"Christos Zoulas" <christos@astron.com> wrote in message 
news:fhlefl$cmn$1@ger.gmane.org...
>
> We have no experience with people with disabilities using NetBSD. I am 
> very
> happy you are trying it, but I don't know how your software can transform
> the graphics display output of wscons to something you can hear. It would
> be interesting to find what opensource software programs have been 
> developed
> that have accessibility hooks and API's.
>
> cheers,
>
> christos
>
>
    Perhaps I'd best explain how I use NetBSD currently.  The system I have 
on my computer is a Windows screen reader, which is a general purpose access 
solution.  With it, I am able to do things like move the mouse or a virtual 
cursor around the display to read text, or indeed even Windows graphical 
controls depending on how standards conforming the latter are.  The 
technology is fairly good, in spite of the $800 or $900 price tag.  There 
are Linux screen readers as well, of which the most popular is probably 
Speakup, from www.linux-speakup.org.  Also, Emacspeak, from 
http://emacspeak.sf.net is a speech interface to Emacs.  Finally, the Gnome 
desktop as of around 2.16 or so provides Orca, which is an accessibility 
program written in Python and using Atspi, the Gnome accessibility 
framework.
    Anyway, back to NetBSD.  I can redirect the qemu serial port with a 
command like:
qemu -serial telnet::4000,server
This lets me have as long as I want to then connect Kermit to the virtual 
port.  I can then use the screen reader to move the cursor around an 
emulated VT100 text mode screen and review to my heart's content.  Granted, 
the feedback isn't automatic or anything, but it's there.
Hope this helps,
Zack.