This is an excellent point. It is what I tell those who are
interested in VO or I help use it. The real obstacle the person
coming over from Windows has is tossing their JAWS or Window--Eyes
mindset out the window. It took me just a few times messing with the
Mac to learn VoiceOver, and once I entirely put aside my mental
comparisons and constant desire to have it work like Window-Eyes, my
experience improved ten fold. VO can be self-taught and, to me, it
is, overall, a far more easier system to master. Yes, this is surely
opinion based from my personal experiences, but I've seen more than a
few folks reach this point as well. to be convinced of this conclusion
Take Care
John D. Panarese
Managing Director
Technologies for the Visually Impaired, Inc.
9 Nolan Court
Hauppauge, NY 11788
Tel/Fax, (631) 724-4479
Email, [EMAIL PROTECTED] net
Internet, http://www.tvi-web.com
AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTORS FOR PORTSET SYSTEMS LTD, COMPSOLUTIONS VA,
PREMIER ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES, INDEX, PAPENMEIER, REPRO-TRONICS,
DUXBURY, DANCING DOTS AND OTHER PRODUCTS FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY
IMPAIRED
AUTHORIZED APPLE BUSINESS ASSOCIATE
MAC VOICEOVER TRAINING AND SALES
On Sep 7, 2006, at 6:12 PM, John Weir wrote:
A good deal of the difficulty for PC people is that they expect VO
to mimic jaws commands and operation. If they take the alternative
view and forget JAWS and say they are learning a new system they
will quickly find it is great and very easy to use and learn. Stop
trying to make VO act like JAWS. It took me only about 1/2 hour to
get to where it could be used and then I just learned as I went.
When learning JAWS I had to go to classes at considerable expense
for at least 10 days to get minor use of it. Vo is much easier to
learn and use and can be self taught at no cost. Vickie Weir
Darcy Burnard wrote:
Hi Harry. I'm sorry to hear that you are finding voice over
difficult to master. I've been using it for a couple of months
now, and I'm finding the opposite to be true. I've used a lot
of technologies over the years. Starting off with the Apple 2
and text talker with the echo, moving on to dos with asap, then
on to windows and a variety of screen readers like window bridge,
asaw, and eventually jaws and window-eyes. In addition to all
that, I've played extensively with linux and speakup, before
finally trying out voice over and the Mac. In all that, the only
thing I would say is easier to learn then voice over is speakup,
and that's only because it's screen review functions are very
similar to asap, and thus no learning curve. But of all the
screen readers designed for graphical interfaces, I've found
voice over to be the easiest to learn. The main reason I think
is that there aren't a lot of commands to remember, so it was
more about learning tiger then it was learning voice over. The
voice over tutorial you get when first turning on the Mac gave me
a good chunk of what I needed to know about voice over. The rest
of what I needed was found in the voice over manual, and going
through the archives of this list. Now to be fair, I had been
lurking on this list for a good year before getting my Mac, so I
had a pretty good idea of what to expect with voice over.
Obviously I'm not an expert in the Mac by any stretch of the
imagination, but in the last month or so, I have been using it
exclusively for my computing needs, with very little difficulty.
Actually that's not entirely true. I have been using windows to
play change reaction, but other then that, it's been the Mac.
Now I'm not trying to compare myself to anyone else. We all have
different ways of learning, and different things that work for
us. I for example, have never much cared for Jaws, but I know
that's the screen reader of choice for most. I mainly wrote this
because I'm seeing a lot of people saying that voice over is
good, but they wouldn't leave windows yet. I just thought I'd
offer up the perspective of someone who has recently switched
over to the mac, is loving it, and rarely if ever uses windows
anymore.
Darcy
On 7-Sep-06, at 9:34 AM, Harry Bates wrote:
I agree. While I have not yet even mastered the simplest
rudimentary commands of VO, I am definitely in no hurry to
discard my JAWS screen reader and my windows system. Learning
VO has turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. I know
it has to be something real simple that keeps stumping me in the
learning process with VO and the keyboard commands, but I
haven't figured it out yet. It is probably something real
simple like pressing the spacebar at the right time or the
return key or something, but what is it? keeps stumping me. Or
maybe it is making sure that all three of the VO cursors are
tethered together at the same point. Is there a keyboard
command to do that?
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Heim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of
Mac OS Xby theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility look at Vista
David,
Sometimes it's difficult to frame a question so that it doesn't
sound snotty. But trust me, I'm really just asking...
You said:
When the make their os seriously and robustly accessible such
as what Apple has done, I'll take them seriously.
What do you mean by the above comment? Voiceover is way better
than Narrator -- you've got to give Apple credit for that. But
in large part, the blame for that probably goes to the NFB. I
suppose Microsoft could have ignored the NFB's request that
they *not* include a real screen reader in Windows but that
would have been extraordinary.
Other than that, I think Microsoft has really done an
outstanding job of making Windows accessible. Internet
Explorer, Outlook Express, and the Office suite of programs are
some of the best programs on the market in terms of working
with screen readers. And I haven't found anything in Windows
itself that doesn't work with JAWS. Everything in the control
panel works great. At one time, there seems to have been a
problem with the Users widget but that seems to be fixed. I can
administer a Windows system about as well as anybody.
Again, trust me, I'm just looking for info but it seems to me
that the best solution is still Windows and JAWS. It's *way*
more expensive but it is better. Don't get me wrong, I think
Voiceover is excellent and given that it's included, it's
fantastic. I'm trying to switch from Windows/Jaws to a Mac/
Voiceover system. I'm just not sure that's practicle at this
point.
