Lead, kindly light: Debian shows the way
There were several shining examples at the Linux conference of people not letting disadvantage stand in the way of moving to free and open source software but none better than that of Jason White .
White, who is blind, presented a paper on using Linux with speech and Braille output interfaces.
A GNU/Linux user since 1998, when he switched over from DOS, White's paper provided a comprehensive overview of how much support the blind and sight-impaired people are afforded by free software projects.
Given that his entire audience consisted of sighted people, White first provided a rundown of Braille - and also the way it differs from language to language - and the methods by which it is implemented in hardware and software.
The piezo-electric cell technology behind the refreshable braille display that he uses makes the device prohibitively expensive; he said it cost him something in the region of $8500.
However, he said, this was the only real option for people like him when it came to using computers. Everything else was still in the prototype stage.
The Braille access daemon, BRLTTY, a client/server based infrastructure for applications that use a Braille display, provides the needed drivers to communicate with the hardware.
White's move from DOS to GNU/Linux was aided by the maintainer of BRLTTY, Dave Mielke, who worked with him to extend a driver so that it could support the Braille display device that White uses.
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Sam Varghese
A professional journalist with decades of experience, Sam for nine years used DOS and then Windows, which led him to start experimenting with GNU/Linux in 1998. Since then he has written widely about the use of both free and open source software, and the people behind the code. His personal blog is titled Irregular Expression.
