Re: [orca-list] questions re: ubuntu and/or debian, speech software, nautilus, and more

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Hi Jason,

On 8/8/12, Jason Custer <jscuster gmail com> wrote:

> 1. I have read Ubuntu 12.04 is one of the best distros for
> accessibility because so many things are included, QT accessibility,
> among others. Is this still true?

Yes, Ubuntu 12.04 is definitely one of the better choices out here.
You may get some difference of opinion on this, but I generally found
Ubuntu to be a good starting place for a new Linux user. Not just
because its very accessible, but it tends to be on the bleeding edge
of accessibility so Ubuntu users are likely to get newer packages for
things like Qt, Orca, at-spi,etc before other distributions of Linux
without having to compile them from scratch. Which is definitely a
plus.

> 2. After installing Ubuntu, the login screen spoke nicely, after
> pressing ctrl-S, but after updating, it spoke no more.

Yes, this is a known bug. Not sure if there is a fix yet, but usually
pressing control+s a couple of times will force Orca to speak when
LightDM appears. However, I've also had times when Orca fails to come
up at all during login. Not sure what exactly the problem is, but
here's for hoping it gets fixed sooner than later.

> 3. Is unity the best shell for accessibility? I know gnome-shell is
> lacking some things, like no text on the status icons (battery etc),
> but what about the others: Mate, Cennamon, XFCE, LXDE, etc?

Right now Unity 2D, not to be confused with Unity, is the most
accessible graphical environment for a blind user.  Gnome-Shell 3.4.1
is also a decent alternative. At the moment those are really the only
two for serious consideration. Xfce, LXDE, KDE, etc are in various
stages of development, accessibility, and don't seem to be as
accessible as Gnome or Unity 2D. Mate is a fork of Gnome 2.x, should
be accessible, but if I'm not mistaken it still relies on older
accessibility libraries and you are going to be stuck with older
versions of Orca so I'm not sure it is a good idea for a blind user.
Perhaps someone who knows more about Mate can fill us in on if it
still uses Gnome 2.x libs or has upgraded to Gnome 3.x libs.

> 4. Using Ubuntu, how can I "see" what applications are available, and
> select one to run? For example, if I install an app, how can I find
> and start it without using alt-f2 and typing in the command? After
> all, this is supposed to be a graphical UI, right?

Depends on the GUI you are using. In Gnome-Shell, for example, you can
press alt+f1 to get the dash, use alt+control+tab to the applications,
and arrow around to find the program launcher you want. If you are
running Gnome Classic simply pressing alt+f1 will bring up a menu of
applications. If you are running Unity 2D most but not all of your
apps will be on the launcher toolbar, and all you need do is press
alt+f1 to bring up the launcher toolbar. So there are multiple ways to
do this depending on what desktop GUI you happen to be running.

> 5. Orca is dog slow when using Nautilus. It may not be Orca's fault, I
> don't know, but is there any way to pick up the pace, or a better file
> manager? I turned off all the things in prefferences, such as:
> thumbnails, counting items, etc.

The sluggish behavior is do to the sidebar. If you go into the view
menu and uncheck the sidebar it will run much better. Even so Nautilus
is well known for running slow, but you can dramatically improve
things by turning off the sidebar.
> 6. I have one program that requires windows, and I have to use this
> program, there is no other. Has wine gotten accessible yet? If not,
> which is more accessible, VirtualBox or VMWare Player, maybe something
> else?

Unfortunately, no. There is absolutely no way for Orca to use a
Windows application via Wine. The only option you have here is to
install Virtualbox or VMPlayer, install Windows into a virtual
machine, and install a screen reader like NVDA on it for speech.

> 7. Finally, eSpeak drives me nuts, so I want to find something better.
> Is there such a beast? I have voxin, but it seems very buggy. I keep
> getting a screen to report crashes with it. I've heard good things
> about ivona, but how responsive is it? I haven't had success
> installing festival, I installed the recommended packages, but orca,
> and presumably speech-dispatcher, were unable to find it.

Well, there is the Cepstral voices from Cepstral.com. They certainly
sound better than ESpeak, but as is the case with higher quality
voices they sound better but aren't as responsive. However, for
reading and writing e-mails, listening to books something like
Cepstral Dianne, Cepstral Callie, etc is better than ESpeak, but they
aren't very responsive.

The Ivona voices are extremely high quality, but are very
unresponsive. this is pretty par for the course. As far as I know
there isn't any TTS voices that sound extremely good and are also very
responsive too. It usually comes down to a choice of put up with the
voice quality of ESpeak for maximum stability and responsive speech
output, or pay for a voice that sounds good but is not very
responsive.

As for Festival it is a pain to get working on Ubuntu these days. The
issue has to do with Pulse Audio. Festival was designed for Alsa and
you either have to get it working with Pulse or disable Pulse and set
Alsa to your default sound drivers. In either case I'm not sure
Festival is worth the effort.

Cheers!