Want to try a GUI. Which one is best?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Best I can tell, Mate 1.24 is currently available in both Debian
Testing(aka Bull's Eye which will eventually become Debian 11) and
Debian Unstable(aka Sid).

It's unlikely something as big as a new version of Mate will make it
into Debian 9 aka Stretch or oldstable or Debian 10 aka Buster or
Stable as Debian priortizes stability over cutting edge, though it
might make it into backports(more likely for Buster than for Stretch,
but I confess to not knowing how long Debian supports Oldstable when a
new Stable is released).

That said, while Orca, the primary, and possibly only, graphical
screen reader for Linux, is officially part of Gnome and persumably
optimized for that environment, and probably works so well with Mate
due to Mate's origins as a Gnome fork(as I understand it, Gnome 3
brought many controversial changes to look and feel and Mate startedas
a way to keep the Gnome 2.x look and feel in an updated environment),
Orca should, in theory, be able to work with any GTK-based Desktop
Environment or Window Manager, though anything QT-based(KDE chief
among them) is currently a bit hit or miss.

Gnome or Mate might be the best options for a beginner as they're the
most well documented DEs for using them with Orca, but Knoppix using a
combination of LXDE and Orca when launching a full Desktop seems to
work well, and I've heard people have had success with the ratpoison
window Manager.