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
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GrapheneOS
in reply to Peter Vágner • • •One of our full time developers is actively working on building our own text-to-speech and speech-to-text integration. It's where all of their effort is currently going. None of the available apps are suitable for inclusion. None are modern enough aside from Sherpa and it has issues including high latency making it unsuitable for use with TalkBack. Our own implementation is going to be significantly better.
ADB works fine on GrapheneOS but you'd have to enable it.
Peter Vágner likes this.
Peter Vágner
in reply to GrapheneOS • •@GrapheneOS Thanks for the positive info and nice sounding prompt reply.
Now I need to make up my mind if I should find someone else who will install current release for me and install TTS or use something else I can tinker with such as lineage in the mean time.
Huge thanks
boredsquirrel
in reply to GrapheneOS • • •What is there apart from #SherpaTTS that is fast and supports many languages?
What components do you want to replace? My only issue currently is the need for multilingual models (german-english) as otherwise it is unusable for me.
Peter Vágner
in reply to GrapheneOS • •I have asked a friend and @GrapheneOS community chat members for the help with initial setup and now I am fully configured with RHVoice as my current TTS of choice.
Except of one GPS navigation app I am used to everything is working fine for me including proprietary stuff for my work like Microsoft Teams, banking apps including Poštová banka, George and Revolut and the other apps I like such as Bitwarden as a password manager, Arcanechat, Conversations, ElementX, FairEmail, Open Key Chain for chatting and emailing, Antennapod, BubbleUPNP, Foobar 2000, Kore, Voice, NewPipe, ytdlnis for podcasts, music, audiobooks and videos, , Catima for lojalty cards and tickets, some other apps. For downloading apps I am mainly using F-droid and Aurora store. I am not signed into the google account but I am using play services for push notifications and other compatibility reasons for apps which need it.
Thanks for everything you are doing, it's fantastic and I like it verry much.