[raspberry-vi] Web site review
- From: Michael A Ray <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: raspberry-vi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:02:02 +0000
Hello list,
This email list will be a year old on 31st December. The web site is
slightly younger than this. I think that was created some time in
February or just a little later than that.
In view of this there will be a wholescale review of the site content
which has been a little static for a few months now.
There is a lot to review and there have been some changes in how the
accessibility tools we have managed to get going are working.
It is my intention to detail where we are currently so that newer list
members can see what went on in the earlier part of this year and how
much effort went into bringing the Accessible Arch image to fruition.
And also to remind the list of how much work was done with Raspbian to
try to make either the 'yasr' or 'SpeakUp' screen-readers work on that
distro.
Unfortunately we have not always been helped by the Raspberry Pi
Foundation and changes to Pi firmware and the Broadcom sound driver. It
might be peculiarities of the way either espeak or the alsa system works
but changes to both firmware and driver don't seem always to have been
tested for functionality with text-to-speech.
The list may feel that the content of the web site is of little use,
apart perhaps from the downloads of Arch images available on the
downloads page.
At some point in early 2014 we will come to the end of a year of free
hosting and the cost of the site will then be something like $10 a
month. At that point, if the list feels there is enough value in the
site and people are willing to contribute to these costs, the site will
continue. If not, the web site will be closed down. But this email
list will stay either way.
Some of us who have been striving to get a talking desktop working are
beginning to feel this is never likely to work on the Raspberry Pi.
Unfortunately the 700MHz ARM processor cannot be compared to an intel
chip running at the same speed and the 512 megabytes of RAM is proving a
small container into which to squeeze a graphical environment with the
added load of the Orca screen-reader and all the components needed to
support it.
But Emacspeak continues to work well and at least one list member is
using it to great effect for day-to-day tasks. But it seems like the
take-up of Emacspeak has been minimal. Unless loads of you are using it
and keeping quiet.
There are some interesting alternative single-board computers coming
along. Some also based on ARM processors, some on intel, and probably
some other flavours I don't know about. It may be easier to get an
accessible GUI running on these more powerful, but more expensive
boards. I am not sure how many of these boards offer the same
'tinker-value' which the GPIO bus on the Pi offers. This latter being
of less appeal, possibly, to those of us who can't see well enough to
solder. Which includes me.
Mike
--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
Ham Radio Call-sign: G4XBF, licensed since 1982
Don't just sit there, learn something
Raspberry VI:
http://www.raspberryvi.org/
NVDA, the best free screen-reader in the world:
http://www.nvda-project.org/
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Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
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