I've used jaws, windoweyes, speakup, and emacspeak. Emacspeak is legendary
for how hard it is to learn. But at *least* if you press the cursor arrows
in a text window, it reads what is under the cursor. What could be more
basic than that?
I don't have a jaws mindset. I use speakup almost as much as I use jaws and
I use emacspeak a lot as well. I don't think the problem is my mindset. You
folks love the Mac, and that's fine. But I think it's clouding your
judgement.
----- Original Message -----
From: "JOHN PANARESE" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility look at Vista
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.
