Hi, There is no real way of accessing ESX consoles with speech since they use a graphical representation of the screen. I believe the way forward for us is to use automation as much as possible to get us a working system without having to resort to console access. I realise this is quite a different story in most companies, for example the work I am doing for the people I work for I am in the automation team, which is working in AWS, and completely separate from the rest of the business using ESX with a very different workflow. I am typically using Packer to create images in code, then those are deployed to VMs and I can then use those going forward with SSH or something else. I would recommend looking at Packer with ESX if you can to see if that will help you with your workflow. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Hutchings Sent: 01 April 2017 15:46 To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Access to vmware ESX 5.5 (both gui and VM guest console) Hi all, I recently joined the list, as I came across it while researching the above subject. I am a Linux system administrator in the UK, and contract out my services to various companies. A few places I have worked in predominantly use virtual machines for their servers, via vmware ESX 5.5. I have found access to both the GUI of vmware ESX (which is done via a web interface which uses inaccessible flash) and Virtual machine consoles themselves, to be nearly impossible to use with a screen reader (have tried both JAWS and NVDA). Supposedly, vmware ESX 6.0 has improved the accessibility of its web interface, but I haven't come across a company who uses ESX 6.0 yet, and the ones that I have worked for that use 5.5 have been reluctant to upgrade because of the perceived risk, virtual machine migration and so on. I have tried using the virtual console on Linux machines and network serial port access on vmware ESX (which I had to get sighted colleagues to setup), but this caused issues for sighted people who then wanted to use machines via the main vmware guest console. This meant that I had to enable serial port access when initially setting up a machine (via kickstart), and then disable the serial port once I had done the setup, both these tasks requiring sighted assistance. Have any of you had experience with using Vmware guest consoles / the vmware ESX 5.5 GUI with a screen reader? I have used vmware workstation and vmware player at home several times to run my own virtual machines, but I was able to access most machines via ssh and telnet. At the compaies I have worked at, ssh/telnet access is blocked for initial kicking of a machine, and is only available once machine configuration is complete. I have also explored using powershell and ruby esx interfaces to ESX via the command line, but these do not allow booting a machine via PXE for example, which is required for initial machine setup using kick start over a network. Many thanks for any advice, Ryan Hutchings _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins