main accessibility page: accessibility

Braille

Starting from version 0.9.1-4, debian's qemu-kvm 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 kvm -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/kvm 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/kvm. The isolinux boot menu does not show on the braille device. Just "blindly" hit enter.

After the installer has booted you should see:

To test the serial device support, replace

with

and append

to the kernel command line.

To test hotplug support (new in wheezy with brltty 4.2-9), replace

with

to remove the braille device but keep the USB tree initialized by qemu/kvm, and after d-i startup, press ctrl-alt-2 to get into the qemu/kvm console, and there type

and use ctrl-alt-1 to switch back to the installer. Debconf should get killed and restart in text mode.

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

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

choose the GTK installer, and append

to the kernel command line. You will then get on stdio what would be spoken.

To test software speech synthesis, simply pass  -soundhw ac97 , and select speech synthesis in the boot menu (last item, s shortcut). As soon as the first debconf question you should get spoken feedback from the sound board.

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.