Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:38:50 +0100 From: "Julian Stacey" <jhs@berklix.org> To: "Mr. Jim Vaglia" <jimjv@verizon.net> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Vision impaired software on FreeBSD? Message-ID: <200701251638.l0PGcoFC076854@fire.jhs.private> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:35:25 %2B0100." <8664avcjqa.fsf@dwp.des.no>
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Reference: > From: des@des.no (Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?=) > Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:35:25 +0100 > Message-id: <8664avcjqa.fsf@dwp.des.no> Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?= wrote: > "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@flat.berklix.net> writes: > > One problem: (last I knew), FreeBSD only has a graphical installer, > > not Ascii text mode. So you might need somoene else to install it > > for you. > > On the contrary, FreeBSD does not have and has never had a graphical > installer. Sysinstall is text-based and is rumored to work well with > screen readers. Depends what one means & understand by graphics. There was previous discussuion on topic of FreeBSD installer use by the blind many years back: a short while after Jordan gave us the nice colourful boxed (what I call graphical) installer, a blind person wrote in & asked if there was a plain text installer, his answer was no, get someone else to install. It'll be in webed mail archives. As the BSD installer is not a pixel X11 Xwindows graphics installer, just ascii strings with escape sequences for pcterm/ vt100 whatever, maybe modern blind equipment might cope with (ie ignore) sequences . The cursor does rather jump around during the install, whereas a clasical command line tool does not, so it may be harder to retain everything in human memory though. A near blind German girl (Linux user I think) told me in English long ago: - Braile transducers for the blind cost a fortune, - Did limited mapping of 1 line of 40 chars to a pixel map for fingers. - Braille varies completely between countries (ie far more than just umlauts), so hinders import competition to force price down, so even if Jim Vaglia has a device that copes, it may not be usable for others. A case report from Jim would be interesting, if he can try it, & report back, FreeBSD could document it to web site for next enquirer. Jim, if no luck with the FreeBSD installer, try NetNSD installer. -- Julian Stacey. BSD Unix C Net Consultancy, Munich/Muenchen http://berklix.com Mail Ascii, not HTML. Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz. http://berklix.org/free-software
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