Orca in Xfce?

[Peter Vágner]

Hello,
I am also using xfce on one of my machines and I have got a lot of apps 
working in there.
I am using Arch linux and I have tried to write the instructions on how 
to get xfce4 working in arch. Perhaps you will be able to get the idea 
from my write up and you will adjust it to ubuntu.
So let's assume you have got pure text based arch linux installed and 
you would like to get xfce installed and try to make it accessible.
Here is what I would suggest:
- install xfce4 and xfce4-goodies groups of packages.
- If you have no ~/.xinitrc file then copy the default one into your 
home directory
cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
- edit ~/.xinitrc with your favorite text editor. Make sure the line
exec startxfce4
is there and is not commented out.
Before this line add another line saying
export GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge
- Install orca what will also install speech-dispatcher and other 
dependencies.
- Now either change speech-dispatcher configuration so it will use alsa 
as its output module or install pulseaudio.
You can edit /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf
- At this point you should be able to start xfce by executing startx . 
As it starts up you will be greeted by the pannel configuration which is 
not accessible. You can escape or alt+f4 out of it and then press alt+f2 
to run xfce4 app finder and type in orca to launch it.
- If orca starts first thing you should do is that you will press alt+f1 
to inwoke the popup menu, choose applications -> settings -> 
accessibility and enable screen reader checkbox.
Once this is enabled I think you don't have to export the GTK_MODULES 
variable. So you will then be able to start xfce from the login manager.

I haven't installed gdm in order to get accessible login screen because 
it installs a lot of gnome dependencies. Instead I have installed SLiM 
and set it to autologin. 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLiM#Autologin I don't know if 
there are other more accessible login managers.

In order to make the experience better I have installed the following 
gnome and lxde packages:
polkit-gnome, evince, file-roller, pcman-fm.

QT4 apps can also be made accessible while running xfce4 you have to 
instal qt-at-spi from AUR and restart the machine in order to get it 
working.

xfce4-terminal is accessible, it has even keyboard shortcut for select all.
Mousepad what is xfce text editor is working verry well too.
For playing multimedia you can install vlc, totem or DeaDBeeF for music. 
DeaDBeeF is just partially accessible but it's avesome.

Firefox, Thunderbird and libre-office are all working verry well.
In the alt+F1 menu -> settings -> prefered applications I have changed 
default filemanager from thunar to pcman-fm. Xfce folks have put some 
efforts into making thunar more accessible however it is not yet working 
verry well.

If something does not work then try to diagnose what is failing. If all 
is working well don't read further.
After starting xfce4 hit alt+f2 and run xfce4-terminal .
In the terminal make sure sound is working by using speaker-test for 
example. You can exit speaker-test by pressing ctrl+c.
Then next step is to make sure speech is working. First try to use 
espeak as follows if it is really installed properly and working
espeak -v en "hello world"
If that is working well then move on and test whether the 
speech-dispatcher is working by running
spd-say "hello world"
Finally if all this is still working without a problem start orca from 
the terminal and examine its output. Perhaps there is some package 
missing, wrong entry in the config etc.


Hopefully this is usefull

Greetings

Peter


On 19.08.2013 11:27, Jimmy Sjölund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm part of the devel-team for Ubuntu Studio and we received a request 
> to include Orca and brltty in the next releases to further support 
> visually impaired users. I have been doing some tests to include Orca 
> but not very successfully. The aim is to include Orca already during 
> installation.
>
> However, I'm not sure where to address my questions and issues. My 
> first thought was the Ubuntu Accessibility team but I'm not sure the 
> team is still active? I've tried the #ubuntu-accessibility channel on IRC.
>
> Since I'm uncertain if the issue is because I'm setting it up wrong, 
> or it's an issue since Ubuntu Studio use Xfce as default or if it's an 
> issue with Orca in general in 13.04 and 13.10 I'm not sure where to 
> turn? Any pointers?
>
> Kind regards
> Jimmy
>
> cub on irc.freenode
>
>

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