Linux Mint Forums

After convincing my blind friend that the open source way is the better way, I've been asked to prepare a linux usb stick for his use. What packages are available to aid my blind friend in his use with the OS to make his experience better?

How does your friend use a computer now. With a braille display, or with text-to-speech? Depending on that, there are various solutions for the blind.

Linux Mint comes pre-installed with brltty, which allows reading text from the Linux terminal with a braille display. If your friend reads email and browses the Internet with a braille display, that could be a good solution. You'll need to add a terminal based email client and browser. I'm not sure which to recommend though. Some editions of Linux Mint also come with text-to-speech installed, notably Cinnamon is strong in that regard (from using Gnome 3)

You might instead pick a Linux distro specifically for the blind. If you are most comfortable with an Ubuntu based distro, give Vinux a look (erm, no pun intended). The Knoppix based distro ADRIANE might also be worthwile. At least both offer you a chance to check what applications would be installed for blind users, so at least for that purpose I'd say explore them.

xenopeek wrote:How does your friend use a computer now. With a braille display, or with text-to-speech? Depending on that, there are various solutions for the blind.

Linux Mint comes pre-installed with brltty, which allows reading text from the Linux terminal with a braille display. If your friend reads email and browses the Internet with a braille display, that could be a good solution. You'll need to add a terminal based email client and browser. I'm not sure which to recommend though. Some editions of Linux Mint also come with text-to-speech installed, notably Cinnamon is strong in that regard (from using Gnome 3)

You might instead pick a Linux distro specifically for the blind. If you are most comfortable with an Ubuntu based distro, give Vinux a look (erm, no pun intended). The Knoppix based distro ADRIANE might also be worthwile. At least both offer you a chance to check what applications would be installed for blind users, so at least for that purpose I'd say explore them.

Thank you for your reply, I should have been more specific sorry, He can see very slightly so he actually just now uses Windows XP and magnifier set to invert, and also text to speech built into Windows, but he doesn't rate them very highly. I'll take a look at what you recommended.