Orca Screen Reader

Orca Screen Reader (Orca) is a free, open source scriptable screen reader which provides access to applications and toolkits. It provides alternative access to the desktop by using speech synthesis, braille, and magnification.

Orca also provides a flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology that provides end-user access to applications and toolkits that support the AT-SPI (e.g. the GNOME desktop). With early input from and continued engagement with its end users, Orca has been designed and implemented by the Sun Microsystems, Inc., Accessibility Program Office.

Orca defines a set of default behaviors (reactions to application events) and key bindings (reaction to user key presses). These default behaviors and key bindings can be overwritten on a per-application basis. Orca creates a script object for each running application, which merges both the default behaviors and key bindings, and the application specific ones. Orca provides the infrastructure to activate and deactivate scripts, as well as a host of services accessible from within the scripts.

Features include:

• Screen reader enables non-visual access to standard applications in the GNOME Desktop by using speech and braille output
• Magnifier provides automated focus tracking and full-screen magnification to aid low-vision user
• Voice type: Default, Uppercase, Hyperlink, System
• Speech synthesizer: Default, espeak, dummy
• Control rate, pitch, volume, and person
• Verbosity (brief, verbose)
• Braille support
• Keyboard modes - desktop and laptop keyboard layouts
• Key echo
• Key bindings
• Pronunciation dictionary
• Text attributes

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Last Updated Monday, March 25 2013 @ 04:19 PM EST