Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64
Christian,
> On Feb 13, 2023, at 9:05 AM, Christian Schoepplein <chris@schoeppi.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Frank,
>
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 07:56:04AM -0500, Frank Carmickle wrote:
>>> On Feb 13, 2023, at 3:50 AM, Christian Schoepplein <chris@schoeppi.net> wrote:
>>> What do I have todo to test speech based installation where sound is needed?
>>> As said, I am using braille, for that reason I've never installed a system
>>> where sound was needed during installation. However, I'd like to test it...
>>
>> Maybe this is where I'm having trouble. The instructions seem to indicate
>> that it is the same for all architectures. One should be able to press 's'
>> at the boot prompt, given that this should be emulated EFI. Even that
>> doesn't seem to be working, but it's hard to tell as my sighted assistant
>> isn't great about giving me all the information. It seems as though you
>> still can arrow down to the accessibility menu option after having pressed
>> 's'. In either case, after booting many times, I have never been able to
>> get sound running.
>
> Ah, OK. I think the arm64 installer behaves not the same like e.g. the amd64
> installer. If I install amd64 machines I get a beep tone when the
> bootmanager is ready. At this point pressing "s" will chose speech based
> installation or, in older days where braille devices were not regognized
> automaticaly, one has to enter
>
> install brltty
>
> to get braille support during installation.
>
> When using the arm64 installer no beep tone was played, but this might be
> because the whole system is running in a VM. So either pressing "s" does not
> work in the arm64 installer or we just don't know when to press the key :-).
Yet another thing likely needing work after I get something running, pc speaker emulation. I'm guessing that we don't have it enabled in the appstore build of utm. I hope to be wrong about this.
>
> I'll ask my girlfriend if she can take a look or what to press to get into
> the menu to have the accessible installer started.
>
> If a braille device is connected its OK to press just enter when the
> bootmanager is loaded. Because the device is connected via USB the normal
> installer can recognize the braille device and the textbased installation
> will start automaticaly.
>
> However, one points differ from a normal installation on amd64 systems.
> During software selection no grafical environment and therefore also no Mate
> desktop was selected, but this is the default on amd64 installations IIRC. I
> don't know if this an issue of the installer or if its related to some
> hardware settings for the VM, e.g. the RAM.
>
>> I did confirm that booting a x866-4 debian installer does appropriately
>> bring up speech in the installer.
>
> OK, then it really seems like the bootmanager on the arm64 installer behaves
> not like the amd64 installer. I'll take a look with my girlfriend.
>
> BTW.: I did not change any sound settings when creating the VM. The default
> sound card works after installation is finished.
>
>>> BTW.: I was able to get a amr64 based Debian installed on my M1 Mac with
>>> UTM and braille support. After installation sound was presend and I was able
>>> to use Mate out of the box. Also braille was working when the braille device
>>> was connected to the VM. The only problem is the capslock key which is used
>>> as screen reader key for Orca and VoiceOver on the Mac. For VoiceOver
>>> capslock has to be disabled as the screen reader key to not overlap with Orca
>>> keystrokes when working in the VM. But the bigger problem is, and thats also
>>> the case with Windows VMs, that capslock on a Mac uses another keyboard
>>> code and therefore the capslock key is not recognized by the virtual
>>> machine. There are tools like Karabiner Elements which can remap capslock
>>> on the Mac to behave like e.g. the insert key in the VM, but I had no
>>> success to get this working so far, will look in this later.
>>
>> I'm thinking that I will disable capslock from being capslock in Macos as
>> I never use it, and it just gets in the way.
>
> that does not work, at least not for me. I had the same idea but still no
> success with using the caps lock key inside the VM as screen reader key for
> Orca. I'll do more tests later, but in the past, when I was working with
> Windows VMs on a Mac, I had to use tools like the already mensioned
> Karabiner-Elements to remap the caps lock to e.g. the insert key in the VM.
> I was hoping that this not longer necessary for a linux VM, lets see.
The utm documentation at
https://docs.getutm.app
indicates that you can disable capslock, specifically for use with screen readers. I have not figured out where you turn this setting on, as it isn't in the app preferences on utm 4.1.5 (74), from the appstore, macos 13. I'll keep digging.
--FC
>
>> How did you pass the braille display to the VM?
>
> Connect your braille device to your Mac. If you do this the first time Mac
> OS will ask if connecting the device is OK, just allow it. Then create the
> VM or boot it for the first time. The VoiceOver cursor will be placed in the
> Window with the output of the VM and tells something like to press
> Option+CMD to grap the input. If you navigate left a toolbar is displayed.
> Interact with this toolbar and chose the USB submenu. There all devices
> which are connected to your Mac should be listed. Mark your braille device
> and it should be connected.
>
> Maybe it will also work if you connect your braille display while the VM is
> already running. I remember a situation where UTM was asking if I want to
> connect the new USB device to the VM or the host.
>
> However, if you are not sure if your braille device has been connected to
> the VM when the installer was starting the first time, just reboot the VM
> after you have attached your braille device. Just rebooting the VM will not
> unattach the device.
>
> Also in some situations brltty will be started if the installer is already
> running and the braille device is attached to the VM. This is also working
> with an already installed system.
>
> In general a installed system is working fast and snappy and I think the
> installation on my Mac Book Air M1 from 2020 with 8 GB RAM was the fastest
> Debian installation I've ever seen, even faster as on most servers I am
> administrating.
>
> I'll keep you posted of my experiments with the bootmanager for the arm64
> installer and please let me also know if you manage to install a system or
> when you have more ideas what todo with the caps lock key...
>
> Ciao,
>
> Schoepp
>
Reply to: