Plasma-mobile working orca screenreader! (files.catbox.moe)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by TheMightyCat@ani.social to c/linuxphones@lemmy.ca

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While celebrating my previous post of working call audio @pvagner@fedi.ml left this excellent comment:

https://ani.social/post/34656971/17805917

And this reminded me something that i and many devs sadly often forget, if its works for me it doesn't mean it works for everyone.

My philosophy is that linux should be as accesible as possible, nobody should be forced to be stuck with big tech.

So i tried my best to add orca screenreader support to plasma-mobile.

I mad this statement on my previous post

But a successful one!

But i genuinely don't know if i can claim that today, i don't use a screenreader so i don't know what the user experience should look like. I will glady incorporate feedback.

As with my kernel patches i will be working to upstream this with KDE, since this is probably not controversial i think it should be accepted quite quickly.

Small celebration:

I was quite happy when i saw this in my inbox:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260722234221.884765-8-srinivas.kandagatla@oss.qualcomm.com/

+maintainers:

Jorijn van der Graaf jorijnvdgraaf@catcrafts.net

Srinivas Kandagatla srinivas.kandagatla@oss.qualcomm.com

It looks like im being upgraded from linux contributor to linux maintainer!

Selling fp6 with pmos preflashed and with my patches preinstalled

Some comments mentioned this and it got me thinking, would there be demand for this?

I would be selling them on my catcrafts.net website, payment methods would be my bunq so wero, bancontact, credit card and crypto.

If you are interested in this, please upvote my comment, ive been looking into this and there is quite alot of administration that comes with it, so i would like to only do this if there is actual demand.

I would be shipping to any place i can. I will be shipping from the Netherlands, so keep that in mind for import duties and shipping costs.

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[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Holy shit, this is amazing. As a blind screen reader user myself, thank you.

I do have one question, though. I noticed that you were doing taps on the screen in order to see what element was underneath it. What happens if you do a flick from, say, left to right or right to left, as that is how a lot of screen reader users navigate?

The way it works on other operating systems is that a quick flick to the right or left will read the next element or the previous element on the screen.

Edit: This just took Linux Mobile from a "maybe one day I can use this" to a "i could use this now" thing.

I've been thinking about making my next phone a post-market OS device, and now that desire just increased exponentially, thanks to this post.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 5 points 2 months ago

Currently that does nothing im afraid.

If I understand correctly on the top bar it would for example start on wifi, announce wifi, then on a flick to the right it will select and announce the mobile data?

Is the flick in the center of the screen edge to edge or from the element?

Im not sure if plasma-mobile has a concept of focus like desktop has, if it does this should be a relatively easy addition.

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

The flick can be from anywhere on the screen to anywhere else on the screen as long as it is from right to left or from left to right.

As an example, when you tapped the Wi-Fi icon, you would be able to swipe from left to right, anywhere on the screen, and the next thing announced would be whatever element came next, which I think was mobile data, but I'm not certain of that.

The flick has to be able to be done from anywhere on screen as a blind user is not going to know where the element is visually on the display. Most of the time.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 6 points 2 months ago

Got it, thank you.

I will try to add that

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I don't know if this will help or not, but here is a video of me using my Android device in the way I mentioned, and I have it set so that you should be able to see where I touched on the display.

https://files.catbox.moe/qo7unk.mp4

Edit: A flick from left to right is the equivalent of using the tab key on your PC, and a flick from right to left is the equivalent of using shift+tab.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 3 points 2 months ago

When trying to view your video it says "No video with supported format and MIME type found" and downloading its 0B?

Ive done my best to replicate it from your text description:

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Darn thing, the heck man.

Well, I hope my description was at least good enough so that you could properly replicate it.

If you happen to have an Android device lying around, you can go to Settings, Accessibility, and then TalkBack Screen Reader, and turn it on, and give it a try. And you will see what I mean that way.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

I have used the screen reader for a broken phone, so I kinda know how it's supposed to work. and this madman made it! it works like on android! at least on the app list and the menu where the wifi/bluetooth/do not disturb toggles are

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

Sure, it has touch and explore, but a blind person is also going to need swipe navigation between elements.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

I meant the swipe navigation. right swipe goes to next element, left swipe to previous one

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

So that does work? According to what I understood from the developer, that did not work.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

as far as I can tell it works on the video

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

From what I could tell of the video, that was Touch and Explore, not swipes.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 2 points 2 months ago

The video I posted in the comment has swipes, if you touch an element and swipe it goes to the next one or previous one, if you open a panel without touching it starts with the first one

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks, I wasn't aware of a second video and so did not see it until somebody else gave me the link for it.

I think the only problem I saw with it is that you had touched Bluetooth and it said that Bluetooth was off, but then when you double-tapped Bluetooth, it turned on, but the screen reader did not announce the change.

Other than that though, it looks good.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think you might have only seen the video in the post. They have another video in this comment: https://ani.social/comment/17847594

but their instance uses strict cloudflare bot blocking, so it might be hard to watch. I could not get through it from a single try.

edit: it should work this way: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26561321

or this way: https://ani.social/pictrs/image/26dce2cd-9d4f-4d7f-bb90-01c4dfe19bfc.mp4

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Oh, you are right. I was completely unaware of that other video. Thank you for showing me that.

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 7 points 2 months ago

We really need better TTS voices. This does not sound good.

Perhaps we already have those and I just haven't found then yet?

[-] Sandbar_Trekker@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago

On Android, SherpaTTS pulls in a number of different Piper and Coqui voice models. They definitely sound a lot better than this.

https://github.com/woheller69/ttsengine

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The problem for screen reader users is that the better the voice sounds, the slower you have to use it at. And screen reader users generally like reading things at high rates of speed, and so generally are more willing to put up with the lower quality voices to get the faster speed.

For something like your map application that says in 300 feet turn left onto X name of road it's fine but for a screen reader user it's a problem.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

For whatever reason the video did not attach, give me a minute please to fix it.

The lemmy upload strangely did not work, so i used catbox.moe instead, does this work for everyone now?

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Please only upvote this comment if you would be interested in purchasing an fp6 with pmos and patches preinstalled

[-] Solrac@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I already bought one from Murena, but that was a couple of days before this post. -- That said. I'm sure this will make things even more accessible for those who just wanna jump into linux but are afraid of the whole installation process (If you already have one, try the UBPorts insaller) -- I cannot thank you enough for the work you've done, and congrats on the title upgrade!! It's more than earned. -- Technically, that'd also make the Fairphone 6 having two official Linux Kernel Maintainers...right?

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 5 points 2 months ago

Technically, that’d also make the Fairphone 6 having two official Linux Kernel Maintainers…right?

Not really, there is not really and official linux kernel maintainer for specifically the FP6, Luca maintains the FP6 kernel but does so out of tree.

With the patch series i mentioned is pure about the audio, so for any device using that audio.

[-] inari@piefed.zip 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I can't knock this if you see this as a business opportunity or a means to support your work on open source, but my impression is that over time these patches will be upstreamed and the installation will be simple(ish?), so my selfish ass would be happier seeing you spending time on drivers or reverse engineering phone components for Linux

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 5 points 2 months ago

I can’t knock this if you see this as a business opportunity or a means to support your work on open source

I don't intend to run it as a profit making business, i do say my dream would be able to quit my job and do open source full time, sadly that does require money since i need to eat. So i would like to make as little profit as possible but enough that i can pay myself a living wage.