Re: Accessibility in the FreeBSD installer and console

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On Sun, Jul 10, 2022 at 3:55 PM Hans Petter Selasky <hps@selasky.org> wrote:

> Hi Klaus and Michael,
>
> I've tried to make some graphical QT v6.x cross platform so-called
> accessible applications. It is really hard to get it right. If you use
> one QT widget, everything is read perfectly in MacOS and if you use
> another QT widget, or a custom one, it is just not working. Or if you
> have a text editor you need to make sure you can tab out of it.
>
> Then a friend of mine said he started to use mac-ports and asked if I
> can port my applications from AppStore to there, because it is so much
> easier for him to use --- sigh, why could he not just re-install his Mac
> M1 with FreeBSD. pkg has just about everything he needs! Only that he
> needs to learn a few things the FreeBSD way.
>
> FreeBSD could beep all sound cards from 0 to 9 during single user mode
> for example, to indicate something is wrong. Some kind of espeak daemon
> could also be started from single user-mode.
>
> FreeBSD could technically support USB audio from the USB loader. We do
> have a USB stack which can be built as a single-threaded blob into the
> loader, but probably using the bell character via the BIOS is simpler.
>
> Many times when I see people use FreeBSD it is through Windows or MacOS.
> There is nothing wrong about that. I personally however prefer Windows
> through FreeBSD. Now if you would listen to me for a bit you will get
> why FreeBSD may be your only bet. Both Apple and Microsoft are totally
> tied up companies. I claim they can't do anything about computer
> programs that violates copyright law. You will be completely banned from
> their stores. But who would need to break "the law" to do something
> which most other people can do by not breaking the law?
>
> I've personally had a dream about being able to play the piano, but my
> brain simply won't do it. So I made a computer program to fill the gaps.
> The problem is that many so-called TAB sites are full of "stupid"
> copyright protections, obfuscating all the simple plain-text everyone
> else can see with their plain eyes, I just need it for my program, with
> tons JavaScript parsing, to make the text non-machine readable:
>
> Go here first and look at the CPU-usage and HTML source:
> https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
>
> Then go here and compare:
> https://nortabs.net
>
> And nobody wants to use a program that can only play a 100 Norwegian
> songs, when UG has 1.4 million multi-national songs available, in
> exactly right format I need. You will find people tried to talk to UG,
> but with no success.
>
> Is it legal to download movies using the Pirate bay if you are blind?
> Say you want all sub-titles on a braille device and need
> machine-readable subtitles?
>
> What if you have some kind of other disability and really need
> machine-readable formats to do your job?
>
> It's like being allowed to remove the copyright protection from that
> PDF, because you are not blind or deaf, but something else, which in the
> future will be mitigated by a machine.
>
> The only option for Apple, Google and Microsoft products, is so-called
> jail-breaking and cracks, which often gets your device infected by viruses.
>
> Apple says that all browsers on iOS must use the WebKit layout engine.
> That is so clever and I see another reason why. They don't want anyone
> to have access to machine readable formats, because then someone could
> remove all the ADs or someone could clone all the TABs on UG or blah
> blah blah.
>
> What prevents you from feeding audio of an e-book back into Google
> translate and selling the resulting text?
>
> What prevents you from OCR-ing ultimate-guitar?
>
> It's getting late here now and I think I've shared enough thoughts for
> today. Hope you find something meaningful in what I've written.
>
> --HPS
>
>