Orca is the primary, perhaps sole, graphical screen reader for Linux that is in active development and is generally considered highly compatible with Gnome and Mate, moderately compatible with other GTK-based Desktop Envrionments and Window Manager, and poorly compatible with KDE, QT, and other non-GTK based graphical setups, though the latter has made massive improvements in recent months. As Orca is nominally part of Gnome, just about any distro that has a Gnome flavor should have a package for Orca, and once things are setup, I'm not convinced the choice of distro makes much difference on how well Orca works with your chosen Desktop Environment. Where things do vary is in how accessible a Distro's installer is and how easily Orca can be made to launch automatically. My setup is based on the Debian-based Knoppix running in Adriane mode, but the main reasons I do this is that Adriane uses a console-screen reader that isn't readily available on most distros and allows one to launch Fierfox+Orca without the need to launch a full Desktop, which I find handy since Firefox is the only graphical application I use. Probably not the best option if you plan to hang out in the Desktop all the time as Knoppix, being designed primarily as a LiveDVD, has some quirks that make it less than ideal for installing to a Harddrive. Debian is a good option for an accessible installer and easily getting Orca up and running(the Installer can be made to talk, and I'm pretty sure choosing to install a Desktop Enviornment makes the system come up with Orca talking), but Debian's slow and steady development cycle means Debian Stable is often well behind on software upgrades, especially in the area of accessibility, though this can be somewhat alleviated by adding Debian Backports to a Debian Stable system or upgrading to Debian Testing or Debian Unstable. Knoppix sources most of its software from Debian and I can attest to Debian Testing being pretty stable... If you need Wi-Fi, you probably want to seek out the unofficial images that include non-free firmware as that is one area where Debian's reluctance to include non-free software in the core system can be a unworkable hindrance. I've heard mixed reviews for both Ubuntu and Fedora when it comes to accessibility. Slint is probably the best alround distro for out of the box accessibility, but be warned that it is based on Slackware, a distro with a bit of a reputation for being less beginner friendly than Debian and its deriatives. I understand that there are several projects offering easy setup of Arch with screen readers, but again, Arch is a distro with a reputation for being for more experienced Linux users. Please note, Knoppix is the only distro I have current experience with and the above is just a summary of what I've read on this and other accessibility-related mailing lists. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list