Re: dosemu and accessibility

Jude DaShiell
2021-03-31T12:13:02Z

Yes, easier to get to with top posting. Slackware hasn't yet got dosemu2
but archlinux has it in git and since hard drives are interchangeable here
I can run archlinux.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2021, Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:

> Are mail replies at the top easier for you to process?
>
> It would be better to move to DOSEMU2 as nobody can really help with the
> older version anymore. Do you have the ability to sign up for a GitHub
> account? To receive the mails on dosemu2 one has to log on to GitHub and
> press "watch" and then "all activity" at the top of of this page:
> https://github.com/dosemu2/dosemu2
>
> Let it know if that turns out to be difficult. Using dumb or terminal mode
> would indeed seem the easiest way to have dosemu accessible as those modes
> are entirely text based. Are you aware of graphical software for dos that has
> accessibility features?
>
> Op 30-03-2021 om 21:59 schreef Jude DaShiell:
>> Hi, I have cloned stuff from github before and built it on my system. This
>> distribution is slint.  When packages are new, slackbuilds.org may have a
>> SlackBuild script made for the package so others can install it on slint
>> and on slackware.  Slint is slackware international version and is at
>> https://slint.fr/.  All of this work was done in dosemu 1.4.0.8.
>> I learned sdl exposes no accessibility information at all so it's
>> unuseable for any screen readers.  I thought that was the case and got it
>> confirmed by a sighted person doing accessibility work on orca.  I'm
>> running dosemu with espeakup and will try it later with provox and tdsr
>> two other console screen readers.
>> Better yet to move on up to dosemu2 as well.  Thanks for the heads up on
>> this and if dosemu2 has its own email list I'd like to subscribe to that
>> one.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2021, Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jude,
>>>
>>> Op 29-03-2021 om 10:43 schreef Jude DaShiell:
>>>>  I put a .dosemurc and .mtoolsrc file together since a long-standing
>>>> friend
>>>>  has some dos applications he'd like to run and both of us are blind.
>>> I saw some of your previous messages and I think it is important to
>>> highlight that as you are blind, you are using different equipment than
>>> what previous respondents probably assumed you were using.
>>>
>>> This mailing list is barely used anymore by the rest of the DOSEMU user
>>> community and so are all the 1.x versions of DOSEMU. There is now a
>>> GitHub project started by Stas, the DOSEMU 2 project, with versioning to
>>> be 2.x based and interaction went over to the infrastructure that GitHub
>>> is providing. The accessibility consequences of this were most likely
>>> never taken into consideration.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately it is not something that can be changed overnight, but I
>>> think it would be appropriate to strive to fix this, especially if you
>>> would be interested in being more involved and/or there might be even
>>> more DOSEMU users in a similar situation.
>>>
>>> My proposal would be to set up some simple webpages that are friendly to
>>> screen readers and braille devices as part of the new DOSEMU 2 project
>>> with instructions to install newer packages particularly for
>>> distributions that handle screen readers and braille screens well or at
>>> least the distributions popular among users of such devices. Maybe your
>>> .dosemurc and .mtoolsrc could be provided as well.
>>>
>>> There could possibly be an instruction to sign up your e-mail address as
>>> a so-called watcher to the DOSEMU 2 project or maybe we could link this
>>> mailing list so it watches the DOSEMU 2 project. The amount of traffic is
>>> quite significant, on some days only a few messages, but sometimes there
>>> might be over 20 mails a day. Note that you can respond to those messages
>>> by e-mail and the replies will by part of the conversation as usual.
>>> Searching online I found a community on GitHub called Blind Computing.
>>> Maybe we could ask them for advice.
>>>
>>> How easy would it be for you to upgrade to a newer DOSEMU if packages are
>>> not provided by your distribution? Which distribution are you using?
>>> What do you think of my proposals regarding the mails?
>>>
>>> Here is the GitHub project for DOSEMU 2, I do not know if you can access
>>> it comfortably:
>>> https://github.com/dosemu2
>>>
>>> Here is the page on the Blind Computing website about contributing to
>>> their GitHub project:
>>> https://blindcomputing.org/contributing/
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Julius
>>>
>