Don't get me wrong. I am not steering you away from voiceover. In fact, I
am a huge Mac & voiceover advocate. I am trying to steer my department
toward buyintg more Macs. I have acquired a Mac for myself at home. I have 2
main points:
1. You should prepare yourself for an effort. I think most Windows users
will struggle for a while before becoming fluent in voiceover & osx.
2. There is at least one deal killer in voiceover, the way it works in a
terminal window is just not good enough.
I made a 3rd point in my first post but it is both controversial and simply
a matter of opinion. I feel that jaws is easier to use than voiceover. Even
I'll admit that the difference is marginal and that my opinion may be simply
wrong because I'm so much more familiar with windows and jaws. Of course, I
don't think that is true or I wouldn't have posted my opinion. I'm trying to
take my familiarity into account and I still think voiceover is, well,
cumbersome (for lack of a better word). I think if you took a Windows user
and a Mac user, blindfolded them, and said go ahead and use the computer,
the Windows person would have to get less help and would figure out how to
use jaws before the Mac user would figure out how to use voiceover.
Obviously, I can't prove that. It's just my totally subjective opinion. It
would be an interesting experiment though, don't you think?
Keep in mind that voiceover is on version 1. I don't know if that is the
official version number from Apple but it didn't exist before the current
version of the operating system. Jaws is on version 8. It's not really a
fair comparison. Voiceover version 1 is way, way better than jaws version 1.
Well, I never used jaws version 1 but I used version 3.5 and voiceover is
already better than that. And voiceover is *free*.
Another point: When I have to use somebody's computer in my department, I
don't use jaws. I usually use narrator. If that isn't good enough, I map a
network share and fire up nvda. With voiceover, it's not even an issue
because it's part of the operating system.
So by now I think I've probably made more points if favor of voiceover than
jaws.
From: "Ari" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS Xby
theblind" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 10:20 AM
Subject: Re: Hi
If I can do most things with VO, I think I'd rather take the chance.
Especially because JFW and all other screenreaders are so expensive, it's
probably worthwhile trying to learn VO, also considering the thing which I
find the most brilliant: that I can go to any sighted person's Mac, and,
because I've learned VO, I can use it just like that. It is also a good
thing to learn the other operating system's screenreader, since then you
can use it whenever you need to anyway. I also heard the Narrator story,
and, I don't know if this is true, but I heard that the screenreader
manufacturers could sue microsoft if they developed a screenreader that
was good, you guys know like when makers of things like web browsers sued
microsoft because of the incorporated browser and stuff, I suppose that's
what screenreader manufacturers would do? But John, you do have the point,
I need to be as productive as I am with the windows system, in that my
documents and assignments need to look good, and I can be able to do most
things.
Ari
Ari
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alastair Campbell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: Hi
John Heim wrote:
Wow... I totally disagree that voiceover is easy to llearn when compared
to jaws.
I was in a similar position, and wrote this:
http://www.nomensa.com/resources/articles/accessibility-articles/screen-reading-with-apples.html
(Which although some things are easier than I previously thought, it
is still fair to say that application support is still somewhat
lacking, depending on what you do with it.)
I kept going, and created this help guide:
http://alastairc.ac/notes/osx/voiceover/voiceover-basics/
I suspect that (like me) a lot of the issues were more to do with
differences in OSX and how they impact keyboard controls rather than
the screen reader itself. It's a fine line, but an important one.
Voiceover has a lot of potential, I'm definitely looking forward to
the next version
(http://alastairc.ac/2006/08/the-potential-of-voiceover/).
Oh, and I made a backup of the Voiceover wiki before it disappeared,
is it worth putting back up?
Kind regards,
-Alastair
