skype for the mac is great and very accessible! i added you to msn and
myspace. i'm in springfield mo by the way.
On Mar 20, 2008, at 8:47 PM, Jenny Kennedy (Howard) wrote:
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)
