Apologies, John, I didn't really mean to imply you're more prejudiced than other list members or even that you are necessarily wrong that JAWS is easier to learn than VoiceOver, even if it did sound like that. I'm a sighted web developer with an interest in screen reader web access, so I'm subscribed to a lot of screen reader-specific mailing lists. I definitely recognize your point that every screen reader, JAWS included, has its loyal fans!
What I was trying to say in a somewhat discombulated way is merely this. Scientifically speaking, to get a clear idea of the ease-of-learning merits of such complex and flawed systems, we'd have to conduct a usability study with users who are just beginning with those systems and users switching in both directions, not just rely on anecdotal evidence from the most common experience of switching from Windows and JAWS to Mac OS X and VoiceOver. Linux screen readers like Orca fare even worse than VoiceOver in this respect, since new users typically have to cope with the horrors of operating system installation whereas Windows and Mac came preinstalled. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis On Fri, 2007-04-13 at 14:25 -0500, John Heim wrote: > From: "Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > I agree that your familiarity with JAWS and unfamiliarity with > > non-Windows operating systems would naturally prejudice you in favour of > > JAWS unless the other screen readers offered massive ease-of-use > > benefits. > > I didn't exactly say i'm prejudiced. I said it's possible. I don't think I > am. > > And for that matter, almost everybody on this list would naturally be > prejudiced in favor of voiceover. If you discount my opinion, then you have > to discount most everyone else's too. > > I'll bet I'm the only one on this list who has argued both sides. I think > the jaws advocates underestimate and prematurely discount voiceover and the > voiceover advocates unfairly criticize jaws. I can tell you one thing with > 100% certainty... There are jaws users who are every bit as certain that > voiceover stinks as many people on this list seem to be that voiceover has > it all over jaws. It would be interesting to get the two groups together. I > would like to put some of you folks together with the people on the nfbcs > list. > > But I can't tell you folks anything about the NFB (like how to sign up for > one of their lists) until they reverse their stand on accessible money. > (They are against it, by the way.) > >
