I’ve been searching for physical/cognitive disability access aids for use within antiX.

Web searches do lead to a lot of info, but seems to confirm that linux so far offers much, but maybe not much.

Please, any ideas for finding more, any source, any platform, any linux distro or repository?

From “Linux Accessibility HOWTO”:
KDE Accessibility Project -
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GNOME Accessibility Project -
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KDE Usability Project -
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So far (Nov/2010), I’ve found only a few “standalone” applications that do not need either the full / almost full Gnome or K desktop environments. Debian offers some.

-xkbset
“Small utility to change the AccessX settings of XKEYBOARD”, eg. mousekeys feature.

-autokey-gtk
“AutoKey is a desktop automation utility for Linux and X11. It allows the automation of virtually any task by responding to typed abbreviations and hotkeys. It offers a full-featured GUI that makes it highly accessible for novices, as well as a scripting interface offering the full flexibility and power of the Python language”. Also autokey-qt (needs KDE).

-xzoom
“Like xmag, xzoom magnifies a section of the X display. Xzoom is different because it will continuously update the magnified area as the display changes. It is fast enough to enlarge small animations, for example. It can also mirror or rotate a part of the screen.”.

-brltty
“Access software for a blind person using a braille display
BRLTTY is a daemon which provides access to the console (text mode) for a blind person using a braille display. It drives the braille display and provides complete screen review functionality.”, “also provides a client/server based infrastructure for applications wishing to utilize a Braille display. The daemon process listens for incoming TCP/IP connections on a certain port.”.

- morseall
“Morseall allows the user to control a Linux shell by tapping Morse code on the left mouse button:
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.”.

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To get more, installing gnome and/or KDE from debian on top of antiX (any version) works fine if you’ve got the space and ram..

Gnome and KDE have their similar accessibility utilities.

Also found::

accerciser
“an interactive Python accessibility explorer for the GNOME desktop
It uses AT-SPI to inspect and control widgets, allowing you to check if an application is providing correct information to assistive technologies and automated test frameworks. Accerciser has a simple plugin framework which you can use to create custom views of accessibility information.”


KDE Accessibility Project:
“The KDEAP is a small on-line community of developers and other volunteers dedicated to ensure that our favorite desktop is accessible to all users, including those of us with physical handicaps. If you are accessing KDE.org with a browser supporting access keys, then please have a look at our Description of Access Keys.”. Mentioned was “Linux Accessibilty Forum” in Europe.

So, we.ve got magnifiers, keyboard navigation, mousekeys, morse code, braille, speech recognition, text-to-speech,, touch-screens (?), whatever I’ve missed.

Actually, much/most of these apps are very useful for the fully enabled.

More standalone accessibility applications.

-amora-cli

“use a bluetooth device as X remote control (commandline tool)"

“Amora (A mobile remote assistant) is an application that enables you to control your desktop using your mobile phone. It uses bluetooth to send mouse and keyboard events to the X session. With it, you can control your presentations, movies or any other application which mainly uses mouse and cursor keys.”
(Debian)

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-gnome-mousetrap

Head tracked mouse control.

“Mousetrap is a standalone GNOME application that allows users with physical impairments to move a mouse cursor. It uses a webcam to track the motion of any object visible by the camera and moves the mouse cursor according to the path of the tracked object (a user's head, for example).""... uses image processing to translate the user's head movements into mouse events (movements, clicks) which allow users to interact with the different desktops managers and applications."
(Debian)

Needs at-spi and a bunch of pythons. This one (and amora) I haven't tried out yet within antiX, don't have the eqipment, but sounds good!

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On-screen keyboards, with some varied features:

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-Caribou
“... on-screen keyboard may also be useful for touch screen or tablet users.“
“... very early release intended for people to preview the UI interaction...not currently usable as a primary text input application.”

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-Matchbox-keyboard
“an on-screen 'virtual' or 'software' keyboard, designed for touch-screen devices running X.”
(Debian)

-xvkbd
software virtual keyboard for X11
(Debian)

-Florence Virtual Keyboard

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Check out this site, have a really, really good read.

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