Again, John, if you need any help, please don't hesitate to
contact me off list. I had my difficulties as well and still have
my daily frustrations over a year later.
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 2:37 PM, John Heim wrote:
Sorry, I over reacted.
Although, I do think that it's not likely that my problems with vo
are due to having used jaws for so many years. More likely, it's
that I'm learning a new operating system and a new screen reader.
----- 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: Monday, September 11, 2006 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility look at Vista
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.
