I've been a happy Linux user since the start of this century, and I've run plenty of distros over the years — Gentoo and Debian were always my favourites.
In 2012 I had an accident, and since then I can no longer read. I can still write, but for someone working as a system administrator, losing the ability to read was an enormous blow.
Ever since, I've relied on text-to-speech software to keep working with computers. At first I had no choice but to use Windows, with ClaroRead as my text-to-speech software. Not ideal, but it let me manage my Linux servers remotely.
Over time I managed to keep working, even if at a reduced pace, and eventually I'd saved enough to switch to Apple — whose accessibility features are, of course, a good deal better than Microsoft's.
Throughout those years I kept checking whether Linux could work for me as a desktop, but Orca sadly never worked well enough for me. Now that we live in the age of AI, I decided to see whether I could finally come up with my own solution.
With help of ai, I've been able to build a program that works really well for me — and one that I believe can help a lot of people with low vision, dyslexia, and other reading difficulties.
My mother was clever enough to come up with a nice name: VoxFox. ("Vox" is Latin for "voice," and my surname is Vos, so VoxFox made perfect sense.)
After many weeks of developing, testing, developing some more, and testing again, I felt it was good enough to give to the world. If you think it might be something for you, or if you know someone you could help with it, you'll find it at www.voxfox.nl.
For now the software runs only on Debian-based systems — and yes, I wrote this entire post using VoxFox itself.
In 2012 I had an accident, and since then I can no longer read. I can still write, but for someone working as a system administrator, losing the ability to read was an enormous blow.
Ever since, I've relied on text-to-speech software to keep working with computers. At first I had no choice but to use Windows, with ClaroRead as my text-to-speech software. Not ideal, but it let me manage my Linux servers remotely.
Over time I managed to keep working, even if at a reduced pace, and eventually I'd saved enough to switch to Apple — whose accessibility features are, of course, a good deal better than Microsoft's.
Throughout those years I kept checking whether Linux could work for me as a desktop, but Orca sadly never worked well enough for me. Now that we live in the age of AI, I decided to see whether I could finally come up with my own solution.
With help of ai, I've been able to build a program that works really well for me — and one that I believe can help a lot of people with low vision, dyslexia, and other reading difficulties.
My mother was clever enough to come up with a nice name: VoxFox. ("Vox" is Latin for "voice," and my surname is Vos, so VoxFox made perfect sense.)
After many weeks of developing, testing, developing some more, and testing again, I felt it was good enough to give to the world. If you think it might be something for you, or if you know someone you could help with it, you'll find it at www.voxfox.nl.
For now the software runs only on Debian-based systems — and yes, I wrote this entire post using VoxFox itself.
