[Jeffery Mewtamer]

Due to vision loss, I am completely reliant on a screen reader in order to operate a computer, and the graphical screen reader I use cannot interact with Flash objects at all. For YouTube, this doesn't cause much of a problem as the HTML5 player works just fine with my screen reader and there are very few videos that have refused to play for me with the HTML5 player. YouTube does seem to default to the Flash player no matter how many times I tell it to use the HTML5 player, but this is resolved easily enough by simply not having Flash installed.

Unfortunately, most other streaming sites require flash and with some shows being easily found on streaming sites other than YouTube and being almost impossible to find on YouTube, I find myself wanting to start using other Streaming sites. I could probably deal with not being able to access the controls of a Flash video player provided the site had smooth playback and autoplayed videos when a video page loads, but the YouTube HTML5 player is so much more user friendly that I don't want to risk it exterting itself when I'm on YouTube. I could just install/uninstall Flash everytime I switch between YouTube and a site that requires Flash, but I would rather have something more convient.

I use a rebranded version of Firefox 24(newer versions are available to me, but they act screwy with my screen reader), and an easy to use extention to make Flash invisible to YouTube while letting other Streaming Sites use it would be nice.

Also, I run Linux and thus have no access to the Silver Light plug-in that Netflix uses for its streams, and a Dual boot or VM really isn't an option for me(Don't have access to a Windows compatible screen reader, never launch a full X session, and I'm running a 1.2 GHz Dual Core Celeron). Any tips on a work around that might actually work for me would be appreciated.

[CheatFreak]

I don't know about the whole youtube thing, but for Netflix you actually do have an option, luckily.

As of now there is no way around using Silverlight, but last I checked you can use pipelight.

If you know how to install applications through the terminal then it's not too hard, but if you don't- I'm not too sure how easy it'll be taking your situation into account.

If your screenreader is friendly with the terminal however- though I have no idea how much of the terminal output it'll read.

in the terminal you'll need to successfully run these commands and follow them through.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install pipelight-multi

you'll need to do a bit of standard install stuff, as well as tab and enter on the OK button for the ttf-mscorefonts-installer.
once it's installed you'll need to run this

sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

Since you use firefox, you're going to need user agent switcher to make your computer look like it's windows so netflix will let you watch.


EDIT: I found a way to make youtube ignore flash as you requested
Theres a firefox addon which should let you force the player to always be the Youtube HTML5 one.
It's called youtube center.

This post has been edited by CheatFreak: 08 August 2014 - 08:48 PM

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

Actually, I do nearly everything from the terminal and Firefox is the only reason I ever launch even a stripped down x session(because I haven't found a text mode web browser half as usable), so installing from command line is a non-issue(though I normally use the Aptitude frontend instead of giving apt commands directly).

Regarding the User agent switcher, will switching to one of the built-in Internet Explorer agents be enough, or would I need a custom agent for best results(I already use the built-in Iphone agent to force this forum to display in mobile mode, but I've stuck to the default for all other sites)?

I'll let you know what kind of results I get once I try out these suggestions.

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

Well, had to do a Google search to learn what line to add to my sources.list, but I got Pipelight installed. Haven't tried silverlight yet, but Pipelight Flash works(native Flash doesn't want to install properly for some reason), though opening a tab with flash arenders the firefox windows completely uncontrollable for some reason, requiring me to Alt+F4.

As for YouTube Center, given the way it integrates itself into YouTube(and YouTube's general abuse of javascript controls that don't play well with my screen reader), I'm not sure how useful it will be at resolving my issue. It would be nice if activating its preferences button in Add-on manager actually brought up an old-fashioned preference window for setting global defaults for loading YouTube pages. Though Pipelight's ability to disable plugins does give me a more convenient way to turn Flash off and on than installing/uninstalling the flashplugin-nonfree package(if it was working right).

Update 2: Tried Netflix with User Agent Switcher's various built-in agents. Best I can tell, the Default agent causes a redirect to the system requirements page when loading a video, the Internet Explorer 8 agent throws an activeX is disabled error, and trying with the iPhone agent causes Firefox to throw an unknown protocol error, and I doubt any of the search bot agents would have any better results. Looks like I either need a different user agent switcher or a tutorial on how to define a custom agent.

This post has been edited by Jeffery Mewtamer: 11 August 2014 - 11:35 AM