livecd

Revision 1 as of 2006-11-02 12:34:15

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Taking Orca for a test drive

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.

Please note: In order to use the Live CD as described below, your computer must be set up to boot from your CD drive. If this does not happen automatically you will need to change the boot order of devices in your computer's BIOS.

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).

The Orca Preferences dialog is a multi-page dialog with four pages:

  • Speech
  • Braille
  • Key Echo
  • Magnifier

Use Control Page Up and Control Page Down to move among pages. Use Tab and Shift Tab to move among the controls. If you are familiar with Windows, you should find that the controls all work as you expect (e.g. use the Arrow keys to move within a group of radio buttons, use the Space Bar to toggle checkboxes, and so on.) Having made all of your desired changes, press the Apply button followed by the Close button.

Note: If at any time you would like to modify your preferences, you can press Insert Space Bar to return to this dialog. In addition, you can use Insert Left and Right Arrow to change the rate "on the fly" and Insert Up and Down Arrow to do the same for pitch.

Now that you have Orca speaking the way you want, you are ready to check out Ubuntu. If you are completely new to Linux and the GNOME desktop, you may find [http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/latest/ the GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide] helpful, especially the chapter on [http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/latest/keynav-0.html Using the Keyboard to Navigate the Desktop].

Installing Ubuntu from the live CD

If you explore your Desktop while using the Live CD, you will find an icon named "install." Its purpose is, as you might have guessed, to enable you to install Ubuntu on your computer. 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:

  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 (the equivalent of Administrator in Windows).

  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.

You should find the installer to 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. The first time you boot into your newly-installed Ubuntu system, the Orca Preferences dialog box will be opened. Alt Tab into it and configure your settings just as you did with the Live CD. For all future boots, you should find that Orca starts automatically using the settings you specified.

Where to go from here

  • Continue reading the documentation available on the Orca wiki. These documents are currently a "work in progress" so check back often! Also, if you would like to help write documentation, let [mailto:orca-list@gnome.org us] know!

  • Join us on the [http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca mailing list].

  • Join us in the #orca chatroom on irc.gnome.org.

  • Visit the [http://www.ubuntu.com/access Ubuntu Accessibility site] which includes information about the ubuntu-accessibility mailing list, forums, and IRC chatroom.

  • Get the latest release of Orca.

Getting the latest release of Orca

For experienced users

  1. The latest stable release of Orca can be obtained from: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/orca

  2. Get the necessary packages to build Orca if you haven't done so already. (Note that in order to obtain gnome-devel, you will need to uncomment the universe line in /etc/apt/sources.list.): sudo apt-get install gnome-devel build-essential automake1.9 python2.4-dev

  3. Unpack the Orca tarball you downloaded and cd into its directory

  4. ./configure --prefix=/usr; sudo make; sudo make install

For new users

Download the latest copy of Orca from: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/orca. (e.g. orca-2.17.1.tar.gz or, if you prefer the more compressed file, orca-2.17.1.tar.bz2) Save it to your Desktop.

If you have not already done so, you will need to get some additional packages in order to build Orca. Apt is a utility for installing, upgrading, and removing software. /etc/apt/sources.list, as its name suggests, is a list of the sources Apt's utilities use when checking for packages. By default, Apt will not check where we need it to in order to obtain the packages we need to build the latest Orca. Therefore, it is necessary to edit /etc/apt/sources.list.

There are a number of ways you can edit /etc/apt/sources.list. If you are going to do so using Orca, you should find the following to be the most straightforward approach:

  1. Get into a terminal window by going to the Applications menu, choosing Accessories, and then choosing Terminal.
  2. Type "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list" and press Enter.
  3. You'll be prompted for your password. Type it and press Enter.

  4. Arrow down to the line that reads "# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe" and remove the initial # and space.

  5. Press Control X to Exit nano. You'll be prompted to save. Press Y. When prompted with the file name, press Enter.

Now that you've edited your /etc/apt/sources.list, you're ready to get an updated list of packages and to install the ones you need in order to build the latest Orca.

  1. Type "sudo apt-get update" and press Enter.
  2. Type "sudo apt-get install gnome-devel build-essential automake1.9 python2.4-dev"

In order to build Orca:

  1. Change directories to your Desktop by typing "cd Desktop" and pressing Enter
  2. Unpack the file you downloaded by typing "tar -xvf" followed by the file name (e.g. "tar -xvf orca-2.17.1.tar.bz2") and then pressing Enter.
  3. Change directories to the unpacked file by typing "cd" followed by that file name (e.g. "cd orca-2.17.1") and pressing Enter.
  4. Build and install Orca by typing "./configure --prefix=/usr; sudo make; sudo make install" and pressing Enter

Getting the very latest Orca from CVS

Features are constantly being added to Orca between releases. If you want to be on the "bleeding edge", get the latest copy from the GNOME CVS source code repository.

Note that the following assumes that you have already obtained the packages described in the previous section.

  1. Install cvs if you have not already done so: sudo apt-get install cvs

  2. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome co orca

  3. cd orca

  4. sudo ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr; sudo make; sudo make install

CategoryLivemedia