orca man page on OpenIndiana

orca man page on OpenIndiana

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orca(1) 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 pro‐
vides alternative access to the desktop by making use of speech synthe‐
sis, 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 dialog.

-t, --text-setup

When starting orca initiate the text-based configuration.

-n, --no-setup

When starting orca force the application to be started without con‐
figuration, 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 alternate directory
for the user preferences.

-e, --enable=speech|braille-monitor|magnifier|main-window

When starting orca, force the enabling of the supplied options.

-d, --disable=speech|braille-monitor|magnifier|main-window

When starting orca, force the disabling of the supplied options.

-?, -h, --help

Show the help message of this release of the orca program.

-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 assis‐
tive technology (AT) that exposes the graphical desktop information
encoded in the GNOME Accessibility 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 disad‐
vantages inherent in not being able to "see" the entire screen immedi‐
ately 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 Accessibil‐
ity Framework. It has been designed with direct continual feedback from
its disability user community.

orca uses a "scripting" approach to easily allow customization 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 assis‐
tive 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 connected 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 processing, execute orca-specific commands (such as
reading the next line in the display or panning the braille dis‐
play), or perform operations on application objects (such as click‐
ing buttons or modifying text areas).

orca will also:

· 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 interception modules, and event coalescing.

· be developed with the standard GNOME build environment.

· support multiple braille displays.

· support the gnome-speech module for text-to-speech.

· intercept keyboard & mouse events through the GNOME Accessibility
Framework and other supported X mechanisms.

· support the gnome-mag module to provide end-user magnification of
the screen between 2 and 16 times magnification in integer incre‐
ments.

· render its own graphical user interface using GTK+ widgets.

· provide a scripting mechanism, giving it the ability to customize
how each application on the JDS desktop is handled by orca.

· 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 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.

· 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

· Flat review commands

- 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 char‐
acter, 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 location of the
flat review cursor.

- Numpad-star perform a right mouse click at the location of the
flat review cursor.

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 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.

· Miscellaneous functions

- Insert-F1

enter learn mode (press escape to exit)

- Insert-f

speak font and attribute information for the current charac‐
ter.

- 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.

-Insert-q

quit orca.

· Commands for debugging

- Insert-F3 report information on the currently active script.

- Insert-F4 cycle through orca's various debug levels.

- 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.

FILES
The following files are used by this application:

/usr/bin/orca orca executable

~/.orca/user-settings.py user's personal configuration settings
for orca

ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │gnome/accessibility/orca │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface stability │Volatile │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘