I would agree with Glen and would also like to add another point from a UX angle.
Yo You see, for entry level people who are just getting used to screen reader assisting in typing, it is better for them to initially hear every single key pressed including character.
As their confidence increases and performance too, then they can always choose to switch the character echo off.
I never use it myself but echo by word and sentence is always on.
Jace, I think the majority of users of a screenreader like the key echo to be on. I can type over 50 WPM, maybe 60 WPM on a good day. But I still don't trust that what I typed is correct, in fact, sometimes I am not sure of the spelling of a word, and if I have it set to speaking words, I may not know that what I typed was a mistake or just the way the screenreader says a word. If you are a fast typist, maybe you aren't as good at listening to synthetic speech at a fast rate, as in what comes out from typing fast. Anyway, that is why I think having key echo on by default is a good thing. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jude DaShiell" <jdashiel panix com> To: "Joanmarie Diggs" <jdiggs igalia com> Cc: <orca-list gnome org> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 10:45 AM Subject: Re: [orca-list] Why is key echo on by default? I think keeping key echo on as a default is an excellent idea for another reason. Even those of us who learned to touch type are not perfect typists and it helps to hear when we make a mistake so the backspace and/or other correcting keys like control-u to wipe out a whole line can be used in time. Just because we're blind our typing and writing doesn't necessarily have to look like that at least for the braille readers. On Mon, 29 Mar 2021, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:Hi Jace. A user who needs key echo enabled (i.e. because they are not totally familiar with the layout of their keyboard) might not be able to enable it themselves in Orca preferences if they do not know what keys they are pressing as they attempt to get into Orca preferences. As someone who can touch type, and also happens to be sighted, that setting is the very first thing I turn off in a new set up because it annoys me. But I don't think it would be a good, upstream default to change key echo to off by default. That said, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. :) --joanie On Mon, 2021-03-29 at 15:56 +0100, Jace Kattalakis via orca-list wrote:Something I'm wondering about with regard to Orca and default settings, and it's come up in a few podcasts/recordings I've used to install tricky stuff. Why is key echo on by default, is that down to the indivdual distro or is that a part of having Orca that in order to have Orca in your distro's live image/repos, here's the default settings you need? I turn key echo off the instant I load Orca on a live session, and playing around with VMs got me wondering on why key echo is always on by default and if there's anything I can do on an iso image to leave it off by default since it gets insanely spammy, insanely quickly, I've had times where it's left control left alt then won't hush. _______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/ GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/ GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/ GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html _______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/ GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html