Subject: Re: NetBSD, Qemu, Serial Consoles and introductions
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Christos Zoulas <christos@astron.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 11/17/2007 01:00:38
In article <fhlda7$a2l$1@ger.gmane.org>,
Zachary Kline <Z_kline@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>    My name is Zachary Kline, and I recently became somewhat interested in 
>NetBSD, along with Unix-like systems in general.
>    I have Linux on my machine already, but that didn't seem quite as pure 
>Unix, somehow.  Hard to describe.
>    I should also perhaps mention the fact I'm blind, and thus my choices in 
>operating systems are somewhat limited.
>    Because I had nothing else to do, and wanted to see if I could pull it 
>off, I managed to get my screen reader to read the virtualized serial 
>console under Qemu.  (I use Kermit 95 to emulate a VT100, and installed 
>NetBSD I386 via the two 'floppy' images for serial consoles.
>    This is actually pretty neat.  I can power up NetBSD whenever I want to 
>play with it, as to be honest I know little about Unix, even if I do have 
>interest in learning.
>    Now to my questions.  I wonder if I can get the full wscons experience, 
>with virtual consoles and all, by using the Kermit 95 emulation in this way? 
>I don't have any method to read the Qemu screen otherwise.
>    Also, I wonder what kinds of accessibility features might be built into 
>NetBSD already that I'm just missing?  A quick search in mailing lists 
>turned up little.
>Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, and hope to hear back,
>Thanks,
>Zack.

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