Episode: 1406
Title: HPR1406: ORCA fundraiser
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1406/hpr1406.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:57:35

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Hi, this is Abouka. Welcome to another exciting episode of Acro Public Radio, and today we
have a very special guest, Jonathan Nado, and we're here to talk about a number of things,
but among them is a fundraiser that he has started to improve the screen reader known
as Orca. But before we get into that, I think Ken Palin has a little bit of news about New
Year's Eve cap. Yeah, the New Year's third annual New Year's Eve show will be starting
when the first time zone hits that's on the 31st of December at 10 hundred hours UTC. That's
10 hundred hours UTC. There's a link on the main page now for that. And probably as a spectacular
piece of news for everybody, we're going to be running a telephone to support what you're
about to hear in this interview here. So if you are around, if you can spread the word for the
2026 hour show, we're going to be trying to raise some money to support the cause that you're
going to hear about now from Jonathan. And we're going to also try and connect into the twit.tv
24 hour show that they're doing over there and get some cross-pollination if we can. So the
mumble server is mumble.openspeak.cc and the port is 64747. And we will have live streams
at hackupubblegradio.org forward slash org and hackupubblegradio.org forward slash MP3 running through
the entire 26 hours. So if you want to come along and join us and spread the word, we're looking
for your cash and we're looking for your code. Okay, with that, I'll drop off. Thank you.
Thank you, Ken. So now Jonathan, you are a man of many parts. I know that you are executive
director of the Accessible Computing Foundation. I know that earlier in the year we did a fundraiser
for the Sonar project. And now Orca is a screen reader. If you want to tell us a little bit about
what you're trying to do with Orca and what your fundraiser is about. Absolutely. First,
thanks for having me on, guys. I totally appreciate it. And I greatly, greatly appreciate you using
the HPR 24-hour thing as sort of a fundraising telephone thing. I really appreciate that, guys.
So with the Orca screen reader, what kicked this off is I met with a person who's kind of an angel
investor, does a lot of startups. His name is Jason Callicanis. He used to be a lot on the
Sunday shows this week in tech. He has his own podcast called This Week in Startups. I met him
in Boston a month and a half ago. I spoke with him about all of the things that I'm trying to do.
And during the conversation, he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, he literally was saying
that he's like, let's slow down here. He's like, man, you are doing way too much. He's like,
what you need to do is so we start, we got on the topic of vision impaired people in Orca.
And we're discussing the numbers. There's roughly 360 million vision impaired people in the world.
90% of them live in developing countries. 80% of the vision impaired people in the United States
are unemployed. And I'm telling him that the majority of these people do not have access to
proprietary screen readers because they're extremely expensive. So during the conversation,
this is when he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. He's like, all right, this is what we need to do.
He's like, you're going to run an IndieGoGo campaign. And you're going to set the goal for $100,000.
I'm going to pledge into this campaign. And we're going to raise money to make Orca better. He's
like, this is what you need to do. He's like, if you want Orca. And if you want, you know,
the majority of these people using Orca, you need to make it 10 times better than anything else.
It can't be two times better. It can't be five. It's literally got to be 10. It's got to
crush and destroy anything else that's like it in order for people to switch over to it and use it.
So this is why you need to run this campaign. Focus on one thing. He's like, I love
that you doing all these other things. He's like, let's focus on Orca. Get that to be in the state
that it can crush anything. Then you move on to something else. He's like, don't try doing all
these things at once. Nothing will ever get, quote unquote, better. He's like, you're just spreading
yourself too thin. Let's focus on this one thing and just crush it and then move on to the next
successful thing. Then move on to the next successful thing. He's like, that's the only way you're
going to succeed with this. So he's like, let's start this IndieGoGo campaign. And let's get Orca
into the best shape that you possibly can. Let's raise the $100,000 and get developers on this
thing and make it better. So that's why I've launched the campaign. Now, we'll probably give
the URL a few times. But right now, the short URL is IGG.me slash AT slash ORCA. And I guess I'll
take a moment to breathe and you can throw anything in here you want, Kevin.
You know, I think that that's probably pretty good advice, you know, to focus on just doing one
thing and doing it well. So I'm going to go with Jonathan, go with Jason Calacanis on that.
That does make sense. So for people who aren't familiar, what does a screen reader do?
So I guess this would be an opportunity to, I'll tell you what a screener does, but then I will
have the opportunity to show our folks listening to this episode because I'll basically what a
screen reader does is it is a synthesizer, a synthesized voice, which reads the text on the screen to
a blind or low vision person. And you can manipulate the screen reader using various keyboard commands.
So I can send emails, I can surf the web, I can play music, I can type out documents, I can use
text editors, I can change config files, I'm all using the ORCA screen reader. One of the things
I was able to do with the sonar campaign, the sonar campaign was to help sonar could do Linux and
just really kind of get that together. And also I brought a enhancement at ORCA through the sonar
project. Now you will hear soon that I have like the original sort of synthesized voice on ORCA
and you'll hear it's very like robotic sounding and this is sort of a hurdle for some blind users
where the other proprietary operating systems have better sounding voices. Well with ORCA I wanted
to be able to bring free software, a better free software voice synthesizer to ORCA and I was able
to do that through the sonar project. So what I'll do is I'll take a moment here to kind of switch
over my setup. This is always great for live radio or a podcast, but what I'll do is I'll take
a second and I'm going to turn on the mumble thing not to push the talk but to be on automatically.
And after I do that I just need to switch a couple of wires around and I'm going to run my computer
into my mixing board and you will then be able to hear ORCA and I'll use it with the default
voice and then I'll change it over to the other voice and you can hear it and then we can maybe
discuss that a little bit farther. Okay so let me I'm going to switch the mumble thing right now,
hang on one second. Okay so can you hear me now Kevin? Yep. Okay so. Drop into a different room
for a minute. Okay so sorry about that folks. Okay so now I'm on the not push the talk so I need
to switch to two chords and then you should be able to hear my computer. So hang on one second.
Okay I'm plugging in one thing right now. Okay then I just need to plug my headphones into this
other area. Okay you can hear me right? Yeah yeah. Okay here we go. So you should
now you can hear ORCA right? Okay so this is what ORCA sounds like I'm going to switch out of
the mumble thing here. Okay so right now I'm running a GNOME shell and it's on the desktop.
There's the home folder. There's the trash. There's my pen drive. So what I'm going to do now is
I'm going to open the ORCA preferences and you'll all change the synthesizer. So here we go.
So I'm on a speech system and right now it's using speech dispatcher. What I was able to do with
the sonar project is make a new speech system called speech hub which of course is not showing up now.
Oh good you got to you got to love live demos here of course it's not there now. Okay we'll
we'll exit that but this is the giving of what screen meters you know sound like. So
desktop frame plus canvas. Yeah so that's what a screen meter sounds like maybe I'll open up
something here so you can see. I'm opening up a G at it right now.
There mine of course is just like a total epic fail of a demonstration. I hear everything ready
and now it's not working right so. Sorry Kevin. Yeah exactly. I started setting up an hour
before this just to make sure okay this works. Yep. I changed everything on the fly. Everything
was working and you know now it's complete utter failure. So um but again this is just
what ORCA looks like and it sounds like rather. And I do have better sounding voices. Unfortunately
I cannot play them for you. So I will switch back to how I had to set up because I think the
recording is going to come across a lot better if I do that. So I will continue to talk as I unplug
things here. Let's see. Sorry everyone for the total fail on the demonstration.
Okay so all right there Kevin. Yeah I am. Okay so yeah let me let me put it back to push the talk
here. Okay sorry about all that folks. Well Jonathan that was not a total failure because I
thought it was useful for people to get a sense of how a screen reader works and I think one of
the things that people if this is the first time they've heard this they don't know you all
that well. I would just point out you set the speed to be a lot higher than and I remember this
because you and you and Pokey I think did a show and he was stumbling around trying to do an
installation using a screen reader. Yeah. You have it set to like two or three times faster than
normal speech because you're used to it. Oh yeah I mean what you heard of that I that was like
50%. I put it up to 100 and it basically speaks at 350 words a minute. Yeah I've been
gradually increasing the rate at which I listened to podcasts because otherwise I'd never get
through them all. So exactly. Oh yeah totally yeah I didn't start like that either. I went to 60
and crept up the 75 then to 85 then before I knew as at 100. Yeah I started at 50 I'm now at 60
and getting used to that. Now one of the things that you mentioned but I think it's worth coming back
to is and it's something I'm aware of. I know that you and I had exchanged some email earlier.
There's a couple of friends of mine who were blind, married couple and the husband has been trying
to find work. He's got a degree in computer science and he's just having the hardest time
because no one thinks he's capable of doing anything and so I know the unemployment rate among
people who are visually impaired is extremely high and I think you said it was like 80% yes
and that's one of the things that if we have accessible technology maybe that gives us a chance
to get around some of that and you know I think most people want to be productively employed.
I can care with you 100%. There's so many things that come into play with you know disabilities
and trying to get jobs. I mean one honestly people you know I'm trying to think of how to put this
kind of like politically correct or whatever but people that you know regular people this is a
very broad brush but people that don't interact with people with disabilities kind of think like
oh he's blind he obviously can't do anything or oh that poor person's in a wheelchair what can
they possibly do or you know and it's not the case at all like they're extremely smart people
that have disabilities and you know some people that aren't so smart that don't have disabilities
but there's extremely smart people that don't have disabilities and it's you know people that aren't
so smart with that disability so you know we're not any different than another person it's just
we have to do things differently or in another way or adapt how we accomplish things but
that doesn't mean where you know no no smarter than the next person so there's that hurdle
and then you know there's a hurdle as an employer like oh geez you know if I hire this you know
blind person now I'm gonna get a talking this and a talking that and you know I got to spend like
$10,000 in equipment to you know get this person a job and what if they don't work out and you
know so they just want they don't want to put up with it and they just you know instead of saying
look when at hiring because they're blind we're gonna would they say oh well we hired Bob over
here he's more qualified than you and that meaning he can see you know so it's just all these
annoying hurdles that you know not only blind people but just people with disabilities in general
have to overcome oh absolutely and you know one of the things that used to maybe thinking about
a little bit is if people can't have jobs and can't earn a living then your tax dollars end up
supporting them exactly well with with Orca and and well I guess maybe more sonar I really
my own goal like with sonar canoe Linux and the ACF you know this could be a 10 15 year thing
it could be that far out but I'm you know in it for the long run my goal is for anyone that's
any type of disability to be able to use sonar canoe Linux and then not only that but in core
encourage entrepreneurship using sonar you know people could have their own tech support companies
within the towns they live in the countries they live in people could start to become developers
because it's free software they can read the source code start to understand it teach themselves
how to program maybe you know now that they can access the computer they could get online and
take online training to develop who knows how many developers could come out of these you know
360 million vision impaired people are one billion people with some type of disability so they'll
be able to become developers create software for a sonar or you know free software in general
bring enhancements to Orca and other types of software so we can create developers out of sonar
we can create tech support companies out of sonar we can you know there could be other companies
that sell computers preloaded with sonar really I mean the sky would be the limit with what you
want to do with free software and so on so now we will sonar bring accessibility but sonar could
also encourage entrepreneurship throughout the world okay so tell us a little more about technically
what is sonar I think it's a Linux distro but give us the details sure so sonar is like Kevin
Linux distro that it's focused on accessibility and assistive technology so right now sonar
currently has software on it for vision life for blind people like me you just heard Orca it has
low vision software screen magnification so you can enlarge the text and everything on a screen
so low vision users can magnify the screen it has a font included for people with dyslexia to help
them with reading papers and fonts and things like that on the computer screen it has a couple
of on screen keyboards for people with low motor skills so if one person only has use of
only has good use of one hand or maybe like a little bit of use out of both hands instead of
having use the keyboard they use the mouse or any kind of pointing device and they can use the
on screen keyboard to you know type things in one of the keyboards will do predictive text and
will also pre-populate certain things so if you're constantly typing in some of the same things
some of the same paragraphs you can type it in once and save it and then just by the press of one
button you can pre-populate these specific things that you already had outlined um there's also
software on here for quadriplegics where they can control the course of the mouse just by moving
their eyes or their head um and then thanks to Jezra who kind of uh in a roundabout way
give us uh text uh voice recognition software called blather that hasn't been worked on at all
unfortunately there's just so much we're doing and obviously now with us focusing orca blather is
kind of pushed to the side a little bit but i'd like to see blather be one of the next projects we
work on where blather is like a dragon naturally speaking where you can actually control the computer
just from your voice and i believe that uh listeners to hacker public radio uh john culp has recorded
several programs about blather so you go look for uh john culp's uh programs you can see what we're
talking about yeah he actually sent me all of his uh notes and his config files and everything
which is a great you know a great jumping point to to start with so i totally appreciate that
john and unfortunately i'm done anything with you yet i'm sorry but we will get to it um but that's
you know roughly what sonar is and like i said that's the focus of sonar is not only to give access
to everyone that has any type of disability but we're gonna encourage entrepreneurship also through
sonar like i said tech support companies uh you know developers will be coming out of you know
using sonar um really like i said the sky is the limit we can't you know force people to make
their own jobs are to want to get a job but this will definitely if anything uh at least give them
the opportunity and the chance to do that if they wish if they're motivated enough uh that is
wonderful uh so glad to hear about that i think it's very interesting that you're aiming uh sonar at a
broader audience than just people who have uh visual impairments that you're looking at a whole
yeah because i'm honestly the the the you know blindness is probably the largest type of
disability like i said out of the one billion people with some type of disability 360 million
are vision impaired so that's the largest kind of uh uh disability throughout the world but uh
according to the Christopher Reeves foundation in united states there's 1.25 million people that
suffer paralysis due to spinal cord injuries i didn't know there's that many people like i
i've looked into doing home automation things using the raspberry pi so people that are wheelchairs
have complete control over their house they they could you know live you know independently open the
doors on their open to close the blinds control their cooling and heating systems control their
you know media players all through just one device in their house to give them home automation so
that's all there's really so many things that i want to do but i need to just stay focused and
and and do orca but like i said in 10 or 15 years uh the ACF i'm hoping will be you know
not a force to be reckoned with but the ACF will be a non-profit providing all of these
services and software to all these people throughout the world like i said you know one out of every
six or seven people the world has some type of disability and and unfortunately most of the world
has kind of written them off throw them a bone every now and then saying oh well here's here's
your whatever and and you know they just kind of pat them on the head and and you know keep going
and i say you know me and you know i say that every of these one billion people have something to
offer and let's give them the chance and the opportunity to give back to the world that they live
in instead of you know i trust me these people don't want to sit by and just take hand out so
their life they want to do something who knows what person has the next great novel in their head
the next great play the next great movie the next great album or song or the next great web
application or web service or operating system or mobile operating system who knows which one of
these one billion people have the next great thing in them and they can't get it out because they
can't use the computer well that raises you you're getting into the next area here the accessible
computing foundation uh at which you established the old what a year and a half two years ago
yeah so uh tell us a little bit about ACF so the ACF is a nonprofit focused on bridging the gap
between accessibility and technology and you know this day and age that we live in it's this
i call it a technological revolution there's like all these just insane things coming out we're
carrying phones in our pockets that are faster than computers that we had nine years ago where
you know people are wearing glasses on their face and taking videos and pictures and giving them
updates of tweets right and further eyes they're you know we're having autonomous cars we're having
you name it there's probably a billion other things i'm not thinking of right now all these things
are moving so fast at such a rapid rate it's really impressive but as fast as all of these things
are moving that means that people that need assistive technology or need accessibility are actually
being left behind that much faster because the faster all this technology is advancing the more and
more we're not focusing on accessibility computers have been around you know what so like you could
get them in your home since like the late 70s early 80s or whatever they've been around for a long
time there's no reason why a blind person kid shouldn't be able to at like every blind person should
be able to access the computer now it should just be built into the operating system it's not like
blind people are a new thing it's not like we just discovered there's blind people in the world
this should have been thought of from the beginning but it wasn't and so now you know like the
ACF has to come along and give free software for assistive technology to assure all blind people
can access the computer and so there's things like that like there's no like i said there's no
reason why a blind person a quadriplegic you know people with low motor skills there's no
reason why they shouldn't be able to access a computer with tools already built into the
operating system there should be no need for proprietary software companies to come along and sell
stuff for like a thousand dollars fifteen hundred dollars extra just so a person with some physical
hurdle can access a computer you know that's a really good point and i think that people sometimes
really need to be pushed some years ago i was managing a university website and i put some
effort into saying this site has to be accessible we have to do things that are going to make it
accessible and the administration of the university was say well why do we need to do that we
don't have any blind students and what i wanted to say was and with that attitude you never will
right but instead it was uh well the law says you have to right and uh you know we have the
americans with disabilities act in this country and i'm sure our friends in other places
there are similar kinds of legislation uh so i was able to just pull that out and say well
you know do you want to get prosecuted or do you want to let me fix this thing yeah and that's
sort of a double edged sword too like the americans with disability act like sure it's a good thing
that's a law that's there but then it's like okay uh we need you to do this much and no much more
and then you don't have to worry about getting sued it's like doing just enough to to appease
people and it's not even appeasing the right people like you know nine times out of ten of someone
says oh yeah this is accessible yeah it's accessible if you have your eyes open and you're using
a screen reader like even if you're using a screen with your eyes open you're still like cheating
you're not getting what could what's missing or what's not working right because you can see
and if you know if something doesn't work you like click on the mouse and it works like okay yeah it
works and it's like yeah it's accessible to you because you did it with your eyes open shut your
eyes for ten minutes and then tell me how accessible it is you know so there's a lot of that
unfortunately that kind of happens to where it's like yeah it's accessible enough yeah it works but
when push comes the shove it really isn't accessible on this you know little bit off then it was
when it was totally inaccessible yes I recall when you did that demo with Poké you just turned off
the monitor it's like okay Poké you're you are now blind exactly now I know that you are looking
for people to support the existing computing foundation I signed up and I think the plan I'm
lying is two dollars a month yes you know that's not a whole lot of money there's most people
going to order something like that and is that I think that's PayPal yeah unfortunately right now
it's PayPal have you looked at you know Amazon and Google I'm more looking at a company called
Stripe they're sort of the newer sort of company offering things like online payments I'm looking
at setting up something with them the the the reason why I don't like PayPal and I've had a few
been you know few people email me saying like is there any other way I can give you money than
other through PayPal because even some other people don't like PayPal one issue I've been having
is with PayPal I've noticed it like me not recently but in the past I would get an email saying
like oh so and so quick their membership like oh that's things and I thought of like emailing
people just like oh I'm sorry you know was there something you know I do feel like we're not
doing something that we should be but I never email people and one time I had a member email me
and he said I'm sorry you know why did you quit my why did you cancel my membership and I email
the vaccine I didn't cancel your membership I got an email from PayPal saying you cancel that
and he said well I got an email saying that you cancel that and I was like that's really weird
and so he was like why didn't cancel it and I was like well you know obviously I wouldn't want
to cancel your membership I have no idea why this happened so you know I had 10 or 12 cancellations
probably all of them if not most of them with this like PayPal debacle like campus so if you were
a member I did not cancel your membership if you'd like to join again it would be greatly appreciated
but I have no idea why PayPal would do that well I think that illustrates the problem that a lot
of us have is that PayPal is not very customer friendly they tend to be arbitrary and you know you
could they could one day just suddenly decide we've decided you're not legitimate and not even give
you the money that has already been collected right yeah yeah I saw I don't know if it was a kick
starter in your Google campaign but I saw someone had raised like a significant amount of money like
$80,000 $100,000 something like that and PayPal held on to like half of it and said well we're
not gonna release the rest of it to you until we know you know people are getting what you said
they're gonna get and I was like whoa I was like who gave them the you know who gave them the
position to decide whether or not they're gonna give this person the money you know I was like man
that's that's a little scary oh absolutely and you know I understand that a lot of people PayPal
is being in but remember there was a company that needed some serious competition it used PayPal
yeah so I'm looking at using it like I said a company called Stripe so if anyone's looking for any
sort of online payment method I would check out Stripe I don't know if they're US only but I would
definitely check them out and I hope in the very near future we'll be switching over to them and
we won't have to accept PayPal anymore okay that's that's good keep us informed about all of that
so I think at this point what what are you mostly looking for I know you've got this fundraiser going
to raise money to improve the Orca screen readers at the primary focus right now yeah basically
with making Orca better I say I want to make it 10 times better really the goal currently there's
no like major show stopping bugs in Orca I mean it's comparable to like jaws which is the
proprietary software or whatever other you know proprietary screen readers software it's comparable
but currently there's 247 bugs against Orca and so it's sort of like you know death by a thousand
paper cuts kind of thing so what I'd love to do is with a hundred thousand dollars we could hire
two full-time developers like in South America and that we have a couple of guys that we're looking at
and it and currently there's one full there's basically really one developer on Orca no one's
there's no outside people you know contributing stuff there's one full-time developer she gets paid
by another company to do work of work which is great the only I don't want to say problem or
whatever but the only thing is when the money the company that pays her she has to basically work on
things that they deem you know important or that they want her to get done so anything outside of
that she can't do on company time she would have to do on her own time and if she's already doing
you know 40 60 hours a week she probably doesn't really you know want to donate anymore time so
if we could hire a couple more guys we could triple you know the development we could triple the
amount of commits to Orca we could you know triple the work being done to Orca get these bugs down
and then we could actually truly start innovating on Orca I don't want to start any sort of innovation
until we can get a lot of these bugs squash because now let's tell my wife the other day that
you know I've been using Orca full-time for five years now I don't there are a little quirky
workaround things that you have to do I don't really I don't notice them anymore I'm just used to it
to me Orca's fine Orca works but I saw someone come out of the million with the other day say like
oh man how do you know how do you do this how do you do that and like everyone's like oh yeah
three years ago we figured out a way to work around that or you know oh yeah you know instead of
doing this you have to do that and I started to realize man there's all these little things that we
do to kind of make it work when it shouldn't have to be like that so I want to get work at that point
we're a new person you know install Sonar installs any other canoe Linux starts up Orca and look
at no problems they're going to be able to just start using stuff and not have to ask like why
doesn't this work why isn't that work why you know why can't I see what I spilled when I arrow back
why is it not reading it you know little things like that so that's really the goal of Orca is to
you know to get for the hundred thousand dollars is to hire some guys to work on this and really
just squash those nitpicking little things that I don't even notice anymore that sounds like a great
idea so we're getting I think towards the end here so where can people go for more information
sure so the so the campaign again is igg.me slash at slash orca and if you want to check out
the accessible computing foundation that is at theacf.co theacf.co and if you want to check out
Sonar the operating system it's sonar canoelinux.com so those are the the three places you'd probably
want to check out. Wonderful thank you very much Jonathan I will make sure that these get into
the show notes for this program so that people can get more information and as Ken said we're
going to be talking about this in a week's time because we're going to have our new years marathon
and you are going to be featured on. Yeah I will I will be on that as as much as a humanly possible
so if anyone doesn't want to talk to me you'll be able to hit me up on the hpr marathon.
Wonderful so this is sohuka signing off on behalf of Jonathan Nado and Ken Fallon and as always
I'm going to remind everyone to support free software. Absolutely.
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