I don't think anyone implied or said you specifically had a JAWS
or any other mindset. At least, I know that was not my intended
assumption and I apologize if I made it sound as if I had just
written your experience off as such, John. My comments were from my
general experiences in dealing with folks coming over from windows
and such screen readers as well as my own. No, my thinking is not
clouded by the Mac. In fact, my use of the Mac has truly cleared my
mind in regard to computer access and the future of that access.
It's like anything else. No solution is perfect for everyone.
No one will say VoiceOver is perfect. Are there things about it that
drive me up the wall? Of course. However, in comparing my overall
experience to dealing with Windows, it's worth the inconveniences.
Maybe, some things "don't make sense" to specific kinds of thinking,
but, you know what, there is a hell of a lot in JAWS and Window-Eyes
that I found doesn't make any more sense. It's just the nature of
the beast, and, again, based on personal impressions and reactions.
I can just tell you from witnessing it that once people toss
aside the screen reader framework, mindset or whatever terminology
you want to use and approach VO with an open mind and an honest one,
they tend to get much farther than before hand. That's just my
findings and I am not at all stating that it is the absolute rule of
thumb. You have your own experiences and your own reactions. I'd be
glad to give you a hand off list should you ever desire assistance.
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 11, 2006, at 10:21 AM, John Heim wrote:
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.
