[orca-list] miscellaneous Orca comments

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Hello Orca enthusiasts,

I have just managed to get Orca running reasonably reliably under the latest
Debian Sid distribution, using BRLTTY for braille and eSpeak as the speech
synthesizer. I have tried Orca before, but this time I am more serious as I
plan to take advantage of the excellent accessibility available in Firefox 3.
Apparently, Debian packages are on the way, which will be even better.

First my background: I have been using Linux since 1998, and Unix systems
since 1993. Linux is my only operating system and I haven't used either
Microsoft Windows or MacOS. Yes, I'm in the "never used MS-Windows" category
and wish to remain that way.

The keyboard navigation sections of the Gnome accessibility guide are highly
useful and informative. I recommend this documentation to other new users. I
think it is important to be aware at all times of the type of object that has
focus, as this crucially affects the key bindings which are available as well
as their consequences.

I couldn't find documentation of the braille navigation support, specifically,
which BRLTTY commands are recognized in Orca. The next/previous window
commands of the braille display operate as expected; the previous and next
line commands are bound, according to learn mode, to the word above and below
the cursor, respectively. These are both flat review commands. There seem to
be inconsistencies in what is displayed if these commands are issued
repeatedly on the braille display, however, and I think the braille support
would benefit from more work, more documentation, or both.

I can't find any flat review command to return the review cursor to the
current object that has focus. Of course, this will happen if the focus is
changed, but it is often necessary to return to the focused item without
moving the focus. Every screen reader I have used offers a command to do this.
The need is well illustrated in Gnome terminal, where one frequently wants to
return to the current line after reviewing the output of a command. Is there a
way to achieve this result easily?

Also, if you run Vim as a Gnome application, the accessibility is somewhat
lacking, for example there are problems and inconsistencies in the speech
output of the text in the document as the cursor is moved around the buffer.
Braille output is somewhat better. I couldn't find any way to access the
status line, and presumably there are user interface controls available as
well. I think this would benefit from improvement. Emacspeak should run under
Gnome, although it would conflict with Orca's speech output if the same sound
card and channel are used for both.

Obviously I will have other detailed comments in due course. My initial
impressions are that the basics work well and that the developers have built a
solid foundation for further improvements.