Ubuntu Wiki

Starting the Live CD

Once you've downloaded and burned the live CD image, insert it into your CD drive and reboot your computer. You should find that your drive spins for a bit and then stops. The point at which it stops coincides with the appearance of the boot options screen. In order to enable accessibility options, press F5. This will cause a list of accessibility options to appear:

• None (has focus)
• High Contrast
• Magnifier
• Screen Reader
• Keyboard Modifiers
• On Screen Keyboard

Use the arrow keys or a number key from 0 to 5 to activate an option. If wish to activate the Orca screen reader for example, you press 3 to give focus to screen reader, followed by Enter to indicate your selection. You'll be returned to the boot options screen. Press Enter again to indicate you would like to boot.

Within a couple of minutes, Ubuntu will be loaded the assistive technology feature you selected. In the screen reader case, the Orca Preferences dialog will be open (but will not have focus -- press Alt-Tab to give it focus).

Installing Ubuntu from the live CD

The Install icon on the desktop allows you to install Ubuntu onto your hard drive (also found under the System -> Administration menu). At this time, however, Orca is not able to provide access to the installer if you start it from the desktop icon. This is a known issue and is being addressed. In the meantime, here is a work-around which will enable you to perform an accessible install by running Orca as root (the equivalent of Administrator in Windows). Instructions:

1. Press Alt F2 to get into the Run Application dialog
2. Type "gnome-terminal" and press Enter.
3. In the resulting Terminal window, type "sudo su" and press Enter.
4. Press Insert Q to quit Orca. At this point, you will have no speech, but focus is still in the terminal window.

5. Type "orca --no-setup &" and press Enter. This will cause speech to resume, but Orca will now be running as root.

6. Type "ubiquity" and press Enter.

Note: Because you are now running Orca as root, Orca will not use the speech settings you configured earlier. As a reminder, you can quickly change the rate with Insert Left and Right Arrow and the pitch with Insert Up and Down Arrow.

The installer should be fairly straightforward: Use Tab and Shift-Tab to move among controls, indicating your preferences as you go, and then press the Forward button to progress to the next screen of options. The one control that you might find different is the City combo box. After you choose your city from among the options, you will need to press Control-Tab to move to the next control.

Towards the end of the installation, you will be presented with a screen asking you about disk partitioning and offering the following options:

• Resize your disk and use the freed space
• Erase your entire disk
• Manually edit the partition table

If you would like to have a dual-boot system (i.e. so that you can boot your computer into Windows/OS X or Ubuntu), select the option to resize your disk and use the left-right slider to indicate the size. If the only operating system you want on your computer is Ubuntu, select the option to erase your entire disk.

After the disk partitioner, you will be given a summary of the installation options you have selected. Look them over and press the Install button to install Ubuntu.

Booting into your new Ubuntu system

When you reboot your computer, you should hear a musical tone which lets you know that the logon screen has appeared. Type your user name, then press Enter. Type your password, then press Enter. Your computer will then continue to boot.

--- Document based on a guide by Joanmarie Diggs, which contains additional information on using Orca and how to obtain the latest version.