Ubuntu's switch to pulseaudio broke accessibility for the blind.

[igorche]

Ubuntu's switch to pulseaudio broke accessibility for the blind.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/416101

Bug Description

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

The switch to pulseaudio has made screen readers, on which the blind
depend, unintelligible.

The recommended workarounds are, in this order:
* aptitude remove pulseaudio
* touch ~/.pulse_a11y_nostart
* Use orca with pulseaudio via speech-dispatcher:
http://live.gnome.org/Orca/UbuntuJaunty

The problem appears to revolve around pulseaudio's lack of support for
mmap, and libportaudio's dependancy on it:

$ LIBASOUND_DEBUG=1 espeak "This is a test."
ALSA ERROR hw_params: set (ACCESS)
           value = MMAP_INTERLEAVED : Invalid argument
...

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

$ apt-cache policy pulseaudio
pulseaudio:
  Installed: 1:0.9.14-0ubuntu20.2
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Dave Lentz wrote on 2009-08-20: #1

Removing pulseaudio will break important stuff (like your sound
preferences) in Ubuntu 9.10. See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/400973
Luke Yelavich wrote on 2009-10-01: #2

This should no longer be a problem from jaunty onwards, at least in
terms of portaudio working with pulseaudio. However due to other
changes, the sound that gets played in unintelligable. There is a
work-around in place to not use pulseaudio when installing from the
live CD when accessibility for blind people is enabled.
Luke Yelavich on 2009-10-01
Changed in pulseaudio (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
Darxus wrote on 2009-10-03: #3

Why did you start that with "This should no longer be a problem" when
you went on to say "the sound that gets played back is
unintelligible"?

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