Just a quick note here...
The Veterens administration gives computers to those blind veterens who can
handle it. They only give jaws to the vets, and there is absolutely no
mention of other screen readers. in fact, the VA trainers in the rehab
hospitals for the blind have never once told me anything about all the
great things the visually impaired has accomplished thru programs, games,
email lists and the like.
It would have been nice for those computer teachers to give out lots of
links to the communities that are on the internet, it would have made my
first few years a lot less stressful and difficult.
AS a side note, the only game provided by the VA for the blind was a chess
set, and bingo.
al
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 5:00 PM
Subject: [Audyssey] Screen Readers and Games
Hi Bryan,
That's not so surprising really. When I first went blind the first thing
they showed me was Jaws. As a result that is what I ended up with for
school, college, and being new to blindness and screen readers in general
I really didn't know anything different. I just assumed Jaws was the only
show in town.
It was only after I got to college not only did I discover there were
several other screen readers out there, I found Jaws really wasn't so hot.
Yeah, it was a decent screen reader, but Window eyes has always been a
fairly decent product itself. The more current versions are a superior
product in my opinion. However, this brings me to my point.
If I assume most blind computer users in the United States were handled
the same way I was they were given Jaws through some state or school
agency, and it was assumed it was the best product for the person it was
given to. As a result the blind computer user has no experience in using
Hal, Window Eyes, or anything else. They may not even been shown their
options to pick or choose the product they wanted. It was just assumed
Jaws was what they would use for work, school, college, whatever.
So as it happens most of our game developers are Jaws users. When they say
turn off your screen reader in the manual I half to assume they know Jaws
conflicts with games, and they have no personal experience with anything
other than Jaws. Else you might get directions for how to set the game up
with Jaws, Window Eyes, Hal, System Access, etc.
As has been pointed out here Hal and Window Eyes don't really have serious
conflicts with existing accessible games. Jaws, on the other hand, does.
Therefore it might help if we educate the game developers out there on how
various screen readers works with their games so that the manuals can be
updated to reflect this more specifically.
<Smile>
Bryan Peterson wrote:
Doubtless Dark the reason for that is that while they may say "your
screen reader," a lot of game developers probably assume most of their
customer base uses JAWS. I myself was a staunch JAWS user until two years
ago, when I discovered that JAWS won't let me use the NeoSpeach voices
and Window-Eyes will. Then as I experimented I discovered that
Window-Eyes worked so much better with just about every program I used.
The bit with games was just an accidental discovery, but I still turn off
Window-Eyes out of habbit when I play games.
Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of
pizza?
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