This chapter describes Orca, a screen reader and magnifier application provided with GNOME.

The Orca Configuration GUI 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 which general keyboard layout you want (desktop or laptop) and you can also examine and modify the existing keyboard layout with fine-grained control. To bring up the Orca Configuration GUI, press ORCA_MODIFIERSpace, where ORCA_MODIFIER is Insert when you use the desktop key bindings and Caps_Lock when you use the laptop key bindings. See also the [[Orca/AppSpecificSettings| Application Specific Settings]] page for how to set settings specific to a single application. The Orca Configuration GUI is a dialog containing several tabbed pages, each of which is described in the following sections.

Orca GUI Configuration - General Page The General page allows you to customize general aspects of Orca. These include the following:

The keyboard layout section allows you to specify if you will be working on a laptop (small) or desktop (large, with a numeric keypad) keyboard. You select which layout you want by selecting one of the following options: Desktop - if selected, the Desktop Keyboard Layout (link kb table) will be used. Laptop - if selected, the Laptop Keyboard Layout (link kb table) will be used.

Orca GUI Configuration - Main window The Orca main window provides you with a graphical way to display the Orca Configuration GUI (also accessible with ORCA_MODIFIERSpace, where ORCA_MODIFIER is Insert when you use the desktop key bindings and Caps_Lock when you use the laptop key bindings). The main window also provides a Quit option, also available with ORCA_MODIFIERQ). Many users do not like the Orca main window because it shows up in the window manager's tab order when you press AltTab to switch windows. By deselecting the "Show Orca main window" button, you can tell Orca to not show the Orca main window.

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

When running commands from the launch menu, many distributions use an application known as gksu to authorize the user to run these commands; gksu is the GUI 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 nefarious applications from "sniffing" the keyboard and grabbing secret information. Please be advised that disabling the gksu 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 logout and log back in 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.

When checked, this option will tell Orca to present information about the object under the mouse when you move it around the screen. Note that this can cause Firefox and Thunderbird versions 2.x and earlier to crash; this is not a problem with Firefox and Thunderbird versions 3.x and later.

When checked, this option will tell the system to automatically launch Orca when you log in.

Orca GUI Configuration - Speech Page 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 enable magnifier support, allow Orca to be tailored to meet the 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 upon how your machine is configured, you may have all or none of these options. Typically, you will have just GNOME-speech. 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 upper case 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 upper case. To accomplish this, you could do the following: Tab to the voice settings combo box, and down arrow until the upper case voice is selected. Tab to the person combo box, and 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. You can quickly raise/lower the pitch by pressing ORCA_MODIFIERUpArrow and ORCA_MODIFIERDownArrow. You can also modify the speech rate by pressing ORCA_MODIFIERLeftArrow and ORCA_MODIFIERRightArrow.

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 that while arrowing through the list of messages 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. You can quickly toggle this behavior by pressing ORCA_MODIFIERF11.

If this setting is enabled, Orca will periodically announce the status of progress bars. How often the announcement is made is determined by the value chosen in the Update Interval spin button. Note that this spin button is only available if the "Speak progress bar updates" checkbox has been checked.

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

Some users desire to hear "blank" when navigating to a blank line in a document. Other users do not. If the "speak blank lines" check box is selected, Orca will speak blank lines.

When moving from component to component in an interface, this option will provide spoken tutorial messages for how to work with the component.

This combo box allows you to specify whether the "say all" functionality of Orca speaks by sentence or line (see Desktop Keyboard Layout and Laptop Keyboard Layout for how to invoke the "say all" functionality).

Orca GUI Configuration - Braille Page The braille page allows you to customize various aspects about the use of braille. See also Using Orca with BrlTTY for more information on configuring and setting up BrlTTY. Orca does not automatically start BrlTTY for you; typically you need to do this yourself, usually at boot time.

The first control on the braille page is the "enable braille support" check box. This check box toggles whether or not Orca will make use of a braille display. This option, along with the ability to enable braille and enable magnifier support, allow 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. The "abbreviated role names" option can be better understood if we consider the following example. Let us assume that a slider had focus, and that the abbreviated role names box was not checked. In this 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 were checked, the word "slider" would be abbreviated to "sldr".

When checked, this feature tells Orca to not present the "$l" string at the end of a line.

Orca supports contracted braille via the liblouis project, where you can find additional information about setting up liblouis with Orca.

The verbosity radio button group determines the amount of information that will be brailled 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.

When you select text, Orca will "underline" that text on your braille display with Dots 7 and 8. If you would prefer, you can change the indicator to only be Dot 7, only be Dot 8, or not be present at all.

When you encounter a hyperlink, Orca will "underline" that text on your braille display with Dots 7 and 8. If you would prefer, you can change the indicator to only be Dot 7, only be Dot 8, or not be present at all.

Orca GUI Configuration - Key Echo Page 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 selected, six additional check boxes become available. These are: Enable alphanumeric and punctuation keys, Enable modifier keys, Enable locking keys, Enable function keys, Enable action keys, and Enable navigation keys. The alphanumeric and function key groups are relatively self explanatory. Modifier keys are those such as Shift, Control, and Alt. Locking keys include Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock. The action keys group consists of keys that perform some logical action, such as Backspace, Return and Tab. The navigation keys group include the four arrow keys as well as any key combination in which the Orca Modifier key is being held down. The latter is designed to prevent Orca from echoing flat review commands.

The next toggle on the key echo page is the "enable echo by word" check box, used to echo the word you just typed. The "echo by word" control is always available, regardless of whether any of the key echo options are checked.

The last toggle on the key echo page is the "enable echo by sentence" check box, used to echo the sentence you just typed. The echo by sentence control is always available, regardless of whether any of the key echo options are checked. 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.

Orca GUI Configuration - Magnifier Page 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 check box toggles whether or not Orca will provide magnification. This option, along with the ability to enable speech and enable braille support, allow Orca to be tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of users.

Two zoomer GUI controls determine magnification characteristics: Scale factor, which sets magnification power from 1.0x to 16.0x (fractional values are supported). Position, which sets the location and size of the magnifier window: Full Screen, Left Half, Right Half, Top Half, Bottom Half, and Custom. The default position is Full Screen. Choosing Custom causes four spin buttons to become available: Top, Left, Right, and Bottom. These spin buttons allow you to define the location of each edge of the zoom window. Units are in pixels.

These options are not available in Full Screen mode.

This option determines if a window border is visible for the magnifier.

This value determines the size of the border in pixels.

Border color settings allow additional visual options.

Creates a reverse or negative-image effect.

Ranges from -1 to 1 (-1 is black/no brightness; 1 is white/total brightness; 0 is "normal"/unchanged).

Ranges from -1 to 1 (-1 is grey/no contrast; 1 is maximum contrast; 0 is "normal"/unchanged).

These controls can be used to customize the size and color of the magnifier's cursor.

If this check box is enabled then a cursor is visible and the size and color options become available.

Enable this check box if you would like to make the mouse pointer larger than it normally is. The cursor size can be changed from the default value of 32 pixels.

If the cursor is enabled, a custom color can also be applied.

This set of controls can be used to customize the magnifier's optional area-targeting cursor.

If checked, you can additionally configure the clipping behavior, size and color of the cross-hair.

If enabled, the cross-hair will be "clipped" (removed) in the area immediately surrounding the mouse pointer.

This control sets the thickness of the cross-hair in pixels.

This control allows a custom color to be used for the cross-hair.

These options control the behavior of the mouse cursor.

If unchecked, no mouse pointer is visible.

Keep the mouse pointer at the center of the screen whenever possible. This is the default.

Position the mouse pointer in the zoom window relative to its actual, unmagnified position. For instance, if the mouse pointer is 25% away from the left edge of the desktop, Orca positions the magnified mouse pointer 25% from the left edge of the zoom window.

Move the zoomer window the least amount necessary to keep the mouse pointer on the screen.

Moving the mouse pointer has no impact on what the zoomer window displays.

This option is enabled by default. If the mouse pointer is not on the screen when you initially move the mouse, it will be moved into the zoomer so that you can continue to see what you were working on. If your preferred mouse tracking mode is centered, the pointer will be moved to the center; otherwise it will be moved to the item with focus.

These options control additional behavior of the magnifier.

When navigating via keyboard, keep the focused dialog box control or menu item at the center of the screen whenever possible.

When navigating via keyboard, move the zoomer window the least amount necessary to display the focused dialog box control or menu item. This is the default.

Using the keyboard to navigate among dialog box controls and menu items will have no impact on what the zoomer window displays.

If this option is enabled, the mouse pointer will follow you as you arrow through menu items and move among controls in dialog boxes. This option is disabled by default.

These options control how the text cursor behaves.

As the text cursor moves, keep it at the center of the screen whenever possible.

As the text cursor moves, move the zoomer window the least amount necessary to display it. This is the default.

Moving the text cursor will have no impact on what the zoomer window displays.

The edge margin is how close the caret should be allowed to get to the edge of the screen before it's time to "push" the zoomer window. The margin can range from 0 to 50%, with 50% being the equivalent of choosing centering. The default value is 0. This option is only available if "Push" is your text cursor tracking mode.

If you press the Advanced Settings button located near the bottom of the Magnifier page, the following dialog will appear: Orca GUI Configuration - Magnifier - Advanced Settings

Bilinear or none.

Red, Green, Blue: Individual controls for choosing customized brightness levels. Choosing different brightness levels for each color allows you to create the color scheme that works best for you.

Red, Green, Blue: Individual controls for choosing customized contrast levels. While not as significant as changes to brightness, choosing different contrast levels for each color helps you to create the color scheme that works best for you.

Allows you to pick one of the colorblind filters available through libcolorblind. In order to take advantage of this feature you will need to install libcolorblind and then rebuild gnome-mag.

X Window System DISPLAY of what should be magnified. Written in the form ":0.x" where x is the number of the screen whose contents should be magnified.

X Window System DISPLAY of where to put the zoomer window. Written in the form ":0.y" where y is the number of the screen where the zoomer window should appear.

Orca GUI Configuration - Key Bindings Page 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." 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 Orca modifier defaults to Insert. For laptop keyboards, the Orca modifier defaults to the Caps Lock key. You cannot modify the Orca modifier key(s) using the Configuration GUI 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 Orca 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 keys. 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 last column (the "Modified" column) will indicate that the key binding has been modified. To undo a modified keybinding, merely arrow to the modified column, uncheck the checkbox, and press the "Apply" button AltA. Beneath the list of Orca keybindings, you will find a group of "unbound" commands: Orca GUI Configuration - Key Bindings Page showing the 'unbound' group of commands These are commands which we feel will be very useful for some users, but not needed by most users. Rather than "use up" a keystroke for such commands, we have left them unassigned. You can assign a keystroke to any of these unbound commands by following the procedure outlined above. In addition, you can unbind any bound command in a similar fashion: press Return to edit the keybinding, and when prompted for the new keybinding, press Delete or Backspace. You will be told that the key binding has been removed. Press Return to confirm.

Orca GUI Configuration - Pronunciation Page Sometimes your speech synthesizer just doesn't say the right thing for a given string. You might prefer to hear "laughing out loud" rather than "LOL." Or there may be a name or a technical term which the synthesizer mispronounces. The pronunciation page is where you can add, edit, and delete Orca's pronunciation dictionary entries. Because the pronunciation page is also part of the application-specific settings dialog that's started when you give a particular application focus and type Orca_ModifierCtrlSpace, you can customize your entries on an as-needed basis for each application you use.

Press the New Entry button (AltN). Type the text of the new entry and press Return to finish editing the actual string. Move to the Replacement String column and press Return to begin editing. Type the text that you would like to have spoken instead and press Return to finish editing the replacement string.

Move to the cell you wish to edit and press Return to begin editing. Make your changes and then press Return to finish editing.

Move to the entry you wish to delete. Press the Delete button or AltD.

Orca GUI Configuration - Text Attributes Page Orca will speak known text attribute information about an object when you press InsertF (desktop layout) or Caps_LockF (laptop layout). Because the number of text attributes is large, and not everyone cares about every attribute, the "Text Attributes" tab of the configuration GUI allows you to customize which text attributes Orca will present. On this tab is a text attribute list, where each row consists of four columns: The name of the text attribute. A checkbox which the user can set to indicate whether this text attribute should be spoken or not. A checkbox which the user can set to indicate whether this text attribute should be "underlined" on the braille display. An editable "Present 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 presented) is that the value of the attribute will only be presented if it is not 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 types Orca_ModifierF and the text in question is not underlined, then this attribute is not spoken. If you always want this attribute to be spoken irrespective of whether the text is underlined, then the attribute should be checked and the "Present unless" value cleared. There is also a Reset button (AltR) which 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 brailled. If you decide to check others or adjust the order, there are four buttons to help you do this: Move to top (AltT) - moves the selected attribute to the top of the list. Move up one (AltU) - moves the selected attribute up one row. Move down one (AltD) - moves the selected attribute down one row. Move to bottom (AltB) - moves the selected attribute to the bottom of the list. Beneath these push buttons is the Braille Indicator group of radio buttons. Here you can select the cell or cells to be used to indicate text which has at least one of the specified attributes. Your choices are: None (the default) Dot 7 Dot 8 Dots 7 and 8 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's started when you give a particular application focus and type Orca_ModifierCtrlSpace.