Switching to Linux when you use assistive software
Orca is the screen reader on Linux. That is the whole list. NVDA is built for Windows and nothing else, JAWS is built for Windows and nothing else, and the request to make NVDA run under Wine has sat open on its issue tracker since 2019 without moving. Even if that request were granted tomorrow, a screen reader running inside Wine could read only the Windows programs running inside Wine. Your desktop, your settings and your login screen would stay silent.
So your current tools stay behind. What matters is whether the ones waiting on the other side do your job, and only your own ears and hands can settle that.
What is already there
More than most people expect.
On GNOME the accessibility settings hold the screen reader, desktop zoom, large text, high contrast and the keyboard adjustments in a single panel. Orca starts when you hold Super and Alt and S together. There is an accessibility icon you can put in the top bar to switch things on and off without opening settings at all.
The magnifier is part of the desktop rather than a purchase. You choose how much it enlarges, whether the view follows the mouse, and where on screen the magnified region sits, and you can turn on crosshairs to find the pointer with the colour, length and thickness set to suit you. Colour filters cover inverted video, brightness and contrast.
Sticky keys, bounce keys, mouse keys and hover click all sit in that same panel. Hover click means the pointer clicks by staying still, with the delay and the amount of drift it will tolerate both adjustable. GNOME has an on-screen keyboard too. It costs nothing and none of it expires.
Where Linux is behind Windows
Dictation first, because it is the worst of it.
There is no equal on Linux to Dragon, or to the Voice access that Microsoft put in place of Windows Speech Recognition for Windows 11 in September 2024. What exists is dictation, which is a smaller thing than voice control of the computer. Speech Note is the best of it, a free app that runs recognition entirely on your own machine using engines including Vosk and Whisper, with a setting that types what it hears straight into whichever window has focus. On older X11 systems that works by itself. On newer Wayland systems a separate background tool has to be installed first. None of it is present at the login screen, understood by every program, or backed by anyone you can ring.
If you dictate because typing is slow, you will probably manage. For somebody who dictates because typing is not available at all, this may be the thing that keeps you on Windows, and that is a sound decision rather than a failure of nerve.
Braille is in better shape, though not evenly. Orca does not drive braille displays itself. It connects to a background service called BRLTTY, and BRLTTY carries the drivers. Whether your display works is a question about your exact model against BRLTTY’s own list, so check it by name before you plan anything around it.
Then there is app coverage. Debian’s accessibility documentation states outright that not every program built with the common GTK and Qt toolkits can be read even with accessibility switched on, and that Qt programs may need a setting changed before they say anything at all. Firefox reports headings, links, tables and form fields properly. Other programs vary. The only way to know which is to run them.
The one time to ignore the Mint advice
Most of the advice here points a first-timer at Linux Mint, and for most people that still holds.
If you use a screen reader, look at a GNOME system instead.
The reason is where the work goes. Orca is a GNOME project. Its keyboard shortcut, its settings switch and the panel it lives in are GNOME’s, and Debian’s documentation, while noting that Orca can be used across MATE, Xfce, LXDE and LXQt as well, singles out GNOME for what comes built in. Mint’s Cinnamon desktop is the friendlier one for a Windows switcher to look at, and it is not the one with the strongest screen reader story behind it. Ubuntu and Fedora both ship GNOME.
Check one more thing before you choose. GNOME’s own help says that depending on how the system was installed, Orca might not be there. A silent desktop, with the screen reader sitting undownloaded in an app store you cannot see, is a miserable place to begin.
Test it before you change anything
A live session runs the whole system off a USB stick without touching Windows or a single one of your files. That matters more here than anywhere else on this site.
Make the stick with the live USB guide, start the PC from it, and before anything else find out whether the screen reader starts at all. Then use the machine by ear, or at whatever magnification you need, for a solid hour. Open the programs you depend on. Plug in the braille display. Dictate a paragraph. Write down everything that stayed quiet.
Nothing is kept and nothing is installed, so you can do this as often as you like and on as many distributions as you like. If the answer comes back that your setup does not work yet, you have lost an afternoon, and you found that out with Windows still sitting untouched on the drive.