<p>Some server motherboards include serial UART/I<sup>2</sup>C ports which can be used to manage a BIOS via serial.
If this is possible, would it be able to attach to a braille display via an intermediary like a Rockchip/Pi SBC or Arduino compatible chip using <ahref="https://brltty.app">BRLTTY</a> and serial input from the motherboard?
Maybe not as it <ahref="https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/rhl-biosserial.html">appears to require</a> a full Unicode terminal, which I have the suspicion that BRLTTY will not be able to automatically filter out the formatting characters.</p>
<p>I found one paper referencing the (in)accessibility of BIOS, specifically UEFI BIOS from Brazil.
I have downloaded the paper and uploaded it here for reference.
<ahref="/assets/pdf/bios-accessibility.pdf">PDF of “UEFI BIOS Accessibility for the Visually Impaired”</a>.</p>
<p>After emailing the authors of the paper, I found out that one of them, Rafael Machado, was able to get a song playing in UEFI as a part of his masters.
Here is a link to the Github <ahref="https://github.com/RafaelRMachado/Msc_UefiHda_PreOs_Accessibility">Msc UEFI PreOS Accessibility</a>;
he has links to YouTube videos where he is shown playing a song on an ASUS laptop with PCIe connected speakers: <ahref="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2De9dI9WbwM">Song Playing in UEFI</a></p>
<p>I have downloaded and played around with his Github project but to no avail.
Either I am not setting it up correctly, or I do not have the proper sound setup, but in any case no sound plays from either my laptop or desktop.</p>
<p>This requires more research and investment to understand UEFI, HDA audio, what systems have it and how to work with words and other sounds.</p>
<p>Use selenium to allow a cross-engine compatible terminal-browser with JS support. Yes, sure, it has all the bloat of the modern web as it uses the full code of Chrome/Firefox/Webkit—but at least it can be used in the terminal.
Guaranteed to be accessible.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of similar key commands to Orca/NVDA but output is send to the terminal. Unsure of how to handle aria-live regions, but perhaps a queue could be used to print text. Unsure how to calculate delay as the user may be using a screen reader at different speeds and/or a braille display.</p>
<p>Change backend on-the-fly with a page reload. So if a website doesn’t work with Webkit, load it in Firefox with a key command.</p>
<p>Just an idea.</p>
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