Introduction
BlindUbuntu is a derivative of the Linux operating system, an Ubuntu distribution intended for the use of severely visually handicaped and blind people. Moreover BlindUbuntu is a set of several Ubuntu packages, which you can just install into your ordinary Ubuntu system. It is however also distributed as a full disk image so that a Blind person can install a system in such a way, that it will be directly accessible.
How is BlindUbuntu different from Ubuntu?
BlindUbuntu is different in several important ways:
It contains a kernel patched with SpeakUp.
It contains the text processor Emacs (including web browser w3m and a support for speech and braille output through speechd-el).
It contains the Orca screen reader including the national localisation.
It includes Speech Dispatcher and the libraries necessary for cooperation with Orca.
- It includes support for some non-free formats (e.g. mp3).
It includes the web browser Firefox-3.0, which cooperates with the Orca screen reader.
It contains the mp3text tool that can convert written text into spoken audio files.
It contains the YASR console screen reader, which can also handle UTF-8 consoles (it however only works after login).
It contains the Festival speech system including the Czech Free(b)Soft voice and sox (and libsox0).
- It contains the SoundRTS strategy game intended for the blind people.
- And more...
How to get BlindUbuntu?
You can get the BlindUbuntu iso image at nvda.venik.org/download/blindubuntu. You can however get BlindUbuntu in a different way as well. If you have an existing Ubuntu system, it is enough if you append the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/martin-suky/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/martin-suky/ubuntu intrepid main
Then update the list of packages using
apt-get update
If you want to display the list of packages available from the BlindUbuntu project, write:
apt-cache search BlindUbuntu
Before you can install the blindubuntu-desktop package, you must first uninstall gnomespeech and Orca, because the BlindUbuntu package contains a newer version. At the end, we will run Brltty so that speechd-el gets compiled correctly (?).
sudo apt-get removelibgnome-speech7 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio pulse -y brltty sudo apt-get install blindubuntu-desktop
This system has the advantage that the packages of the different tools will continue getting upgraded as any other packages in your system.
What next?
With each new version of Ubuntu, I'd like to release a version of BlindUbuntu, so that even a beginner blind user could use the computer and work instead of having to go through the (for a beginner) very difficult process of configuration modifications and compilations.
For more precise and upt-to-date information, read the development page Vývoj (Czech only).
I'd like to thank all the great people for their ideas, inputs and help.
Installation from scratch
A detailed description of how to install the system from scratch if you are blind can be found on Instalace (Czech only).
Contacts
People interested in the project or users seeking help can get in touch with us on our e-mail conference. Read E-mail conference (Czech only).
References
Project author: Martin Sukaný <sukany-at-braillnet-dot-cz>
