[orca-list] Installing Orca on Raspbian Buster

[Christopher Wright <christopher j wright4 gmail com>]

Hi all,


I've been playing around with my new Raspberry Pi 4 and would like to 
use the desktop GUI with Orca. Unfortunately, Ubuntu Mate for the new Pi 
isn't available yet, so I thought I could install Orca onto the official 
Raspbian Buster distrobution.


I found a guide that details how to do this. It can be found at the 
following link: http://techesoterica.com/?p=1135

I installed all the packages including gnome-orca and espeak which I 
believe got installed with speech-dispatcher. When I reboot and try to 
access orca using the Alt F2 shortcut and then typing Orca, all I hear 
is "screen reader on". Pressing any other keys does absolutely nothing. 
I even tried connecting a USB audio device to the Pi, but this does nothing.


Thinking I must have done something wrong, I tried flashing a fresh copy 
of Raspbian to the SD card and prepeated the procedure. However, I don't 
receive any speech feedback at all when I try starting Orca from the 
GUI. Is Orca not compatible with Raspbian Buster? I know this guide was 
written before the Pi 4 came out, so that might be my issue right there. 
Is there any way to make this work or should I wait for Ubuntu Mate to 
be released?


Speaking of Raspbian, why doesn't it include Orca out of the box? Is 
there any way to contact someone at the Raspberry Pi Foundation who 
might actually resolve this? It really bothers me that the official 
Linux distrobution for the Pi isn't accessible for a blind person unless 
you use SSH. This is especially troubling now that the Pi 4 has more 
resources than any model before it and can actually become a decent 
desktop computer if so desired.


Any help is very much appreciated. If the only thing to be done is to 
wait for Ubuntu Mate, that's fine. My Pi isn't completely useless, since 
I can always use Raspbian Lite and SSH. Still, I'd like to use it as an 
actual desktop computer to see what the experience is like.


Regards,


Christopher