Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS: Firefox 62 and Orca screen reader

Hello,

I’m really enjoying using Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS as my daily system. I’m a blind user so am utilizing the Orca screen reader.

Recently, I performed updates to Firefox 62. In Firefox 62, Mozilla changed the underlying method for how pages are shown. Although this visually doesn’t affect the way pages are displayed, there are certain sites that Orca now struggles to read due to this change in Firefox 62.

The Orca team updated Orca to be able to handle this change in the 3.28.2 release of Orca. The LTS currently ships with Orca 3.28.0.

Therefore, since this would be a minor update, is it possible to offer this new version of Orca to users on the LTS please? This regression makes some sites difficult to use, and given that not everyone uses the interim releases, having to wait 2 years for the next LTS could have an impact on the ability to browse certain sites with Orca. The advantage of including Orca 3.28.2 is that it will allow Orca to work better with Firefox 62, and it’s still a stable version of Orca as it’s still in the 3.28.x series.

Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to any input you may have.

Sincerely,

Brandon Tyson

2 Likes

I second the motion; Can orca and dependencies be backported from the latest stable branch? E. G. orca 3.28.2? I’m using the 2018.10 but understand why some folk would like to stick with the lts, but have later accessibility. There used to be a ppa for this.