Orca on Arch

Orca seems to be the go-to screen reader on linux systems.

On Ubuntu, the setup is straight forward

sudo apt install orca

similar thing for Arch

yay orca
#or
sudo pacman -S orca

It gets really tricky when you have a bizarre mix of window manager or GUI or sound system. this message from a mail archive set me on the right track to solving my issue

This can be configured through spd-conf in the terminal.

I had to change my output from pulse-audio to alsa (I don't know why, but it worked).

The screen reader can be started by pressing Super + Alt + S

It can also be accessed through Settings.