I have only two additional observations to this excellent response. 1> vo has an item chooser which gathers all the items in any window and allows you to quickly access them either with arrows or by typing a set of characters which narrows the list.
My favorite: 2> while not specific to vo, Macos has an everywhere spel checker so if you are working on the web and want to check the spelling of your input for instance, you can do that. same in other composition areas from text edit to email. ...and as a bonus, the vo find and quick nav keys are great! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Kearney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by theblind" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:28 PM Subject: Re: Another NFB review of Mac with VO I have been invited to reply to the NFB blog post. Here is what I wrote for them. -Greg "Macintosh is not Windows and VoiceOver is not JAWS or WindowEyes." If you start your investigation of the Macintosh experience with those thoughts in mind you will find that you will be well on your way to learning the "Macintosh way" of doing things. Recently Tony Olivero wrote a post to this blog about VoiceOver for Leopard. In that post he noted a number of issues with VoiceOver which were erroneous and which I would like to correct here. One of the early complaints with VoiceOver was that there was a great deal of key pressing to take an action. This was justified and in MacOSX Leopard this has been rectified with what is called the NumPad Commander. This option permit the user to navigate and issue VoiceOver commands using only the numeric keypad at the right of a fill sized keyboard or an external USB keypad. NumPad commander can be activated using the VoiceOver Utility which is accessed with VoiceOver running with CONTROL+OPTION+F8. The NumPad commander can be configured in any way you wish. Once you have VoiceOver configured with things voice preferences and such you can save that configuration to a USB pen drive and take those configurations with you to any Mac running Leopard. Plug in the pen drive and VoiceOver will ask if you want to use your configuration from it. One area which is difficult for windows users to understand is the idea of interacting with groups of controls such as toolbars or lists. While at first this may seem odd that you should have to choose to interact with a group of such controls, in fact it speeds your use of the computer by permitting you to skip over a number of controls and interact only with those you need to. Another item that was mentioned was the dificulty in using the menu bar. However a MacOS features is that once you have activated the menu with the VoiceOver command CONTROL+OPTION+M you can then jump to any particular menu using the first few letters of that menu's name. So for example if we wished to reach the "View" menu we would first activate the menu bar with CONTROL+OPTION+M and then type the letter "V" VoiceOver would then move to the View menu. You could then drop that menu with a down arrow key and then select any item in that menu with any number of means. For example you could use the arrow keys, enter the first few letters of the menu item, or use VoiceOver to move down the menu. Once on the item that you want pressing the Return key to activate your choice. Many menu items have keyboard shortcuts using the Command key such as Command-W to close a window. This brings up an important part of the VoiceOver experience. In VoiceOver everything you do done the same way as a sighted user would do it. There is no "off screen mode" in VoiceOver. If you wished to show a sighted co-worker how you do something the screen will show the exact process as if you were using the Mac with the mouse and keyboard. VoiceOver help is found by pressing CONTROL+OPTION+? which will open the VoiceOver help window. There is also VoiceOver Getting Started Guide which can be found at http://www.cucat.org/books/vogs/vogs.php this title is offered in print, DAISY, MP3, iPod Audio Book and Braille. You can also order a hard copy braille version in two volumes from Apple at 1-800-692-7753. You can learn much of what VoiceOver can do by working the built in tutorial. With VoiceOver running (Command +F5) go to the VoiceOver Quick Start CONTROL+OPTION+COMMAND+F8 which will lead you through the various functions of VoiceOver. This is also offered when you first start up a new Mac. VoiceOver exists on every Mac running MacOS 10.4 or better. A blind user can know that any such Mac is accessible to them without the need of expensive third party software. It eliminates the need for a "special" computer in the classroom or workplace. As the MacOS is upgraded so is VoiceOver at no additional cost. VoiceOver, in my opinion, represents the future of screen reading for the disabled. Why should the blind and print disabled be expected to buy and upgrade expensive software just to make a computer accessible to them? Should not the blind have the same expectation that the sighted enjoy that every computer will by default be accessible to them? Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
