Leopard is better and works wonderfully. I am not a low vision user
but I did learn on Tiger and now Leopard. I love the num pad commander
and the minor changes that overall makes Leopard a better choice and a
must have upgrade.
On Mar 8, 2008, at 6:42 PM, Mueller, Matt wrote:
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.
