orca not so hot?

[factorialpython]

YES I AGREE THAT oRCA IS GETTING THERE, but I NEED I SCREEN READER AS GOOD AS jAWS, I DO USE LINUX AS MY MAIN pc SO WOULD LIKE TO INSTAL IT VIA wine BUT SO FAR DO NOT HAVE A CLUE HOW to do it, any suggestions would be most welcome. the reason for JAWS been using it since 3.5 and i am so familiar with it, and it sounds and works great.

[RCC2k7]

OK, lets put things into perspective shall we?

It's easy to blame the commercial AT companies for not caring about the visually impaired just to suck money out of us. But keep in mind the developers and testers of JAWS, ZoomText and similar commercial products not only have to care about the software they are developing but they need to be concerned with how their product interacts with the operating systems as well as many mainstream applications. All those developing and testing efforts take time and money, after all they do work on that for a living you know. This is unfortunately why those programs can't be had for cheap, although I do wish they were more affordable.

But that is precisely the reason why you cannot expect open source AT software to match the quality of commercial software. There's a lot of time and money that is needed to test a product like Orca, and to test it interacts well with the operating system and third-party applications. Resources are limited when many of these developers work on their free time because there isn't enough money to be made on a free open source product to make a living.

All this said, I do think Orca sucks, because there have been many years and it struggles with basic stuff. The magnifier became less useful in the past two years, to the point it is non-existent in Ubuntu 11.10. eSpeak makes me want to puke, and though I don't think we should expect NeoSpeech or RealSpeak quality from an open source engine, at least by now it should've learned to pronounce better in other languages and in non-British English. Speech alternatives are limited. There's PicoTTS which is the speech engine from Android yet making it work in Ubuntu is a challenge for the non-developer user who's not sight-impaired let alone to the visually-impaired. The AT-SPI or whatever the GNOME accessibility bridge is called, is awful; it slows down operations and brings some apps to a crash or a lockup. Have you tried to use the Ubuntu Software Center with Orca lately? Nothing has been done to fix the accessibility bridge, or whatever has been done it hasn't worked at all!

Basically, for a visually-impaired user on a tight budget, I think Windows 7 with its Aero magnifier and the NVDA open source screen reader is still a better fit than any Linux distro. Linux is just not usable enough for a daily driver, although it's nice to have as a hobby.

EDIT: I tried to write this post in Ubuntu, but having no magnifier and with Orca being such a pain to switch languages, I ended up rebooting into Windows 7 so I could write this comfortably. Seriously, Ubuntu isn't ready for "accessible primetime".

[jonathonblake]

All those developing and testing efforts take time and money,

What testing? Have you used JAWS 13 with MIE on WinXP?

But that is precisely the reason why you cannot expect open source AT software to match the quality of commercial software.

Going by code metrics, the quality of commercial software is slightly less than the quality of FLOSS. However, in both instances, those metrics are all over the place.

It much easier to adapt FLOSS to one's specific requirements, than it is to adapt commercial software to one's specific requirements.

Resources are limited when many of these developers work on their free time because there isn't enough money to be made on a free open source product to make a living.

Red Hat is one company that proves that all of the points in that claims are completely false.

and though I don't think we should expect NeoSpeech or RealSpeak quality from an open source engine,

The issue here is quite simple. The USPTO has violated US Constitutional Law, US Statute Law, US Case Law, and USPTO Rules and Regulations in granting non-patents on mathematical algorithms that are critical in creating viable speech engines.

IOW, you need to fire your current political representatives, and hire one/two/three that going to either force the various federal agencies to adhere to the law of the land, or else dismantle them completely, on the grounds that no agency is better than one that breaks the laws of the land every minute of every day.

The other option is to hire a president who thinks of patent reform as being the termination of the practice of granting patents in violation of US Constitutional Law, US Statute Law, US Case Law, and USPTO Rules and Regulations.

it should have learned to pronounce better in other languages and in non-British English.

This gets back to those mathematical algorithms that the USPTO has granted in violation of the laws of the land.

jonathon

[RKCole]

Very good information, jonathonblake.

I am simply amazed with how far Orca has come along. I remember using Gnopernicus back in 2005, and I felt like Linux (something I so desired to use) was out of my each. Because of community and developer testing, it is my sole operating system of choice.

The Orca development team works hard to produce a great product, and they listen to their users. They are not solely motivated in an annual salary, but rather the improvement of a great and promising technology.

As saddening as your statements about the USPTO are, jonathonblake, they are correct.

Once again, thanks for that information.