Accessibility
Some users may need specific support because of e.g. some visual
impairment.
USB braille displays are detected
automatically (not serial displays connected via a serial-to-USB converter),
but most other
Most
accessibility features have to be enabled manually.
On machines that support it, the boot menu emits a beep
when it is ready to receive keystrokes.
Some boot parameters can then be appended to
enable accessibility features (see also
).
Note that on most architectures the boot loader interprets your keyboard as
a QWERTY keyboard.
Installer front-end
The &debian; installer supports several front-ends for asking questions, with
varying convenience for accessibility: notably, text
uses plain text while newt uses text-based dialog
boxes. The choice can be made at the boot prompt, see the documentation for
DEBIAN_FRONTEND in .
USB Braille Displays
USB braille displays should be automatically detected. A textual version
of the installer will then be automatically selected, and support for the
braille display will be automatically installed on the target system.
You can thus just press &enterkey; at the boot menu.
Once brltty is started, you can choose a braille
table by entering the preference menu. Documentation on key
bindings for braille devices is available on the brltty website.
Serial Braille Displays
Serial braille displays cannot safely be automatically detected
(since that may damage some of them). You thus need to append the
brltty=driver,port,table
boot parameter to tell brltty which driver it
should use. driver should be replaced by the
two-letter driver code for your terminal (see the
BRLTTY manual).
port should be replaced by the name of the
serial port the display is connected to, ttyS0 is
the default, ttyUSB0 can be typically used when using a serial-to-USB converter. table is the name of the
braille table to be used (see the BRLTTY
manual); the English table is the default. Note that the table can
be changed later by entering the preference menu. Documentation on key
bindings for braille devices is available on the brltty website.
Software Speech Synthesis
Support for software speech synthesis is available on all installer images which
have the graphical installer, i.e. all netinst, CD and DVD images, and the
netboot gtk variant. It can be activated by selecting it in the
boot menu by typing s &enterkey;. The textual version
of the installer will then be automatically selected, and support for software
speech synthesis will be automatically installed on the target system.
The first question (language) is spoken in english, and the remainder
of installation is spoken in the selected language (if available in
espeak).
The default speech rate is quite slow. To make it faster, press
CapsLock6.
To make it slower, press
CapsLock5.
The default volume should be medium. To make it louder, press
CapsLock2.
To make it quieter, press
CapsLock1.
To get more details on the browsing shortcuts, see the
Speakup guide.
Hardware Speech Synthesis
Support for hardware speech synthesis devices is available on all installer
images which have the graphical installer, i.e. all netinst, CD and DVD images,
and the netboot gtk variant. You thus need to select a Graphical
install
entry in the boot menu.
Hardware speech synthesis devices cannot be automatically detected. You
thus need to append the
speakup.synth=driver
boot parameter to tell speakup which driver it should
use. driver should be replaced by the driver code
for your device (see driver code
list). The textual version of the installer will then be
automatically selected, and support for the speech synthesis device will be
automatically installed on the target system.
Board Devices
Some accessibility devices are actual boards that are plugged inside the
machine and that read text directly from the video memory. To get them
to work framebuffer support must be disabled by using the
vga=normal fb=false
boot parameter. This will however reduce the number of available languages.
If desired a textual version of the bootloader can be activated before adding
the boot parameter by typing h &enterkey;.
High-Contrast Theme
For users with low vision, the installer can use a high-contrast
color theme that makes it more readable. To enable it, append the
theme=dark boot parameter.
Preseeding
Alternatively, &debian; can be installed completely automatically by using
preseeding. This is documented in .
Accessibility of the installed system
Documentation on accessibility of the installed system is available on the
Debian Accessibility wiki page.