Install Arch Linux with accessibility options - ArchWiki

Jump to content

# Install Arch Linux with accessibility options

From ArchWiki

The official Arch Linux installation medium supports various Accessibility features:

- speech is provided by the espeakup package
- braille terminal support is handled by the brltty package

This document describes how to install Arch Linux using these features.

Note This page describes only steps which are different from the Installation guide.

## Pre-installation

### Boot the live environment

Note The boot loaders on the installation medium have a timeout of 15 seconds before they start the default menu item.

When the installation medium starts booting, press `Down` followed by `Enter` to boot with speech enabled.

USB braille displays should be detected automatically via udev.

### Multiple sound cards

If your computer has several sound cards, you will hear the following message: Please select your sound card for speech output.

When you hear a beep on the output that you would like to use, press `Enter` to select the card.

### Change speech language

To change the espeak-ng language/voice used by `espeakup.service`, edit the unit so that the language code is appended to `default_voice=` in the `Environment=` directive.

You can also change the espeak-ng voice variant by appending `+variant` to the language code. See espeakup(8) and espeak-ng(1) for more information.

## Installation

### Install essential packages

For speech support in the installed system, you need espeakup and alsa-utils. If you use a braille display, install the brltty package.

Append the required packages to the pacstrap(8) call when installing:

    # pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware espeakup alsa-utils

## Configure the system

### Sound card

If #Multiple sound cards were detected, copy the `/etc/asound.conf` file, which has been generated in the installation medium:

    # cp /etc/asound.conf /mnt/etc/

### Enable the services

To have speech support after booting into the installed system you need to enable `espeakup.service`. See also #Change speech language.

## Reboot

After booting into the newly installed system it should start speaking automatically.

## Troubleshooting

See Accessibility#Troubleshooting.

Categories:

- Installation process
- Accessibility

Install Arch Linux with accessibility options
Add topic