[orca-list] Various questions about Orca and the linux world

[Vincenzo Rubano <vincenzo rubano studio unibo it>]

Hi all,

my name is Vincenzo and I am a blind Italian computer science student. Looking for various information about 
linux, I came across this list and I decided to subscribe.

Starting from this year, I’ll need to use linux for various projects at university; however, before beginning 
to test various distros, I’d like to ask you some questions. I am a novice in the linux world. I only have 
experience with Mac OS X (my primary system) and Windows.

1. First off, I was wondering wether anyone managed to get any linux distro with AT features enabled working 
on a single-board computer, like the Raspberry P or the Banana-p. Was the machine usable, or did it have too 
much latency/was it too slow to let you be productive?

2. Searching for information, I came across two distros that claims to be designed with accessibility in 
mind: Vinux and Sonar. Honestly, I noticed that these distros are popular only among blind users and could be 
considered something like a custom product for blind people. Since I don’t like this philosophy, I was 
wondering wether anyone had experience with “mainstream” linux distros and could recommend me what distro to 
start with.

3. Since my classmates and professors at university are going to use Debian, I’d like to know wether anyone 
knows what the most critical accessibility issues in Debian are and if there are some workarounds to bypass 
them. For instance, I read that Debian can be installed by a blind user on his own only if he has a USB 
Braille Display plugged-in during the first boot, so that Debian can enable Brltty and switch automatically 
to the text-based installation. However, I learnt that orca on this distro must be downloaded separately 
after the installation. Is that correct?

4. In some pages on the Vinux website, I read that Orca works better with Speech dispatcher than with Gnome 
speech (which is the default speech engine in Gnome, if I understood correctly). Can you confirm that? If so, 
how hard switch from Gnome Speech to speech dispatcher is?

5. From what I’ve understood, the most critical points to get an accessible GUI in a distro are the login 
manager and the window manager. Do you have any recommendations about which ones to pick/avoid?

6. Last but not least, do you know wether Orca works properly with gnome-terminal? If not, is there any 
alternative to make it accessible for a blind user?

Thank you in advance for your help. Sorry for asking so much questions, but I’d like to make productive tests 
instead of wasting time on something someone else already figured out. I do believe that putting together all 
the information we have it could be even easier to communicate our issues with mainstream distro maintainers 
and, maybe, get their interest in fixing them.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers

Vincenzo.