[OT] Anything simpler than emacspeak?

[Patrick Wiseman <pwiseman@mindspring.com>]

Hello, all:

I'm trying to set up a Debian laptop (so this is not _completely_ offtopic
:) for my Dad, whose sight has almost failed.  I have bought Fonix's
DECtalk software, and it works quite nicely on the command line (i.e. it
"speaks" what I type), but the only application I can find which uses it
is emacspeak, which has way too steep a learning curve and in any event is
much more than Dad needs, which is basically web-browsing (lynx would be
good) and email (for which I'd set him up with mutt or pine).  I tried
screader, but couldn't get it to work with DECtalk's 'say' program; and
its documentation is so sketchy, I couldn't begin to diagnose the problem.

Any help will be much appreciated, and I'll report back (and probably
create a website) so that anyone else wanting to set up a minimal but
functional "talking" system will be able to do it more easily!

Thanks

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Wiseman                               pwiseman@mindspring.com
Linux user #17943                             *Google First, Ask Later*