Are there any up-to-date blind-accessible Linux distros?
Have a look/listen/touch at http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html .
It is included in KNOPPIX. The main developers wife is blind, so you can be pretty sure it is tried and tested.
Braille-Support is included.
Personally, as a person that can see, I have abused KNOPPIX to install my first Debian-System, as the Debian-Installer at that time was hard to use (for me).
It was really helpful as a rescue-system time and again.
And it's a good distro to borrow dotfiles from, IMO.
Update:
Somewhat related: a braille keyboard for smartphones.
I don't know if there is a dedicated distribution for accessibility. But Debian does offer support for accessibility. See, for example. the Debian Wiki accessibility page and the Debian Project page on Debian-Accessibility.
As noted in the question, there have been several Linux distributions aimed at blind and visually impaired users, many of which were neglected for a long time or even abandoned.
In early 2017, Vinux announced plans to merge with Sonar, using Fedora as a basis. That was the last thing I heard about this.
TalkingArch is or was "a respin of the Arch Linux live iso modified to include speech and braille output for blind and visually impaired users". The latest version dates from 2017 and the Arch wiki points out that "TalkingArch project is dead since 2017". It was succeeded by Tarch (see below).
Speakup, which is or was a set of tools for several Linux distributions, has not seen any updates for a number of years.
Oralux was based on Knoppix and included BRLTTY, Emacspeak, Yasr, Speakup and speech synthesiser for several languages. It was last updated in 2006 or 2007.
Some alternatives that are still being maintained are:
- Luwrain, which describes itself as "A platform for the creation of apps for the blind and partially-sighted". It has ISOs for 32-bit and 64-bit systems and bootable ISO images. Version 1.2.1 was released in May 2019.
- Tarch, "the new talking arch livecd project" succeeded Talking Arch. Its latest version is 2019.06.22, released in June 2019.
- There is also ADRIANE, "Audio Desktop Reference Implementation and Networking Environment", available on Knopper.net, the same website where you can find Knoppix.
Using a distribution that was specifically developed with blind users in mind is not the only option. The decisive aspect is the desktop environment and the availability of packages that blind users need. The Gnome desktop was traditionally the desktop of choice for anybody with accessibility needs. Gnome 3 was a setback with regard to accessibility, which made Mate (a continuation of Gnome 2) the better choice for many years. However, I doubt that this is still the case. For example, I can't find any dedicated accessibility page on the MATE website, whereas GNOME at least has an Accessibility Team.