Re: Announcing Orca

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Krister,

> What is this thing? Is it something that an end user should get or is it 
> for programmers? Is it a new screen reader or is it meant to work with 
> Gnopernicus? What is this thing supposed to provide?

This is an exploration of an approach to scripting, one of the key missing 
features of Gnopernicus, and perhaps the top of the list of things to add to 
Gnopernicus.  Now that there are good Python bindings to AT-SPI (the interface 
for assistive technologies to the accessibility information on the desktop), 
an approach like this is now possible.

Orca is not a fully functional screen reader.  While it is now perhaps most 
interesting to programmers, since Python is a more approachable language (as 
compared to C/C++, etc.), non-programmers may find they are able to get their 
hands a bit dirty with some of the application-specific scripts (e.g. 
'gaim.py', which customizes the behavior when the GAIM instant messenger 
application is running).  Also, as mozilla accessibility was/is a big topic on 
this list, it may be interesting for users to play with Orca and mozilla 
together (behavior controlled by the source file 'mozilla.py').  If nothing 
else, this may be an easy way to explore/prototype some user interface 
alternatives for mozilla.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team