[BRLTTY] Would BRLTTY be of use on Android?

[mattias]

"not every blind person has a smartphone"
i hope all blind peoples have a smartphone today
if not
hard for them to reed sms etc
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nolan Darilek" <nolan at thewordnerd.info>
To: "Informal discussion between users and developers of BRLTTY." 
<brltty at mielke.cc>
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: [BRLTTY] Would BRLTTY be of use on Android?


> Where would you hook a wired display into an Android device? None supports 
> USB host mode to my knowledge. Maybe some of the newer tablets do, but 
> you'd have the same restrictions as you do under IOS with bluetooth-only, 
> so you aren't losing anything over any other mobile platforms.
>
> Not every blind person has a bluetooth display, but similarly, not every 
> blind person has a smartphone. We have to develop for the tech that 
> exists, not for the tech we wish did.
>
>
> On 11/17/2011 01:30 PM, mattias wrote:
>> whonder if it will be cable or only bluetooth
>> all blind peoples not own a bluetooth display
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patricia Fraser" 
>> <pfraser at harpo.com.pl>
>> To: "Informal discussion between users and developers of BRLTTY." 
>> <brltty at mielke.cc>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 8:19 PM
>> Subject: Re: [BRLTTY] Would BRLTTY be of use on Android?
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> The Google Accessibility Project people are already looking at adding 
>>> brltty to at least the Android accessibility project; their developer 
>>> Peter Lundblad in Geneva has been working with a BraillePen 12 on an 
>>> Android system of some sort, using brltty.
>>>
>>> It's probably worth contacting that team to see what they're doing, at 
>>> least alongside any other projects that get started...
>>>
>>> Contacts I have are Clara Rivera Rodriguez, rivera at google.com and Naomi 
>>> Black, naomib at google.com - they'll be able to put you in touch with 
>>> whoever.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Patricia.
>>>
>>> On 17/11/2011 17:16, Nolan Darilek wrote:
>>>> Hi folks. Some of you may know me from my work on Android. In
>>>> particular, I've written the Spiel screen reader
>>>> (http://spielproject.info) and a few other Android apps.
>>>>
>>>> During the early part of this year, I worked with National Braille 
>>>> Press
>>>> on their Android notetaker project. Work died down in June but seems to
>>>> be picking up again, and we seem to be focusing on Braille on the
>>>> Android platform.
>>>>
>>>> There is currently no Android Braille API, but I think we're 
>>>> considering
>>>> creating one, at least until Android supports it natively. I'm 
>>>> wondering
>>>> if BRLTTY might be a good candidate for supporting this?
>>>>
>>>> I've read enough of the list archives to know that there isn't a port 
>>>> to
>>>> Android. The bottleneck here seems to be that no one on the team has an
>>>> Android device with which to work. If you did have an Android device,
>>>> would someone have cycles to look into a port?
>>>>
>>>> I'm also wondering if BRLTTY would fit some of the higher level
>>>> requirements of such an API? No one wants to edit config files or start
>>>> daemons on their phones. Until Braille display support gets baked in
>>>> natively, I'm envisioning users having to pair a bluetooth display as
>>>> they would a regular device, then firing up some GUI that probes all
>>>> connected bluetooth devices, determines which are Braille displays and
>>>> makes them available in a list for the user to choose. Does BRLTTY have
>>>> any sort of device scanning mechanism that can ping a wildcard list of
>>>> devices and return which are Braille displays plus any relevant stats?
>>>>
>>>> Also, does BRLTTY/BRLAPI do its own grade 2 translation, or do I need a
>>>> separate library for that?
>>>>
>>>> My intention is to ship a low-level Braille API and associated service
>>>> that communicates between higher-level apps and Braille displays. I
>>>> think that if we can cross-compile BRLTTY for Android, then ship the
>>>> binary as a resource within the service, then the Android app can run a
>>>> BRLTTY instance and handle communication. My understanding is that
>>>> BRLAPI communicates with a running BRLTTY daemon. It might be easier if
>>>> this daemon could communicate over STDIN/STDOUT rather than a port on
>>>> localhost.
>>>>
>>>> Anyhow, if this seems like a promising project then I might be able to
>>>> secure Android hardware for anyone who feels confident that they can
>>>> attempt a port. Given that the use case is phones and tablets, we're
>>>> probably limited to bluetooth displays, which may or may not be an 
>>>> issue.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for reading.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list.
>>>> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
>>>> For general information, go to: 
>>>> http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Patricia Fraser                       pfraser at harpo.com.pl
>>> International Sales and Support    Tel: +48 (0)61 853 1425
>>> Harpo Sp. z o. o.                  Fax: +48 (0)61 853 1419
>>>           ul. 27 Grudnia 7, 61-737 Poznań, Poland
>>> www.mountbattenbrailler.com             www.braillepen.com
>>> www.piaf-tactile.com                   www.auto-lektor.com
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list.
>>> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
>>> For general information, go to: http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list.
>> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
>> For general information, go to: http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty
>
> _______________________________________________
> This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list.
> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
> For general information, go to: http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty