Episode: 1561
Title: HPR1561: How I got into Accessible Computing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1561/hpr1561.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:07:02

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Hello and welcome to Hacca Public Radio.
My name is Mike Ray and this is the first podcast that I've done for HBR.
In fact, it's the first podcast that I've done for anybody anywhere.
How I got into accessible computing.
Before we talk about how I got into accessible computing, it might be worth
defining the term accessible.
If you've got two ears, two eyes, two arms, two hands, ten fingers,
two legs, two feet, and all of which work properly,
and no cognitive problems like dyslexia or any other serious
cognitive disorders, you might be forgiven for not knowing
what is meant by accessible computing.
The term accessible can be applied not only to computing but to any kind of
gadget or facility or even place such as an elevator, a shop
community center, or a or-and-data computer software system.
Accessibility is the ability of that system to be used by
somebody with some kind of physical or cognitive impairment.
So how did I get into accessible computing? Well, it's really simple.
I'm totally blind. I'm 50 years old and I've been
blind now for about six years, although I've been
visually impaired to some degree or another since I was born.
Gradually getting worse but very quickly going
totally blind about six years ago.
So all of them and I've been a programmer for well since about 1991.
Not worked for a few years because of my blindness but still in the market.
So what do I use? What do blind people or visually impaired people
in particular use to make a system accessible?
Screen reader, very typically, is a system for
reading the screen in a synthesized speech.
Also a refreshable Braille display which is a
device which provides a 9, either typically either 40 or 80
Braille cells, which a cell is a two across and three down
or in the case of computer Braille, two across and four down
dots. The familiar Braille ever pretty much everybody knows about.
Those are the two tools that I use and I use those on both Windows and Linux.
On Windows they use an open source screen reader called NVDA,
which in recent years has come along in leaps and bounds and is really now
snapping at the heels of the commercial opposition.
All of the commercial opposition being extremely expensive.
The market leader, it typically will cost you three if not four times the price
that you paid for your machine to run it on.
So an open source screen reader is a good option.
On Linux, on the Linux desktop there is only one real screen reader option and
that is Orca, which is part of Nome now and runs very well and makes
along with a few other bits and pieces, makes most GTK applications
accessible and is also accessibility for QT applications,
but that's a bit more patchy. In the Linux console there is
SpeakUp which is a console mode screen reader which is actually a kernel module
and that works very well also. So that's really no more to say about how
I got into accessible computing. I'm working at the moment on
doing all sorts of tests and trials to install various Linux
distros that have accessible installation systems. I sort of insist upon
being able to install something without sighted assistance.
Either I'm stubborn or I just don't have regular access to
IT literate sighted people. So I pretty much insist upon being
able to install stuff myself. So if something is not
equipped with an accessible installer, I don't want to know about it.
I'm also doing lots with the Raspberry Pi
working on code to make that accessible and that's a few problems with that which
I'll talk about in a subsequent podcast.
So that's really it. That's how I got into accessible computing.
I intend to do some more podcasts about Linux, about accessibility, about
Raspberry Pi and anything that really kind of springs to mind.
So watch this space.
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