I know there are many #DOS gamers here and those who simply love #retroComputing and #technology . But are there any serious DOS #programmers here as well? If so, in which language/s do you write? (I want to learn #QuickBasic , but I am at the very beginning, and it's not advanced enough for what I need.) Does anyone here work on the development of #FreeDOS ? Assuming any of the above is true, do any of you know about #accessibility and #ScreenReaders ? I am totally #blind and have loved DOS since I was a teenager. I am now forty-one. I am aware of the many updates to the system over the years, but have been unable to take advantage of them due to the fact that no new or updated #AdaptiveTechnology is being developed for it. Everyone seems to love Linux. I don't. Neither do I like Mac OS. I love Windows XP and 7, but 11 drives me mad. I think we deserve another alternative to all of these, and I also think that DOS can be it if a few things are added to it, including a talking installer, an updated screen reader and good software speech synthesis. For those of you who think DOS only equals dialup modems and floppies, you may wish to read this, or at least skim through it.

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ak621/DOS/DOS-Fal.html

DOS Fallacies -- A Doctor DOS Discussion

Gives DOS Operating System Fallacies and Discusses Why they are Untrue

@dandylover1 I am both into the development of the #FreeDOS and #SvarDOS distributions. Development is mainly in C and X86 assembly

We have a "talking" version of our SvarDOS distribution for blind persons. It uses the PROVOX screen reader and requires a Braille 'n Speak synthesizer connected to the COM1 port.

I have never used this by myself, and I am not familiar with developing specifically for Braille 'n Speak. So I will ask the people involved about its state and report back. In the meantime, you may give it a try if you are interested.

You may get it at http://svardos.org/

SvarDOS

@boeckmann *Most of this will probably make no sense to you, so I will try to explain it briefly. But this is good to keep in mind when you speak with the other developers.* That is very interesting! I have never heard of this version of DOS and will need to research it. Provox, to my knowledge, is the only fully open source screen reader available, though I have never used it myself. I am trying to locate Larry Skutchan, the creator of another screen reader, called ASAP, to see if he will allow that to be open source as well, since it's very flexible and development continued well into the 1990's. Regardless, the fact that this is even included at all is a great first step! Please ask if anyone is actively developing Provox or if it is just set up so that it comes with the system itself. One of the main problems with older screen readers is that they require a hardware synthesizer connected to a serial port, or a simulated one if in a virtual machine and using a Windows screen reader such as NVDA. There were tones for DOS, such as JAWS and Flipper, that used the speech in SoundBlaster, but that required very specific hardware, namely the soundcard. My dream is to be able to integrate something such as ESpeak into DOS, so that a screen reader can work with software as is done in Windows.

@dandylover1 ESpeak sadly is neither in the FreeDOS software repository nor in the SvarDOS repository.

However, I downloaded its source code. There are traces of DOS support contained in the source. I am wondering if we could get this at least to compile. This does not mean it will run though.

I forwarded your reply to our discussion board at the SvarDOS website but will also report back here on mastodon. Link: http://svardos.org/?p=forum&thread=1757884070#1757885136

State of the Braille 'n Speak

@boeckmann Thank you so much! i sincerely appreciate all of this. I believe there used to be support for DOS in ESpeak. But I'm not sure if that's still true of the latest version ESpeak NG> If you downloaded something modern, that is a very good sign. At least, it's a starting point.

@dandylover1 I found out that ESpeak and ESpeak NG are different versions of the program. The latter does not seem to have any DOS support.

The original ESpeak has very limited functionallity under DOS. It can only produce wave files and phonemes for mbrola from its text input, but has no means to output by itself

Not sure if that is actually any useful to you. Mateusz Viste replied to me the following on our discussion board:

"Compiling espeak is not enough. Georgiana would like a screen reader that talks on its own, ie without TTS hardware. To achieve this, a TSR screen reader like Provox. ASAP, JAWS, etc would have to output speech instructions to espeak, and the latter would have to generate samples in realtime and feed them to a Sound Blaster. All this while the actual application is being operated by the user. Not a trivial feat."

So, currently, this sadly seems to be a dead end.