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Question for anybody who uses a screenreader or other accessibility software on GNU/Linux, or knows anything about them: What DE/WM should I recommend to someone who wants to try using one?
I have a friend who's blind and deaf, and his main system runs Debian with no gui installed. He uses BRLTTY to read his TTY with a mechanical braille display.
He also has two windows systems that he uses for some things, with NVDA and JAWS set to output to his braille display.
He emailed me recently saying that he's fed up with a lot of the things Microsoft is doing with Windows 10, and he wants to try using a GUI on his Debian system so he can browse websites that won't work from a terminal browser, and do other things that he's using the windows computers for right now.
Has anyone tried using a few DEs with a screenreader? I think anything that works well with a screenreader should work with his braille device. boosts appreciated
@theonefreeman not a Screenreader user myself, but I've supported a few in recent times
both Gnome and KDE have pretty thorough AT-SPI support for the DE itself. Xfce has been working toward it, and may be worth a try. The challenge will be apps; the accessibility model works great for apps that make accessibility system interaction investments, but rough otherwise
@theonefreeman in that case Firefox is generally adequate for AT-SPI, though last experiments had some weakness around text selection and some parts of image support (though alt text worked fine). Not as good as eg Safari, but likely to be acceptable.
Of course the question will be whether AT-SPI support for the particular assistive device exists; that's something I didn't have to worry about (devices selected for purpose in my case), but your friend might
@vfrmedia