Two questions, TTS help & volume muted

[Blaine Clark]

Hello,

Question 1)
I've been messing around trying Screen Readers and different settings 
because several of my blind and low vision friends are very interested 
in my recent conversion to Ubuntu (and I've added KDE) and would love to 
be able to at least give it or some other version of Linux a serious try 
for themselves. I'm fully sighted but I liked to use TTS to check my web 
page editing for two chapters of the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind 
and I got fed up with M$ updates me$$ing my computer up and when the 
groups heard about it, several of them, especially those on one 
committee who works on their web site would love to access the several 
programming programs they've heard about that's available in Linux, but 
are they easily accessible only for the sighted?

So far, I've found Orca to be clumsy, but I'm sure it's my settings 
attempts. I could use some setup advice from anyone who uses it.
Festival just won't work. Again, help!
Emacs won't work.
I'm doing something wrong but can't figure it out.

Question 2)
Regularly, but not every time, volume is muted when I start my computer. 
I'm assuming it's from some of the settings I've been messing around 
with regarding the TTS programs. I'm sure these two problems are related.

When I get straightened out, I'll ask about different voices.
I haven't yet tried the Screen Magnifiers but I'll let that question 
ride for later too.

Hope you all had a grand Thanksgiving!

Blaine