I'm running Debian Testing/Trixie and have Orca and espeakup playing nice with each other.
That said, I picked LXDE at the install additional software step of the Debian Netinst, which defaults to pulseaudio for sound, and I have to run the configure pulse scripts provided by Fenrir to get espeakup and Orca playing nice. On a completely clean install, I get Orca in the desktop, but the consoles are silent, and without those config pulse scripts, the only way I've managed to get espeakup talking is either not installing a DE or doing something that breaks my graphical session.