Orca v2.22.0 Introduction ======================================================================== Orca is a free, open source, flexible, and extensible screen reader that provides access to the graphical desktop via user-customizable combinations of speech, braille, and/or magnification. Under development by the Sun Microsystems, Inc., Accessibility Program Office since 2004, Orca has been created with early input from and continued engagement with its end users. Orca works with applications and toolkits that support the assistive technology service provider interface (AT-SPI), which is the primary assistive technology infrastructure for the Solaris and Linux operating environments. Applications and toolkits supporting the AT-SPI include the GNOME GTK+ toolkit, the Java platform's Swing toolkit, OpenOffice, and Mozilla. AT-SPI support for the KDE Qt toolkit is currently being pursued. See also http://live.gnome.org/Orca for detailed English and Spanish information on Orca, including how to run Orca, how to communicate with the Orca user community, and where to log bugs and feature requests. Build Requirements ======================================================================== Orca v2.22.x is supported on GNOME 2.22.x only. We highly suggest you use the latest releases of GNOME because they contain accessibility infrastructure and application bug fixes that help Orca work better. Building Orca also requires the development modules for the following to be installed: * Python >= 2.4 - Python platform * pyorbit >= 2.14.0 - Python bindings for ORBit2 * pygtk >= 2.8.4 - GTK+ Python bindings * gnome-python >= 2.6.2 - Python bindings for various GNOME libraries * gnome-speech-1.0 >= 0.3.10 - Python bindings for gnome-speech * gnome-mag-1.0 >= 0.12.5 - Python bindings for gnome-mag (optional) * BrlTTY >= 3.7.2 - BrlTTY support for braille (optional) * BrlAPI >= 0.4.1 - BrlAPI support for braille (optional) YOU ALSO NEED THE LATEST ATK, GAIL, AND AT-SPI FOR THE GNOME 2.22.x DEVELOPMENT RELEASES. THEY CONTAIN VERY IMPORTANT BUG FIXES! NOTE: If you have multiple versions of the python interpreter installed on your machine, you should set the PYTHON environment variable when configuring Orca. For example: PYTHON=/usr/bin/python2.4 ./autogen.sh or PYTHON=/usr/bin/python2.4 ./configure NOTE FOR BRLTTY USERS: If you are using BrlTTY v3.8, Orca depends upon the Python bindings for BrlAPI. You can determine if the Python bindings for BrlAPI are installed by running the following command: python -c "import brlapi" If you get the following error, the Python bindings for BrlAPI are not installed. This is most likely because whoever built BrlTTY did not have Pyrex installed before building BrlTTY: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: No module named brlapi If you run into this, install python-pyrex and rebuild/reinstall BrlTTY. Running Orca ======================================================================== To run Orca, you have several options: 1) Enable accessibility and the screen reader via the "System->Preferences->Assistive Technology Preferences" dialog box (also available as the 'gnome-at-properties' application). As of GNOME 2.16, this will cause Orca to be automatically launched when you log in. 2) Add Orca as a startup application in the "Systems->Preferences->Sessions" dialog box (also available as the 'gnome-session-properties' application). This will cause Orca to be launched automatically when you log in. 3) Select "Orca Screen Reader and Magnifier" from the Applications->Accessibility launch menu (also available as the 'orca' application). This will run Orca once. 4) Press Alt+F2 to bring up the "Run Application" dialog box. Enter "orca" and press Return. This will run Orca once. 5) Run the "orca" command from a virtual console or gnome-terminal window. This will run Orca once. When you run Orca for the first time, you will be prompted for your initial user preferences. The first time you run Orca, you also need to log out and log back in in order for accessibility to be enabled in your environment. If you wish to modify your Orca preferences in the future, you can press "Insert+space" while Orca is running, or you can re-run orca with the "--setup" command line option. You can bypass the Orca setup utility by running orca with the "--no-setup" option. This is useful for running from environments such as the login screen. In general, you should not have to use any Orca-specific keystrokes; Orca will follow your focus as you navigate the screen using the built-in keyboard navigation mechanisms of the GNOME desktop. For more information on accessing the desktop, including the built-in keyboard shortcuts of the GNOME desktop, see the GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide: http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/latest/ If you find you run into an ill-behaved application, or you just want to explore an application using Orca's flat review mode, you can use the numeric keypad. A quick overview of the keypad is as follows: Keypad 7, 8, 9: review previous, current, and next line of window Keypad 4, 5, 6: review previous, current, and next word Keypad 1, 2, 3: review previous, current, and next character Keypad Enter: provide "where am I?" information Keypad +: read the current text document Other Orca keyboard commands include: Insert+space: bring up the configuration GUI Insert+s: turn speech on and off Insert+left_arrow: slow speech down Insert+right_arrow: speed speech up Insert+up_arrow: increase speech pitch Insert+down_arrow: decrease speech pitch Insert+f: read the text attributes at the caret position Insert+q: quit Orca Furthermore, to get help while running Orca, press "Insert+F1". This will enable "learn mode", which provides a spoken and brailled description of what various keyboard and braille input device actions will do. To exit learn mode, press "Escape." Finally, the preferences dialog contains a "Key Bindings" tab that lists the keyboard binding for Orca. To quit Orca, you can press "Insert+q" as shown above, or run "orca --quit" from the command line. More details are available on the Orca WIKI: http://live.gnome.org/Orca
