Hello @GrapheneOS screen-reader users and other #a11y friends,

There was an interesting debate going on at the end of may where screen reader users were asking for #tts engine included with GrapheneOS base system.
grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/…

I understand this is very unlikely to change in the near future as I am not aware of a TTS system that is open-source and modern enough to be included.
@Accessible Android has a list of TTS engines sorted by language at this page: accessibleandroid.com/list-of-…
Except of eSpeak-ng and RHVoice there is another opensource app called SherpaTTS that can use Piper TTS and Coqui based voices at: github.com/woheller69/ttsEngin…
Including eSpeak-ng, RHVoice, SherpaTTS and the list of TTS engines mentioned by accessible android, is there a viable TTS engine or at least one that is close enough to be viable to get included in the foreseable future?

Another approach I have been thinking about is to add / inject the TTS app or any other app I'd like as a part of the install process. It turns out I am not the only one speculating about that idea and it's not practical and feasible either as it's also breaking the security model.
It's been discussed recently at: discuss.grapheneos.org/d/25899…

Another way on how to install an app on an android device would be using adb install from a computer. I am not definatelly sure on this but GrapheneOS does not allow enabling ADB on production builds. In order to instal a TTS app over ADB we'd need to find a way on how to install GrapheneOS with ADB preenabled on first run. This is a huge security hole as well.

There might be a way to build my own flavour of GrapheneOS, but that's too involved, I'd need very powerfull machine for the actual build process and I would again compromise security by either disabling or handling future updates on my own building each new release on my own.

So given the current state I am afraid we screen reader users are out of luck and there is no way to get this thing running on my own with no help from someone else.

The end result is that I'll either get security or I can look elsewhere to get accessibility.

Please am I getting it right or might I have overlooked something that might help me to install GrapheneOS on my own?

Thanks for reading to the end