Hello,

I want to give blind people ability to install Slint (and other spin-off and Slackware itself if their maintainers think it's worth the maintenance needed) using a vocal screen reader.

This means that a software says what is displayed on the screen, with a possibility of review of the display using keyboard shortcuts, e.g. "say the previous line", "say again the current word", "stop speaking".

This is theoretically already possible in Slackware, cf. the documents SPEAKUP_DOCS.TXT and SPEAK_INSTALL.TXT at the root of a Slackware distribution media. However, the procedure described in the latter is not easy to follow, and is intended for hard synthesizers, that not all blind people can afford.

Nowadays there exist software allowing to use your regular sound card instead. This is what is called a soft synthesizer.

I will do the packaging of the needed stuff in the installer, meanwhile I would like that the software be tested by as many people as possible on an installed Slackware.

If you are interested do this on Slackware64-14.2 or any derivative:

1. Install the espeak and espeakup packages from http://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-testing/slint/
   There is no dependency beyond a full Slackware installation but do note that pulseaudio is needed (no specific setting needed AFAIK, no need to make /etc/rc.d/rc.pulseaudio executable)
2. Read the docs in /usr/doc/espeakup-0.80/, especially InstructionsForUse and SpeakupMainKeys. Don't worry, they are short In any case follow the next steps.
3. Review /etc/espeakup.conf and edit it as need be.
4. chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.espeakup
5. Reboot at runlevel 3

The system should begin saying what is displayed and spell what you type just before you log in. But not your password, of course.

You can try to run dialog-based Slackware admin tools.

Please report your findings in this thread.

As a bonus you will have espeak installed, that can speak any text or text file, "espeak --help" to know more, examples of usage here: https://soslug.org/home/software/audio/espeak/

PS In case you wonder there are md5 files in the repository and source directories are in http://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-testing/source/

Have fun!