This is an interesting idea. If we do it, we of course want to do it right. Therefore, I've just started a thread on the Orca mailing list. There are many end-users subscribed and there's always plenty of discussion, debate, and opinion sharing. :) Having their feedback and suggestions should prove valuable.

Thread begins here: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2014-August/msg00561.html

I would like to see a feature where after some idle time the screen reader is started also, the Apple TV does it and for someone transitioning who has not thought to read up first and dive straight in, this is a great feature. Though the ability to quit very easily should be paramount so not to produce further bug reports from annoyed sighted users.

Yes, this is exactly what I suggested here.

The idea is that in initial setup we will start the reader if you idle for few seconds, and the reader would allow some sort of an option to enable it permanently (for example by "press Win+Enter to enable screen reader permanently"). After the initial setup is complete, the setting will be carried over to your desktop session and the reader would be auto started on every login unless you disable it.

Alternatively we could just enable it on idle and then have a shortcut or a button to turn it off for people who don't need the screen reader.

We could also have it speak the shortcuts to explain how you can toggle the reader during runtime.

I am running gnome 3.12 on arch linux and I am afraid I haven't seen initial setup screen at all. I have installed gnome 3.6, enabled gdm via systemd and either on the login screen or after logging I was just able to press super+alt+s to start orca. So if the initial setup screen in deed came up I haven't noticed it. We may need a kind of auditory cue or something else to make all sorts of users aware it has popped on the screen.
If this is something a typical user would first encounter on a live CD (e.g. similar to ubuntu initial screen with install / try out buttons) or on an installed system when putting in his / her credentials I like the idea to start screen reader after idling for a little while. E.G. 45 seconds or more is a reasonable time.

Created attachment 300208 [details] [review]
assistant: Add support to start the screen reader if needed

It sees that if the user is idle for 30 seconds and has not clicked a  button to
switch pages that is to proceed or to go back, the screen-reader is enabled.

Review of attachment 300208 [details] [review]:

::: gnome-initial-setup/gis-assistant.c
@@ +56,3 @@
   GisPage *current_page;
+
+  guint timer_id;

Would be good to give the variable a more meaningful name, like screen_reader_timeout_id or so.

@@ +354,3 @@
+  g_settings_set_boolean (screen_reader, "screen-reader-enabled", TRUE);
+  g_object_unref (screen_reader);
+  return FALSE;

It would be nice if we could not just start orca (indirectly, like this), but also make it say a nice welcome message. But we can refine that later.

The first page of initial setup is language selection. If the screen reader is going to be useful at this stage, it needs to accommodate the user not understanding the default language.

One way to do this would be to have the screen reader read the same line in each available language, one after another:

"Press return to select English"
"Pulse Intro para seleccionar Español"
"Drücken Sie die Eingabetaste , um Deutsch zu wählen."

And so on.

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