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Hi! My name is Anders and i am a blind guy who like to testing a lot of software. I have a friend who was sighted but has become blind. He was very dissapointed when i found that xbmc does not work with his screenreader. It is sadly totally inaccessible. I have installed it here and can't use it at all as a blind person. I don't mean to be rude, i just will suggest that the interfaceis being changed so that blind users can use it. I can't even configure it to use it with a web interface. Thanks.
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natethomas
Enjoying Retirement by Staying Busy
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Well, time for a bit of regrettable honesty. None of the coders on the team are blind. Most of the time, the things the Team codes are things that either Team members or non-Team members who know how to code contribute. Fortunately, this tends to result in a great deal of awesome software. Unfortunately, this means there are occasional gaps in the code. Because we aren't a massively well funded foundation, like Mozilla, or a extremely wealthy company, like Microsoft or Apple, we tend to focus on either items that would benefit the largest number of people, or items that the people who are doing the coding for free want to see integrated into the software.
Unfortunately, to date, no coders have popped up and offered to help make XBMC blind-accessible, and without that kick start, it seems fairly unlikely that the feature will make it into the code. With that said, A: never say never, and B: this is actually a pretty good thread to keep running, because there might be a coder or two out there who will read it and come up with a brilliant way to make XBMC more accessible, which is never a bad thing.
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It is possible to use some smart phone XBMC remote apps to control most of XBMC. iOS/iPhone/iPod touch devices have text to speech built in, and will work with most of the XBMC iOS remote apps. I'm not sure about Android.
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Banjer
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Umm... is it me or does using a program geared to playing visual content for a blind person sound kinda strange?
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Anders74 Wrote:Hi Scot! I have seen a couple of such app on ap store. But dont you have to do some configuration on the computer first? /A
XBMC would have to be set to allow remote apps to control it (I believe default is off). The initial sources (folders, network drives, etc) would also probably need to be set up through the XBMC GUI at least once (well, technically speaking you can edit sources through an XML file, but that's hardly an elegant solution).
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i have an idea for them.
activate the webserver - the website including a remote can be read by screenreaders.
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pru1
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The blindplayer script was meant for doing what you need, I think. However someone must configure it first through GUI.
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i don't want to offend anyone.
But most i know are using xbmc because its visually appealing and skinnable.
Where are the benefits of xbmc vs. Windows Media Center, which probably offers support for blinded people.
I think microsoft is responsible to create a good user experience for handicapped people.
Xbmc just isn't the mainstream mediacenter for everyone.
i don't think that people, which aren't very tech saavy could set it up..
But maybe blind people could use it, if someone would explain them the menu tree.. (just an idea, could work well with some simple audio feedback)
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Accessibility for the blind is certainly an important issue for XBMC. I'll admit, I was one of those people who originally thought that XBMC just couldn't really fit this role, but since then I've been convinced otherwise. Plus, there are many changes happening to XBMC's guts under the hood that will make using alternative interfaces and feedback easier for everyone, like changing settings. JSON-RPC could be used to interface with screen readers and such. I think we're closer to this goal than some of us realize, but yeah, it will still take some more work.