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Contents

  1. What's new?
  2. Contact information
  3. Downloads
    1. Source Archive
    2. Subversion
    3. Packages
      1. RPMs and yum
      2. debs and apt-get
      3. conary and Foresight
    4. Other
  4. Presentations and Publications
  5. Documentation
    1. Developer resources
    2. Maintainer resources
    3. Deprecated user resources
  6. Frequently asked questions

What is LSR?

The Linux Screen Reader (LSR) project is an open source effort to develop an extensible assistive technology for the GNOME desktop environment. The goal of the project is to create a reusable development platform for building alternative and supplemental user interfaces in support of people with diverse disabilities.

The original use of the LSR platform was to give people with visual impairments access to the GNOME desktop and its business applications (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen magnification. The extensions packaged with the LSR core were intended to meet this end. Development on these extensions has ceased. However, the core of LSR might still serve its purpose as a platform in other creative endeavors, such as:

  • Supporting novel input and output methods, such as joysticks, web cams, game pads, audio icons, and environmental sounds.
  • Creating interfaces for other users, such as people with mobility impairments, people with cognitive impairments, children learning to use a screen reader, and so forth.
  • Supplementing the graphical GNOME desktop with useful audio feedback for sighted users, such as text-to-speech reporting of events in a monitored window.

See our 14-minute screencast titled Linux Screen Reader ... is not just a screen reader for demonstration of LSR's extensibility.

What's new?

June 4, 2007

LSR 0.5.3 is released. This version is the final snapshot of LSR as a screen reader for GNOME. See the mailing list post about the future of the project for more information.

Contact information

Questions and comments about LSR can be posted to the community mailing list at lsr-list@gnome.org. You can make casual posts to the mailing list without subscribing. To subscribe to the mailing list, either visit the mailing list web interface or send an email to lsr-list-request@gnome.org with subject "subscribe".

The project maintainers tend hang out on irc.gnome.org in the #lsr channel. Feel free to visit us.

Bug reports and requests for enhancements should be filed in Bugzilla. Please review our current list of bugs before you file a new report. We appreciate your feedback!

Downloads

Source Archive

Click here to download the latest release. Then follow the getting started directions to build, install, and run it. You may also browse the FTP site listings if you wish to find an older version.

Subversion

Alternatively, you may fetch the bleeding edge LSR source from Subversion. The getting started guide details how to use svn to fetch, build, and install it.

Packages

Generous third-parties have decided to build and host packages of the stable releases of LSR. There may be some delay between our source code release and the creation of these packages.

RPMs and yum

Thanks to Janina for adding LSR to her speakupmodified.org repository. To use this repository, enter the following:

sudo rpm -iv http://speakupmodified.org/speakupmodified-release.rpm

Then use yum to install or update LSR:

sudo yum install lsr

debs and apt-get

Thanks to Luke for packaging LSR for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (v7.04). If you're running Feisty, you should be able to enter the following to get the latest stable build of LSR:

sudo apt-get install lsr

conary and Foresight

You should be able to install LSR on ForesightLinux or other conary distributions via:

sudo conary update lsr

Other

You may find extensions submitted by third-party developers on the extensions page. Take care when using these extensions as we have not verified them.

Presentations and Publications

Documentation

Developer resources

Python developers who wish to contribute to the LSR project should review the following documents:

Additional resources for learning and coding Python are available at the following locations:

Maintainer resources

The following materials are here to aid the maintainers of LSR;

Deprecated user resources

The screen reading extensions for LSR are no longer in development. For historical purposes, the draft user's guide is still available for the curious.

Frequently asked questions

See the FAQ page for answers to common questions.

LSR (last edited 2008-02-03 14:45:05 by localhost)