SBL (Re: OT: bsl)

[Klaus Knopper]

Dear William,

On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 10:09:18AM -0600, William Hubbs wrote:
> All,
> 
> I saw a few messages on the list yesterday regarding a screen
> reader/braille display program called BSL.

Could it be that it's spelled "SBL", which was "Suse Blind Linux" in the
old days, and today rather generic "Screenreader for Blind Linux-Users"?

> Someone posted here asking where they could get this program.  I looked
> also and agree that google doesn't seem to know anything about it.

I THINK you really mean SBL, developed and maintained by Marco Skambraks
and Halim Sahin. You may find it preinstalled on the current version 6.2
of the KNOPPIX-ADRIANE live CD, and its sources in debian-friendly
format at http://debian-knoppix.alioth.debian.org/sources/

> Could someone who knows about this program reply to me on or off list
> with more information about it?

SBL features support for many braille devices, as well as optional
keyboard-only navigation (which is why we used it in KNOPPIX, for users
that can' afford an expensive braille device). It has profiles for
different programs that trigger text attributes for reading and very
flexible configuration options for keyboard and braille device keys,
supports various speech synthesizers and speech dispatcher by default.
The braille part (brld) also works well with orca when switching from
console to xorg mode. Just as a short summary.

Regards
-Klaus Knopper