[miki123211]

> The "mess" of Linux audio is due to ONE reason: single-client ALSA driver model.

This is one of the major reasons why Linux accessibility sucks IMO.

Audio is one thing that you need to "just work™" if you want to get accessibility right, as there's no way for a screen reader user to fix it without having working audio in the first place[1]. On Linux, it does not "just work", and different screen readers have different ideas on how they want audio to be handled. In particular, the terminal Speakup screen reader (with a softsynth) wants exclusive control of your device through ALSA IIRC, while the Orca screen reader for the GUI goes through Pulse. That makes it impossible to use both of them at the same time.

[1] Well, you can sort of fix it by having a second machine and SSHing into the broken one, but that's not what I mean.

[codedokode]

> the terminal Speakup screen reader (with a softsynth) wants exclusive control of your device through ALSA

If you have Pulseaudio or Pipewire, they add a plugin to ALSA library that reroutes audio to audio daemon, so ALSA applications should work correctly.

[lynx23]

I would be surprised if Orca did use Pulse directly, it uses speech-dispatcher (IIRC) which then uses PA if configured that way.

Also, Accessibility != Audio. I, for instance, use Braille only. No need for speech synthesis. So equating Accessibility issues wth the crazy audio stack is a little bit too simple.

[bigstrat2003]

I mean... I've never seen a single audio issue on Linux. It does "just work" in my experience. I realize the people citing issues in this thread aren't just making shit up for the fun of it, but I think there's a lot of going too far and saying it sucks for everyone when it seems to work just fine for most.