It's recently reached the point where a lot of things are kind of doable, if you don't mind headaches:

* Orca's performance on the web and in general is terrible compared to NVDA and (I assume) VoiceOver, though this isn't always the case anymore with less complex sites. Using flat review sometimes comes with a lag, entering/exiting preferences is slow, a long list of links can render it unresponsive for several seconds...everything just takes longer. Orca is not really multithreaded afaik, which may contribute to this somewhat. Weird tip: if lag gets worse when running on battery, you use TLP and have an Intel CPU, change the HWP bias from balance_power to balance_performance. Like I said, headaches!
* Again especially on the web, expect a lot of inconsistent behavior (some elements don't activate when you press space/enter and require clicking in flat review, which is much slower and clunkier than NVDA's object review, some things might be ignored entirely or shown incorrectly, etc).
* It also seems to act up in the terminal quite a bit as well, with the workaround generally being to switch in and out of the window.
* It's less stable in general and doesn't have a lot of features you might be used to in NVDA; not dealbreakers but QoL stuff like table navigation, pausing of speech, cursor parking in the terminal, etc.
* Orca's braille support is abysmal
* not as many TTS options; previously there was basically only espeak and maybe Festival if you wanted to torture yourself. We can now use Nuance Vocalizer voices through voxin, though you must purchase each voice individually. Imo they are not really suitable for screen reader usage, but you/others might like them. There's also ViaVoice (Eloquence before it had that name) available for $5, but that version has so many annoying little glitches I find it unsuitable for use with a screen reader and always switch back to espeak.
* Many apps just aren't accessible and likely never will be.
* Orca has one developer and occasional contributions from others, and a lot of very old code. The current accessibility stack for GTK, which Orca and accessible applications use, dates back to 2001; I think someone mentioned on here a while ago that a lot of the code says "Copyright 2001 Sun Microsystems Inc"; it's true. This will change with GTK4 and a new streamlined API based on WAI-ARIA, but if/when apps start using it is anyone's guess, and there's no telling how it will work in practice yet.

I feel like the best experience you can get with Linux right now is at the console with speakup/brltty, though then you have audio issues like ALSA not being able to multiplex sound sources without latency. I completely get your frustration with Windows, though thankfully you can still get rid of most of the bullshit for now, at least. It's getting to the point where I've half-seriously thought about switching most of my machines to Linux and trying to live without the modern browser as much as I can, with at least one running Windows when that's not possible.

I hope you find something in here helpful.

I am totally blind and I ran Linux from 2012 until last Christmas. Orca is okay, but over the time I was using it, I realized I was always working around the accessibility issues. I didn't have a great way to OCR PDFS, and I was always using my iPhone to do the things that Orca could not. I got a new Windows machine for Christmas and I haven't looked back.

I hope Linux improves and I can return to it someday. I am not a huge fan of Windows, but I do like that almost every program I use is accessible. At the end of the day, I had to take a practical approach instead of an idealogical one. It is great when your computer respects your freedom, but if you can't work efficiently, it kind of seems like a waste of time.

Got a raspberry pi to mess around with recently and I have the same questions.
I can use the command line via ssh and its awesome for servers but there's something I have never gotten the hang of with orca.
I know a lot of people use it but in the 8 or 10 years I've played with various linux flavors, orca has never done it for me.
I see a lot of ,internet traffic about how awesome it is,but I've not had much success with the desktop at all.

Granted, I'm a programmer and a tinkerer at heart, but I've been using desktop Linux for about 5 years now, along with Windows and macOS. I keep a mac around for audio / video editing, and Windows just in case, but Linux is my primary.

I don't know what issues you've had with Orca, but I've dedicated quite a large amount of time to figuring out the ins and outs of Linux accessibility, and Orca works fine for me. I've used it on Gnome, Mate, XFCE, LXDE, Unity, heck, even the i3 window manager. The most important things you need to know IMO are:
1. Make sure you have the environment variable GTK_MODULES set to "gail:atk-bridge". It's fine if there's other modules in there as well, but those modules enable most accessibility features. If you're on a pre-set-up distro like Ubuntu, you won't have to worry about this, it's more for those freaks that run Arch ... oh wait that's me.
2. As of pretty recently, you can now run most Chromium and Chrome apps, including Electron based apps like Visual Studio Code. Only thing is, right now, these apps aren't good at detecting when accessibility services are running and adjusting accordingly, so you need to run them with the --force-renderer-accessibility command-line option. This seems to have been the main focus of the orca devs over the last year or so, so you've probably already heard about it.
3. If you want a good magnifier / inverted colours option, you could install something like Compiz. It doesn't work on Gnome (I'd suggest using Mate + Compiz) but it gives you fantastic negative and zoom plugins, even if Compiz is no longer the popular WM it once was.
4. If you're ok with a magnifier that only works in a window, check out $1. It comes pre-installed on Ubuntu Mate and It's pretty good from what I hear, if very simple.
5. To get slightly better voices for orca, like the ones NVDA uses if you use espeak-ng with it, open /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/espeak-ng.conf. Search for the word variant (I can't remember the exact phrasing) and you'll hit a block of comments explaining the next setting in the file. Find the setting they're talking about by cursoring down and change the 0 on the end of the line to 1. Then restart orca. If you go into orca's preferences (insert+space) you can then change the voice to something a little better. The list will probably take a couple seconds to render, as there's a lot of variants in there now.

I run a website that was created for the purpose of aggregating info like this, it's at $1, so maybe you'd find that useful? Also feel free to contact me about anything related to Linux accessibility. Either I'll know the answer or I'd like to know it so I can record it somewhere to make this easier for the next generation of blind Linux users.

I’m DeafBlind and I currently use Debian with the MATE Desktop, and Arch Linux (Talking Arch) again with the MATE Desktop. The primary purpose of my Linux Rigs is programming. So I spend the majority of my time on the Command Line. The reason for maintaining two Linux Rig is Arch is a rolling release which can and does break at times, whereas Debian is a point release thus more stable.

You don’t mention which distro you have been using. I don’t think they are all equal in terms of accessibility. I have used the Gnome desktop and found issues with Orca and brltty in particular. When installing Gnome did you install xorg, or Wayland?

For me Debian is the easiest distro to use with either speech or braille. If you select install with speech, it will automatically install Orca and brltty (if you have a braille display connected during the installation). I am able to install Debain just using a braille display without any issues. The default desktop is MATE (Gnome 2) and I highly recommend you stick with it when you get to the option to change it.

Once you know some of the seemingly endless keyboard commands, navigating the desktop is a simple affair. Like any system not all applications are accessible on Linux. I am currently compiling a list of accessible apps for Linux. But there are plenty of apps that are accessible.

Linux unlike proprietary software such as Windows, macOS, etc … needs more input from the user to get the system setup but you have the option to customise the hell out of it. That’s my main reason for using Arch. I have just started writing a blog to document my own journey with Arch Linux as Rethunker mentions.

To clarify a few of your other points. I agree that Microsoft Office is a good suite and I run it myself on both macOS and Windows. But Linux does have Office Suites that work just as well. You just need to be little more open minded when using Linux. I like that Linux is open-source and doesn’t run proprietary software natively, and don’t see it as a negative. I like the philosophy of Trisquel Linux for that very reason. That distro can also be made accessible, but not as easy as Debian in my opinion.

If you want a PC-like experience then stick with Windows. Linux isn’t for you. As for macOS it has always been closed shop! At the end of the day they all have their pros and cons from a blind user’s perspective. That’s why I maintain a number of rigs running different operating systems.

I’m always happy to chat about nonvisual tech, accessibility, and tech in general. So please feel free to email me.

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Yeah, I've been 100% LINUX over over a decade now, and blind for about 4 years.

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I use $1 \-- MATE 64 bit edition (Cinnamon eidtion wouldn't work for me), and it's awesome. Most of everything is perfectly accessible without any issues, and the Linux Mint dev team actually put a huge amount of resources into accessibility. I at least think they've done a hell of a good job.

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What issues are you having with Orca/ That's all I use, and works fine for me at least.

What is it about the Mac that you find "too closed in"? I would have thought it a good choice, given it's accessibility features at the GUI level, and that it's Unix once you get to the command line.

Zoom on debian is pretty good.

Thing about Linux is that, you can download and use one distribution, but because it's all Linux you can make that distribution look and function like any other distribution.

So, for me, I would use Debian with the Pantheon launcher from elementary OS if I had all the time in the world.

The trick is to start with a distribution that is innately accessible out of the box, and you can change it to suit whatever desires or needs you have afterwards.

You can also use the eloquence synthesizer, very popular amongst the blind community, on Linux without the egregious DRM.

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I've been using KDE/Kubuntu for a few years and have found it pretty good. The built in magnifier with KDE is nice, you can pretty much zoom as far as you want (at the expense of picture quality of course). I've never tried any text-to-speech on linux though, so can't say anything about that.

This is also one of my biggest frustrations with Linux, and I don't even need a magnifier or screen reader (scaling up the UI and terminal font size is good enough for me on dwm).

It's definitely an area that I want to contribute code to down the line when I have more time.

A DeafBlind programmer chronicles his work in setting up computers, and he’s doing work in Linux. I’d suggest checking out his website and Twitter and perhaps even contacting him.

The website where he's writing about Linux work is here:
https://screenlessswitcher.com/

Here’s one of his websites:

https://deafblind.im

He’s redesigning another of his websites:

https://lifeinsixdots.com


On Twitter, you can follow @LifeInSixDots. Here’s the web page:
https://twitter.com/LifeInSixDots

Zoom on Mint is decent. You can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel, at least.

I've given up on Orca. Thankfully I don't often need to use a screen reader.

I share your pessimistic perspective.