This was posted on the WorldCommunityGrid site yesterday.

I assume the partial answer to this is to use boinccmd but as I have minimal experience with it I don't feel I should try advising my friend over the phone.

A friend of mine is totally blind. He uses Jaws as a screen reader on a Windows box with no mouse. The monitor is normally turned off. He set up an account and downloaded the BOINC client. Things did not go well.

The following was posted on our team forum. He was rather frustrated as you may gather:

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*Sigh that was a bust. =-(

Supposedly I registered with the UserName "*redacted*".
I opened Notepad & used Copy+Paste to make sure I recorded it *exactly* as entered.
Ditto with the Email & Password.
Saved the text file for later use.

Sign out of the site, visit the log in part, & use the text file's data, C+P'd back in to the site, to verify it worked.
Log in successful.

Grab the client, install it, and find out it's got a (edited for language).
(How many unlabeled Check Boxes, Radio Buttons, & Text Entry Fields did they incorporate into that atrocity? I'd love to tell you, but I got frustrated & stopped counting.)
Finish the install, reboot as required, and as soon as the Boinc client comes up demanding my UN/PW, I Alt-Tab to WindowsFileExplorer & open the text file.
Copy+Paste it in *exactly* as originally entered, and it refuses to accept them as valid.
And JUST to be a pain in the a3, it can't tell me this in any easily parseable way, but has to merely go back to the UN/PW entry screen & sit there silently waiting for me to re-enter it all with a "Mismatch" error message beneath the log in part.

To add insult to injury, it blocks *ALL* network traffic until/unless it validates, making it impossible for me to go online to look for help.
(Seriously, "No Network Access" on the SysTray network icon description, and IE brings up a "You're not connected" error.)

Then, just to add the icing on that cake, I reach over & the NUC, on for barely five minutes at that point, is now *WARM* to the touch.
It had been on for over 24 hours solid & still been cool prior to installing the client.
Install it, reboot, and now the sucker's heating up like a toaster?
*Growls*

Try to make the Boinc client stop, unload, and not auto-start during boot, so I can determine if it's Boinc or some other cause.
It refuses to release, Alt+F4 doesn't do it, the Task Manager can't kill it, and it refuses to give back my network connection.

Uninstall the client, reboot...
And not only do I have my internet connection back, but the unit is growing cooler as I type.
(Reaches over, lays hand atop the case, & sits back smiling.)
It's not cold to the touch, but it's a freakin *iceberg* compaired to a few minutes ago.

Not sure what that client's got against NUC's, but I don't suggest running it.
Especially not if it refuses to accept a UN/PW combo that was *just* used to register the account & accepted via the site's log in system.
=-/

No WCG for me.
I can't afford to buy a new computer because it made this one catch fire.

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A reply from one of the team members:

It's due to the default setting...

I haven't had a problem with the network part, but it defaults to using 100 percent of the CPU all the time.

I have mine set to not run if CPU usage for other tasks go above 25 percent and to only use as much as 50 percent CPU to keep temps cool and apps from not choking.

I DO agree that the UI is obfuscated beyond belief. "Options" and "Preferences" in the same menu. For different functions of the UI. What "options" and "preferences" are you talking about? I tend to bang my head trying to remember which is which.

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A final comment,

That one was a "lovely" find, too...

*Watches Sarcasm-O-Meter detonate*
*Sigh*

One of them has a "Tabbed" interface (the default page it opens claims to be One Tab of Many), but when attempting to switch tabs, Jaws tells me there are no other tabs to switch to.
Strike One.

None of the sliders have labels, and I can't tell what any of them are for.
I take it from your description they're the controls I would've used to tone down the aggressiveness of the client, but without labels/descriptions/AltText to let me know, I didn't/don't dare futz with them.
(If I can't read it to know what it's for, and fiddle with it anyway, I may not be able to find it again, much less undo the damage.)
Strike Two.

The *only* reason I can think of to separate "Options" and "Prefferences" is to let you set all the default options, then save "Profiles" in the other.
Like "Default CPU use = 25%", but have a "Full Power" Profile for when you know you won't be using the machine any time soon & want to let it use all the cycles it can.
But even that needs to be under Options, with a Load/Save/Delete/Rename Profile set of buttons at the end inside that section.
Making it a separate section with overlapping functionality?
Strike Three.

*Sighs*

Oh well, the client has been uninstalled, the text file saved for later use "Just In Case", and I'll keep my ears open for if anyone posts to the forum (here or there) that they've finally fixed the UI to make it useable.

Especially that refusing to accept as valid data you *JUST* got through using to register with in the first place.
Grrrr...

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Our friend is on the other side of the country so dropping in to adjust things is not readily done.

There is a team for blind users. How do they get BOINC installed? In my friend's case the nearest team member is several hours away. The local sighted assistants are a little above the "Where is the ANY key?" stage.

Can anything be done to BOINC to make it blind friendly?

Any advice?

Forwarded to development.
Question though, do you know which BOINC version he is running?

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He downloaded from the WorldCommunityGrid site. This is currently 6.10.58.

All right, according to the developers there's been code in place since 2009 that adds read-support for JAWS to BOINC Manager. They haven't heard of any of this in a long time.

Now, what the user can try to do, is to install BOINC 7.2.42, as this version doesn't use bitmaps for the buttons in Simple View, something that 6.10.58 does still do. Although your blind user is talking about tabs, so we can deduce he managed to get to Advanced View. But even here adjustments have been made, to allow for using keyboard only, and no mouse. It may be that it's a problem with 6.10.58, so it is best to try with an up-to-date version first.

In case he wants to use a WCG version only, there's a beta one available: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/wcg_boinc_7.2.7_windows_intelx86.exe
Mind, do warn, if the user wants to try to use BOINC 7.2.42, that he should download the plain version, without Virtual Box, and that they should check that they get the correct version --32 bit or 64 bit.

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Thank you. I passed you post on to him and the WCG forum also.

WCG has also announced official support for a newer version as of yesterday. If you prefer using their version for whatever reason, it is now available.

https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/reg/ms/viewDownloadAgain.do