Emmabuntüs announced DE 6 version 1.03 on September 28, 2026, adding two accessibility tools: Easy Menu, which puts accessibility options and common actions within keyboard reach, and Easy Reader TTS, which processes supported files for spoken playback. The release is based on Debian 13.7 and includes the Xfce and LXQt desktop environments.
What the two tools do
| Tool | How to open it | What it does |
| Easy Menu | Press Right Control or F12 | Opens a keyboard-navigable menu of accessibility options and common actions. |
| Easy Reader TTS | In Caja, select a file and press F7 or F8 | Processes supported files for reading or text extraction; F8 saves converted text beside the original file, while F7 does not. |
The release also updates Thunderbird to 140.16.0esr, Ventoy to 1.1.17, Turboprint to 3.01-1 and CTparental to 5.3.10-1, and adds firmware-sof-signed.
Easy Menu puts common actions within keyboard reach
Press Right Control or F12 to open Easy Menu. Use the arrow keys to navigate, then press Enter or the shortcut shown for an action. When a screen reader is active, the menu is both visible and vocalized.
Its shortcuts cover tasks such as controlling Orca, opening email or a web browser, managing files, and accessing Wi-Fi and volume options.
Easy Reader TTS processes files for speech
In the Caja file manager, select a file and press F7 or F8 to start processing. Easy Reader converts supported text-oriented documents into text for spoken playback. The shortcut matters if you want to keep that conversion: F8 saves the resulting text file beside the original; F7 does not.
The supported conversion formats include TXT, ODT, PDF, HTML, DOC, DOCX and RTF. EPUB files open in Ebook-speaker. For images, optical character recognition (OCR) identifies text, which can then be opened in Easy Player TTS. Audio and video files open in VLC, while ZIP archives containing DAISY documents can be opened in a DAISY reader.
In Easy Player TTS, Space starts or pauses playback, Escape stops it, and the arrow keys adjust speed or move between sentences. The manual also lists controls for punctuation, voice and theme. With Pico Svox or Piper, Orca may say “space” when playback resumes; that key echo can be turned off in Orca’s Echo preferences.
The project names collaborators connected to Togo
Emmabuntüs says its accessibility tools were inspired by ACIAH-Linux and developed from ACIAH scripts in collaboration with A.S.I. YOVOTOGO and the Fédération togolaise des associations de personnes handicapées (FETAPH).
