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byron27 · 2014-03-24, 18:42

I have some vision so i can see it, I've been helping some people configure it but it would be nice to be able to just refer people to a webpage with instructions or an installer so I don't have to get on Skype with them and step them through it. I used Splashtop remote desktop to help someone this weekend but otherwise it's been all about counting clicks as you arrow to where you need to go and hoping to god nothing changed. LOL

**ruuk** · 2014-03-24, 19:09

Sorry, that's not what I meant. I was talking about the method you were using. If you are installing my repository and then installing the addon from there, or using some other method.

byron27 · 2014-03-24, 19:14

Oh, yes, I was using the repo you posted here, throwing it on my root C drive, install from zip, then go to get addons, ruuk's repo, then services then XBMC TTS. I don't know why the speech add-on uninstalled itself but it certainly did. When I launch it on my mac we'll see if it goes away too.

**ruuk** · 2014-03-24, 21:09

(2014-03-24, 06:05)byron27 Wrote: So just a few interesting things I discovered while helping a friend of mine who is totally blind get XBMC going. Firstly, we got everything installed on Friday night and come Sunday her speech was not working at all. After a bit of investigation it turns out the add-on was missing from enabled add-ons. We reinstalled her add-on and all is good. I got home tonight and launched XBMC and uh-oh, my speech went away after about 2 minutes of running. I looked in enabled addons and mine was gone too. I reinstalled and saw that 0.26 was available.

I've never experienced this. Let me know if you figure anything out.

(2014-03-24, 06:05)byron27 Wrote: The other thing we noticed after helping someone from a totally blind perspective... you can't hear if there's anything already in the virtual keyboard and you can't hear if you have deleted everything from the keyboard. Also, you can't hear what percentage an add-on has downloaded when installing.

Those are 2 of the things on the top of my list to figure out, the top of my long long list Smile

(2014-03-24, 06:05)byron27 Wrote: The other thing is that of course this addon doesn't support JAWS at this point. If possible we should have a backend for it since it's one of the biggies on the realm of screen readers.

It's added in version 0.0.27 which I just put to the repository. After I added it, I realized it will show up as an option whether it is installed or not because I forgot to finish the code checking that. I'll be trying to fix that presently. Otherwise, it will work if JAWS is installed now.

(2014-03-24, 06:05)byron27 Wrote: The last thing we noticed is that my blind friend kept getting confused when she should do up or down arrow vs. left or right arrow. Is there a skin that forces everything including the front page to be vertically scrolling? Thanks!

Not off the top of my head. Quartz is maybe less confusing as the main screen has horizontal sections of vertical lists, and the rest is mostly vertical lists. If I get a chance I'll look at what's out there.

(2014-03-24, 06:05)byron27 Wrote: Also, can we figure out a method for blind people to install and configure the addon as a lot of people can't test at all without sighted help to get it running.

I can look into making a windows installer for the addon. OSX maybe as well, but that will be harder because I know very little about OSX.

On a related note, do you know if most blind users use windows?

**ruuk** · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-25, 01:50 by ruuk.)

Windows Installer

This will install the XBMC TTS addon, the comptypes addon dependency and my repository (for auto updating).

I ran it on a Windows XP computer that didn't have the addon yet. Started up XBMC and it was speaking Smile

This has only been tested on XP, so I can't be positive it will work on Vista/7/8. I'll try to test it on my daughter's Windows 8 laptop soon.

So on windows you can now:

Install XBMC with the XBMC installer
Install XBMC TTS with this installer

And that's it.

When I get a chance, I'll set up a page that has links to the XBMC installer and the addon installer.

**ruuk** · 2014-03-25, 01:50

Added a new version to my repository: 0.0.28

Repo

This fixes JAWS backend availability reporting.
I also updated the windows installer.

byron27 · 2014-03-25, 01:56

I think there are more people using Windows but there is a very quickly growing segment of blind people using OSX as well. I think Windows is a good start since most of us dual-boot our macs for accessibility reasons. Sometimes you just can't do everything you want in OSX.

Keao · 2014-03-25, 13:34

Hello,
I am the one who helped out Byron test this on Friday night, and with the new installer for the add-on for xbmc, I will test it on a laptop that I have for windows 8.1 on to see if it works.
Thanks for making this Rick!
Now all we need to wait for is instructions for the site.

**ruuk** · 2014-03-25, 22:43

Added a new version to my repository: 0.0.29

Repo

This adds speaking of typing to the virtual keyboard and speaking of the progress dialog.

Byron: You mentioned it not speaking the addon download percent, I'll look into that as well.

domasofan · 2014-03-26, 12:20

Hi all,

can we also install this manually?

I saw that also the zip files which the addon would download by itself on the repo are available:

tts service:
http://ruuks-repo.googlecode.com/svn/tru....xbmc.tts/

comtypes:
http://ruuks-repo.googlecode.com/svn/tru....comtypes/

i also read that there is a installer for windows in development.
sounds great.
now we just need something for the raspberry pi. but i talked about that with a openelec dev who might try and implement something for this platform.

greetings,
simon

**ruuk** · 2014-03-26, 14:39

(2014-03-26, 12:20)domasofan Wrote: Hi all,

can we also install this manually?

I saw that also the zip files which the addon would download by itself on the repo are available:

tts service:
http://ruuks-repo.googlecode.com/svn/tru....xbmc.tts/

comtypes:
http://ruuks-repo.googlecode.com/svn/tru....comtypes/

i also read that there is a installer for windows in development.
sounds great.
now we just need something for the raspberry pi. but i talked about that with a openelec dev who might try and implement something for this platform.

greetings,
simon

You can install this manually by extracting the addon and comtypes addon zip into the addons folder. Or you can install from zip comtypes and then the addon from within xbmc.
You can also install my repository and install them from there, which you will want to install no matter what method you use to get auto updates.

The windows installer for the addon is already available. There's a link a few posts back.

Sraue said he added eSpeak into openelec and added a patch we got from amet that allows us to use xbmc audio output. He said it should work now on all supported openelec platforms. I assume that includes the pi.

domasofan · 2014-03-26, 14:52

(2014-03-26, 14:39)ruuk Wrote: You can install this manually by extracting the addon and comtypes addon zip into the addons folder. Or you can install from zip comtypes and then the addon from within xbmc.
You can also install my repository and install them from there, which you will want to install no matter what method you use to get auto updates.

The windows installer for the addon is already available. There's a link a few posts back.

Sraue said he added eSpeak into openelec and added a patch we got from amet that allows us to use xbmc audio output. He said it should work now on all supported openelec platforms. I assume that includes the pi.

Very interesting news.
I hope they haven't forgotten a shortcut to enable/disable the addon on-the-fly so they could include it into the preinstalled images. Smile

guess i have to talk to him about this.

thanks for the info.
i guess i have to play with things this evening.

greetings,
simon

**ruuk** · 2014-03-26, 14:54

The addon is not included. He said we will have to figure out a way to do that.

domasofan · 2014-03-26, 15:01

(2014-03-26, 14:54)ruuk Wrote: The addon is not included. He said we will have to figure out a way to do that.

alright. but sounds pretty cool anyway that it seems to work.
good job to all who work at this project.
and that it takes off pretty nicely.

greetings,
simon

**ruuk** · 2014-03-26, 21:45

Added a new version to my repository: 0.0.30

Repo

Added speaking of addon status including addon download progress
Change to prevent errors from killing the addon, thereby stopping speech and possibly hanging XBMC on exit