Visual cue
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Narration
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Display
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Welcome to the tutorial on Desktop navigation with Orca
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Show Slide
Learning Objectives
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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
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Show Slide
System Requirements
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To record this tutorial, I am using:
Orca screen reader on Ubuntu 12.04 Operating System.
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What is Orca?
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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 using Orca.
- A blind person can thus work without sighted assistance.
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Starting Orca
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- When you start Ubuntu for the first time, you will have to activate Orca.
- Machine will boot.
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- A drum roll sound indicates that you are on the login prompt
- Enter the password
- Press ctrl + s to have Orca started.
- Note, every time you boot your machine, Orca will come up talking.
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Unity in Ubuntu with Orca
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Ubuntu offers 2 varieties of desktops in 12.04 like Ubuntu 2D and Ubuntu 3D.
- For best accessibility, you will choose Ubuntu 2D.
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Selecting desired Unity
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- 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.
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- 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
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Logging in
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- Come back again to your password prompt.
- Now enter the password for your user name.
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Starting Orca after Desktop load
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- Wait till the desktop loads and all icons appear properly
- Note that Orca spoke at the login prompt.
- But again you have to select Orca for login-time selected desktop
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- Let's activate the run dialog by pressing alt + f2 and then typing Orca.
- As you will hear Orca has started.
- Orca is now ready to provide audio assistance for all our activities.
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Concept of Launcher pane
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- Let's take a real world situation.
- Generally when you work in an office, you have a few things ready on the desk.
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Launcher pane is the section of the desktop
- That hosts your most frequently needed applications for quick access.
- Which you can customize as well.
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Using Launcher pane
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- 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.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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Let's use the down arrow to navigate the items one by one.
- Press the down arrow once.
- You will hear Orca telling us that you are on the Home folder.
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- Home is the section of your storage disk where all your data is stored.
- This includes your Documents, Music, Videos etc.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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- Press the right arrow once.
- As you can hear, Orca tells us that you are on the Documents icon.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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- Press the down arrow again.
- Now you are on the Downloads icon.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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Pressing down arrow again takes us to the icon for the Music folder.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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- 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.
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- 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.
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Navigating Launcher pane
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- Press the down arrow once for moving to Libre office writer icon.
- Press the down arrow again.
- You now hear 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.
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Other Applications in Launcher pane
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- 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.
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Impress is the default software for presentations.
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- Ubuntu software center provides you to download,install,update and upgrade applications.
- These applications which might have not come with Ubuntu by default.
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- Ubuntu1 is the free cloud service
- It provides 5 gb of online storage space which can sync with your Home folder.
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- System settings is just what you expect it to do.
- It manages system configuration.
- Referred to as the Control Panel in other free and proprietary OS.
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- 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.
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- Trash is the place where you can find all the deleted files and folders.
- You can restore them too.
- These are the set of default applications.
- Ubuntu developers place them on the Launcher pane by default.
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Position based shortcuts for the applications.
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- 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.
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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.
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Opening more than one instance of an application
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- Now if you press alt + f1 and down arrow, Orca will respond differently.
- As you heard, now Orca announces Home folder and says one window is open
- Press escape to close the Launcher
- Return to Home folder. Interesting right?
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Position based shortcuts for the applications.
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You can use the dynamic shortcut keys assigned by the desktop also.
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Shortcut to Home
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- 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?
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Where is Home in Launcher pane?
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- 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.
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How to open Home with shortcut?
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- 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.
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- 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!
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For other application
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- 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.
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Show Slide
Summary
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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.
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Spoken Tutorial Workshops
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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
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Show Acknowledgement Slide
Acknowledgement
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- 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
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Thanks for joining
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- That’s it for this tutorial.
- Thank you for watching.
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