I don't see how the zoom and close buttons are more of a hazard in a
Mac App than they are in a Windows one where screen readers have
always read them. They are out of the way and mostly ignored by VO
unless you go looking for them. I've been on the list here for years,
and don't recall any appreciable discussion of Sherlock in that time.
I agree that there are some issues and I hope they will adress them
through osftware updates. This is par for the course with a new
software release of course. Overall, I think Leopard is quite good.
On 28 Oct 2007, at 20:40, Justin Harford wrote:
Hello
Thanks for the responses on my concerns. I am happy to know that
the spaces thing is getting noticed by others.
As for the other stuff… I have in deed read the explanation for why
we have the three buttons on the top of the window. Luckily my
california education did not leave me so illiterate. Personally I
am surprised at the opposition I have encountered on this one. I
thought that blind people would want to optimize their
productiveness on the mac, not decrease it. In my defense, I would
like to point out that we have two ways of closing a window with the
keyboard, one way of hiding it with the keyboard, and a way to
access the zoom function through the menus. I think that, a person
so concerned with the importance of written explanations such as
yourself, should have the capacity to look them up. You are the
only person I am aware of, who does not know them. Which brings us
to sherlock. You must not have been on the list for that long if I
am the only person you know who has found use in that application
for there are many posts from the list's earlier days where people
praised the usefulness of sherlock.
The issue of voiceover as a tool of collaboration between the
sighted and the blind is very legitimate. A screen-reader like
jaws, that has no visible cursor or logical way of visually
displaying the blind user's movement across the screen, will cause a
world of trouble for the blind user and their sighted peers. I have
many memories, from the days of windows, of my dad yelling that I
was not going to the right place on a page to prove my point. The
visible voiceover cursor is a brilliant solution for this problem
and I have not had any more collaboration problems with sighted
people ever since. Just as I have never, in all my days of using
computers, had a problem with being unable to click a close or hide
button for a sighted person. Why? Because I never have had to. It
is completely pointless. Whenever I needed to close a window or
hide it or zoom it, I used the keyboard. Just as we all have
learned to do… well most of us.
I have tried changing the intonation to fix the problems with fred,
but the problems with the synthesizer seem to go deeper for no
amount of adjustment has brought back the old fred. The
enunciation, and the intonation are completely broken.
Yes, I have found problems with leopard, but all in all, apart from
what I just ranted about, pretty small complaints. I hope that
apple are going to fix some of these bugs in the future, before
10.6, the "navigation hazard" aside.
Regards
J
