lack of accessibility options in the scale installer

[criticview]

Hello everyone

Before I dive into my issue, first a bit of back story. I'm a completely blind person, using screenreader technology to get around on my computer, and am currently trying to sort out what to do in relation to data backup preferably with lots of extras.
This is why, I thought of using Truenas scale, to run a home assistant container, as well as a zentyal vm to get proxy and webfilters etc. The exact way of how or what is still unclear, and certainly up for adjustments... but...
Though closely related to this toppic
my problem is actually what comes before having the ability to check the web interface. Here's what I have:
running VMware Workstation 16 Player created a vm with 4 gigs memory, a drive of 20gigs, selected debian 10 x64, and after poweron selected removeable devices > Future Devices Braillex II USB > connect to guest. This, in other debian related distributions like univention, or ubuntu based ones like zentyal, resulted in my braille display being picked up by the installer, and thus allowing me to get everything up and running with no, or very minor issues. Since I found "efi/debian" I am assuming that the installer is debian based or related, thus it completely confuses me, why braille is not working. Any way I could get this resolved? As was stated by the OP of the topic above, I won't be able to open an account to file a bug, so this seems the only thing I can try.
Kind regards
criticview

 

[criticview]

I've done some more digging in the meantime.
First of all, I do realize I've cheaped out on the vm configu by not allowing enough ram and some such, but that should not have any influence on the detection of any device what so ever. While using screen ocr, I could select the install / upgrade option (dumb luck really, but I'll take what I can get), and only then did the installer complain about not enough memory. I'm trying a vm first, before figuring out an investment to try on bare metal.
Then, there might be the argument or question many would ask: "why would you add a program like brltty to a nas?" Easy: the same reason you'd atatch a monitor to the system, because a braille display accomplishes the same for a blind person. It does need the brltty program to accomodate navigation, and the propper set of drivers. Going to ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/debian/pool/main/b/brltty/ and looking for the latest version, at the time of writing 6.4, shows a size of about 2 MB more or less, so on a disk of 1.5 gigs, that's not even worth being worried about.
Lastly: why all the fuss? Because, sorry netgear... but I'd really like to chuck out my readynas ultra, get off the road of proprietary NAS systems, while also not letting resources go to waist by adding components like home assistant, hopefully a web filter and proxy, and who knows what else. It is just so baffeling to me that in this modern age and time, certainly if it comes to linux, that things like brltty and other accessibility features are generally an after thought or flat out an unknown given, most defenately if the distro you're basing on, has this figured out for a long while now. From what I could see, through the download.truenas.com all used apps seem to not include any desktop environment like gnome, kde or mate. This, for me, seems to indicate text install, wich means that it just could work. Any feedback would be appreciated, and on a scale of 1 to 10, a custom iso would be 7, while including brltty and some other things that might be helpfull like contrast stuff, or larger fonts, would be an amazing 15...

 

[criticview]

Even more follow up to be found. But before all this, I want to make it obvious that I'm only trying things that I think could be productive, while I would not call myself even a linux newbie...
So, first I set up a debian vm, rather with minimal specs just because it's to experiment with things.
Then I read
https://sleeplessbeastie.eu/2012/05/27/how-to-modify-squashfs-image/
grab myself a TrueNAS scale iso, install squashfs-tools and follow the instructions to extract filesystem.squashfs from the live folder on the iso.
When all of that is done, I copy /etc/resolf.conf, chroot into the extracted squashfs-root, probably forgetting to mount some stuff, ...
doing "apt update" worked, as did "apt install brltty".
After all that is said and done, I leave the chroot, rebuild the squashfs following the above instructions, and use a windows program called AnyBurn to edit the iso file to include the new squashfs...
This resulted, believe it or not, in an iso file that at least had my braille display working, even though it complained about the inability to find installation media. This proves at least that with some development tinckering, the TrueNAS scale image can be made to use brltty to help people with no vision, try and get themselves a NAS up and running. How the installer reacts with braille, I don't know, because of the no installer disc issue, nor would I want to try if it would ever come to deploying something to bare metal. If I'd know what I was doing (wrong) I could try to get to the installer, but I am sure there better ways to accomplish stuff than me blundering around.

This line goes straight out to the whole dev team: I'm convinced that with some fine tuning, some dependency liquidation like "alsa" and so on, you would be able to make a difference where up until now, the choice was proprietary or proprietary or being dependand on others to get your data saved, be that booting from an ssd, or a usb stick, or whatever else floats your boat.

I'd rather tell any friends, fora, whatsapp groups ... to get a second hand pc system, and use TrueNAS scale fully independently, than to advice them to buy any brand and risk being outdated a while later, (netgear comes to mind here, ... even though the readynas is still a capable thing, software updates, oh no sir, why would you need that.)