Guide to Accessibility In Linux

From ITCH

original text

1 Accessibility Guide
2 Other resources

Accessibility Guide

Introduction

There are many different distributions of Linux, to provide the desktop section of this accessibility guide two major distributions were used with proven hardware driver support: Suse 9.1 Professional and Fedora Core. There is an option to use a Graphical User Interface with both of these distributions and there is a choice between KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.2. At present these are the 2 major graphical user interfaces in Linux although Sun Java desktop is growing in popularity and a major new release is expected later this year (2005).

In terms of accessibility it is important to note that Linux accessibility projects are dynamic and that usability is improving all the time. Whilst at present there are areas which are not as accessible as Windows that this is changing as accessibility is high on the agenda. The very low costs of running and maintaining a Linx system may actually mean that it is more accessible to many disabled users.

KDE 3.4 Release March 2005

Since writing the KDE section a new version of KDE (version 3.4 ) has been released which offers a greater number of accessibility options and utilities. There are a number of new features including text to speech and Text-to-speech system with support built into Konqueror, Kate, KPDF and the standalone application Ksayit. not yet Support for text to speech synthesis is integrated with the desktop. If the interval between the first and second click exceeds the specified time then the action is not interpreted as a double click. Information about these features has been given but they have not yet been tested thoroughly and there are no step by step directions for their use. This information has been marked as being available in Version 3.4 and links have been given to other on-line sites.

Full information on how to download and install KDE 3.4 is available on the official website at http://www.kde.org/info. It is available for download and is free. Precompiled packages may be available from your distributions website or from http://download.kde.org. The source code can also be downloaded from there.

Further information about the new desktop and its release is available at: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.4.php

About This Guide

The features that I document in these wiki pages are present in the system distribution and or on the system CD or download and unless specifically stated have not involved separate downloads and installation. Such downloads use the command line facility and it is not expected that users of these pages would necessarily be familiar with a command line environment. Some basic guidance on using the command line has been given below. Where possible guidance on utilities and there configuration is given using the GUI desktop environment.

Desktop Accessibility Projects

Both Gnome and KDE have accessibility projects further details are available at :

Software Tools for blind and visually Impaired in Gnome 2 http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html

KDE Accessibility Project http://accessibility.kde.org/

KDE also has a Usability Project at http://usability.kde.org/

Non GUI-dependent Linux Accessibility Projects

There are an ever growing number of small utilities, and applications that could help to make your computer more accessible and it is worth investigating the Linux forums for guidance on what and where these might be, the first news of them will generally be found on-line.

To find out what is going on in Linux with regard to accessibility there is a new experimental site LARS (Linux Accessibility Resource Site) hosted by the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC) at the Unviersity of Toronto which is a summary of the work of the Linux Accessibility community http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca/

A project in the UK has been set up to create a centralised database and support network for Open Source Assistive Technology and their site at http://fullmeasure.co.uk/OATS/OATSIntro.html is under developement.

A wealth of information about many of the accessibility features available for Linux can be found online at http://www.linux.com/howtos/Accessibility-HOWTO/linuxos.shtml or http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Accessibility-HOWTO/

Downloading Software in Linux

Your Linux OS may not have come with some of the applications and utilities you might need or want to use to enable access. You may need to download and install applications. You need to follow the directions about installation carefully and you cannot afford to ignore them as you often can in Windows.

If you need help and advice on downloading software you will find that there are many tutorials and support pages for new Linux users on the web. You may also have the Red Hat Package Manager or a version of it which will enable you to download through the GUI. However some downloads do not support mouse click style installation as in Windows. If you can't download through the GUI or something has gone wrong then you may find some of the basics included here useful Linux Download Basics If you are going to use the CLI (command line inferface) to download then use a guide such as that at http://linuxcommand.gds.tuwien.ac.at/learning_the_shell.php and have a go with using it to just navigate round your system before downloading and installing files. Ensure you are not logged in as a Superuser/root during your experimentation phase.

Generic Linux Accessibility

Some accessibility features or applications may come with your distribution. Some tools can be found in the GUI and may only work in a specific GUI. Other tools for accessibility may be available generically for Linux. You will find these in the first section below.