Re: boot-time accessibility issues

[Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com>]

since several different kinds of accessibility can be provided, which kind
of accessibility is needed also needs sorting out.  Apple in 10.4 Tiger
had things set up such that if the computer was completely hooked up
including a set of speakers a question as to which language a user needed
came up on the screen and this had a time limit on it.  Failure to answer
that question resulted in VoiceOver being turned on to interact with the
user during installation and afterwards.
Speech would be no help for those with no hearing ability.  The deaf-blind
usually have refreshable braille displays if involved in education or
employment so perhaps detecting a refreshable braille display and
activating it would help that group.
Perhaps start by displaying a question in normal sized type.  No answer,
make the type larger until that's no longer possible.  Next detect a
braille display if present and display a question on that if available.
Next, try speaking a question with espeakup and see if that gets a
response from either a keyboard or perhaps a microphone if no keyboard is
used.  Perhaps a mouse response could be checked for as well somewhere in
that group but not all people have or use mice.  One thing that may be
necessary to do since some systems these days are missing pc speakers or
those are disabled would to play some tones on a sound card if one is
found and perhaps adjust the post-install boot to play those tones on the
sound card as well.  We had to do this with some very recent hardware so
my reason for bringing it up here.

One thing I really would like to see in a debian installer that installs a
graphical environment is an option for the user if they choose to have
debian start up in console then run ratpoison or startx to go into the
graphical environment since if the graphical environment breaks they have
at least logged in on the console and have a chance to repair the
graphical environment without the need to destroy the whole installation
and start from bare metal again.



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