3 ms·

Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's usable f

by jareds 6y ago

Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's usable for me.

coolspot 6y ago
I would love to give you a definite answer, but only way to know for sure is to test yourself. PineTab can run any ARM OS, so you can install one that you have positive experience with. These OSes are touch-optimized and recommended: UBPorts (community-driven Ubuntu Touch) postmarketOS Arch Linux ARM I know that desktop Ubuntu has screen reader (Orca) installed by default. No sure about Ubuntu Touch. My Google-fu shows very outdated answers.
- folmar 6y ago
  You should be able to run a standard Ubuntu if you don't aim for touch-driven interaction; @jareds - do you?
exikyut 6y ago
Wow, what an interesting question. Open source first-class accessible tinkerer/maker-oriented hardware design. That gets me wondering... what would be the ideal here? I don't have much experience with blind-oriented usage but I get the impression blind users only keep screens around for when software/the OS falls apart and orientational cues completely break down... but perhaps sighted assistance is needed less often than I presume, and blind users simply use phones and laptops with screens because that's what dominates the market. Maybe you could viably get away with having a quick-access mechanism that lets someone use their own device's display whenever assistance is required. I can totally see a device that serves VNC over HTML5 to any web browser via a built-in hotspot, that would be pretty universal. Which leads me to the question of how useful touchscreen gestures are - since that's all touchscreens are useful for in a blind context - and if there isn't a better input method than that. I get the impression keyboards are pretty much "it". It would be pretty cool if your entire computer was a keyboard with a 3.5mm headphone jack :) The Pinetab is basically a highish-end ARM system with its own bits of novel hardware added on, so the base question becomes "how usable is the mainline AArch64 Linux experience for blind users?". I suspect it's somewhere between "poor" and "fair"; and bespoke hardware in this device may add a small amount of extra strain on top of that. Now I'm puzzling over which mechanical keyboards are the thinnest, and if you could cram a power bank and ARM development board into the footprint space underneath.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- naugtur 6y ago
  I've seen a computer in 2008 that was like the bottom part of a laptop and between the keyboard and where the hinges would be it had a 3 row braille display. It was pretty old at the time and quite thick, with modern technology could be as thin as a tablet. These things have a very narrow audience so they're one digit more expensive than their regular counterparts.

by jareds 6y ago

Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's usable for me.

coolspot 6y ago

I would love to give you a definite answer, but only way to know for sure is to test yourself. PineTab can run any ARM OS, so you can install one that you have positive experience with. These OSes are touch-optimized and recommended: UBPorts (community-driven Ubuntu Touch) postmarketOS Arch Linux ARM I know that desktop Ubuntu has screen reader (Orca) installed by default. No sure about Ubuntu Touch. My Google-fu shows very outdated answers.

folmar 6y ago
You should be able to run a standard Ubuntu if you don't aim for touch-driven interaction; @jareds - do you?

exikyut 6y ago

Wow, what an interesting question. Open source first-class accessible tinkerer/maker-oriented hardware design. That gets me wondering... what would be the ideal here? I don't have much experience with blind-oriented usage but I get the impression blind users only keep screens around for when software/the OS falls apart and orientational cues completely break down... but perhaps sighted assistance is needed less often than I presume, and blind users simply use phones and laptops with screens because that's what dominates the market. Maybe you could viably get away with having a quick-access mechanism that lets someone use their own device's display whenever assistance is required. I can totally see a device that serves VNC over HTML5 to any web browser via a built-in hotspot, that would be pretty universal. Which leads me to the question of how useful touchscreen gestures are - since that's all touchscreens are useful for in a blind context - and if there isn't a better input method than that. I get the impression keyboards are pretty much "it". It would be pretty cool if your entire computer was a keyboard with a 3.5mm headphone jack :) The Pinetab is basically a highish-end ARM system with its own bits of novel hardware added on, so the base question becomes "how usable is the mainline AArch64 Linux experience for blind users?". I suspect it's somewhere between "poor" and "fair"; and bespoke hardware in this device may add a small amount of extra strain on top of that. Now I'm puzzling over which mechanical keyboards are the thinnest, and if you could cram a power bank and ARM development board into the footprint space underneath.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
naugtur 6y ago
I've seen a computer in 2008 that was like the bottom part of a laptop and between the keyboard and where the hinges would be it had a 3 row braille display. It was pretty old at the time and quite thick, with modern technology could be as thin as a tablet. These things have a very narrow audience so they're one digit more expensive than their regular counterparts.