Hi Matthew,
Cool about your Aunt. Overland Park is where I go to see all my doctors and
where I had Skye and where I'm going to have this lil one! The folks at the
Overland Park Medical Center are all super nice as are all the doctors
connected with the hospital.
Yes, feel free to add me to messenger and MySpace. That would be cool.
I don't use Skype right now mainly because I don't have a mic, well I do but
I don't know where it has gone off too. But when I get my Mac I think I
will give Skype a try and would love to have folks to chat with.
I hear that Skype for Mac seems to work better with VoiceOver as compaired
to Skype for windows and the windows screen readers. I'm so excited to see
what sorts of things I'll be able to do with my Mac. I know it will be way
different than I'm used too. Mac isn't Windows and VO is not JAWS and as
long as I try and remember this I think I'll be fine.
I love learning new sorts of things. I love to play with everything at once
and figure out as much as I can by trying. After all, I don't think you can
distroy teh computer by just trying things. Well you could if you messed
with system files, but just trying out all the programs and settings and
things... And then if I can't sort something out I go to the help files...
Awsome to be on the list and look forward to talking to you all!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Elliff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: New list member intro with some questions
hi welcome to the list! my aunt lives in overland park ks! not too far
from there. i've had a mac for almost 2 years. it's a little different at
first but you eventually get the hang of it. i'll add you to msn and
myspace as well. do you use skype>? i could help you with the mac there
also.
On Mar 20, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Jenny Kennedy wrote:
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)
