[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Screen Reader interaction between GUI / command-line

[Sebastian Humenda]

Hi

Pardon, I hit the "send" button.


Sebastian Humenda schrieb am 16.06.2025, 17:49 +0200:
>Pipewire, installed with a standard desktop installation, is a "daemon"
>started as a per-user process. Common user installations for blind users
>include a command-line screen reader 

that runs as Root, for instance BRLTTY or speakup. With these screen readers,
the Linux TTY is read. At the same time, using Orca, graphical applications
such as Firefox are used. For the GUI, the screen reader Orca runs as a
per-user process. The screen readers use the daemon speech-dispatcher to emit
speech. Speech-dispatcher is run per-user.

There is a conflict between Orca using speech-dispatcher to
access pipewire and the command-line screen readers using speech-dispatcher
(as root) accessing pipewire.

I would like to start a discussion on what opportunities exist to allow blind
users to use their Debian system on the GUI and the TTY from the start. For
less technical users, configuring piewire/pulse in a mode where the both
screen readers can emit speech is a common issue.

For pulse, it once was possible to run pulse as root. Although not adviced,
both screen readers could emit speech + the audio on the desktop would work.
Pipewire has a different architecture and I wonder whether there is a better
solution to this problem?

Thanks
Sebastian
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