Vibuntu developments

[David Vosnacos]

Hi Anthony,

I look forward to trying your distribution and letting you know what we
find!  We have Ubuntu 8.10 set up in our library (alongside the others:
Windows and Mac) for our clients to trial. Seems like we are on the same
path as we've been looking into a similar project.

Regards,

David Vosnacos 
Program Manager: Information Systems 
Association for the Blind of WA (Inc.) 
Street address: 61 Kitchener Avenue, Victoria Park WA, Australia 6100 
  
Unless stated otherwise in the body of this message, the views /
opinions expressed are purely personal and not those of the Association
for the Blind of WA (Inc.)



Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 19:20:21 -0000
From: "Anthony Sales" <tony.sales at rncb.ac.uk>
Subject: Please allow me to introduce myself,	I'm (not) a man of
	wealth and taste!
To: <orca-list at gnome.org>,	<ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com>
Message-ID: <ECDECE2A33E14D4C906DB31CC0C292B8E9F4DC at MAIL.rncb.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Greetings earthlings!
 
My name is Tony Sales and I currently work as the ICT Development
Officer at the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford. I have
recently released (in the loosest possible sense of the word) a
customised version of Ubuntu called Vibuntu (or Vinux - can't decide!)
which is aimed at visually impaired users. It is still very early days,
but I decided to make it available straight-away so that I could collect
feedback, suggestions and advice from interested parties rather than
keep it hidden away until it is finished (alledgedly).
 
My vision (or lack of it) is to produce an easy to use fully accessible
version of Ubuntu, that just works out of the box for VI users, and
still has all the glitz and glamour of Ubuntu for sighted users. In
other words I am not trying to create a distro which will only be used
by visually impaired users, but a generic distro that can be used by
anybody to do the everyday kind of things people want to do like browse
the internet, listen to music, send e-mails etc. For example so it could
be used in schools, colleges and homes by those of us who can't afford
or just don't want to pay through the nose for expensive proprietary
solutions (no names mentioned). 
 
At the moment I am using remastersys to modify an installed system and
create a distribution with a pre-configured user account, overcoming
obstacles as I find them. The first issue to deal with is the problem of
Orca not wanting to read out Ubiquity (or any other application opened
with root permissions). I could do this by enabling a root user account
for installation and admin tasks, but because of the security risks this
would cause I am working on simple bash script that stops orca, restarts
it in --no-setup mode, runs the app (e.g. Ubiquity) and then restarts
the original Orca session. I already have a working script but it needs
a few tweaks so that it is invisible as possible to the user. However,
someone mentioned that this could be attained by simply editing one of
the orca config files. If anyone can shed any light on this or other
tweaks/tips I would be happy to include them in future versions of
Vibuntu, so other people don't have to.
 
I want to try and keep to the original Ubuntu releases as closely as
possible, ideally not adding anything that isn't included on the
official release unless absolutely necessary, and only then if it is
open-source GPL licenced (unless permission is granted  by the
developers). In a perfect world Ubuntu would already be fully accessible
to VI users and I wouldn't have to do this, I live in hope! The only app
I have added so far is remastersys, which is absolutely essential at the
moment.  I am also very keen on trying to keep the iso below 702Mb so it
fits on a CD, I don't really want to produce a bloated distro full of
everything under the sun. I want to provide the basics and let people
add extra apps and codecs etc themselves.
 
I would be happy to receive any feedback, suggestions, criticisms,
abuse, law suits  and/or death threats (preferably in that order) about
Vibuntu and what I am trying to acheive!
 
Tony Sales (aka drbongo)
 
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