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1. Linux Foundation Announces an Intent to Form the OpenWallet Foundation  PR Newswire
2. Linux Foundation announces the OpenWallet Foundation to develop interoperable digital wallets  TechCrunch
3. Linux Foundation unveils open source digital wallet consortium  Telecoms.com
4. Linux Foundation unveils plans for open-source OpenWallet  Candid.Technology
5. Linux Foundation Rolls Out OpenWallet Foundation to Develop Interoperable Digital Wallets  Crypto Economy
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Linux Foundation Announces an Intent to Form the OpenWallet Foundation  PR Newswire

A Consortium of Companies and Non Profit Organizations Collaborating to Create an Open Source Software Stack to Advance a Plurality of Interoperable Wallets

DUBLIN—September 13, 2022—The Linux Foundation, a global nonprofit organization enabling innovation through open source, today announced the intention to form the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort to develop open source software to support interoperability for a wide range of wallet use cases. The initiative already benefits from strong support including leading companies across technology, public sector, and industry vertical segments, and standardization organizations.

The mission of the OWF is to develop a secure, multi-purpose open source engine anyone can use to build interoperable wallets. The OWF aims to set best practices for digital wallet technology through collaboration on open source code for use as a starting point for anyone who strives to build interoperable, secure, and privacy-protecting wallets.

The OWF does not intend to publish a wallet itself, nor offer credentials or create any new standards. The community will focus on building an open source software engine that other organizations and companies can leverage to develop their own digital wallets.  The wallets will support a wide variety of use cases from identity to payments to digital keys and aim to achieve feature parity with the best available wallets.

Daniel Goldscheider, who started the initiative, said, “With the OpenWallet Foundation we push for a plurality of wallets based on a common core. I couldn’t be happier with the support this initiative has received already and the home it found at the Linux Foundation.”

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemllin said, “We are convinced that digital wallets will play a critical role for digital societies. Open software is the key to interoperability and security. We are delighted to host the OpenWallet Foundation and excited for its potential.”

OpenWallet Foundation will be featured in a keynote presentation at Open Source Summit Europe on 14 September 2022 at 9:00 AM IST (GMT +1) and a panel at 12:10 PM IST (GMT +1). In order to participate virtually and/or watch the sessions on demand, you can register here. 

Pramod Varma, Chief Architect Aadhaar & India Stack, said, “Verifiable credentials are becoming an essential digital empowerment tool for billions of people and small entities. India has been at the forefront of it and is going all out to convert all physical certificates into digitally verifiable credentials via the very successful Digilocker system. I am very excited about the OWF effort to create an interoperable and open source credential wallet engine to supercharge the credentialing infrastructure globally.”

“Universal digital wallet infrastructure will create the ability to carry tokenized identity, money, and objects from place to place in the digital world. Massive business model change is coming, and the winning digital business will be the one that earns trust to directly access the real data in our wallets to create much better digital experiences,” said David Treat, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain lead, Accenture. “We are excited to be part of the launch and development of an open-source basis for digital wallet infrastructure to help ensure consistency, interoperability, and portability with privacy, security, and inclusiveness at the core by design.”

Drummond Reed, Director of Trust Services at Avast, a brand of NortonLifeLock, said, “We’re on a mission to protect digital freedom for everyone. Digital freedom starts with the services used by the individual and the ability to reclaim their personal information and reestablish trust in digital exchanges. Great end point services start with the core of digital identity wallet technology. We are proud to be a founding supporter of the OpenWallet Foundation because collaboration, interoperability, and open ecosystems are essential to the trusted digital future that we envision.”

“The mobile wallet industry has seen significant advances in the last decade, changing the way people manage and spend their money, and the tasks that these wallets can perform have rapidly expanded. Mobile wallets are turning into digital IDs and a place to store documents whereby the security requirements are further enhanced,” said Taka Kawasaki CoFounder of Authlete Inc. “We understand the importance of standards that ensure interoperability as a member of the OpenID Foundation and in the same way we are excited to work with the Linux Foundation to develop a robust implementation to ensure the highest levels in security.”

“Providing secure identity and validated credential services are key for enabling a high assurance health care service. The OpenWallet Foundation could contribute a key role in promoting the deployment of highly effective secure digital health care systems that benefits the industry,” said Robert Samuel, Executive Director of Technology Research & Innovation, CVS Health.

“Daon provides the digital identity verification/proofing and authentication technology that enables digital trust at scale and on a global basis”, said Conor White, President – Americas at Daon, “Our experience with VeriFLY demonstrated the future importance of digital wallets for consumers and we look forward to supporting the OpenWallet Foundation.”

“We are building and issuing wallets for decentralized identity applications for several years now. Momentum and interest for this area has grown tremendously, far beyond our own community. It is now more important than ever that a unified wallet core embracing open standards is created, with the ambition to become the global standard. The best industry players are pulling together under the OpenWallet Foundation. esatus AG is proud to be among them as experience, expertise, and technology contributo,” said Dr. Andre Kudra, CIO, esatus AG 

Kaliya Young, Founder & Principal, Identity Woman in Business, said, “As our lives become more and more digital, it is critical to have strong and interoperable digital wallets that can properly safeguard our digital properties, whether it is our identities, data, or money. We are very excited to see the emergence of the OpenWallet Foundation, particularly its mission to bring key stakeholders together to create a core wallet engine (instead of another wallet) that can empower the actual wallet providers to build better products at lower cost. We look forward to supporting this initiative by leveraging our community resources and knowledge/expertise to develop a truly collaborative movement.”

Masa Mashita, Senior Vice President, Strategic Innovations, JCB Co., Ltd. said, “Wallets for the identity management as well as the payment will be a key function for the future user interface. The concept of OpenWallet will be beneficial for the interoperability among multiple industries and jurisdictions.”

“Secure and open wallets will allow individuals the world over to store, combine and use their credentials in new ways – allowing them to seamlessly assert their identity, manage payments, access services, etc., and empower them with control of their data. This brings together many of our efforts in India around identity, payments, credentials, data empowerment, health, etc. in an open manner, and will empower billions of people around the world,” said Sanjay Jain, Chairman of the Technology Committee of MOSIP.

“The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) welcomes and supports the creation of the OpenWallet Foundation. The creation of open source components that will allow wallet providers to work to standards and trust framework policies in a consistent way is entirely complementary to our own work on open and interoperable Digital Identities. OIX’s Global Interoperability working group is already defining a ‘trust framework policy characteristics methodology,’ as part of our contribution to GAIN. This will allow any trust framework to systematically describe itself to an open wallet, so that a ‘smart wallet’ can seamlessly adapt to the rules of a new framework within which the user wants to assert credentials,” said Nick Mothershaw, Chief Identity Strategist, OIX.

“Okta’s vision is to enable anyone to safely use any technology”, says Randy Nasson, Director of Product Management at Okta. “Digital wallets are emerging as go-to applications for conducting financial transactions, providing identity and vital data, and storing medical information such as vaccination status. Wallets will expand to include other credentials, including professional and academic certifications, membership status, and more. Digital credentials, including their issuance, storage in wallets, and presentation, will impact the way humans authenticate and authorize themselves with digital systems in the coming decade. Okta is excited about the efforts of the OpenWallet Foundation and the Linux Foundation to provide standards-based, open wallet technology for developers and organizations around the world.”

“The OpenID Foundation welcomes the formation of the OpenWallet Foundation and its efforts to create an open-source implementation of open and interoperable technical standards, certification and best practices.” – Nat Sakimura, Chairman, OpenID Foundation.

 “We believe the future of online trust and privacy starts with a system for individuals to take control over their digital identity, and interoperability will create broad accessibility,” says Rakesh Thaker, Chief Development Officer at Ping Identity. “We intend to actively participate and contribute to creating common specifications for secure, robust credential wallets to empower people with control over when and with whom they share their personal data.”

Wallet technologies that are open and interoperable are a key factor in enabling citizens to protect their privacy in the digital world. At polypoly – an initiative backed by the first pan-European cooperative for data – we absolutely believe that privacy is a human right! We are already working on open source wallets and are excited to collaborate with others and to contribute to the OpenWallet Foundation,” said Lars Eilebrecht, CISO, polypoly.

“Digital credentials and the wallets that manage them form the trust foundation of a digital society. With the future set to be characterised by a plurality of wallets and underlying standards, broad interoperability is key to delivering seamless digital interactions for citizens. Procivis is proud to support the efforts of the OpenWallet Foundation to build a secure, interoperable, and open wallet engine which enables every individual to retain sovereignty over their digital identities,”  Daniel Gasteiger, Chief Executive Officer, Procivis AG.

“It is essential to cross the boundaries between humans, enterprises, and systems to create value in a fully connected world. There is an urgent need for a truly portable, interoperable identity & credentialing backbone for all digital-first processes in government, business, peer-to-peer, smart city systems, and the Metaverse. The OpenWallet Foundation will establish high-quality wallet components that can be assembled into SW solutions unlocking a new universe of next-level digitization, security, and compliance,” said Dr. Carsten Stöcker, CEO Spherity & Chairman of the Supervisory Board IDunion SCE.

“Transmute has long promoted open source standards as the foundation for building evolved solutions that challenge the status quo. Transmute believes any organization should be empowered to create a digital wallet that can securely manage identifiers, credentials, currencies, and payments while complying with regulatory requirements regarding trusted applications and devices. Transmute supports a future of technology that will reflect exactly what OpenWallet Foundation wants to achieve: one that breaks with convention to foster innovation in a secure, interoperable way, benefitting competitive companies, consumers, and developers alike,” said Orie Steele, Co-Founder and CTO of Transmute.

“The Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation is proud to support the momentum of an industry-wide open-source engine for digital wallets. We believe this can be a key building block in our mission to establish an open standard trust layer for the Internet. We look forward to our Design Principles and Reference Architecture benefitting this endeavor and collaborating closely with this new Linux Foundation project,” said Judith Fleenor, Director of Strategic Engagement, Trust Over IP Foundation.

For more information about the project and how to participate in this work, please visit: openwallet.foundation. 

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 3,000 members. The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, Hyperledger, RISC-V, PyTorch, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

###

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page:  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact:

Dan Whiting
for the Linux Foundation
+1 202-531-9091
dwhiting@linuxfoundation.org

The post Linux Foundation Announces an Intent to Form the OpenWallet Foundation appeared first on Linux Foundation.

How I troubleshoot swappiness and startup time on Linux David Both Tue, 09/13/2022 - 03:00

I recently experienced another interesting problem in the Linux startup sequence that has a circumvention–not a solution. It started quite unexpectedly.

I was writing a couple of articles while making some updates to my personal copy of my series of books, "Using and Administering Linux: Zero to SysAdmin." I had four instances of LibreOffice Write open to doing all that. I had three VMs running with VirtualBox to test some of the things I was writing about. I also had LibreOffice Impress open to work on an unrelated presentation. I like to listen to music, so I had one of several tabs in Firefox open to Pandora, my music streaming service of choice. I had multiple Bash shells open using Konsole with numerous tabs and the Alpine text-mode email client in one. Then there were the various tabs in the Thunar file manager.

So I had a lot going on. Just like I do now as I write this article.

The symptoms

As I used these open sessions, I noticed that things slowed down considerably while waiting for the system to write a document to the M.3 SSD–a process that should have been really fast. I also noticed that the music was choppy and dropped out completely every few minutes. Overall performance was generally poor. I began to think that Fedora had a serious problem.

My primary workstation, the one I was working on at the time, has 64GB of RAM and an Intel Core i9 Extreme with 16 cores and Hyperthreading (32 CPUs) that can run as fast as 4.1 GHz using my configured overclocking. So I should not have experienced any slowdowns–or so I thought at the time.

Determine the problem

It did not take long to find the problem because I have experienced similar symptoms before on systems with far less memory. The issue looked like delays due to page swapping. But why?

I started with one of my go-to tools for problem determination, htop. It showed that the system was using 13.6GB of memory for programs, and most of the rest of the RAM was in cache and buffers. It also showed that swapping was actively occurring and that about 253MB of data was stored in the swap partitions.

Date & Time: 2022-08-12 10:53:08
Uptime: 2 days, 23:47:15
Tasks: 200, 1559 thr, 371 kthr; 4 running
Load average: 3.97 3.05 2.08
   
Disk IO: 202.6% read: 687M write: 188K
Network: rx: 0KiB/s tx: 0KiB/s (0/0 packets)
Systemd: running (0/662 failed) (0/7912 jobs)    
Mem[|||||||##*@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@    13.6G/62.5G]
Swp[||#                                      253M/18.0G]

But that meant I still had lots of memory left the system could use directly for programs and data and more that it could recover from cache and buffers. So why was this system even swapping at all?

I remembered hearing about the "swappiness" factor in one of my Red Hat training classes. But that was a long time ago. I did some searches on "swappiness" to learn about the kernel setting vm.swappiness.

The default value for this kernel parameter is 60. That represents the percent of free memory not yet in use. When the system reaches that 60% trigger point, it begins to swap, no matter how much free memory is available. My system started swapping when about 0.6 * 62.5GB = 37.5GB of unused memory remained.

Based on my online reading, I discovered that 10% is a better setting for many Linux systems. With that setting, swapping starts when only 10% of RAM is free.

I checked the current swappiness setting on my system, and it was set to the default.

# sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 60

Time to change this kernel setting.

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I won't dive into the gory details, but the bottom line is that either of the following commands, run as root, will instantly do the job on a running Linux computer without a reboot.

# sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10

You could also use this next command to do the same thing.

# echo 10 > /proc/vm/swappiness

Tecmint has an excellent article about setting kernel parameters.

Both commands change the live kernel setting in the /proc filesystem. After running either of those commands, you should run the sysctl vm.swappiness command to verify that the kernel setting has changed.

But those commands only change the swappiness value for the currently running system. A reboot returns the value to its default. I needed to ensure that this change is made persistent across reboots.

But first, the failure

To permanently change the kernel vm.swappiness variable, I used the procedure described in my previous article, How I disabled IPv6 on Linux, to add the following line to the end of the /etc/default/grub file:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="vm.swappiness=1"

I then ran the grub2-mkconfig command as root to rebuild the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg file. However, testing with VMs and real hardware showed that it did not work, and the swappiness value did not change. So I tried another approach.

And the success

Between this failure at startup time, the one I describe in the How I disabled IPv6 on Linux article, and other startup issues I explored due to encountering those two, I decided that this was a Linux startup timing problem. In other words, some required services, one of which might be the network itself, were not up and running, which prevented these kernel option changes from being committed to the /proc filesystem, or they were committed and then overwritten when the service started.

I could make all of these work as they should by adding them to a new file, /etc/sysctl.d/local-sysctl.conf with the following content, which includes all of my local kernel option changes:

###############################################
#            local-sysctl.conf                #
#                                             #
# Local kernel option settings.               #
# Install this file in the /etc/sysctl.d      #
# directory.                                  #
#                                             #
# Use the command:                            #
# sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/local-sysctl.conf   #
# to activate.                                #
#                                             #
###############################################
###############################################
# Local Network settings                      #
# Specifically to disable IPV6                #
###############################################
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1

###############################################
# Virtual Memory                              #
###############################################
# Set swappiness
vm.swappiness = 1

I then ran the following command, which activated only the kernel options in the specified file:

# sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/local-sysctl.conf
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
vm.swappiness = 13

This is a more targeted approach to setting kernel options than I used in my article about disabling IPv6.

Reporting the bug

At the time of this writing, there is no true fix for the root cause of this problem–whatever the cause. There is a way to temporarily circumvent the issue until a fix is provided. I used the /etc/sysctl.d/local-sysctl.conf file that I had created for testing and added a systemd service to run at the end of the startup sequence, wait for a few seconds, and run sysctl on that new file. The details of how to do that are in the How I disabled IPv6 on Linux article.

I had already reported this as bug 2103517 using Red Hat's Bugzilla when trying to disable IPv6. I added this new information to that bug to ensure that my latest findings were available to the kernel developers.

You can follow the link to view the bug report. You do not need an account to view bug reports.

Final thoughts

After experimenting to see how well I could reproduce the symptoms, along with many others, I have determined that the vm.swappiness setting of 60% is far too aggressive for many large-memory Linux systems. Without a lot more data points than those of my own computers, all I can tentatively conclude is that systems with huge amounts of RAM that get used only infrequently are the primary victims of this problem.

The immediate solution to the problem of local kernel option settings not working is to set them after startup. The automation I implemented is a good example of how to use systemd to replace the old SystemV startup file rc.local.

This bug had not been previously reported. It took a few days of experimenting to verify that the general problem in which locally-set kernel options were not being set or retained at startup time was easily repeatable on multiple physical and virtual systems. At that point, I felt it important to report the bug to ensure it gets fixed. Reporting it is another way I can give back to the Linux community.

I recently experienced another interesting problem in the Linux startup sequence that has a circumvention–not a solution. It started quite unexpectedly.

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Linux Sysadmin What to read next How I recovered my Linux system using a Live USB device This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

Open source blockchain development: Get started with Hyperledger FireFly Nicko Guyer Tue, 09/13/2022 - 03:00

It takes more than a blockchain node to build enterprise-grade applications at scale. As a result, developers often find themselves building plumbing from scratch to make their business logic work. The release of Hyperledger FireFly changed blockchain development, offering developers a full stack of tools to build and scale secure web applications using familiar APIs. FireFly’s next-gen platform simplifies development, making it easy to connect across multiple public and private chains while running many use cases simultaneously. Whether you want to build on permissioned chains like Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, or Enterprise Ethereum, or public chains like Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Moonbeam, or Fantom, FireFly has you covered.

In this article I'll walk you through where to download Hyperledger FireFly, how to set up a local development environment, and introduce you to the FireFly Sandbox. But first, a quick introduction to the Supernode.

What is a Supernode?

Hyperledger FireFly is an open source project that was contributed to the Hyperledger Foundation by Kaleido, a blockchain and digital asset platform provider. To make FireFly a reality, the Raleigh, NC-based company collaborated with the blockchain community to fit vital technology components into an enterprise-grade, pluggable development and runtime stack called a Supernode.

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(Nicko Guyer, CC BY-SA 4.0)

This development stack offers three key advantages to blockchain developers, especially those looking to build enterprise-grade applications with scale.

• Accelerate: Hyperledger FireFly helps developers create applications on the blockchain protocol of their choice, and build quickly with familiar REST APIs. Users can leverage pre-built services for tokens, wallets, storage, and identity to reach production faster.
• Orchestrate: Hyperledger FireFly makes it easier to manage data end-to-end from blockchain to back-office. APIs allow developers to trigger business processes based on blockchain activities, and off-chain storage and messaging to protect sensitive data.
• Support: Hyperledger FireFly supports high-volume workloads, integrates with existing IT systems and databases, and communicates with network participants.

Getting Started with Hyperledger

FireFly makes it super easy to build powerful blockchain applications. Installing the stack on your machine is a simple process, too. Below I'm going to walk you through the three step process to get up and running so you can start testing the FireFly functionality today.

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(Nicko Guyer, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Install FireFly CLI

The FireFly command-line interface (CLI) creates local FireFly stacks for offline development of blockchain apps. Having FireFly locally allows developers to test and iterate on ideas without worrying about setting up extra infrastructure.

The easiest way to install the FireFly CLI is to download a pre-compiled binary of the latest release. To do this, visit the release page.

Next, extract the binary and move it to /usr/bin/local. Assuming you downloaded the package from GitHub into your Downloads directory:

$ sudo tar -zxf ~/Downloads/firefly-cli_*.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin ff

This places the ff executable in /usr/local/bin.

If you downloaded the package from GitHub to a different directory, change the tar command above to wherever the firefly-cli_*.tar.gz file is located.

Alternatively, you can install the FireFly CLI using Go. If you have a local Go development environment, and you have included ${GOPATH}/bin in your path, you can use Go to install the FireFly CLI by running:

$ go install github.com/hyperledger/firefly-cli/ff@latest

Finally, verify the installation by running ff version. This prints the current version:

{ "Version": "v1.1.0", "License": "Apache-2.0" }

With the FireFly CLI installed, you are ready to run some Supernodes on your machine.

More great content Free online course: RHEL technical overview Learn advanced Linux commands Download cheat sheets Find an open source alternative Explore open source resources Start Your Environment

A FireFly stack is a collection of Supernodes that work together on a single development machine. A stack has multiple members (also referred to as organizations). Every member has their own Supernode within the stack. This allows developers to build and test data flows with a mix of public and private data between various parties, all within a single development environment.

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(Nicko Guyer, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Creating a new FireFly stack is relatively easy. The ff init command creates a new stack for you, and prompts you for a few details such as the name, and how many members you want in your stack.

There are also some settings you can change. The defaults are the simplest way to get going, but you can see a full list of options by running ff init --help.

Once you've created your stack, use the command ff start dev to run your environment.

After your stack has started, it prints the links to each member's UI, and the Sandbox for that node.

Use the FireFly Sandbox Image by:

(Nicko Guyer, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Each member gets an instance of the FireFly Sandbox as well. The Sandbox is like an example application. It can be used to test, iterate, and practice using FireFly features. It provides code snippets as examples of how to build those features into your own application backend.

There are a couple of things in the Sandbox you may want to check out to experience the full capabilities of Hyperledger FireFly.

The Messages tab helps you send messages, and view the data payload, in every member's FireFly Explorer, or send a private message to one member, and verify that the data payload is not visible in a third member's FireFly Explorer. You can send an image file, and download it from another member's FireFly Explorer.

The Tokens tab creates a non-fungible token pool, and allows you to transfer an NFT to another member and verify the account balances in FireFly Explorer.

The Contracts tab can create a contract interface and API, then view the Swagger UI for your new API, or create an event listener. You can also use the Swagger UI to call a smart contract function that emits an event. Any event received in the Sandbox also shows up in FireFly Explorer.

Build your app

Hyperledger FireFly brings a complete open source stack for developers who want to build and scale secure, enterprise-grade applications with access to blockchain technology. It's simple to install on your machine, and the Sandbox allows developers to view code snippets and test ideas—all so blockchain applications reach production faster. Read more about Hyperledger FireFly's capabilities in the project documentation and give it a try yourself.

Hyperledger FireFly brings a complete open source stack for developers who want to build and scale secure, enterprise-grade applications with access to blockchain technology.

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Remixing Linux for blind and visually impaired users Vojtech Polasek Tue, 09/13/2022 - 03:00

When I was around 5 years old, my father brought home our first computer. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in computers. I haven't stopped hanging around them since. During high school, when considering which specific area I wanted to focus on, I started experimenting with hacking, and that was the moment I decided to pursue a career as a security engineer.

I'm now a software engineer on the security compliance team. I've been at Red Hat for over two years, and I work remotely in the Czech Republic. I've used Linux for about 12 years, mainly Arch Linux and Fedora, but I've also administered Debian, Gentoo, and Ubuntu in the past.

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(Vojtech Polasek, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Photo description: Black and white image of a smiling Vojtech, with a red frame around it and an illustrated paper airplane in the background.

Outside of my day job, I play blind football, and I'm involved in various projects connecting visually impaired and sighted people together, including working in a small NGO that runs activities for blind and visually impaired people. I'm also working on an accessible Fedora project currently called Fegora, an unofficial Linux distribution aimed at visually impaired users.

The assistive technology stack

When I use a smart device, I need several pieces of assistive technology. The first and most essential is called a screen reader. This is software that presents what's on the screen to blind or visually impaired people, either through speech or through braille (basically, it tries to serve as our eyes). It can read out notifications and tell me which button or page element I'm focusing on, allowing me to interact with graphical user interfaces.

Screen readers use speech synthesis to speak aloud what appears on the screen. There are a variety of speech synthesizers, and some voices are more "natural-sounding" than others. The one I use, Espeak, is not very natural-sounding, but it's lightweight and fast. It also supports almost all languages, including Czech (which I use).

Finally, I use a Braille display, a device that represents a line of text in Braille. I use this a lot, especially when I'm coding or doing code reviews. It's easier to grasp the structure of code when I can freely move from one code element to another by touch. I can also use its buttons to move the cursor to the character or area of the screen I'm interested in, and it has a Braille keyboard too if I want to use it.

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles How I use assistive technology on a daily basis

When using a computer as a blind or visually impaired person, there are a couple of things that are relatively straightforward to do using the tech above. Personally, these are a few of the things I do every day:

• The text console is pretty much my favorite application. As a general rule, when something's in text, then blind people can read it with a screen reader (this doesn't hold true in all cases, but in most.) I mainly use the console for system management, text editing, and working with guidance and documentation.
• I browse the web and interact with websites.
• I code and do code reviews using VSCode and Eclipse.
• I send emails and instant messages.
• I can use word processing software, like Google Docs (which is not open source, but common in the modern office) and LibreOffice. Google Docs developers have added a lot of keyboard shortcuts, which I can use to move around documents, jump to headings or into comments, and so on.
• I can play multimedia, usually. It depends on how the application is written. Some media players are more accessible than others.

Possible but painful

This brings me to tasks that aren't so easy. I like to call these "possible but painful".

PDF files can be difficult. Sometimes I end up needing to use optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert images to text. For example, recently I needed to read a menu for a restaurant. They had the PDF of their menu on their website, but it had been flattened, and didn't have a text layer. For me, this shows up as a blank screen. I had to use an OCR application from my smartphone to extract the text for me. Not only is this an extra step, but the resulting "translation" of the text isn't always entirely accurate.

Viewing and creating a presentation can be problematic. To work around this, I create slides in HTML, using software such as Pandoc, which can process markdown and convert it into slides. I've been using this for many years and it works well—it allows me total control of the resulting slides, because the markdown is just simple text.

Video games can be made more accessible by basing them on sound or text. However, playing games can be doubly challenging on Linux as not only would you need to find an accessible game, but most PC games are also native to Windows so you would be dealing with some compatibility issues as well.

Some websites and interfaces are more difficult to navigate than others. These issues are often quite easy to solve just by setting some attributes correctly. In general, lots of web content comes in the form of images, especially today. One of the easiest ways to make web content more accessible is to make sure that alternative text is added to images so that screen readers can read it out, and people who cannot distinguish the image have some idea what's there. Another thing I experience a lot is unlabeled controls: you know there's a button or a check box but you don't know what it does.

The Fegora project optimises Linux for accessibility

Developers don't intentionally set out to build applications that aren't accessible. The problem is that they usually don't know how to test them. There aren't many blind Linux users, so there aren't many people testing the accessibility of applications and providing feedback. Therefore, developers don't produce accessible applications, and they don't get many users. And so the cycle continues.

This is one thing we hope to tackle with the Fegora project. We want to create a Fedora remix that's user-friendly for visually impaired and blind users. We hope it will attract more users, and that those users start discovering issues to report, which will hopefully be solved by other developers in the open source community.

So why are we doing this? Well, it's important to point out that Fedora is not an inaccessible distribution by design. It does have many accessibility tools available in the form of packages. But these aren't always present from the beginning, and there are a lot of small things which need to be configured before it can be proficiently used. This is something that can be discouraging to a beginner Fedora user.

We want Fegora to be as friendly and predictable for a blind user as possible. When a user launches a live image, the screen immediately starts being read as soon as a graphical user interface appears. All environment variables needed for accessibility are loaded and configured correctly.

Fegora brings the following changes, among others:

• Environment variables for accessibility are configured from the start.
• The Orca screen reader starts as soon as the graphical interface loads.
• A custom repo is added with extra voice synthesis and packaged software.
• Many alternative keyboard shortcuts have been added.
• There's a special script that can turn your monitor on and off. Many users do not need the monitor at all and having it off is a great power saver!

So how can you help?

First, if you'd like to contribute to Fegora (or just spread the word), you can find out more on our repository.

Additionally, when working on a team with someone who has a visual impairment, there might be some additional considerations depending on the accessibility tech being used. For example, it's not easy for us to listen to someone and read at the same time, because we are basically getting both things through audio, unless someone is very proficient with the Braille display.

Lastly, bear in mind that blind and visually impaired users consume the same end products as you do, whether that's presentation slides or websites or PDFs. When building products or creating content, your choices have a huge effect on accessibility and how easy it is for us to engage with the end result. Know that we are here, we love to use computers and technology, and we're often willing to help you test it, too.

Image by:

(Vojtech Polasek, CC BY-SA 4.0)

 Image description: Vojtech holding a football. He is wearing a football uniform and protective goggles.

Fegora, a Fedora project, is an unofficial Linux distribution aimed at visually impaired users.

Image by:

Opensource.com

Linux Accessibility Diversity and inclusion What to read next Use this open source screen reader on Windows Usability and accessibility start with open communication This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

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