

Emacspeak at Twenty: Looking Back, Looking Forward - qdot76367
http://emacspeak.blogspot.com/2014/09/emacspeak-at-twenty-looking-back.html

======
mwcampbell
A little context for readers who are unfamiliar with the field of assistive
technology for the blind:

When Raman started working on Emacspeak in 1994, most blind computer users,
including him, were using screen readers for MS-DOS. Naturally, these only
worked in text mode. They intercepted BIOS interrupts and/or polled screen
memory to find out what was on the screen. So naturally, these screen readers
didn't have access to any information about the structure of what was on the
screen, just the text and colors. They used various heuristics to determine
what to speak in a given situation, but this was far from optimal IMO. I dare
say the same applies to Linux text-mode screen readers, specifically Speakup.

Today, there are multiple excellent screen readers for Windows, both
commercial and free. The most popular commercial screen reader is JAWS for
Windows; the best and most popular free one is NVDA. Apple provides a good
screen reader called VoiceOver on both Mac and iOS. On Android there's
TalkBack, and for GNOME, there's Orca.

The primary way of providing access to GUIs is through accessibility APIs such
as Microsoft Active Accessibility and UI Automation on Windows. These APIs
expose GUI widgets and containers as a tree of objects, with attributes such
as name, role (e.g. button, list view, editable text), state (a set of flags
such as focused, selected, checked, etc.), value, location, and more. So
there's much more information about the structure and meaning of what's on the
screen; this is practically a necessity for GUI screen readers, as opposed to
text-mode ones.

Some GUI screen readers, such as JAWS, NVDA, and Orca, also provide ways to
associate scripts or plug-in modules with specific applications, to add
application-specific behavior. The ability to modify screen reader
configuration settings on a per-application basis is also common (as it was in
DOS screen readers).

I don't have an informed opinion of my own about Emacspeak versus the current
crop of GUI screen readers, since I don't use either full-time. But based on
my observation of the blind people I happen to know, including blind
programmers, Emacspeak doesn't seem to be very popular even among blind
programmers; the ones I know mostly use Windows and NVDA.

Anyway, I hope this comment will help to provide some context for the OP. It's
not often that I see a post about assistive technology hit the HN front page.

~~~
jareds
I'm a blind Windows user because general desktop accesibility in Linux is not
great. I've attempted to set up Emacspeak under a Linux VM but installation
has always been dificult. Seeing this article though has gotten me to look
into using Vagrant to create a Linux Vm that will install Emacspeak.

------
JetSpiegel
[https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email](https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email)

Here's a description of the process of sending an email by the creator of
Orca, the GNOME screen reader.

------
swartkrans
Emacs is a great editor, very capable, and it's awesome that accessibility is
possible with such a great editor. The author knows a lot and I'm glad they
shared their experience. However that blog is nearly unreadable for someone
with sight.

Also I wonder if vim or IDE's like IntelliJ provide comparable accessibility.
I'd hope they do.

~~~
yzzxy
It's totally readable. You may dislike the aesthetic but it's a capable,
simple page layout, unlike many modern sites "optimized for readability."

It doesn't mess with your scrolling or use unreadable color combinations. It
doesn't use crazy fonts or table layouts.

What's unreadable?

~~~
gwern
It _is_ a little distracting to have that dog tiled across most of what would
otherwise be whitespace. No doubt it's not a problem for anyone using a
screenreader who just hears the text and doesn't seen the tiling...

