Orca/C2/Desktop-Navigation/English

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Visual cue Narration
Display Welcome to the tutorial on Desktop navigation with Orca
Show Slide

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
Show Slide

System Requirements

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

What is Orca? Let us begin with an introduction.
  • Orca is a powerful state-of-the-art tool
  • It is Free and Open Source screen reader for the GNU/Linux based desktop.
  • All personal and professional computing is possible for a blind person by using Orca.
  • A blind person can thus work without sighted assistance.


Starting Orca
  • 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.
Unity in Ubuntu with Orca Ubuntu offers 2 varieties of desktops in 12.04 like Unity 2D and Unity 3D.
  • For best accessibility, you will choose Unity 2D.
Selecting desired Unity
  • 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
Logging in
  • Come back again to your password prompt.
  • Now enter the password for your user name.
Starting Orca after Desktop load
  • 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.
Concept of Launcher pane
  • 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.
Using Launcher pane
  • 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.
Navigating 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.
Navigating Launcher pane
  • Documents
  • Press the right arrow once.
  • As you can hear, Orca tells us that you are on the Documents icon.
Navigating Launcher pane
  • Downloads
  • Press the down arrow again.
  • Now you are on the Downloads icon.
Navigating Launcher pane
  • Music

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

Navigating Launcher pane
  • 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.
Navigating Launcher pane
  • Libre office
  • 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.


Other Applications in Launcher pane
  • 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.
Position based shortcuts for the applications.
  • 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.
Opening more than one instance of an application
  • 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?
Position based shortcuts for the applications.

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


Shortcut to Home
  • 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?
Where is Home in 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.
How to open Home with shortcut?
  • 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!
For other application
  • 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.
Show Slide

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.
  • 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
Spoken Tutorial Workshops

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
Show Acknowledgement Slide

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




Contributors and Content Editors

Trupti