Differences between revisions 23 and 24
Revision 23 as of 2011-01-13 17:59:58
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Comment: make sure qemu has braille device support compiled in
Revision 24 as of 2011-01-13 18:11:16
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The first command will show a window that displays what would be displayed on a braille device. If you have issues with it, add {{{-l debug -n -e}}} to the command line to get more debugging details. The second command starts the installer (without harddisk so only the first few installation steps can be tested). If qemu complains that it doesn't find the "braille" backend, it was probably built without brlapi support. Make sure to have the libbrlapi devel package installed when building qemu. The isolinux boot menu does not show on the braille device. Just "blindly" hit enter. The first command will show a window that displays what would be displayed on a braille device. If you have issues with it, add {{{-l debug -n -e}}} to the command line to get more debugging details. If it's complaining about the font, try to append {{{-B font='-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1'}}} or even {{{-B font='-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'}}} . The second command starts the installer (without harddisk so only the first few installation steps can be tested). If qemu complains that it doesn't find the "braille" backend, it was probably built without brlapi support. Make sure to have the libbrlapi devel package installed when building qemu. The isolinux boot menu does not show on the braille device. Just "blindly" hit enter.

main accessibility page: accessibility

Braille

Starting from version 0.9.1-4, debian's qemu has support for a virtual braille device. That means that you can very easily (i.e. without any braille hardware) test the debian installer support for braille devices by just installing brltty-x11 (at least version 3.10~r3715-1) and running:

$ /sbin/brltty -b xw -x no -A auth=none,host=127.0.0.1:1
$ BRLAPI_HOST=127.0.0.1:1 qemu -usbdevice braille -cdrom mini.iso

The first command will show a window that displays what would be displayed on a braille device. If you have issues with it, add -l debug -n -e to the command line to get more debugging details. If it's complaining about the font, try to append -B font='-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1' or even -B font='-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' . The second command starts the installer (without harddisk so only the first few installation steps can be tested). If qemu complains that it doesn't find the "braille" backend, it was probably built without brlapi support. Make sure to have the libbrlapi devel package installed when building qemu. The isolinux boot menu does not show on the braille device. Just "blindly" hit enter.

After the installer has booted you should see:

  • the newt frontend being used without framebuffer
  • the language list limited to languages using only Latin1 characters (accented characters may not show correctly in the brltty window, that's a known limitation of the virtual braille device being shown)
  • the currently selected line from the language list visible in the brltty window
  • changing selections or tabbing to buttons reflected in the brltty window

To test the serial device support, replace

  •  -usbdevice braille 

with

  •  -serial braille 

and append

  •  brltty=bm,ttyS0 

to the kernel command line. On reboot into the newly-installed system, nothing should be needed to get braille output again. If the (gnome) graphical desktop task was chosen, orca should get started to read gdm's chooser, and sound effects should be enabled. The user created during d-i should get orca and sound effects enabled in its session too.

Low vision

There is a high contrast them which can be enabled by adding

  •  theme=dark 

to the kernel command line. This is supported by both the "newt" and "gtk" frontends. TODO: the low vision parameter should get applied to gdm and the created user.

Speech

Just run

  •  qemu -serial stdio -cdrom mini.iso 

choose the GTK installer, and append

  •  speakup.synth=dummy 

to the kernel command line. You will then get on stdio what would be spoken. On reboot into the newly-installed system, nothing should be needed to get output again. If the (gnome) graphical desktop task was chosen, orca should get started to read gdm's chooser, and sound effects should be enabled. The user created during d-i should get orca and sound effects enabled in its session too.