From low vision to blindness, the range of visual limitations is broad. Symptoms of low vision include dimness, haziness, extreme far-/near-sightedness, color blindness, and tunnel vision, among others. People with these disabilities are concerned with being able to see text or images on a computer screen and being able to perform tasks that require eye-hand coordination, such as moving a computer mouse. Text size and color can make a big difference in legibility for people with low vision. The technologies that can assist those with low vision or blindness are: Screen Magnifier - this is like a magnifying glass. People using them are able to control what area of the computer screen they want enlarged, and can move the magnifier to view different areas of the screen. They are also known as screen enlargers or large print programs. Screen Reader - this makes on-screen information available as synthesized speech and/or a refreshable braille display. They generally only translate text-based information. Graphics and other non-textual objects can be translated if there is alternative text describing the item. They are also known as blind access utilities or screen reviewers. Desktop Appearance Enhancement - users can configure the desktop to be easy to read; for example, by increasing text size and using high-contrast themes.

Screen Reader and Magnifier Orca The Orca Screen Reader and Magnifier application enables users with limited or no vision to use the GNOME Desktop and associated applications. Orca provides the following functionality: Screen Reader The screen reader enables non-visual access to standard applications in the GNOME Desktop by using speech and braille output. Magnifier The magnifier provides automated focus tracking and full-screen magnification to aid low-vision users. The following sections provide information about Orca and how to use it.

Orca is a flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology for people with visual impairments. Using various combinations of speech synthesis, braille and magnification, Orca helps provide access to applications and toolkits that support the AT-SPI (e.g., the GNOME Desktop). Orca is also free open source software.

One of the first DOS screen readers was Flipper, made by Omnichron Corporation in Berkeley, CA. It was named Flipper in part because the blind wife of the programmer envisioned computers as being programmed by flipping switches (an accurate image of a bygone era). Then came another DOS screen reader, this one from Henter-Joyce in Florida - "Jobs Access With Speech" (or JAWS). And so on.... Although no obvious connection exists between blindness and creatures from the sea, there is certainly a naming tradition for screen-reader software. Hence Orca, which is a lot tougher-sounding than Nemo, Ariel, Willy, or Mr. Limpet.

Orca is part of the GNOME platform and Orca's releases are coupled with the releases of the GNOME platform.

Bugs and feature/enhancement requests (RFEs) should be reported to the GNOME Bug Tracking System . Patches are always welcome, and instructions for creating patches can be found in the GNOME Introduction to Subversion (SVN) .

You can get in touch with developers and other users by sending an e-mail to the Orca mailing list ( Archives).

Yes! braille is supported via BrlTTY and it is tightly integrated with Orca. BrlTTY offers support for nearly every refreshable braille display known to man. Refer to the braille page for more information.

Yes, Orca fully supports contracted braille output.

Orca provides interfaces to both gnome-speech and emacspeak speech services. As such, the available voices for Orca are only restricted by the speech engines supported by the available speech services. For free speech engines, you typically have a choice of the eSpeak, Festival, and FreeTTS speech engines. For commercial engines, you have a choice of additional engines such as Fonix DECtalk, Loquendo, Eloquence, Cepstral and IBMTTS, with others on the way. Periodically check the gnome-speech package for more progress in this area.

The GNOME translation teams are composed of many passionate volunteers from around the world. These teams do a great job and keep an up-to-date status report. See the Orca translation status page for the large number of languages into which Orca has been translated. Note: support for a language also depends on the speech synthesis engine also supporting the same language.

Orca currently uses the gnome-mag magnification service. gnome-mag has incorporated support for smoother full-screen magnification, which relies upon newer extensions in the X Window System server. These extensions do not always function well on all platforms, so smooth full-screen magnification may not always work.

Orca targets the Firefox web browser (version 3) for providing accessible web browsing. Both the Orca and Firefox teams are fully dedicated in this cooperative effort.

For a text-only guided setup, open a terminal session (AltF1) : Applications - Accessories - Terminal) and use the command orca --text-setup Enter. Alternatively, use AltF2 to bring up the Run dialog, type in orca and press Enter. The first time Orca is launched you will be asked a few questions: First you will be presented with a list of languages to choose from; there are currently about 45 languages supported. Most of this list will scroll off the screen, so you may have to use the terminal's scrollbar to view earlier parts of the list. Type in the number of your language choice (e.g., 7 for American English) and press Enter. You are next asked to set Echo By Word. This option instructs Orca to speak words as you finish typing them. Type y or n and press Enter. The next item is Key Echo. This option will speak all keys as they are pressed. Type y or n and press Enter. Now select your desired keyboard layout; generally, you will want to choose the layout that matches your keyboard type - 1 for Desktop or 2 for Laptop. This choice will determine what key will act as the Orca modifier key. The Desktop layout uses Insert while the Laptop layout uses Caps Lock. A system, host, shift or modifier key is one which is used in conjunction with other keys, enabling keyboard access to most program functions. Next, specify if you require braille output. This functionality assumes a BrlTTY-compatible device is available. Type y or n and press Enter. Lastly, indicate whether you want an on-screen braille output monitor. This is mostly for developers who need to verify BrlTTY output, but may also be useful in other situations, such as visually diagnosing or verifying braille output. Type y or n and press Enter. That's it! Orca is now ready for use. If accessibility was not yet enabled, Orca does so now and asks you to logout and back in for the services to start. Type y and press Enter to restart your login session. After completing the first-time Orca settings, use Alt-F2 to bring up the Run dialog, type in orca and press Enter. Accessibility functions should now be active.

When you run Orca for the first time, it will automatically enter setup mode. If you want to run setup at some later point, you can pass the --setup option to Orca the next time you run it. Furthermore, while Orca is running, you can press InsertSpace to bring up the Orca setup window. Finally, Orca provides a text setup utility that you can start by passing the --text-setup option to Orca. All of these options will create a ~/.orca/user-settings.py file that holds your preferences and will also enable the accessibility infrastructure. You need to log out and log back in for the new settings to take effect.

Run Orca by typing orca in a terminal session window. You can do so from a virtual console window if you do not yet have access to the GUI. With the GUI installed you can also press Alt F2 to bring up the Run dialog and then enter orca as the command (followed by any optional parameters). Orca will automatically enter text setup mode if you run it from a virtual console window or your GUI environment is not yet set up for accessibility.

To quit Orca, press Insert Q. A confirmation dialog will appear. Select Yes to quit. If the system seems unresponsive, you can try a few things: Run orca --quit from a terminal window, such as a virtual console; press Ctrl AltF1 (on most Linux platforms) to get to a virtual console, enter your commands, and then use Alt F7 to get back to the desktop. This will kill the Orca process and reclaim system resources. You can then rerun Orca using the previously outlined methods. Press Ctrl AltBackspace to end your login session and get back to the graphical login prompt (not implemented in all Linux distributions).

You can redefine your key bindings for Orca in two main ways. The first way is to choose between the Desktop and Laptop layouts, which can be selected on the General page of the Orca configuration dialog (press InsertSpace to bring up Orca Preferences). For more refined control, you can set individual key bindings on the Key Bindings page of the Orca configuration dialog.

Place the following lines in ~/.orca/orca-customizations.py. If this file doesn't exist yet, go ahead and create it. Note that in this case InsertD will be used to report current information about the time and date.

Create an empty file named ~/.orca/orca-scripts/__init__.py and place your custom scripts in ~/.orca/orca-scripts , Orca will pick up any scripts from there before looking in the installed area.

The Orca configuration dialog allows you to customize the behavior and features of Orca, such as speech, braille, and magnification. For example, you can select which speech synthesis engine you want to use, whether braille is enabled or not, and which magnification preferences you want. You can select between Laptop/Desktop keyboard layouts and you can also examine and modify the existing keyboard layout with granular control. To bring up the Orca configuration dialog, press <ORCA MODIFIER>Space, where <ORCA MODIFIER> is Insert when you use the Desktop key bindings, and Caps Lock when you use the Laptop key bindings. The Orca configuration dialog is a multi-tab container for several pages, each of which is described in the following sections.

The General section details the following items:

The keyboard layout option lets you choose between a small keyboard layout (Laptop) or large keyboard layout with a numeric keypad (Desktop). If you choose Laptop the Orca system key is Caps Lock; for the Desktop layout the system key is Insert.

The Orca main window provides you with a graphical way to display the Orca configuration dialog (also obtained by Insert Space). Many users do not like the Orca main window because it shows up in the window manager's tab order when you press Alt Tab to switch windows. By deselecting the Show Orca Main Window option, you can tell Orca to not show its main window.

Normally when you press InsertQ or press the Quit button in the Orca main window, a confirmation dialog will prompt if you really want to quit. Unchecking this option prevents the confirmation window from appearing.

When running system administration commands from the launch menu, many distributions use an application known as gksu to authorize the user to run these commands (gksu is the dialog that asks you for your password). When it runs, gksu enables what is known as a "keyboard grab," which is a feature to prevent keyboard actions from going to any other application on the desktop, including Orca. The result of a keyboard grab is that Orca will not receive any keyboard events, preventing Orca from functioning normally. By selecting the Disable gksu Keyboard Grab button, you will turn off the keyboard grab behavior, allowing Orca to function normally with system administration applications. The keyboard grab is a security attempt by gksu to prevent malicious applications from "sniffing" the keyboard and obtaining your password. Please be advised that disabling gksu's keyboard grab feature can expose you to such nefarious behavior. If you do not feel comfortable with this, you can always use the root account for system administration purposes. To do so, you need to enable the root account for login, and then log out and back in again as root whenever you want to perform a system administration command.

When checked, this option will tell Orca to present information about tooltips when they appear as the result of mouse hovering. Specific actions to force tooltips to appear, such as pressing CtrlF1 when an object has focus, will always result in tooltips being presented, regardless of this setting.

The speech page allows you to customize how Orca uses speech synthesis.

The first control of note on the speech page is the Enable Speech check box. This check box toggles whether or not Orca will make use of a speech synthesizer. This option, along with the ability to enable braille and magnifier support, allows Orca to be tailored to meet the specific needs of a wide variety of users.

The next two controls deal with selecting the speech system and synthesizer. Orca provides support for a growing number of speech systems. At the time of this writing these include GNOME-speech, Emacspeak, and an experimental backend for Speech Dispatcher. Depending on how your machine is configured, you may have all or none of these options. Typically, you will only have GNOME-speech available. First, determine which speech system you would like to use - GNOME-speech works best at this time. After making your selection, tab to the speech synthesizer combo box and choose from the list of available synthesizers.

If your synthesizer supports it, Orca can utilize multiple voices in order to identify special cases within an application, such as hyperlinks or uppercase text. The voice settings and person combo boxes can be adjusted to customize these settings to your liking. For example, assume you were using Fonix DECtalk and wanted the Betty voice to denote uppercase. To accomplish this, you could do the following: Tab to the voice settings combo box, and press the down arrow until the uppercase voice is selected. Tab to the person combo box, and press the down arrow to choose the Betty voice. The next three sliders in the tab order allow adjustment of the synthesizer's rate, pitch and volume, respectively. Note that you can quickly raise/lower the pitch by pressing InsertUp Arrow and Insert Down Arrow. You can also modify the speaking rate by pressing InsertLeft Arrow and InsertRight Arrow.

The Punctuation Level radio button group is used to adjust the amount of punctuation spoken by the synthesizer. The available levels are None, Some, Most and All.

The Verbosity setting determines the amount of information that will be spoken in certain situations. For example, if it is set to Verbose, the synthesizer will speak shortcut keys for items in pull-down menus. When it is set to Brief, these shortcut keys are not announced.

The table row speech option determines the way in which Orca will read items within tables. The available settings are Speak Current Row or Speak Current Cell. The ability to adjust this behavior can be useful in many situations. For example, consider the process of browsing email messages in Evolution. In this instance it may be preferable to set table speech to Speak Current Row, so arrowing through the list of messages causes all relevant info, such as the sender, subject, and whether the message has attachments, is read automatically. While the current row setting is active, it is still possible to read individual cells by using the left and right arrows. Note that you can quickly toggle this behavior by pressing InsertF11.

When working with code or editing documents, it is often desirable to be aware of justification as well as indentation. Selecting the Speak Indentation and Justification check box will cause Orca to provide this information.

Some users desire to hear the word "blank" when navigating through empty lines in a document. Other users do not. If the Speak Blank Lines check box is selected, Orca will announce any blank lines.

The braille page allows you to customize various aspects of braille output.

The first control on the braille page is the Enable braille Support check box. This toggles whether or not Orca will make use of a braille display. This option, along with the ability to enable braille and magnifier support, allows Orca to be tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of users. By default, this check box is enabled. If BrlTTY is not running, Orca will recover gracefully and will not communicate with the braille display. If you configure BrlTTY later on, you need to restart Orca in order for it to use braille.

Orca's braille monitor provides an on-screen representation of what takes place on the braille display. This feature is mostly for demonstration purposes, but is also useful for Orca developers who do not have access to a braille display.

The Abbreviated Role Names check box determines the manner in which role names are displayed and can be used to help conserve real estate on the braille display. This option is best explained by example: Let us assume that a slider had focus, and that the abbreviated role names box was not checked. In that case, the word "slider" would be shown on the display, to reflect the fact that the current control was indeed a slider. If the abbreviated role names box was checked, the word "slider" would be abbreviated to "sldr".

The Verbosity radio button group determines the amount of information that will be output to braille in certain situations. For example, if it is set to Verbose, keyboard shortcut and role name information is displayed. This information is not displayed in Brief mode.

The Key Echo page allows you to specify the behavior of Orca when pressing keys on the page and whether words are spoken as you complete them.

The first control on the key echo page is the Enable Key Echo check box. When this box is checked, five additional check boxes become available. These are Enable Alphanumeric and Punctuation Keys, Enable Modifier Keys, Enable Locking Keys, Enable Function Keys, and Enable Action Keys. The alphanumeric and punctuation option determines if letter, number and punctuation characters are echoed as you type them. Modifier keys are those such as Shift, Control, and Alt. Locking keys include Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock. Enabling function key echo will announce F1 - F12 when they are pressed. The action keys group consists of keys that perform some logical action, as Backspace, Return and Tab.

The last toggle on the Key Echo page is the Enable Echo by Word check box. This option is always available, regardless of whether any of the key echo options are checked. When enabled, whole words are spoken as typing progresses. In summary, the Key Echo scheme can offer a great deal of flexibility. For example, one user might choose to enable all Key Echo options, while another might prefer to use word echo, but only have locking keys announced.

The magnifier page allows you to enable/disable magnification and specify how magnification is performed.

The first control on the magnifier page is the Enable Magnifier check box. This toggles whether or not Orca will provide magnification. This option, along with the ability to enable speech and braille support, allow Orca to be tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of users.

Enable Cursor Color Custom Size and Width

Enable Cross-Hair and Size Enable Cross-Hair Clip

Scale factor Invert Colors Zoomer Position Top, Left, Right, Bottom Smoothing Mouse Tracking Mode Source Display - X Window System display of what should be magnified. Typically :0. Target Display - X Window System display of where to put the magnified area. Typically :0.

The key bindings page allows you to examine and modify the key bindings for Orca.

The first control on the Key Bindings page allows you to examine which key (or keys) acts as the "Orca modifier" (Orca system key). The Orca modifier is the key that you press and hold in conjunction with other keys to give commands to Orca. For Desktop keyboards, the modifier defaults to Insert. For Laptop keyboards, the modifier defaults to the Caps Lock key. You cannot modify the Orca modifier key(s) using the configuration dialog at this time.

The key bindings table provides a list of Orca operations and the keys that are bound to them. The "Function" column header is a description of the operation to be performed. The "Key Binding" header is the primary way to invoke the function from the keyboard. Note that the function description may include the word Orca. This indicates that the Orca modifier key should be held down along with the other key(s). The "Alternate" header provides an alternate mechanism for invoking the function from the keyboard. To modify either the "Key Binding" or the "Alternate" bindings, arrow to the cell and press Return. Then, press a key combination and press Return to confirm the new combination. When you do so, the new keystroke will be saved and the check box in the Modified column will indicate that the key binding has been modified. To undo a modified keybinding, arrow to the modified column, uncheck the checkbox, and press the Apply button (Alt A).

Orca will speak known text attribute information about an object when you press Insert F ( Caps LockF for Laptop systems). Because the number of text attributes is large, and not everyone cares about every attribute, the "Text Attributes" tab of the Orca configuration dialog allows you to customize which text attributes will be presented. On this tab is a text attribute list, where each row consists of three columns: A checkbox which the user can set to indicate whether this text attribute should be spoken or not. The name of the text attribute. An editable "Spoken unless" string value. By default, not all text attributes will have this set. If present, what it means (assuming the user wants this text attribute spoken) is that the value of the attribute will only be spoken if it's a different value than this value. For example, by default the "underline" text attribute has a value of "none". If the user has this attribute checked and the user presses Insert F and the text in question is not underlined, then this attribute is not spoken. If you always want this attribute to be spoken regardless of whether the text is underlined, then the attribute should be checked and the "Spoken unless" value cleared. There is also a Reset button (Alt R) that will set the list values back to their initial state when the dialog was first displayed. When you initially display the text attribute pane, all your checked attributes are put at the top of the list. They are given in the order that they will be spoken and output to braille. If you decide to check others or wish to adjust the order, there are four buttons to help you do this: Move to Top ( Alt T ) - moves the selected attribute to the top of the list. Move Up One ( Alt U ) - moves the selected attribute up one row. Move Down One ( Alt D ) - moves the selected attribute down one row. Move to Bottom ( Alt B ) - moves the selected attribute to the bottom of the list. Text attributes can also be set on an individual application basis. The text attribute pane is also part of the application specific settings dialog that is started when you give a particular application focus and press InsertCtrl Space.

Orca is designed to work with applications and toolkits that support the Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI). This includes the GNOME Desktop and its bundled applications: OpenOffice, Firefox, and the Java platform. Some applications work better than others, however, and the Orca community continually works to provide superior access to more and more applications.

We are currently working on a script for Adobe's Acrobat Reader, and the initial version has been contributed to Orca v2.17.5. Note that there is still work to do, and we are very encouraged by Adobe's commitment to accessibility.

If you get Adobe Acrobat Reader directly from the Adobe site, you may find that the software will not launch. If launched from the Applications menu, it may appear that nothing has happened, or if launched from a terminal window you may receive a long series of syntax error messages. Should this occur, you will need to edit your /usr/bin/acroread file as described in this Ubuntu forum thread. If you instead choose to install Acrobat Reader from your distribution's packages, be sure to install both acroread and acroread-plugins. Without the plugins package, you will not have the access to the "Reading" category in the Edit- Preferences dialog. Note: If you use Ubuntu and cannot locate the acroread package, you will likely need to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to include the 'multiverse' repository. Then run apt-get update. Having done so, you should then be able to install both acroread and acroread-plugins.

Once you've installed Reader, you need to enable accessibility: In the "Accessibility" category of the Edit- Preferences dialog, make sure Always display the keyboard selection cursor ( AltD ) is checked. In the "Reading" category of the Edit- Preferences dialog, make sure Enable Document Accessibility ((Alt E) is checked.

When you open an untagged document, you will be presented with a dialog box asking you to specify the reading order and the reading mode options. The default reading order is Infer reading order from document . This setting works well for most documents. The default reading mode will vary depending on the length of the document; for short documents, the default is Read the entire document; for long documents the default is Read currently visible pages only. Orca tends to work better when Read the entire document is selected. If you find that a document seems to be missing parts of the text, try changing the reading options. To do so, get into the Document menu and select Change Accessibility Reading Options... or use the shortcut CtrlShift5.

The best page layout for reading a document with Orca is Single Page. When Continuous is chosen, moving focus to text as the page is scrolling can cause that text not to be read. You can change the page layout to Single Page by getting into the View menu and selecting the Page Layout submenu.

As far as we know there isn't currently a whole lot of keyboard support for tables in Acrobat Reader. We hope Adobe will remedy this soon. Basically, there are the arrow keys. Their behavior is to move you first within the cell with focus, then to the next cell with data in it. Note that currently, Up and Down Arrow do not seem to move you vertically among cells - at least that has been the experience with the tables we have tried. Instead, Up and Down seem to move you horizontally until you run out of cells on the current row.

To customize the settings for a particular application, you will first need to run that application. Make sure the application has focus, then press ORCA_MODIFIER ControlSpace (by default, this will be InsertControl Space for the Desktop keyboard layout). This brings up a tabbed dialog window very similar to the Orca configuration dialog, but with the following differences: There is no initial General pane. The Speech System and Speech Synthesizer combo boxes on the Speech pane will be grayed out (made inactive). Any existing application-specific key bindings will appear at the top of the list on the Key Bindings pane. There may be a new application-specific settings pane at the end of the set of tabbed panes. Note that pressing the End key from the tab list will get you directly to the right-most tab. Adjust your application-specific settings in the same way you set your general Orca preferences. For example, you may have Key Echo disabled generally in Orca but would like to specifically have it enabled for the gcalctool (GNOME Calculator) application. Here's where you could easily set that. When you have your application settings customized the way you want, press the OK button. These settings will be written to your ~/.orca/app-settings directory in a file called <APPNAME>.py, where <APPNAME> is the name of the application. These files are automatically written by Orca. The contents of the file will be overwritten each time you change your application settings for that application. If you want to have some extra application-specific settings or code that you don't want to lose, then you should put it in a file called ~/.orca/app-settings/<APPNAME>-customizations.py. This file will be automatically read when the settings for the <APPNAME> application are loaded. Note that this is an advanced feature that we don't expect many people to use. It's just there if you really want it. There is currently one known bug (some people would call it a feature) that we are trying to track down and fix: If you adjust one or more application-specific key bindings, the new values will not take effect until you've pressed the OK button. The work-around is to either restart Orca, or Alt-Tab away to some other application and then Alt-Tab back to the one that you've just changed the key bindings for.

Orca uses BrlTTY for braille support. On Linux systems, BrlTTY is used to access the text mode console content. On a typical braille-enabled installation of Linux, BrlTTY is already running and providing access to the text consoles. When Orca starts, it connects to BrlTTY. If you switch from a text console to your X Windows session, your braille display will automatically follow and display the content that Orca is presenting to you. Orca attempts to work with various releases of BrlTTY. It works well with BrlTTY v3.7.2, and we've also been working with the BrlTTY team to get it going for BrlTTY v3.8. The remainder of this document provides information related to using Orca with BrlTTY 3.8. Below are descriptions of the necessary tasks to install/setup BrlTTY in Ubuntu and Solaris. For both, you need to first obtain brltty-3.8.tar.gz from the BrlTTY site.

First, configure your build environment to build BrlTTY. Much of this setup is done for you automatically in the Ubuntu distribution with products such as G++ already present. In addition, you must also install tcl, Pyrex, and the Python developer environment. To do this, execute the following commands as root: Then, when you build BrlTTY, avoid configuring the package with --prefix=/usr. Use the standard procedure instead, executing the following commands as root: Run BrlTTY as root: If you want, you can remove the existing /sbin/brltty and replace it with the /bin/brltty, either by copying the /bin/brltty to /sbin/brltty or just by making a symbolic link. Do so at your own risk.

This is the list of common Orca keyboard commands. Note that you can always enter Orca's Learn mode while running Orca by pressing InsertF1. When in Learn mode, Orca will intercept 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. If you are using a laptop computer, you will want to see the laptop keyboard commands page at live.gnome.org.

Insert Right Arrow : increase speech rate Insert Left Arrow : decrease speech rate Insert Up Arrow : raise the pitch Insert Down Arrow : lower the pitch

Numpad-7: Move the flat review cursor to the previous 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 previous 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 previous 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-/: Perform a left mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor. Numpad-*: Perform a right mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor. 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 (Numpad-8) would speak the names of all visible 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.

Alt Insert [1-6] : add a bookmark in this numbered slot. If a bookmark already exists it will be replaced. Insert [1-6] : go to the position pointed to by the bookmark bound to this numbered slot. Alt Shift [1-6] : "Where am I" information for this bookmark relative to the current pointer location. Insert B and Insert Shift B : move between the given bookmarks for the given application or page. Alt Insert B : save the defined bookmarks for the current application or page.

Insert Numpad + : "say all" command; reads from the current position of the caret to the end of the document. Insert Numpad Enter : "where am I" command; speaks information such as the title of the current application window as well as the name of the control that currently has focus. 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 Ctrl Space : reload user settings and reinitialize services as necessary. Also launch the Orca configuration dialog for the current application. Insert S : toggle speech on and off. Insert F11 : toggle table-reading mode between single cell or entire row. Insert Q : quit Orca.

Insert F3 : report information on the currently active script. Insert F4 : cycle through Orca's various debug levels. In order for the next three commands to be of use, Orca needs to be started from a virtual console or via gnome-terminal. Output is sent only to the console (i.e., it is not sent to speech or braille). 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 current application.

See Troubleshooting Speech.

If you can get to a terminal (or press AltF2 to open the "Run Command" dialog box), try restarting Orca by issuing another Orca command in a terminal window. This will force any existing Orca process to exit and will then restart Orca. This sometimes has the effect of unhanging the desktop (which is usually due to an ill-behaved application). If you cannot get to a terminal window, try pressing Ctrl AltBackspace : shut down the X Window System server. This should return you to the login screen.

This chapter describes the methods you can use to change the appearance of the GNOME Desktop in order to enhance the accessibility of the desktop for users with visual impairments.

customizing the desktop appearance There are several ways to customize the appearance of the GNOME Desktop to suit your specific needs: Themes Themes are the most effective way to change the appearance of the desktop in a consistent manner. See for more information about themes and how to use them to achieve the type of desktop environment that you require. Desktop and Application-Specific Configuration Settings You can customize different components of the desktop to achieve the display settings that you require. You can configure the desktop and applications in addition to using themes or as an alternative to themes. See for more information. The following table summarizes the changes that you can make to the GNOME Desktop and where you can make the changes. This guide does not provide detailed instructions about how to customize the desktop. For detailed instructions about how to use the customization tools that the desktop provides, refer to the Help for each tool or to the User Guide. To change the... Use... Overall appearance of the desktop using high-contrast colors, low-contrast colors, or large print. The Theme section of the Appearance preference tool. Appearance of the desktop background only. The Desktop Background section of the Appearance preference tool; also the file manager Backgrounds and Emblems menu item. Appearance of the mouse pointer. The Theme section of the Appearance preference tool; use the Pointers tab of the Customize option. Font displayed on the desktop background and in all desktop applications. The Font section of the Appearance preference tool. Default font settings of the Text Editor, Terminal or Help application. Normally these applications use the default application font that is specified in the Font section of the Appearance preference tool, but these font settings can also be overridden in the Preferences dialog for the application.

This section describes how to use themes to customize the appearance of the GNOME Desktop.

themes A theme is a group of coordinated settings that specifies how a desktop component or a group of desktop components appears. You can use themes to modify and control the appearance of the desktop in a consistent manner. When you apply a theme, the system modifies many desktop components simultaneously to achieve the desired effect. For example, if you apply a theme that increases the font size across the desktop, the theme also modifies the size of panels and icons on the desktop for optimum compatibility with the font size. Some themes have suggested font settings that may optionally be auto-set; in addition, most colors within a theme can be customized. A theme contains settings that affect different parts of the desktop: Controls The controls setting for a theme determines the visual appearance of all windows, applications, panels, and panel applications. The controls setting also determines the visual appearance of the GNOME-compliant interface items that appear on windows, applications, panels, and panel applications such as menus, icons, and buttons. Some of the control options that are available in the desktop are designed for special accessibility needs. Window Border The window frame setting determines the appearance of the border around windows only. Icon The icon setting determines the appearance of icons on panels and on the desktop background.

themes desktop To choose a theme, perform the following steps: Choose SystemPreferencesAppearance . The themes are listed under the Theme tab. Click on a theme in the list box to choose a new theme. The system automatically applies the theme to the desktop, and may also prompt whether to apply a suggested font for the theme. There are several themes available that suit different accessibility needs, as described in the following table: Theme Name Description High Contrast Provides dark text on a light background using high-contrast colors. High Contrast Inverse Provides light text on a dark background using high-contrast colors. Large Print This theme suggests an increased font size of 18pt. The background and foreground colors are the same as those specified by the Default desktop theme. To apply the suggested font, click on the Apply Font button. High Contrast Large Print This theme suggests an increased font size of 18pt using dark text on a light background. To apply the suggested font, click on the Apply Font button. High Contrast Large Print Inverse This theme suggests an increased font size of 18pt using light text on a dark background. To apply the suggested font, click on the Apply Font button. In some GNOME distributions there are also prebuilt low-contrast/low-contrast-large-print themes to complement the high-contrast theme set. To view the controls, window frame, and icon settings that are associated with a theme, select a theme in the Appearance preference tool, then click on the Theme tab. The Customize option contains a tabbed section for each setting category. Each tabbed section lists the options that are available and the current setting for the theme is highlighted.

To modify the controls setting that is associated with a theme, perform the following steps: Within the Theme tab, select the theme that you want to modify. Click on the Customize button. The Customize Theme dialog is displayed. Click on the Controls tab to display the controls options that are available. Select the controls option that you want to associate with the current theme from the list box, then click Close. The following table lists the controls options that are suitable for accessibility needs: Control Option Description HighContrast Provides dark text on a light background using high-contrast colors. HighContrastInverse Provides light text on a dark background using high-contrast colors. LargePrint Increases the size of controls to accommodate larger fonts. To increase the font size, you must use the Font preference tool. The background and foreground colors are the same as those specified by the Default desktop theme. HighContrastLargePrint Provides dark text on a light background using high-contrast colors. Increases the size of controls to accommodate larger fonts. To increase the font size, you must use the Font preference tool. HighContrastLargePrintInverse Provides light text on a dark background using high-contrast colors. Increases the size of controls to accommodate larger fonts. To increase the font size, you must use the Font preference tool.

themes window border To modify the window border setting that is associated with a theme, perform the following steps: In the Appearance preference tool, choose the Theme tab and the theme you want to modify. Click on the Customize button. The Customize Theme dialog is displayed. Click on the Window Border tab to display the window frame options that are available. Select the window frame option that you want to associate with the current theme from the list box, then click Close. The Atlanta option is designed for accessibility.

themes icon To modify the icon setting that is associated with a theme, perform the following steps: In the Appearance preference tool, choose the Theme tab and select the theme that you want to modify. Click on the Customize button. The Customize Theme dialog is displayed. Click on the Icons tab to display the icon options that are available. Select the icon option that you want to associate with the theme from the list box, then click Close. The following table lists the icon options that are suitable for accessibility needs: Icon Option Description HighContrast Provides dark-on-light icons using high-contrast colors. HighContrastInverse Provides light-on-dark icons using high-contrast colors.

themes creating own For information about how to create your own themes, see the System Administration Guide.

This section describes how to customize specific components of the GNOME Desktop individually.

customizing desktop appearance desktop background The themes do not affect the desktop background. To set the desktop background, choose SystemPreferences Appearance and select a background from the Background tab. If no background is chosen, the first entry listed here may be used.

customizing desktop appearance desktop background objects The size of the icons that are displayed on the desktop background is controlled by the File Management preference tool. To change the size of the icons, perform the following steps: From the File Manager window, choose the Edit Preferences menu item. Select the Views tabbed section. In the Icon View Defaults group, select the zoom level that you require in the Default Zoom Level drop-down list.

customizing desktop appearance fonts This section describes how to customize the font settings for the desktop and frequently-used applications. If you have difficulty with the default font type and font size that is used on the desktop and desktop background, you can customize the font settings to suit your needs. You can specify individual font settings for the following desktop components and applications: Entire desktop (excluding the desktop background) Desktop background only Terminal Text Editor Help Web Browser

customizing desktop appearance desktop fonts The Appearance preference tool allows you to specify the default fonts for the desktop. To start the Appearance preference tool, choose System PreferencesAppearance. The Fonts tab contains the following options: Application Font Click on this button to select a default font to use for the text that is displayed on the desktop, including the text displayed on the windows and dialogs associated with GNOME-compliant applications and panel applications. If you use a predefined theme and you click on the Apply Font button, the font that is associated with the theme overrides the font from the Appearance preference tool. Document Font Click on this button to select a font to use for displaying documents. Desktop Font Click on this button to select a font to use for the text that is displayed on the desktop background only. Window Title Font Click on this button to select a font to use for the text that is displayed in the titlebar area of windows. Fixed Width Font Click on this button to select a font to use for editing documents. Font Rendering To specify how to render fonts on the desktop, select one of the following options: Monochrome Best Shapes Best Contrast Subpixel Smoothing If you use large fonts, you may need to change the size of panes in some applications, such as the file manager and Help browser. For more information about the Appearance preference tool and fonts, see the User Guide.

custom desktop appearance set choose individual font By default, GNOME applications use the default font specified in the Appearance preference tool. Some applications allow this default font to be customized. These applications are: Help Browser Text Editor Terminal Web Browser

The following sections summarize the steps you need to take to improve the accessibility of the desktop in a particular area.

high contrast desktop low contrast desktop To achieve a high- or low-contrast desktop, perform the following steps: Use the Appearance preference tool to select the high-contrast or low-contrast desktop theme that you require from the Theme tab. Use the Background tab to customize your desktop background as follows: Set the Desktop Wallpaper to No Wallpaper. Set the Desktop Colors to Solid Color. Select a background color that suits your needs. In the Terminal application, ensure that the Use colors from system theme option is selected in the Colors tabbed section of the Editing Profile dialog. In the gedit (Text Editor) application, ensure that the Use default theme colors option is selected in the Fonts & Colors tabbed section of the Preferences dialog.

large print desktop To achieve a large-print desktop, perform the following steps: Use the Appearance preference tool to select the Large Print theme. Click on the Apply Font button to increase the size of the font that is used on the desktop and on window frames. Use the Desktop Font option in the Font tab to increase the font that is displayed on desktop background objects. Increase the font size that is used to display the contents of the Terminal application window. If the Use default theme font option is selected in the gedit (Text Editor) Preferences dialog, gedit uses the font size that is specified in the large-print theme that you selected. However, if the Use default theme font option is not selected, increase the font size that is used to display the contents of the gedit text editor window. See the gedit manual for more information. If you use applications that use panes, such as the file manager and help browser, you may need to change the size of panes to accommodate the large print. See the online help for the appropriate application for more information.