XFCE screen reader

[Stephan Arts]

On Feb 11, 2008 10:55 PM, josh <jkenn337 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So does that mean that a whole new accessibility framework would have to be
> written and another screen reader written to work with XFCE?
>
> Josh
>
> email: jkenn337 at gmail.com
> skype: jkenn337
> msn: kenn6498ku at hotmail.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Christian Dywan" <christian at twotoasts.de>
> To: <xfce4-dev at xfce.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 10:22 AM
> Subject: Re: XFCE screen reader
>
>
> > Am Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:09:50 +0100
> > schrieb "Liviu Andronic" <landronimirc at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> Hello Josh,
> >>
> >> On 2/11/08, josh <jkenn337 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > I am blind and I want to use xfce with xubuntu. Could a screen
> >> > reader for XFCE be created so blind people can use it? Orca works
> >> > for gnome, and I'm not sure if at spi and orca could be ported to
> >> > XFCE or not. But gnome is huge and I want something that is light
> >> > on memory.
> >>
> >> Installing orca would mean installing certain Gnome dependencies.
> >> However, they will simply reside on your hard disk. When using orca
> >> with Xfce, you will not notice any of the Gnome foot-print on the
> >> system Memory.
> >
> > I have no particular experience with screen readers, but technically
> > libraries that a program links to are usually loaded. And I suspect if
> > Orca links to Gnome, it certainly uses at least one single function
> > that resides in a Gnome library?
> >
> > Regards,
> >    Christian
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xfce4-dev mailing list
> > Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> > http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce4-dev mailing list
> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
>


That would seem to be correct, if you want to remove the gnome-deps
(though they are few).

However, taking a quick look at ORCA does not make it look like a
trivial task. ORCA is written in python. This makes a direct
'remove-the-gnome-deps' port not possible. It would be preferable to
rewrite the entire thing from scratch.

The screen-reader seems to be the easy part, a speech-synthesizer is
going to be harder. ORCA uses existing speech-synthesizers, and as far
as my limited experience goes, it has a hard time doing so. If we want
a reliable screen-reader, it might be an idea to develop one
ourselves.

NOTE: this is me leaving the questions if we *can* do it, have time to
do it and if there is anyone volunteering for it out of the equation.

I wonder if there is a university who is willing to co-operate on such
a project.

Regards,
Stephan