In Progress

Initiative to Provide a Subsystem for Users with Vision Impairments

Contact: Alfonso Sabato Siciliano <asiciliano@FreeBSD.org>

This project will provide a starting point for a “Vision Accessibility Subsystem” for blind, low-vision, and color blind users.  New features will include a Braille refreshable display subsystem, a communication channel for the virtual terminal console and a speech synthesizer, high-contrast TUI utilities, and an accessibility book to document assistive technologies available on FreeBSD.

The project deliverables include:

  • Modification of the TUI utilities in the base system to provide a high contrast option, probably handling the “NO COLOR” environment variable for GUI terminal emulators and vt(4)
  • New option to run bsdinstall(8) in high contrast by using a startup dialog menu to choose “Install” or “High Contrast Install”
  • New communication method for vt(4) and a speech synthesizer
  • A braille display subsystem. Probably as a port of https://brltty.app, and if time permits, also include its speech capability feature
  • New utility to implement bsdinstall(8) dialogs as a simple text interface suitable for screen readers
  • New “Speech Install” option to run bsdinstall(8) via the new CLI utility.  This feature will be provided as a Proof of Concept as the speech synthesizers and BRLTTY are released under GPL-like licenses
  • New accessibility book in the doc repository to describe the assistive technologies for vision accessibility available on FreeBSD
  • Manual updates for new features.