Re: [orca-list] Orca accessibility gnome vs MaTe

[Kyle <kyle4jesus gmail com>]

Finding and launching applications in MATE is very easy. Press alt+F1
and the applications menu from the menu bar I mentioned pops up. The
menu is divided into groups like Accessories, Internet, Sound and
Video, System Tools, etc. You can either use the arrow keys up and down
to move through the groups, or you can type the first letter of the
group you want, which I recommend doing once you're familiar with
what's there. Once you find the group you want, press the right arrow
key, or if it was the only group that starts with the letter you typed,
you will already be placed on the submenu with the applications in that
group. Do the same thing with either the first letter or the up or down
arrows. If the application you want is the only one that starts with
the letter you typed, it will be launched. Otherwise it will cycle
through the applications that start with that letter. If this happens,
or if you used the arrows to navigate to the application, you can press
the enter key to launch it. It works very much like a menu bar inside
of an application window.

Regarding my chosen login manager, MATE does not come with one by
default. I recommend LightDM, because upon installing it, you can
configure it to start orca automatically, so you can have a screen
reader at login time. Up to now, I had been using lxdm with autologin
set up, but I wanted the full login management access I get from
lightdm now. The only other login manager that does this is gdm, and it
pulls in so much of GNOME that you may as well keep GNOME. Since I was
already running MATE, and didn't have any other desktop environment on
this machine, LightDM gives me the same level of access that I would
get with GDM, complete with session management, meaning the ability to
switch desktop environments if desired, more for experimentation than
anything else, but with the ability to uninstall GNOME completely if
this is my choice, so I can clean up after my experimentation. As I
said, this is a personal preference for me. You are more than welcome
to stick with GDM even if you do switch to MATE, just know that you
will have to keep gnome-shell and other GNOME components on your system
in order to keep using GDM, even if you nevre want to use GNOME again.
Hope this helps.
~Kyle