1. Welcome to Cthulhu

Cthulhu is a free, open source, flexible, and extensible screen reader that provides access to the graphical desktop via speech and refreshable braille.

Cthulhu works with applications and toolkits that support the Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI), which is the primary assistive technology infrastructure for Linux and Solaris. Applications and toolkits supporting the AT-SPI include Gtk+, Qt, Java Swing, LibreOffice, Gecko, WebKitGtk, and Chrome/Chromium.

Launching <app>Cthulhu</app>

To launch Cthulhu:

The method for configuring Cthulhu to be launched automatically as your preferred screen reader will depend upon which desktop environment you use.

To toggle Cthulhu on and off in GNOME, press SuperAltS.

Type cthulhu, along with any optional parameters, in a terminal window or within the Run dialog and then press Return.

Load-Time Options

The following options can be specified when launching Cthulhu in a terminal window or within the Run dialog:

-h, --help: Show the help message

-v, --version: Show the version of Cthulhu

-s, --setup: Set up user preferences

-u, --user-prefs=dirname: Use dirname as the alternate directory for user preferences

-e, --enable=option: Force use of option, where the option can be one of the following:

speech

braille

braille-monitor

-d, --disable=option: Prevent the use of an option, where the option can be one of the following:

speech

braille

braille-monitor

-p, --profile=filename: Import a profile from a given Cthulhu profile file

-r, --replace: Replace a currently-running Cthulhu

-l, --list-apps: Print the known running applications

--debug: Send debug output to debug-YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM:SS.out

--debug-file=filename: Send debug output to the specified file