Accessibility

System 2026-08-21

Shanios pre-installs a full accessibility stack on every desktop edition (GNOME, KDE Plasma, and COSMIC) — a screen reader, speech synthesis, braille display support, and a complete set of input methods for non-Latin scripts. None of it needs to be installed separately; it's a matter of turning on what you need.

Screen Reader — Orca

Orca reads screen content aloud and supports full keyboard navigation without a mouse.

GNOME: Settings → Accessibility → Screen Reader, or toggle instantly with Super+Alt+S
KDE Plasma / COSMIC: launch orca directly, or add it as a startup application; Orca is a GTK/AT-SPI application and works under any desktop that implements the AT-SPI accessibility bus (GNOME, KDE, and COSMIC all do)

# Start Orca manually
orca

# Check Orca's current preferences
orca --show-preferences

Speech Synthesis — espeakup

espeakup bridges the Linux kernel's Speakup screen-reader framework to the espeak-ng synthesizer, providing spoken feedback at the console/TTY level — useful for accessibility before a graphical session starts, or in a minimal/recovery environment where Orca isn't available.

# Check espeakup status
systemctl status espeakup

Braille Displays — brltty

brltty provides braille display support, translating screen content to a connected refreshable braille display and relaying input from the display's controls back to the system. It auto-detects most USB braille displays.

# Check brltty status and detected displays
systemctl status brltty
brltty -E   # discover devices without starting the daemon

Input Methods — IBus

IBus provides input method support for scripts that need composition (can't be typed with a simple keymap), with several engines pre-installed:

| Engine | Language / Script | |--------|-------------------| | ibus-typing-booster | Predictive typing / autocomplete for any language | | ibus-libpinyin | Chinese (Pinyin) | | ibus-anthy | Japanese | | ibus-hangul | Korean | | ibus-unikey | Vietnamese |

Enabling an input method:

GNOME: Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Add an Input Source, then select the language
KDE Plasma: System Settings → Input Devices → Virtual Keyboard, or Regional Settings → Input Method

Switch between input sources with the keyboard shortcut shown in Settings (typically Super+Space on GNOME).

# Check IBus is running
ibus-daemon --version
ibus list-engine    # list all available engines

For Indic scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu), rendering is handled by pre-configured fontconfig rules and Noto fonts rather than a dedicated IBus engine — see What's Included.

Other Desktop Accessibility Settings

Beyond the tools above, both desktops expose standard accessibility options that don't require any extra packages:

High contrast / large text: GNOME Settings → Accessibility → Seeing; KDE System Settings → Appearance → Accessibility
Sticky keys / slow keys / bounce keys: GNOME Settings → Accessibility → Typing; KDE System Settings → Input Devices → Keyboard → Accessibility
Zoom / magnifier: GNOME Settings → Accessibility → Zoom; KDE System Settings → Accessibility → Screen Magnifier

Troubleshooting

| Issue | Solution | |-------|----------| | Orca doesn't start | Confirm AT-SPI is enabled: gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface toolkit-accessibility (GNOME); should be true | | No sound from espeakup | Check systemctl status espeakup; confirm espeak-ng voices are installed (espeak-ng --voices) | | Braille display not detected | Check brltty -E output and USB connection; some displays need a specific braille-driver= setting in /etc/brltty.conf | | IBus input source doesn't appear | Confirm the engine package is installed (ibus list-engine); log out and back in after adding a new input source |