Text Attributes

The term "text attributes" refers to all of the font, style, alignment, and other formatting associated with a given character or series of characters.

Obtaining Formatting Information

When you press Orca Modifier+F, Orca will speak known text attribute information about an object. In addition, Orca will optionally indicate text attributes in braille by "underlining" them as you navigate a document.

Because the number of text attributes is large, and not everyone cares about every attribute, the Text Attributes page of the preferences dialog allows you to customize which text attributes Orca will present in speech, along with the order in which they should be presented, and which ones Orca will indicate in braille.

Because the Text Attributes page is also part of the application-specific settings, you can customize text attribute presentation on an as-needed basis for each application you use.

Identifying Misspelled Words

Most applications and toolkits indicate that a word is misspelled by underlining that word with a red, squiggly line. The presence of this line is typically exposed to assistive technologies as a text attribute. As a result, you will find spelling errors amongst the text attributes you can choose. By default, the spelling error attribute is enabled for both speech and braille and will therefore be presented along with any other attributes whose indication you have enabled.

In addition to accessing the presence of spelling errors as a text attribute, if you have key echo and/or word echo enabled and type a word which is misspelled, when the spelling error indication appears, Orca will announce "misspelled" so that you can immediately go back and correct the error.

Finally, when you are navigating within a document and the caret moves into a word which is misspelled, Orca will announce the presence of the spelling error.