Topic 11

Libre software for the blind and visually impaired

Keywords

• Libre software for the blind
• The needs of visually imapired users
• Screen readers
• Speech synthesis
• Emacs
• Emacspeak
• brltty
• Speech(b)daemon
• Speech daemon
• Free(b)soft
• Biglux

Motivations

Computers play the important role in the lives of ordinary people these days and the importance of this role is rising. We use them to get our work done, to amuse ourselves, to get in touch with the people from around the world. But there are people for whom the role of computers in their daily lives is much greater - the people whom the computers enable to do the things which would be otherwise denied to them due to their impairement.

Things like reading and writing seem 'usual' and 'natural' to the majority but this is not true for all. People with visual impairement do not take these things for granted. But the computers take down this barrier and they can return at least a piece of sight to the sightless. They can enable them to (relatively) easily work with information and in the world of computers and especially on the Internet, the worlds of impaired and unimpaired people are getting closer to each other.

However, machines themselves won't do the work. They need to be fed with appropriate software first. And here is the occasion for libre software to take the place, take the challenge and help these people. We think that the solutions based on the libre software are more effective, cheaper and the thought of cooperation is also very important. Every one can take part in this development, no matter if he is visually impaired or not.

But this is not the task for a single man nor for the small team. There are more questions than answers and many problems and ideas to talk about. This is why the meeting like this can help to lot to such a project and every one who would like to take part is welcome.

Subtopics

• Speech(b)daemon - new project! The goal of speechd is to provide a device independent layer for speech synthesis. It should provide a simple interface for client applications (applications, that want to speak) as well as for device driver modules (for particular speech synthesis).
• Speech enabled workstation - screenreaders, emacspeak, speakup, braille terminal
• Sound processing tools
• Speech support for Emacs and Emacs extensions
• Advocacy and documentation of libre software for the blind

Links

Program