Accessibility questions

[Peter Laursen]

Hi,

I have various questions about Gnome and accessibility - I have
unsuccessfully tried finding these ansers myself. I hope, therefore, that
someone on this list has the answers.

A short background: I am to give a short presentation on Open-source and
accessibility to some people who counsel blind people in what software
they need to choose. Currently, their only choice is Windows. FreeBSD has
shown to be the best platform for Gnome in this respect, especially
because of its clear and simple setup and crystal-clear audio.

Here, then, follows the questions:

1) On various Linux distributions, an audio file is played when the
machine is ready for login. Where does one set this up on FreeBSD? In
gdm.conf or in a completely separate place?

2) When one installs x11/gnome2, gnome-speech is also built. However, due
to gnome-speech's detecting installed speech synthesizers on build-time,
it would be wise to include a configuration section in the port makefile,
allowing a user to choose what speech synthesizer the person would use. I
would like to help with integrating this change if possible. I realise
that few people would need this.

3) When one builds Gnome from ports, Firefox 3 is unable to communicate
with the Gnome screen reader. If one chooses the Gnome that is built from
packages (e.g. pkg_add -r gnome2) and then runs portupgrade -a and
installs Firefox 3, Firefox 3 and Orca are able to communicate, meaning
that visually impaired people are able to browse the net from FreeBSD.
What Gecko engine is used when Gnome is built for distribution with the
various FreeBSD versions?

My own test machine uses FreeBSD 8.0 Beta 4. It's an I386-install of FreeBSD.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who may have some of the answers to
the above questions.

Regards,

Peter.