Orca (assistive technology)

Orca
Initial releaseSeptember 3, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-09-03)
Stable release
44.1[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 25 May 2023; 17 months ago (25 May 2023)
Preview releasen/a (n/a) [±]
Repository
Written inPython
Operating systemUnix-like
TypeScreen reader Accessibility
LicenseGNU LGPL (version 2.1)[2]
Websiteorca.gnome.org

Orca is a free and open-source, flexible, extensible screen reader from the GNOME project for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Using various combinations of speech synthesis and braille, Orca helps provide access to applications and toolkits that support AT-SPI (e.g., the GNOME desktop, Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice and GTK, Qt and Java Swing/SWT applications).

The name Orca, which is another term for a killer whale, is a nod to the long-standing tradition of naming screen readers after aquatic creatures, including the Assistive Technology product on Windows called JAWS (which stands for Job Access With Speech), the early DOS screen reader called Flipper,[3] and the UK vision impairment company Dolphin Computer Access.[4]

As of GNOME 2.16, Orca is the default screen reader of the GNOME platform, replacing Gnopernicus.[5] As a result, Orca follows the GNOME stable release cycles of approximately six-months.[6] Orca is provided by default on a number of operating system distributions, including Solaris,[7] Fedora,[8] openSUSE[9] and Ubuntu.[10]

  1. ^ "orca-44.1.tar.xz". 25 May 2023. Retrieved 24 July 2023.
  2. ^ "COPYING file from the Orca git source code repository". 9 October 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  3. ^ "Assistive Computer Technology For MS-DOS Training Guide" (PDF). p. 33. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  4. ^ "Dolphin Computer Access website". Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  5. ^ "GNOME 2.16 Release Notes". Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  6. ^ "GNOME's Time-Based Release Schedule". Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  7. ^ "Oracle Solaris 11 Desktop Accessibility Guide". Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  8. ^ "Fedora 16 Accessibility Guide". Archived from the original on August 16, 2013. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  9. ^ "openSUSE 12.3". Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  10. ^ "Ubuntu Accessibility". Retrieved 16 August 2013.