[BRLTTY] Help for a Friend

[Adrian van Bloois]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 03:00:08PM -0400, wmichaelb at fuse.net wrote:
> 
>    Hi: I have been providing some tech help for a blind friend, although
>    I'm sighted myself.
> 
>    Andre has for twenty years run a DOS system using the Powerbraille80
>    display. He
> 
>    has now found himself running out of dial-up options, and needs to move
>    on to something
> 
>    with a standard ethernet connection to a fiber modem.
> 
>    He and I and a third friend with some IT experience have been trying to
>    get him connected,
> 
>    but have had no luck with various DOS programs and NIC hardware. Right
>    now, he has
> 
>    some connectivity with a Windows 7 machine running a trial copy of
>    Dolphin. We have
> 
>    tried brltty on that Windows machine, but were unable to get it to
>    work. I'm a long time
> 
>    Linux user, and would frankly love to get him on that platform.
I'm using CentOS, this is the free version of RedHat Linux.
I use it with a BC680 nowadays, this an 80 char braille display sold by a
dutch company. Indeed brltty is the braille driver, text mode is the
thing just like DOS.
I am retired now but I've been using this setup professionally for 35
years.
For reading the icons and so on on the display you might get help from
orca, this is also in the CentOS/epel distribution.
Sorry, I'm not in the Chicago area, if you were active in amateur radio
we could arrange a chat in D-STAR, but this probably means nothing to
you. I'm ssuere there are users of this sort of setup in the area, but
how do you find them.

Good lcuk

		Adrian




> 
>    This leads us to three questions:
> 
>    1.) Are there any brltty users in the Chicago area, or for that matter,
>    somewhere in the US
> 
>    that Andre might call by phone to chat with about their experience?
> 
>    2.) Does brltty have screen reading capability, or is it primarily a
>    braille display driver that needs other
> 
>    software for the reading function?
> 
>    3.) Do we need an additional driver for the Powerbraille80 display, or
>    ??
> 
>    Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

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-- 
	Adri P. van Bloois


"Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between 
 success and failure."
	Edsger W. Dijkstra