Accessible Install of Ubuntu Feisty

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Contents

  1. Accessible Install of Ubuntu Feisty
    1. Getting the live CD
    2. Taking Orca for a Test Drive
    3. Installing Ubuntu from the live CD
    4. Booting into your new Ubuntu system
    5. Where to go from here

Getting the live CD

If you want to check out and/or install Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04) with Orca, start by obtaining a "live CD" from a daily build. A live CD is bootable and contains everything you need to run an operating system without actually installing it on your hard drive. Thus you can "try before you buy" so to speak (Ubuntu and Orca are free).

You can obtain the latest live CD daily build from http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ (the x86 image is http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/feisty-desktop-i386.iso). Be sure that you select the Desktop CD as the instructions that follow will NOT work with the alternative CD.

Please note: In order to use the live CD as described below, your computer must be set up so that your CD/DVD drive is higher up in the boot order than your hard drive. There's a good chance that it is already set up this way. If it is not, your computer will boot as it normally does even though the CD is inserted. Should this occur you will need to alter the boot order in your computer's BIOS. Making this change will, unfortunately, require sighted assistance; however, once the change has been made it will be saved, so this is at most a one-time-only problem.

Taking Orca for a Test Drive

Once you've downloaded and burned the live CD image, insert it into your CD/DVD drive and reboot your computer. You should find that your drive spins for a short while and then stops. The point at which it stops coincides with the appearance of the boot options screen.

At this point, you have about 30 seconds to perform the next step. If you do not perform the next step quickly, Ubuntu will automatically continue booting.

In order to enable accessibility options, press F5. This will cause a list of accessibility options to appear:

If you want to try Orca, you should press 3 to give focus to Screen Reader, followed by Enter to indicate your selection. You'll be returned to the boot options screen. Press Enter again to indicate you would like to boot.

Within a few minutes, Ubuntu will be loaded with Orca running and you will hear a greeting such as "Welcome to Orca. Orca Preferences. Tab list. General page." The CD drive should also stop spinning at this point. If the CD drive stopped spinning and you didn't hear a greeting from Orca, you might need to try to reboot from the CD and repeat the steps for selecting the Screen Reader.

Now, the graphical desktop is up and running, Orca is active, and the Orca Preferences dialog has focus. The Orca Preferences dialog is a multi-page dialog with several pages that allows you to configure your settings. The dialog is described in detail on the Orca Configuration GUI documentation.

Use Control+PageUp and Control+PageDown to move among pages. Use Tab and Shift+Tab to move among the controls. If you are familiar with Windows, you should find that the controls all work as you expect (e.g. use the Arrow keys to move within a group of radio buttons, use the SpaceBar to toggle checkboxes, and so on.) Having made all of your desired changes, press the Apply button followed by the Close button.

Of interest to new users may be the "Key Echo" tab of the Orca Preferences dialog. Orca is generally pretty quiet by default, so you may want to activate options such as key echo and echo by word.

Note: If at any time you would like to modify your preferences, you can press Insert+SpaceBar to return to this dialog. In addition, you can use Insert+Left and Insert+Right arrow to change the rate "on the fly" and Insert+Up and Insert+Down arrow to do the same for pitch.

Now that you have Orca speaking the way you want, you are ready to check out Ubuntu. The desktop consumes the largest area of the screen and the only currently open window is the Orca Preferences dialog.

You can minimize all windows quickly by pressing CTRL+ALT+D. The desktop is now unobscured.

By default, the desktop in Ubuntu contains only two icons: Install and Examples. Gnome has a multiplicity of configuration options, so a desktop can be customized to fit the needs of any user. For example, one user's desktop might be filled with icons for files and programs, or it could be set up to resemble Microsoft Windows XP. However, on this live CD the desktop is spartan.

It is also important to know that the desktop is behind all the other objects in Gnome, and is controlled by Nautilus, the Gnome file manager.

Above and below the desktop are two thin bars, known as the top and bottom panels in Gnome. A panel contains items that users will access on a regular basis.

The top panel shows you the GNOME main menu bar, the date and time, and the launcher for the GNOME help system. The bottom panel shows you the list of open windows and the workspace switcher.

Workspaces are multiple mini-desktops that enable you to organize your work by topics. For example, one workspace could be used for your job-related activities and another for music collecting and a third for programming. It is easy to add both work spaces and panels, and it is easy to add or remove items from each.

Use CTRL+ALT+Tab to move between the desktop and these two panels.

Use the arrow keys to navigate between items on the desktop or within a panel. Taking a few minutes to explore using these keystrokes will help you feel more comfortable with Orca.

If you are completely new to Linux and the GNOME desktop, you may find the GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide helpful, especially the chapter on Using the Keyboard to Navigate the Desktop.

Installing Ubuntu from the live CD

If you explore your Desktop while using the Live CD, you will find an icon named "install." Its purpose is, as you might have guessed, to enable you to install Ubuntu on your computer. At this time, however, Orca is not able to provide access to the installer if you start it from the desktop icon. This is a known issue and is being addressed. In the meantime, here is a work-around which will enable you to perform an accessible install:

  1. Press Alt+F2 to get into the Run Application dialog
  2. Type "gnome-terminal" and press Enter.
  3. In the resulting Terminal window, type "sudo su" and press Enter. You should hear "root at ubuntu colon slash home slash ubuntu pound".
  4. Press Insert Q to quit Orca. At this point, the Orca quit confirmation dialog will appear. You need to tab to the "Yes" button and press Space. At this point, you will have no speech, but focus is still in the terminal window.

  5. Type "orca --no-setup --disable main-window&" and press Enter. This will cause speech to resume, but Orca will now be running as root (the equivalent of Administrator in Windows).

  6. Type "ubiquity" and press Enter.

Note: Because you are now running Orca as root, Orca will not use the speech settings you configured earlier. As a reminder, you can quickly change the rate with Insert+Left and Insert+Right arrow and the pitch with Insert+Up and Insert+Down arrow.

You should find the installer to be fairly straightforward: Use Tab and Shift+Tab to move among controls, indicating your preferences as you go, and then press the Forward button to progress to the next screen of options. please be patient, and give the installer time to finish each task as you progress. because you are running from a CD, you may notice that the system takes long to respond. The one control that you might find different is the City combo box. After you choose your city from among the options, you will need to press Control+Tab to move to the next control. If you get lost or the system becomes quiet, try pressing Tab or the arrow keys.

Towards the end of the installation, you will be presented with a screen asking you about disk partitioning and offering the following options:

If you would like to have a dual-boot system (i.e. so that you can boot your computer into Windows/OS X or Ubuntu), select the option to resize your disk and use the left-right slider to indicate the size. If the only operating system you want on your computer is Ubuntu, select the option to erase your entire disk. another sinario would be that you have already prepared a Linux partition and a swap disk, in which case you can choose to manually edit the partition table. NOTE: dual boot is always a struggle. Unless you are experienced, we recommend just putting Ubuntu on your machine.

After the disk partitioner, you will be given a summary of the installation options you have selected. Look them over and press the Install button to install Ubuntu.

when the installation is complete, (this may take somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour depending on the speed of your system), you will be notified and will be given 2 options:

For all practical purposes, you should reboot to be able to take advantage of a full Linux system.

Booting into your new Ubuntu system

When you reboot your computer, you should hear a musical tone which lets you know that the logon screen has appeared. As of this writing, Orca is unable to speak at this stage. Type your user name, then press Enter. Type your password, then press Enter. Your computer will then continue to boot. The first time you boot into your newly-installed Ubuntu system, the Orca Preferences dialog box will be opened. Alt+Tab into it and configure your settings just as you did with the Live CD. For all future boots, you should find that Orca starts automatically using the settings you specified.

Where to go from here

The information on this page and the other Orca-related pages on this site are distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Orca/UbuntuFeisty (last edited 2009-01-16 16:56:14 by WillieWalker)