Re: Transplanting old System to New Drive (now Linux for vision impaired)
On 19/08/11 06:39, Lisi wrote:
> On Thursday 18 August 2011 03:55:30 Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> As Martin isn't going to
>> use a Live CD approach - it's a moot point. (though Knoppix Adriane will
>> probably do the job, and includes parted)
>
> I understood (possibly erroneously) that Martin's problem wasn't that he
> doesn't know about about Live CDs intended for those of us with less than
> perfect vision, but that he can't, without the help of a sighted person, use
> any of the tools available on the BIOS of the machine he is using to
> set "boot from optical drive" because only visual information is available
> prior to booting.
>
> Lisi
>
>
You are probably correct Lisi - I'm (reluctantly) new to the reduced
vision thing, and have yet to learn the basic skills (I still prefer the
headaches from squinting over using a screen reader).
Surely someone has thought to market a BIOS for the unsighted? I vaguely
recall an addon for the Spectrum (Currah), but the only PC BIOS I can
remember was a Phillips (or Panasonic?) from the early 80s (it announced
BIOS settings, can't recall if it aided navigation). Lernout & Hauspie
were working on similar project (or collecting money under those
pretexts) - hopefully that is amongst the technology that was aquired by
Nuance/Visioneer/Scansoft.
It's big technical documents and completely new interfaces that cause me
the most hassles.
For me the biggest problem is CD labels - my writing makes the reading
even harder. Now if someone created a simple system that announced the
title of any cd placed in the drive based on information burned to the
CD....
Unfortunately most of the Live CDs I've come across require a full
desktop just to get reader for CLI tools. The latest Knoppix for
instance, requires the noudev boot parameter to run on many of my
machines - which leaves me with no gui or screenreader! What I'd prefer
is a sort of Tom's Root Boot disk with voice support (and parted).
Knoppix Adriane is very good - I've also heard good things about
ArchLinux for the Blind. But most of the recommendations I get are from
sighted people ie. Vinux is "supposed" to be good... maybe if I came
from a Gnome background I wouldn't find it unusable - or fail to
understand why a desktop built for the sighted has to be adapted for the
blind (ugh).
Cheers
--
"I love the Pope, I love seeing him in his Pope-Mobile, his three feet
of bullet proof plexi-glass. That's faith in action folks! You know he's
got God on his side."
~ Bill Hicks
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