Difference between revisions of "Orca/C2/Desktop-Navigation/English"

Learning Objectives

In this tutorial we will learn :

• What is Orca screen reader?
• Unity interface used on the Ubuntu distro of GNU/Linux
• Desktop navigation using Orca

System Requirements

To record this tutorial, I am using: Orca screen reader on Ubuntu 12.04 Operating System.

• Orca is a powerful state-of-the-art
• It is Free and Open Source screen reader for the GNU/Linux based desktop.
• Thus all personal and professional computing is possible for a blind person.
• A blind person can thus work without sighted assistance.

• When you start Ubuntu for the first time, you will have to activate Orca.
• Machine will boot.

• A drum roll sound indicates that you are on the login prompt
• Enter the password
• Press ctrl + s to have Orca started.
• Now, every time you boot your machine Orca will come up talking.

• For best accessibility, you will choose Unity 2D.

• For this, press shift + tab.
• That is, hold down the shift key and press the tab key once
• You will hear Orca announcing that you are on the Sessions options button.

• Press enter to activate the same.
• Now, press the same shift + tab key combination again.
• You just heard Orca announcing that you are on the Ubuntu 2D option.
• Press enter to select it

• Come back again to your password prompt.
• Now enter the password for your user name.

• 10 seconds is required for the desktop to settle and all icons appear properly.
• You remember that Orca spoke at the login prompt.
• But again you have to select Orca for login-time selected desktop

• Let's activate the run dialog by pressing alt + f2 and then typing Orca.
• As you can hear Orca has started.
• Orca is now ready to provide audio assistance for all our activities.

• Let's take a real world situation.
• Generally when you work in an office, you have a few things ready on the desk.

Launcher pane is the section of the desktop

• It hosts your most frequently needed applications for quick access.
• Of course you can customize this as well.

• For accessing Launcher pane on the desktop,press the alt + f1 key combination.
• As you can hear Orca said that we are in the Launcher pane.

• Home Folder

Let's use the down arrow to navigate the items one by one.

• Press the down arrow once.
• You hear Orca telling us that you are on the Home folder.

• Home is the section of your storage disk where all your data is stored.
• This includes your Documents, Music, Videos etc.
• Wish to confirm, ok.

• Documents

• Press the right arrow once.
• As you can hear, Orca tells us that you are on the Documents icon.

• Downloads

• Press the down arrow again.
• Now you are on the Downloads icon.

• Music

Pressing down arrow again takes us to the icon for the Music folder.

• Firefox

• Well, let's move back to our main Launcher section by pressing the left arrow.
• Now press the down arrow again.
• We are now focused on the Firefox web browser.

• Both in the case of Home folder and Firefox, Orca also said not running.
• It means the item we have currently focused on is not active.

• Libre office

• Thus, press the down arrow once for moving to Libre office writer icon.
• Press the down arrow again.
• You now here Orca telling us that the cursor is on Libre office calc.
• Libre office writer is the word processor that comes with Ubuntu by default.
• Similarly Calc is the default spreadsheet application.

• You can navigate the entire Launcher pane by using the down arrow.
• You could hear names such as
• Libre office Impress,
• Ubuntu software center,
• Ubuntu1
• System settings.

Impress is the default software for presentations.

.

• Ubuntu software center provides you to download and install applications.
• These applications which might have not come with Ubuntu by default.

• Ubuntu1 is the free cloud service
• It provides 5 gb of online storage space which can sync with your Home folder.

• System settings is just what you expect it to do.
• It is the section through which you can manage all the settings.
• Referred to as the Control Panel in other free and proprietary OS.

• Finally we found 2 other options namely the Workspace and Trash.
• Workspace is the icon which helps you to run more than 1 desktop instance at a time.
• It is an advanced feature and will be covered in some later tutorial.

• Trash is the place where you can find all the deleted files and folders.
• You can have them back also.
• These are the set of default applications.
• Ubuntu developers place them on the Launcher pane by default.

• Now let's move in the reverse direction
• Use the up arrow and come back at the Home folder icon.
• Press enter to open your Home folder.

• Use the right arrow to locate folders such as

 * Desktop
 * Documents 
 * Downloads 

etc, one at a time.

• To achieve this press the right arrow once for locating every folder.

• Now if you press alt + f1 and down arrow, Orca will respond differently.
• As you heard, now Orca announces Home folder ans says one window is open
• Press escape to close the Launcher
• Return to Home folder. Interesting right?

You can use the dynamic shortcut keys assigned by the desktop also.

• First close the Home folder you just opened.
• We will open it again, this time using the shortcut key.
• To close the Home folder press the alt+ f4 key combination.
• Do you remember on which position was the Home folder icon in the Launcher pane?

• Well you can confirm it yourself by opening the Launcher pane.
• Press alt + f1 as you have been doing.
• Press down arrow once.
• You can observe that Home is the first item here.

• Ubuntu desktop uses super key also called as the Windows key
• It uses the number corresponding to the position of the item as its shortcut.
• This means that the shortcut for Home folder must be Windows key + 1.

• Firstly, let's close the opened Launcher pane by pressing escape key.
• Now let's hold down the Windows key and press 1 with it.
• Indeed you can hear Orca telling us that the Home folder has opened.
• Meaning the shortcut key we guessed was correct!

• Thus see every application's position in the Launcher pane
• Then use that number with the Windows key.
• Now press alt+f4 to close the Home folder.

Summary

So in this tutorial we have seen

• Basic overview of the 2d desktop on Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system,
• Orca functioning ,using and customizing the Launcher pane.
• Thus we can have Orca in the Launcher pane also than typing through run dialog.

• Watch the video available at the link shown below
• It summarizes the Spoken Tutorial project
• If you do not have good bandwidth, you can download and watch it

The Spoken Tutorial Project Team

• Conducts workshops using spoken tutorials
• Gives certificates to those who pass an online test
• For more details, please write to contact@spoken-tutorial.org

Acknowledgement

• Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the Talk to a Teacher project
• It is supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India
• More information on this Mission is available at: http://spoken-tutorial.org\NMEICT-Intro

• That’s it for this tutorial.
• In the next tutorial on detailed desktop overview, you will learn just that.
• Thank you for watching.