Hello all. I'm a new member to the list and also new to the mac. I've been using it in one of the labs on my college campus while considering making the switch. It has mostly been a good experience. The magnification features are not quite as developed as in ZoomText which I am currently using on a Laptop with Windows XP, but the screen reading features in VoiceOver are much more complete. This is especially true with web pages. ZoomText provides no additional navigation of web pages over simply tabbing to links or controls. Reading any other part means pressing a keystroke, finding the specific word you would like to start at using magnification, and then clicking that word. Generally you have to repeat that for each section you want to read and it is less than usable for reading small pieces of text that are around other page elements. VoiceOver has been a major improvement. the page can usually be entirely navigated using the keyboard, reading as you go (obviously). The navigation by groups and interaction has been very efficient in finding sections of pages and skipping over irrelevant content. The other feature that has impressed me is magnification of the VoiceOver cursor. I have tried to gain similar functionality by using ZoomText with Jaws and Window Eyes, but found they didn't always play nice or communicate with each other.
It hasn't all been perfect though. The largest issue I have encountered is with basic word processing. I attempted to get a magnified view of what I was typing while it was read by word. This is something ZoomText does effortlessly. At first I tried magnifying just the voiceover cursor, but it kept the whole line in focus. So the line would start out big, but as it expanded it would reach the edges of the screen and necessarily have to become smaller to fit until, by the end of the line, I couldn't read it. Trying another option, I didn't magnify the VoiceOver focus but used the zoom feature to magnify the whole screen and track the keyboard focus. This kept text readable, but the zoom kept jumping between the insertion point and the mouse pointer. It was a very annoying behavior and it kept moving my text out of view. So I've ended up facing a dilemma between 2 very common and basic tasks: writing and web browsing. What I would like to know is if there are any other low vision users out there who could share their experiences. What have you found to work very well in OS X and where have you had problems? How have you worked around them? Finally I guess I should say I have been using Tiger. Maybe someone knows if these issues have been improved in Leopard? In fact, I am wondering, Just how well does Voiceover work in Leopard? I realize that is broad so I will try and clarify it a little. Is the general experience better? Are most applications that you download or want to use accessible or are they hard to find? This got really long, so if you made it this far, thank you for your patience and i hope you can comment on your experiences.
