My sorta long ranty two cents. I'm not sighted, and learning how to use Jaws and Voiceover had a really difficult learning curve, even though I thought I was more technically able than the average person. Even years after first learning about Jaws, I still don't know the specifics of some of the accessibility software and hardware out there, just a broad knowledge to help out a visually impaired user or myself for testing *most average cases*.
As a result, I can't imagine Apple Store staff knowing about voiceover other than it exists, and maybe in a very rare occasion an employee who knows how to use it at all because of either a significant number of customers in the local area asking about it, or for personal reasons. Just like how I can't imagine Apple Store staff knowing much about development tools, which is a huge reason for me buying Macs in the first place. If I justified a computer purchase based on what an Apple Store employee told me, I'd REALLY be missing out on a bunch, and I would never buy Apple. But no, I did my own research and made the decision on my own, knowing that the employees most likely wouldn't know *anything* about how to help me and not expecting them to either. And thinking back to the past several years of frequenting Apple stores for various reasons, I've only ever met two employees out of possibly over a hundred that knew anything about programming. When you're a very niche audience, you have to do some of the legwork yourself. Even if they find you some answers, they can't do everything for you because they only have so much time, resources, and..well, let's be frank, they're not the best paid employees out there. Also, I do love the idea of an accessibility guru and all, but let's also be pretty frank about this, the number of people needing assistive technologies is not enough to justify training a person or two for every apple store out there to know this really in-depth - perhaps some of the accessibility features, but not in detail about VO. I could see some sort of specialty email/phone support or maybe a trained person or two for some of the big markets like LA and NYC, but not anywhere close to the benefits given to the big audiences Apple caters to specifically in-store in many locations (e.g. business and creative). So in the end..Apple has a general retail experience much more pleasurable than what you will find at a lot of other stores. That is one reason why the stores are the only success of its kind among computer manufacturers. But expecting them to know everything is unreasonable, and the best kind of research is the kind you do personally to your satisfaction. cheers, jane On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 3:51 PM, John Denning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This has been said before by others. You can't compare a Best Buy sales > person's knowledge of Jaws to an Apple store sales person having some > knowledge of VO. Apple has set the bar high. Apple claims the superiority of > their product and staff. Apple even dares to call their in store support > team "Genius". > > All that being said I still never expect them to know anything off the top > of their heads. But I do expect them to be able to find the answers to even > obscure questions. Even if that required "can I get back to you." > > And yes I have offered to help. I don't know VO like most of you. But I'd > learn it. I did offer to be a resource at my local apple store.
