We're certainly in agreement that Apple will get to the point where
things like Garage Band etc are accessible, though inaccessibility
issues are currently largely to do with the program being run, not
the VO. That aside, Jaws didn't support WIndows 95 until 1996, and
was at version 2.0.29 at the time. Version 3.5 sounds about right
for inclusion of the command though, and that would've been 1999 or so.
On Apr 13, 2007, at 10:57 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
introduced until 2000 or so, long after the Windows key that did
the same
was introduced.
I used Jaws around 1995 on win95 - Jaws 3.5 I think it was. It
certainly had
insert+f6, because many times having overlapping windows on the
screen would
confuse Jaws and it couldn't read even the simplest text document
properly
until all other windows were minimized. It still sort of has this
problem
so I've gotten into the habbit of minimizing all but the current
app. I've
never seen this problem with VoiceOver.
I also have to say here that I'm not arguing for the sake of
argument, or
because I like windows or Jaws so much. I'm simply curious about
people's
philosophies on how to build an effective nonvisual UI. In want to
be able
to use more applications, music production is perhaps my main
desire. When I
can efficiently use Garage Band and QBase on the Mac, I'll consider
VoiceOver to be mature enough. Jaws is scriptable, so it allowed two
different developers to build two very different environments on
top of Jaws
which make Sonar (an audio and midi editing suite sold by Cakewalk
Music
Software) accessible. I have no doubt Apple will get there, and I
also have
no doubt that their solution will be different than what has come
before.
It remains to be seen how effective and comfortable it is to real
users.
Apples products have always been easy to use for sighted folks, so
as soon
as they figure out how to do this for a nonvisual audience, then I
think
we'll see some cool stuff coming out of Apple Labs.
-- Rich
----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh de Lioncourt" <[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 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: Hi
On Apr 13, 2007, at 9:22 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
Pointless, until you consider that back in those ancient days
(around 1995
or so), the standard keyboard didn't have the app key and the
"windows" key
on it, so windows+m (minimize all windows) wasn't available. So, if
you were
lucky enough to have a keyboard that had extra keys on it, you
might have
been able to convince win95 to do the right thing, but I'm not even
sure
there was a windows keyboard command for this until win98 came out,
which
was coincident with the wider availability of keyboards with these
extra
keys on them.
Actually, the JFW command wasn't around back then either. It wasn't
introduced until 2000 or so, long after the Windows key that did the
same was introduced.
