@aral I take your word for it, but I'm really surprised...

@aral I take your word for it, but I'm really surprised that no such screen reader exists for linux. Hopefully others have an idea. If it is open source, has no one tried a port ?

Like 19 February at 17:52 | Wall-to-wall | Open on universeodon.com

4 comments

Carnildo

@jab01701mid @aral The problem isn't a lack of a screen reader, it's the lack of a consistent user-interface API. Linux has two major UI frameworks (GTK+ and Qt) and a whole mess of minor ones, so there's no single point you can plug in to and start describing what's on the screen.

19 February at 20:41 | Open on indieweb.social

John Breen

@carnildo @aral True, the fact that Windows (and MacOS ?) supports only one Windowing system might seem like a "feature".
But assuming people are willing to use GNOME/GTK, or even Wayland, on Ubuntu, it seems like there is a good chance this could be available for linux soon, which despite the complaints, offers some significant advantages compared with Windows platforms, for all users.

19 February at 20:59 | Open on universeodon.com

John Breen

@carnildo @aral I'm curious, have you tried the Orca screen reader ? It seems to be installed by default with Ubuntu 22.04, and I had never tried it, but did just now, and while I'm not sure how it compares with NVDA, and am not sight-impared, it seems to work. ???

20 February at 1:21 | Open on universeodon.com

Carnildo

@jab01701mid @aral No experience with Orca. I'm not sight-impaired; my screen-reader experience consists of researching and using Windows and Mac screen readers so I can tell my co-workers "no, a screen reader isn't going to be able to do anything useful with that".

20 February at 6:35 | Open on indieweb.social

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