[BRLTTY] a couple of questions for linux users

[kendell lee clark]

Hi all
I can’t remember if I’ve brought this up before, but I now use a duel boot setup between antergos Linux and fedora. I’ve had a lot of requests, mostly by devin prater, to investigate braille input on Linux. The results are … not disappointing exactly but … it’s rather fiddly to get going. Here’s how I’d like braille to work, if possible. You plugin a display, or set up your Bluetooth display  in range of your computer, brltty, or udev, or whatever, figures out there’s a display there, connects to it, starts brltty, and it begins putting out braille, both in the console and in xorg/wayland. It is possible to get it going in a desktop yes, but it’s a little fiddly to get going. Just having braille turned on in orca doesn’t seem to work. If you try that you’re likely to get a “screen not in text mode” error on the display and braille doesn’t seem to work out of the box. I’m not complaining at all, braille isn’t plug and play, especially on those displays that require you to be in a braille display mode before it will work. But that’s just for braille output. I’m not at all sure what’s needed to get braille input, that is, typing on the braille or qwerty keyboard, to work. Most distros should be packaging brltty’s udev and policy kit rules, so when a display is connected udev starts brltty, but not all do. Is it possible for  orca to autodetect the  braille display, and  whether or not it has a braille or qwerty keyboard and select an appropriate table? I believe that’s a liblouis  question, not a brltty one, but I’ve been trying to figure out why typing on the braille keyboard simply does not work. I’ve found a lot of stuff about xbrlapi not working, or not being started, but this is honestly something brltty should do. Figure out whether you’re in a desktop, and whether you’re in x or wayland, and start up whatever is needed for input and contracted output, if set in orca, to work. I can’t code yet, but if code is needed, is there any way I can help? One of my goals is to make Linux distros so accessible that special “accessible” distros aren’t needed anymore, and part of this is making braille a lot more automatic than it is now. Is ths issue that packagers aren’t including brltty’s udev and policy kit rules, resulting in brltty not starting? Is it the issue of brltty not for some reason being able to parse input from the keyboards of notetakers or braille displays? Is it something with the desktops? I’m just trying to figure this out, because honestly this should just work.
Sorry if I sound frustrated, I’m really not. I’ve just been going around and around and around trying to get this working. I don’t currently have a braille display, so I’ve had to have other people test.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
    

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

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