Speech help

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I would recommend speech-dispatcher and Orca. You can install the MATE 
desktop and the lightdm gtk greeter, drop in a config file that I can 
send and run a couple of gsettings commands, and his system will speak. 
There is a repository I believe for RHVoice, which ships with a 
speech-dispatcher module. RHVoice, especially the bdl voice, tends to be 
easier to understand than espeak. The MATE desktop I mention does ship 
with the menu that will help in selecting applications to run and also 
configuring and shutting down the system.


The best mail client is either Thunderbird or Seamonkey mail. I haven't 
been able to get sylpheed working with Orca, and evolution, which I 
rather like, does have some webkit-gtk problems that keep it from 
working 100%. I would stay away from Mutt personally. I gave up on 
configuring it to work with existing mailbox configurations that were 
not stored on the local machine. It really is a bear to set up if you 
have a regular IMAP mailbox. Orca just reads Thunderbird and Seamonkey 
much better as well, since you have access to navigation keys, SayAll 
mode that will read a message continuously from the top or from where 
your cursor is all the way to the bottom, and of course simple arrow 
navigation that will read your message line by line similar to reading 
it in a text editor or web browser. These clients also handle links 
without issues.


For browsing, Firefox works out of the box, and Chromium works as well, 
but does need some startup flags to be set in order to make Orca read 
it. That said, modifying Chromium's startup flags seems to work the best 
here. It seems much faster and less sluggish, and I have been able to 
get it working with more websites, especially conferencing and phone 
types of things. Online banking does seem to work slightly better using 
Firefox, but pages seem to load much more slowly. I do tend to keep both 
around just in case one works better than the other for a specific task. 
I hope some of this helps.

~Kyle

Sent from my quiet place