The Accessibility thread!

Hi everyone,

I am starting this thread as I have an interest in Accessibility and useful applications that can help aid GNU/Linux users to get the best possible solution to meet their needs. Sadly, the one place one-stop shop for all platforms appears to have disappeared (oatsoft.org) which pioneered developers from all over the world but mainly Europe, on open source materials.

My principal area of daily work is to modify materials for students with reduced or no vision who require texts and other media formatting in a way that enables them to access the curriculum effectively, from primary to higher education.

Well a fairly recent breakthrough has come from the American Printing House, producer of the famous Perkins Braille Machine for Manual production of Braille (which is what I had to learn before being allowed anywhere near transcription software!). Braille Blaster is a free program that allows a user to type text in a left/middle pane, apply the appropriate Braille Coding which is then produced in the right pane and can then be embossed.

Slightly misleadingly, the 'Linux' download is a .zip file containing both Windows.exe and a .sh file to run Braille Blaster via Terminal launch by double-clicking the icon and selectin 'Run in Terminal' - I have yet to find a way to create a shortcut to prevent having to do this all the time. Get it from here:

http://brailleblaster.org/

I will update this post with a screenshot from a works computer running Zorin 12 in due course.

In the meantime, here is an image from brailleblaster.org/ website:

Installing Large Cursor themes:

1. Go to gnome-look.org or opendesktop.org and search for 'large cursors'

2. Choose one that you like, as an example: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/999574/

3. After download, extract the tarball and you should end up with a folder named: 'Large Mouse Cursors' - leave this as it is.

4. Inside the folder you should have if it has extracted correctly, 'cursors', 'index.theme', 'LargeCursors.tar.bz2'.

5. Open a terminal and navigate to: usr/share/

Code:

cd ..
cd ..
cd usr
cd share

Now Mouse cursors live in the 'Icons' folder which is a 'system protected' folder so we need to change ownership in order to copy and paste the 'Large Mouse Cursors' folder in there. To do this in the terminal:

Code:

sudo chown [your username] icons

You will be asked for your password that you login with to give you root permissions.

Now copy and paste 'Large Mouse Cursors' into the icons folder.

Now in Zorin Core/Ultimate it will be a Gnome setting - can't remember the path as am currently using Lite. So for Lite it will be thus:

Menu | Settings | Mouse and Touchpad | Theme Tab:



Just to add Firefox Sucks with this Cursor theme as it is not holding focus - cursor goes infinitissimally small - Opera however works brilliantly.

Get Opera for Linux from here: https://www.opera.com

Thanks!

Another free Braille Transcription program: Biblos 5:

http://www.digrande.it/biblos/default.asp