User Commands orca(1)
NAME
orca - a screen reader / magnifier
SYNOPSIS
orca [--gui-setup] [--text-setup] [--no-setup] [--
disable=options] [--enable=options] [--user-prefs-dir] [--
help] [--version] [--quit]
DESCRIPTION
orca is a screen reader for people with visual impairments,
and provides alternative access to the desktop by making use
of speech synthesis, braille, and magnification support on
the platform.
In addition, orca only provides access to
applications/toolkits that support the assistive technology
service provide interface (AT-SPI), which include GTK,
Mozilla, Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, StarOffice,
Java/Swing, etc.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-s, --gui-setup, --setup
When starting orca bring up the GUI configuration dia-
log.
-t, --text-setup
When starting orca initiate the text-based configura-
tion.
-n, --no-setup
When starting orca force the application to be started
without configuration, even though it might have needed
it. This is useful when starting orca via something like
gdm.
-u, --user-prefs-dir=directory
When starting orca, specify the directory as an alter-
nate directory for the user preferences.
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-e, --enable=speechbraille-monitormagnifiermain-window
When starting orca, force the enabling of the supplied
options.
-d, --disable=speechbraille-monitormagnifiermain-window
When starting orca, force the disabling of the supplied
options.
-?, -h, --help
Show the help message of this release of the orca pro-
gram.
-v, --version
Return the orca version number.
-q, --quit
Quit orca.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
In order for the "Accessible GNOME Desktop" to be accessible
to users who are blind or have low vision, users will need
to employ an assistive technology (AT) that exposes the
graphical desktop information encoded in the GNOME Accessi-
bility Framework.
Customers with blind employees/students need to have the
ability to adapt and customize their assistive technology
solutions - both to improve the efficiency of their blind
users (to help make up for disadvantages inherent in not
being able to "see" the entire screen immediately at a
glace), and also to "work around" poorly designed and not
particularly accessible applications that their blind users
need to use.
orca is an extensible assistive technology that provides
end-user access to applications and toolkits that support
the GNOME Accessibility Framework. It has been designed with
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direct continual feedback from its disability user commun-
ity.
orca uses a "scripting" approach to easily allow customiza-
tion per application and provides the ability for each user
to further customize their AT environment based on their own
preferences. The "scripting" approach of orca provides a
much more adaptable and compelling assistive technology
solution than existing AT for the JDS desktop.
Functionally orca does 4 major things:
1. Present information to the user via speech synthesis
(text-to-speech), or refreshable braille (hardware con-
nected to serial or USB port), or a magnified image on
the user's display.
2. Acquire information from the applications and desktop
graphical display via the GNOME Accessibility Framework.
3. Track events occurring in the applications and desktop
graphical display via the GNOME Accessibility Framework.
4. Intercept and optionally consume user input events from
the system keyboard and the buttons on a refreshable
braille display. Based on the input, orca will either
pass the event on to the application for normal process-
ing, execute orca-specific commands (such as reading the
next line in the display or panning the braille
display), or perform operations on application objects
(such as clicking buttons or modifying text areas).
orca will also:
]o be a collection of building blocks that comprise screen
reading and magnification technology, including use of
text-to-speech, braille input/output, magnification
logic, screen reading logic, keyboard and mouse inter-
ception modules, and event coalescing.
]o be developed with the standard GNOME build environment.
]o support multiple braille displays.
]o support the gnome-speech module for text-to-speech.
]o intercept keyboard & mouse events through the GNOME
Accessibility Framework and other supported X
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mechanisms.
]o support the gnome-mag module to provide end-user mag-
nification of the screen between 2 and 16 times magnif-
ication in integer increments.
]o render its own graphical user interface using GTK]
widgets.
]o provide a scripting mechanism, giving it the ability to
customize how each application on the JDS desktop is
handled by orca.
]o provide further customization on a per-user basis.
orca provides a set of its own keyboard commands. Note that
you can always enter orca's "learn mode" while running orca
by pressing Insert]F1. When in learn mode, orca will inter-
cept all keyboard and braille input events and will tell you
what the effect of them would be. To exit learn mode, press
the escape key.
]o Commands for adjusting speech parameters
- Insert-right arrow
increase speech rate
- Insert-left arrow
decrease speech rate
- Insert-up arrow
raise the pitch
- Insert-down arrow
decrease the pitch
]o Flat review commands
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- Numpad-7 move the flat review cursor to the pre-
vious line, and read it.
- Numpad-8 read the current line.
- Numpad-9 move the flat review cursor to the next
line, and read it.
- Numpad-4 move the flat review cursor to the pre-
vious word, and read it.
- Numpad-5 read the current word.
- Numpad-6 move the flat review cursor to the next
word, and read it.
- Numpad-1 move the flat review cursor to the pre-
vious character, and read it.
- Numpad-2 read the current character.
- Numpad-3 move the flat review cursor to the next
character, and read it.
- Numpad-slash perform a left mouse click at the loca-
tion of the flat review cursor.
- Numpad-star perform a right mouse click at the
location of the flat review cursor.
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Note: the above commands apply when working with objects as
well as when working with text. For example, if the flat
review cursor were positioned on a menu bar, pressing the
read current line command would speak the names of all visi-
ble menus. Similarly, pressing read next word would speak
the object to the right of the flat review cursor on the
same line, or move flat review to the next line if no more
objects were found.
]o Miscellaneous functions
- Insert-F1
enter learn mode (press escape to exit)
- Insert-f
speak font and attribute information for the
current character.
- Insert-space
launch the orca Configuration dialog.
- Insert-Control-space
reload user settings and reinitialize services as
necessary.
- Insert-s
toggle speech on and off
- Insert-F11
toggle the reading of tables, either by single
cell, or whole row.
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-Insert-q
quit orca.
]o Commands for debugging
- Insert-F3 report information on the currently
active script.
- Insert-F4 cycle through orca's various debug lev-
els.
- Insert-F5 prints a debug listing of all known
applications to the console where orca
is running.
- Insert-F7 prints debug information about the
ancestry of the object with focus.
- Insert-F8 prints debug information about the
application with focus.
Note, in order for the last three commands to be of use,
orca needs to be started from a virtual console or via
gnome-terminal. Output is sent to the console only (i.e., it
is not sent to speech or braille).
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Application exited successfully
1 Application exited with error
2 orca cannot parse its command line options.
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FILES
The following files are used by this application:
/usr/bin/orca orca executable
~/.orca/user-settings.py user's personal configura-
tion settings for orca
ATRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
ATRIBUTE TYPE ATRIBUTE VALUE
Availability SUNWgnome-a11y-orca
Interface stability Volatile
SEE ALSO
attributes(5)
orca online reference manual.
Latest version of the GNOME Accessibility Guide for your
platform.
Latest version of the GNOME Desktop User Guide for your
platform.5
NOTES
Written by Rich Burridge, Sun Microsystems Inc., 2006, 2007.
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