How To Install brltty on Debian 9

In this tutorial we learn how to install brltty on Debian 9. brltty is Access software for a blind person using a braille display

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install brltty on Debian 9.

What is brltty

brltty is:

BRLTTY is a daemon which provides access to the console (text mode) for a blind person using a braille display. It drives the braille display and provides complete screen review functionality. The following display models are supported:

  • Alva/Optelec (ABT3xx, Delphi, Satellite, Braille System 40, BC 640/680)
  • Baum
  • BrailComm
  • BrailleLite
  • BrailleNote
  • Cebra
  • EcoBraille
  • EuroBraille (AzerBraille, Clio, Esys, Iris, NoteBraille, Scriba)
  • Freedom Scientific (Focus and PacMate)
  • Handy Tech
  • HIMS (Braille Sense, SyncBraille)
  • HumanWare (Brailliant)
  • Iris
  • LogText 32
  • MDV
  • Metec (BD-40)
  • NinePoint
  • Papenmeier
  • Pegasus
  • Seika
  • Tieman (Voyager, CombiBraille, MiniBraille, MultiBraille, BraillePen/EasyLink)
  • Tivomatic (Albatross)
  • TSI (Navigator, PowerBraille)
  • VideoBraille
  • VisioBraille

BRLTTY also provides a client/server based infrastructure for applications wishing to utilize a Braille display. The daemon process listens for incoming TCP/IP connections on a certain port. A shared object library for clients is provided in the package libbrlapi0.6. A static library, header files and documentation is provided in package libbrlapi-dev. Bindings to other programming languages can be found in cl-brlapi (Lisp), libbrlapi-java (Java) and python-brlapi (Python).

There are three methods to install brltty on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install brltty Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install brltty using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install brltty

Install brltty Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install brltty using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install brltty

Install brltty Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install brltty using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install brltty

How To Uninstall brltty on Debian 9

To uninstall only the brltty package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove brltty

Uninstall brltty And Its Dependencies

To uninstall brltty and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove brltty

Remove brltty Configurations and Data

To remove brltty configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge brltty

Remove brltty configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove brltty configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge brltty

Dependencies

brltty have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install brltty package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.