Seeing Dog Puppy for Blind

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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djringjr
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Seeing Dog Puppy for Blind

#1 Post by djringjr »

Due to loosing sight, I've been interested in incorporating Emacs, Emacspeak, Festival (voice engine and voices) into Puppy. I don't know that this needs X, but it works with it.

I've gotten Emacs and Emacspeak to work, and I've downloaded the Festival.pup - but there is an additional driver needed to allow Emacspeak to drive the Festival screen reader engine. I've not found out how to do this.

I went out of X to the command line and ran emacspeak, and lo and behold, it came up outside of X, but revealed the error - "no driver found for Festival" - which seems to say that a blind person could run a command line Puppy - which is perfect for the blind.

If anyone wants to tackle a "Seeing Eye Puppy" for the blind and visually impaired, it would be such a wonderful thing - especially because without X, it would work on a really "slim" computer, and with Puppy, it would work on a fairly slim computer (with enough RAM to run X).

Hopefully yours,

djringjr

Caneri
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#2 Post by Caneri »

I also think this would be a mighty project for Puppy.

If anyone has a nack for doing a Puppy for the blind I will gladly host it and promote it to CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind).

So the gloves are off and the challenge has been made..;)

Eric
[color=darkred][i]Be not afraid to grow slowly, only be afraid of standing still.[/i]
Chinese Proverb[/color]

raffy
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discussion

#3 Post by raffy »

There has been some discussion of Puppy for the blind here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19533

As to using the clipboard, xcut has been discussed by Barry.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Caneri
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#4 Post by Caneri »

I started to collect files for a Puppy for those with diminished eyesight or other limitations.

They are here http://puppylinux.ca/members/Pupspeak/

If someone finds more .pets/.pups or whatever let me know and I'll put them with the other files.

Thanks Raffy for the link to start from.
[color=darkred][i]Be not afraid to grow slowly, only be afraid of standing still.[/i]
Chinese Proverb[/color]

amigo
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#5 Post by amigo »

I found a fairly simple program for running commands using the voice. It's called cvoicecontrol. I don't have a .pet for it but you can get a Slackware package for it here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... i486-1.tgz

It's pretty simple to use and doesn't need X.

djringjr
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#6 Post by djringjr »

Hello Eric - and others,

I'm using 3.01 right now. It would be amazing if someone could do the command line puppy with speech - that would mean that even a 486 with small ram could get on internet, read mail using a text or even telnet etc. If your blackness blind, you don't need an X server.

Thanks

David

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Lobster
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#7 Post by Lobster »

Sadly this was last released in 2004
but might offer some tips . . . Talking Linux for the Blind
http://www.ipsis.hr/gls/
Last edited by Lobster on Mon 20 Oct 2008, 06:20, edited 1 time in total.
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djringjr
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#8 Post by djringjr »

Lobster Thermometer on toast points, John you got me to a great page with links - and they have an alpha version with an iso that's still there.

http://tuxmobil.org/mobile_blind.html

Scroll down and you'll see the list of links.

Most of the distros have a cryptic message "Development Stopped!" -(

Oralux has an alpha CD iso image:
http://oralux.org/

You frisky shellfish, go man go!

David

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#9 Post by Lobster »

:D

check out this virtual magnifier that might come in useful . . .
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 7773#92466
Last edited by Lobster on Mon 20 Oct 2008, 06:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Trobin
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#10 Post by Trobin »

Jupter Speech Systems has an ISO that can be downloaded and run from a CD.

http://www.eklhad.net/linux/jupiter/

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#11 Post by muggins »

http://swik.net/Orca

I wonder how easy it would be to port this, and whether it has gnome dependencies?

djringjr
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#12 Post by djringjr »

Orca is the best of the bunch. It has synthesizers for English, German, Russian, Spanish - and more that I don't remember.

It should be simplified.One of the pages Lobster gave has a screen shot that you can either TAB down or cursor up/down.

Here is the link:
http://www.ipsis.hr/gls/demo/TLB_Demonstration.htm

It is simple -

WEB
MAIL
PLAY AUDIO
PODCASTS
EDITOR
COMMAND LINE
PREFERENCES
ADVANCED (emacspeak and other stuff ?)
QUIT SEEING EYE PUPPY

Orka has a command line ICQ.

Emacspeak is probably excellent - but the command list is very very long.

I can see a programmer using that, but not Mr. and Mrs. Computer User.

I tried to use LYNKS (text web browser) to access web http mail - won't work.

I like eLINKS which is in Puppy better.

What would be nice is to boot like ORCA does, then come to a very simple menu as the other distro had.

The user selects, WEB or MAIL and goes to a dialog:
PRESS 1 IF YOU WANT TO READ MAIL
PRESS 2 IF YOU WANT TO COMPOSE MAIL
PRESS ESC IF YOU WANT TO GO TO MAIN MENU

Have a script see if there is any unsent mail when ESC is pressed, and say: DO YOU WANT TO SEND YOUR UNSENT MAIL NOW? PRESS ENTER TO SEND ANY OTHER KEY TO EXIT.

Then have a "DO YOU REALLY WANT TO EXIT, PRESS RETURN TO EXIT ANY OTHER KEY TO GO TO MAIL MENU.

A blind user could slip the CD in, it would boot up with synthesizer, go to the simple menu.

They could navigate by keys.

It would be so excellent if it were simple.

Blind people could read google news (or other).

If there was a script when you selected WEB that asked "Do you want graphics browser or text browser" - you could incorporate DILLO or some lightweight browser.

If that were done, this version could easily be used by a six year old sighted or blind child - or an adult.

I don't have the training to execute a design - but I think what I have suggested here has a lot of possibilities for good for many people.

Be well,;

David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA
Radio Officer, US Merchant Marine (Ret.)
Green Harbor, MA
USA
=30=
++++
Last edited by djringjr on Thu 20 Dec 2007, 23:40, edited 1 time in total.

Trobin
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#13 Post by Trobin »

Tis project might be worth keeping an eye on.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html

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compiling orca

#14 Post by raffy »

orca screen reader source seems to be widely available. Anyone willing to compile this in Puppy? Must be a good gift. :)

djringjr
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#15 Post by djringjr »

Hi Raffy,

I mentioned the ORCA screen reader above - it is really good - but it is very complicated to use. The easiest desktop to navigate is the "SPEAKEASY" desktop. The EMACSPEAK desktop is the most capable - but the commands are very very very complicated.

See my post above that mentions the ORCA iso - and below it I mention a simple screen - this is what has to be done.

It gives the new user a list to "tab down" or try different positions on the screen to find with a mouse.

One word command scripts should also be provided so the user can just type. web mail mp3 read edit radio skype icq.

Each command can go to the "next step" - like enter URL (must be spaced to speak it as U R L" otherwise it says EARL. Or for "mail" "press one for get mail" "press two for compose mail"

That's the way it has to go - maybe with the option of using X for Opera or Firefox - both can magnify text and pictures for poor sighted.

Thanks for the post.

Best
David

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Keef
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#16 Post by Keef »

Evening All,

I'm a long-time lurker on this forum, but couldn't resist joining this thread as I work with visually impaired people. The type of interface that djringjr is aiming for sounds like 'Guide' from http://www.softwareexpress.co.uk/, which only works with Windows, but is very easy to use. Costs nearly £400 though...(but it's still cheaper than some other offerings).

I'd love to have a live CD to just chuck in someone's PC (or my laptop if they don't already have a computer) and show them what can be done. Even a dedicated CD that just did one thing would be great - I recently met a 99 year old with failing sight who just wanted to be able use a word processor and nothing else.

djringjr
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#17 Post by djringjr »

Keef,

What a pleasure for your first post going to this topic. It is a great honor.

The menu system that I've been speaking about was part of the link that Lobster gave us.

Here is the link for the page that shows the menu system.
http://www.ipsis.hr/gls/demo/TLB_Demonstration.htm

A developer (that doesn't mean me!) could take this idea and make a Puppy Seeing Eye Dog (bark bark) that could be used by blind, and visually impaired. Opera is wonderful for poor vision as you can preset the magnification and it does pictures and text - Firefox 3.0 does this also - but it is harder to change the zoom.

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#18 Post by Trobin »

Okay, I thought I'd play around with this idea for a while. All ready being partially blind, I may have need of it in the future. Far far future I hope.

Anyway I'm not a programmer, nor am I a Linus Guru. So my approach will be trial and error, and a whole lot of questions here, that I hope someone may be able to answer.

The start off point will be Puppy-OneBone-2.10-elinks
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 70&t=11361

A quick look at onebone shows that it does open up into the elinks browser, which does have a menuing stem.

Is here a tutorial for Onebone floating around?

djringjr
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#19 Post by djringjr »

It might be better to build a new Puppy from 2.14 or 2.17.

I'll burn a CD of the iso you mention soon and try it.

I'm not a programmer either - I do other stuff. I just saw the need and saw where it could be made with Puppy and made into a very lightweight distro with a speaking command line.

That's where emacspeak fails the non-expert user.

If a person is blind, they can easily remember to type: web or mail or music (mp3 player) or write (for a text editor with spellcheck) - all with simple and consistant key bindings.

CTRL Q for quit for example. CTRL S for save. Then have the system know that txt files go in the my-documents folder, mp3 save goes to my-music, if an eBook reader is made it gets saved in my-books. All without operator intervention.

When it boots - up and down key to navigate - everything as automatic as possible.

David

David

Trobin
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#20 Post by Trobin »

I took a longer look at Onebone, and the menu isn't what I thought.

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