Orca is a free and open-source, flexible, extensible screen reader from the GNOME project for individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

The name Orca, which is another term for a killer whale, is a nod to the long-standing tradition of naming screen readers after aquatic creatures, including the Assistive Technology product on Windows called JAWS (which stands for Job Access With Speech), the early DOS screen reader called Flipper,[3] and the UK vision impairment company Dolphin Computer Access.

[10] The development of Orca was started by the Accessibility Program Office (APO) of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (now Oracle) with contributions from many community members.

When Mulcahy left Sun Microsystems and ventured out to start his own company, the Accessibility Program Office took his work, continued with it and released the first official version on September 3, 2006.

The maintainers so far are:[17] Current: Previous: Other developers who made great contributions to the project are Krishnakant Mane, Marc Mulcahy, Rich Burridge and Scott Haeger.