Hi there,
I'm new to this list, and the world of Mac in general.
A quick bit about myself, and then I'll share why I'm moving over to the Mac
side and end this post with a few questions...
Okay. So I'm a stay at home mom. I live with my feeancee Larry in Olathe,
Kansas. Olathe is part of the Kansas City metro area.
Larry and I have an 18 month old daughter, Skye and another baby on the way
who's due date is Skye's second birthday, 9/11. Larry has two older
daughters, MacKenzie, who is 15 and Autumn who is soon to be 11. I love
them as if they were my own, so in total I think of myself as the mother of
three, no four!
I also share my home with Fleming, my soon to be 10 year old golden
retriever guide dog. He's my second guide, my first guide, also a male
golden retriever named Gerard passed away this past October at age 13.
Both my dogs were trained at Guide Dogs for the Blind. And I've been a
guide dog handler for going on 12 or 13 years, I got Gerard at the end of
1995.
We also have, or should I say Larry has, a slightly nerourotic pug dog
called HNY Bear (Honey Bear).
I enjoy loads of things such as reading anything I can get by hook or by
crook or by ordering in to our library for the blind. I like blogging and
do to a limited extent some digital photography, although this has become
harder over the past few years due to vision loss.
I'd like to start podcasting but am waiting untill I actually have my
MacBook to do this. I also have a website, but plan on redoing it, again
once I've got my Mac.
Okay so... The last time I used a Mac computer was way back in high school.
I didn't need a screen reader much back then. Okay I most likely did, but
at that time I wasn't a serious computer user like I am now and got by using
large text.
At home my family had a TANDY 1000 so my only exposeure to the Apple/Mac was
through school. In fact--An Apple II E was my first exposure to a computer.
It was running Braille Edit Express and that was the word processer I first
started doing my school work on. I still remember $ $ M R 4 and $ $ M L 4
as being the commands you had to type in to set the margens, I think...
I also learned some programs at the school for the blind in the summers. I
remembered the computer, an Apple, talked. It had a small speaker and you
could do several things on it. I used it mainly for playing "Zanie Golf"
which wasn't "accessable" but was a heck of a lot of fun. I also remember
typing programs and programs where in you did maths. I also remember some
program that you could make Garfield cartoons on and another program that
you could fill in bits of a story and put clip art and sound effects with...
Back to high school for a moment, I sware this is all leading to a point...
At the summers I was shipped off to our state rehab center where I learned
about non-Mac, I guess back then they were IBM compadable? computers.
I was exposed to ASAP and some really primitive vox something or other dos
screen reader and eventually windows screen readers like JAWS, ASAW,
Windowbridge and I'm sure there were a few more I'm not thinking of right
now.
I finally sorted myself out to being a JAWS user and have used JAWS more or
less, mostly more, for the past nine or ten years.
My first computer was running Windows 95 and I think I started with JAWS
2.x. I progressed through 98, ME, Windows 2K, XP pro... This was my last
O/S for the past five or six years and I used JAWS 6 or 7 and was doing just
fine...
Untill...
My windows computer finally crapped out...
Due to a number of things, such as moving a lot over the past several years
and not exactly keeping up with my SMAs and things to upgrade to the latest
JAWS I'd of had to of bought a whole new program starting from scratch.
Don't ask. This would be about $1,000! Plus the cost of a new computer,
add on another $800 or $900. More if we didn't go with the deals that Dell
was offering recently. The bad thing about this was there seemed no way to
get away from the new VISTA O/S.
So after talking it over with Larry and pointing up the huge costs of buying
a windows computer and a brand new copy of JAWS vs. the rather jaw dropping,
at first glance, cost of a MacBook which, oh yeah by the way has a built in
screen reader and magnifer and oh doesn't crash or get spyware or any of the
anoying things you get as an extra added bonus with a windows computer, we
desided that I would in fact be getting a MacBook.
I have spent most evenings over the past several weeks doing as much
research regarding VoiceOver and the Mac as I can. There are several people
I have to thank for all their hard work on bringing information to my
computer.
Everyone, for example, who has ever done a spot on Main Menu on acb radio
starting with Jerry... Oh dear I can't remember his last name, sorry.
Additionally several people who have submitted podcasts on the blind cool
tech website. That nice man who made the digital talking book version of
VoiceOver and Leopard 10.5. And most recently Darcy and Holly on the
screenless Switchers site... And I know I'm leaving a ton of people out but
if you're out there, a huge thanks!
At first I was not sure a Mac was useable by a low vision/blind person. I
knew it had some limited access via OutSpoken but I didn't know much past
that. In fact, the only things I remembered about Macs were that at one
time it had a neat, well I thought it was neat, talking Moose who didn't do
anything useful, he'd just pop up from time to time to smart off at you or
do something cute... And I remember it had this screen saver called "After
Dark" which had such things as flying toasters and a bad dog who would come
on as your screen saver and chew up your screen. LOL
So I have been very happy to learn all the things I've been able to learn
over the past weeks and can NOT wait to give this computer back to my step
daughter, Kenzie.
It is running this God awful VISTA and it is anoying to reboot every 40
minutes when JAWS demo runs out. Thankfully though there is NVDA screen
reader and it gets me by... But it is a bit slow on webpages and I've only
one voice to pick from and I don'tBrightly like it. But NVDA is free, and
it isn't that bad, just slow, and I'm not sure how to do things like gather
all the links on a page into a nice box like in JAWS... You can do this in
voiceover and I'm glad of this. And it sure is better than a poke in the
eye with a sharp stick or that "screen reader" that comes with windows.
Actually, I think I'd pick the sharp stick over the windows built in screen
reader... At any rate... I should have my MacBook in about a month! I can
not wait! I am so looking forward to walking into Best Buy and walking
right up to the Macs and running VoiceOver. I plan to check out all the
voices. I've never bought a computer from someplace where you just walk in
off the street, nor have I ever gone into a store and been able to do
anything with the computers on display. I am very excited about this and
making the move to the Mac side of things...
I know it won't be totally easy but I think I'm learning enough to have a
good start...
Okay if you've hung on this long, thanks... I'm nearly done now. I've just
got a few questions...
1. Is iWeb useable with VO? From what I've seen on the Mac website I think
I could use it with magnification, but having speach at least to some extent
would be helpful like for menus and things.
2. Is it possible to edit videos? I'm thinking again that this will have to
be done with magnification, but are the menus or at least the help files
readable with VO?
and...
3. I know when John Gunn was doing his demos on VO and tiger, he was using
a program called Fire that let him access his windows messenger contacts...
And last night when plowing through the Main Menu offerings on VO I know
somebody said something about a program that you could sign up for that
would let you access all sorts of messengers like AIM and iChat and Y!
messenger and windows messenger, but I don't remember what they said it was
called... Oh and... Where can I go to find other free/share ware for the
Mac and... I think that is it...
Thanks to all for reading and I look forward to taking part on this list. I
sware I won't be so chatty most of the time, I'm just super excited about
this possible whole new Mac world!
Have a good day and look forward to hearing from whoever would like to
respond.
Jenny Kennedy and guide dog Fleming
Olathe, Kansas USA
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website: http://blueskyes.netfirms.com
MySpace/blog: http://www.myspace.com/benfoldsfan
MSN Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (for MSN messenger only)
