"Speakup" Promoted Out Of Staging For Linux 5.9

The Speakup screen reader that is built into the kernel and allows for speaking all text printed to the text console from boot-up to shutdown for assisting blind individuals is now being promoted out of staging with Linux 5.9.

Speakup has been around for more than a decade so blind users can interact with the video console / VT. There are a number of speech synthesizers supported and has been organized via Linux-Speakup.org as "basically a bunch of blind people who like messing around with Linux and writing cool and, hopefully useful, software."

Speakup was added to the Linux kernel's staging area back in 2010 as the 12.5k lines of kernel code implementing this screen reader for the Linux console. Over the past decade and hundreds of commits later, the quality of the speakup driver code has improved enough to now be promoted out of staging and into the formal area of the kernel for better promoting accessibility.

The promotion comes on the basis of "the nasty TODO items are done."

The promotion is queued in staging-next with the Speakup software now set to live in drivers/accessibility/speakup once the Linux 5.9 kernel merge window gets underway in August.