Hi Larry,
I understand your frustrations and agree with some of your concerns.
Others I do not. The response you received from Apple regarding $199
is unacceptable when you have purchased the Apple Care package. I
have noticed that Apple's sales people seem less than versed in VO
related questions but the Apple Care people should not be so dense.
I would do either or both of the following:
*contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] through email and mention your
experience and obvious frustration with such an outrageous response.
The Accessibility team usually will respond to your questions in a
reasonable amount of time.
*attempt your questions with Apple Care once again and if you receive
a similar response, ask to speak with a superior. Express your
frustrations to the superior as professionally as you can and if you
still get nowhere, send off another note to the Accessibility team.
With respect to accessibility of various apps with VO. Remember that
it is not VO that is made compatible with an application, it is the
application that is made compatible with VO. this of course brings
up two things, it is not Apple's problem that VO is not compatible
with Office but it sure is Apple's problem that iWork apps are not
yet accessible. We need to get on their case for their own products
and on the other developers for their respective apps.
With respect to Safari. David mentioned some excellent ideas for
improving your surfing experience. I'll add the following:
*make sure you've hidden all the hidable items in your View menu when
in Safari. I find it rather cluttering to have the Address bar and
the BookMarks bar and such interfering with my reading and navigating
of a page. If I need the Google Search field I can press cmd+shift
+vertical line or simply go to google and type it in.
*grouping items on webpages is extremely useful It helps you
navigate pages quickly. I also have VO only navigate images with
links (found in the Navigation tab in the VO Utility). Some don't
care for this but it works well for me.
*the difference between the down arrow and the right arrow is when
you use the down arrow, VO will actually move straight down until it
finds something to read which can skip material which is useful in
some cases. Using the right arrow reads everything, useful but
cumbersome sometimes. You can also use the tab key to navigate if
you've set it up in Safari Preferences.
*Safari does handle html frames quite well. If the page is coded
properly for frames. It should be noted though that the look of
frames does not always mean that a page was coded that way. In fact,
my understanding is that frames are no longer a standard in html coding.
With all that said, you must do what is best for you and your
technology needs. You should not have to learn Terminal, Linux or
anything else to operate your Mac efficiently. Make it work for you
within your own know how. If it cannot do it for you, then so be
it. I believe you would not be the type of person that would be
disrespecting Macs and such but would just be waiting for the time
when it could work for you. I also believe that if you give it some
more time you will iron out your frustrations. The iMac you
purchased is an awesome unit, I wish I had one. I purchased one for
a teacher in my department and he is thrilled by its performance.
Sorry this was so long. Hope some part of it was useful.
Later...
Tim Kilburn
& Carter the Canine
Fort McMurray, AB Canada
