[BRLTTY] Fwd: Problems when using brltty in the terminal

[Aura Kelloniemi]

On 2021-05-09 at 21:08 +0200, Didier Spaier <didier at slint.fr> wrote:
 > <off topic>
 > I always wonder why people do in a graphical environment things more 
 > easily done
 > in a console. Maybe just because that's what they are used to? Granted, 
 > there
 > are things that can't be done in console, but typing commands in a shell or
 > editing text files isn't among them, as far as I know.
 > <off topic>

There are two problems with the console:

1) Linux console is broken (and almost unmaintained). Its Unicode rendering is
totally broken – it does not understand multi-column characters at all. Linux
console does not support full Unicode fonts either, and is limited to 512
glyphs which is very little. Quite often I am in a situation where I need to
start a graphical shell to be able to show something to a sighted person.

Linux's keybaord support in the console is also very poor – no shifted arrow
keys, and so forth.

2) Quite many things in a modern Linux system expect there to be a running
desktop session. Notifications, for example require a windowing system. Some
times power management features are only enabled if the user is logged into a
graphical desktop. This could be fixed, in theory, but will not be because
there are not enough blind developers who would implement and maintain the
required changes (which may be huge).

That's why I wish there was a graphical terminal emulator (and a window
manager) which would be as accessible as the Linux console is right now. But,
alas, there is no. Orca is slow, and the whole At-SPI2 protocol is flawed so
that BRLTTY and Orca cannot make the graphical world sufficiently accessible
in its current state.

-- 
Aura