Hi
Numbers is a bit hard to explain. It's accessible, but it does work
quite differently than you'd expect, both with Voiceover and in general.
Voiceover readsrow and column names, which you place in the cells
identified as "header cell." Numbers, while it does have cell
coordinates, isn't really based on them like spreadsheets such as Excel
are. Having the coordinates would be nice in certain instances, such as
when you are working with Excel spreadsheets and I've requested this
from Apple already, but the more people who ask for it the better.
Once rows and columns are placed in the header cells, VO will read that
information as you move across the columns and rows. Multiple tables
also work well, as do formulae.
I would suggest reading the introductionary help provided in the Numbers
application. Its access with VO is different than you're used to, and
Numbers itself works off a different workflow than most spreadsheets.
Quite apart from understanding VO's access to it, you also need to
understand some of the basic concepts in Numbers. For example, Numbers
is based off of several, smaller tables instead of one large sheet and
does not encourage the use of cell coordinates. For instance, say you
have a column for prices, for the sake of argument it is contained in
the A row, cells a1 through a10. In excel, to add it up you could do:
=sum(a1:a10) That is, naturally, a simplified way to do it.
This will work in numbers, but typically you would do this instead,
assuming you named the column prices for example:
=sum(prices)
Header cells can be placed at any point, so columns on different
sections of the sheet can be in different areas. While numbers isn't the
only spread sheet to use this idea, it does utilize it more than some
others do. 
Numbers is one of those things you'd have to get used to and be willing
to play with it at first if you'd like to use it effectively. Apple has
some different ideas when it comes to spreadsheets.
hth, and I hope I explained this ok


On Tue, 2009-01-20 at 21:34 -0500, matthew Campbell wrote:
> Hi list. How do you use numbers? It doesn't look like any spreadshet
> program I used previously. VoiceOver isn't reading cell cooardinates
> and only says "Cell" when I move around the table. Is this app not
> fully accesible? Any feedback would be great. Thanks.
> 


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