[Hudlug] orca info

[MICHAEL WEAVER]

I have pasted some information below in this message about Orca.
henrik’s blog
Orca in the Edgy desktop
henrik
We finally have the shiny new
Orca screen reader
in the Edgy desktop seed, which means it will be included on the Live CD 
and in
default desktop installs. It replaces the gnopernicus reader which it 
has now also
done in Gnome 2.16. Ubuntu already has an active screenreader-using 
community who
have been waiting for this upgrade. If you want to help with testing, 
please report
your findings in
Malone
, our
mailing list
or the
forum section
.
So what does it do? A screen reader basically scrubs the desktop 
interface for useful
text-based information and sends this on to a speech synthesiser or a 
braille system
so that visually impaired users can access it. This includes menus and 
widgets as
well as the main text in Gedit, OpenOffice or a browser window. Users 
can then navigate
this content with a range of keyboard commands.
The major advantage of the Orca implementation is that it accepts custom 
scripts
for the different host applications so it can provide a more useable 
audio interface
from the raw widget information. Anything written with standard GTK 
widgets (and
now also in Qt!) provides a basic level of accessibility information, 
but many applications
have layouts that need special care. In Gaim for example, you would soon 
tire of
hearing the whole backlog read out each time you switched from the text 
entry box
to the conversation area. What you really want is to hear what you have 
typed and
the rest of the conversation as it occurs.
So try it out! As the usability of these tools improve I suspect more 
and more people
without visual impairments will find these tools useful also. If you 
know a bit of
python you can write scripts to suit your own use, and don’t be shy 
about sending
them upstream
:)
If you are running Edgy Eft you just need to update and Orca will be 
installed. Then
type ‘orca’ at the command line to start. It will ask some basic setup 
questions.
After that you can press Insert-Space (yes, Orca uses Insert as a 
modifier key) to
launch the setup GUI, which is also self-voicing.
Orca also enables the gnome AT-SPI accessibility framework when you 
first start it,
which allows other gnome-based applications to be mined for information 
as well.
You’ll need to restart your desktop session for that to take effect though.