Fedora for the blind?

Mon Apr 28 16:45:20 UTC 2008

On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 10:12 +0200, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> Hi,
> does anybody have some information how Fedora and linux distros in
> general are for usable for blind people?
> I heard that speech recognition isn't really working on linux but what
> is the state of screen readers/speech synthesis ?
> How about braile printers and braile keyboards - how do they work on
> fedora and linux in general?
> Has anybody heard or some great story how linux is used by blind
> people? Can you please share links and any info that you have.
> 
> My niece is 80% blind and she uses some really expensive software (on
> windows) and hardware so that she can use the PC and at my former
> university they are starting a class for educating blind people to use
> PC-s but with windows and some additional expensive software for blind
> people. I would like to make a project so that they use fedora as a
> desktop instead if it is possible.

The Orca screen reader for the GNOME desktop is almost as good as
proprietary ones, and closing the gap fast. Many of those involved in
its development have a disability themselves, so it is tightly focused
on what users need.