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:
- 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
- If the braille window is still showing the version of BrlTTY, just click on it to bypass that greeting message.
Serial braille support
To test the serial device support, replace
-usbdevice braille
with
-serial braille
and append
brltty=bm,ttyS0
to the kernel command line.
braille hotplug support
To test hotplug support (new in wheezy with brltty 4.2-9), replace
-usbdevice braille
with
-usbdevice mouse
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
usb_add braille
and use ctrl-alt-1 to switch back to the installer. Debconf should get killed and restart in text mode.
After installation
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
kvm -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.
Software Speech
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.
After installation
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.