[BRLTTY] BRLTTY and accessibility of Grub under UEFI

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Jason White, le dim. 27 janv. 2019 20:23:31 -0500, a ecrit:
> There was also some discussion of BRLTTY support within Grub, but I
> can't remember what happened along those lines.

Yes, that was an idea that didn't get finished.

Another option was to have sound card drivers for playing speech
(synthesized during update-grub).

Another option is using petitboot. The principle is to let grub
systematically boot a Linux kernel, but only to run one program,
petitboot, which prompts for the actual choice to be made. Since that
runs within Linux, the normal brltty can be started along petitboot.
Petitboot can then boot a chosen linux kernel with chosen options etc.

> (either in Grub, or via the menu provided by UEFI itself)

Ideally, UEFI is a modular system which would allow for drivers embedded
in the firmware. This hasn't materialized, though.

> I'm also interested more broadly in whether there are any
> accessibility opportunities that I should be aware of with a
> UEFI-based machine. This particular system has Intel Management Engine
> firmware, currently not configured, which offers the possibility of
> remote administration. (I'm not sure whether it's possible to set up a
> network-based serial console, though.)

It often is, it's called IPMI. It's not trivial to configure (and not in
an accessible way), but then everything happens in textmode over the
wire, thus accessible.

Samuel