Orca
The screen reader for Linux desktops. Reads the screen aloud and drives a braille display, and it is free.
Our verdict
Orca is the screen reader on Linux. There is no second contender with the same reach, and nothing you can install to bring NVDA or JAWS across, so this is the tool your whole day will run through.
On GNOME it is the closest thing to a supported answer. The screen reader switch sits in the Accessibility settings next to zoom and large text, the keyboard shortcut works from the login screen onwards, and Firefox reports headings, links, tables and form fields properly. Braille goes through a separate background service called BRLTTY, which Orca talks to rather than driving the display itself.
The honest limit is coverage. Debian's own accessibility documentation says plainly that not every app built with the GTK or Qt toolkits is readable even when accessibility is turned on, and that Qt apps may need a setting changed before they speak at all. Orca also works across MATE, Xfce, LXDE and LXQt, but GNOME is where the attention goes.
Budget time for the keyboard commands. They are a different set from the ones you know, and no amount of goodwill shortens that. Test it from a live USB session on your own machine, with the apps you actually use, before you change anything on your PC.
What's good
- Free, and the same software whether you are at home, at work or on a borrowed machine
- Speech and braille together, with braille handled through the BRLTTY service
- Already present on GNOME systems, where Super and Alt and S switches it on straight away
- Reads Firefox and the GNOME apps well, including headings, tables and forms
What to know first
- Some distributions do not install it by default, so it has to be added from the app store first
- Coverage outside GNOME is thinner, and not every GTK or Qt app is readable even with accessibility switched on
- Keyboard commands differ from NVDA and JAWS, so there is real relearning to do
- No scripting language of the kind JAWS users rely on to force stubborn apps to behave
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (LGPL-2.1)
- How you install it
- Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
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