I've thought through the various permutations, believe me: yes, your idea
works much better then most, but it requires a custom (or at least recent)
init and it doesn't give any help if the boot locks up before getting to
init.
You'd only need it for the initial installation, because the other part
of my proposal was to make it possible to recompile a kernel that always
did things in "blind mode" (at least according this particular braille
device.)
As far as the installation software, we could just turn off hardscroll
for the installation disk. (i.e., use a kernel in "blind mode" by
default. Turning off hardscroll is slower, but there aren't any other
bad effects.
- Ted