1. Yes Voiceover is able to give font information. There is a learning curve to word processing on the Mac, including getting used to different cursor behaviour . You can set up the Mac so that Voiceover behaves like windows screen readers when cursoring or editing text but this creates other problems and it is best to learn the Mac way of doing things I found. The Mac is perfectly fine for most levels of word Processing and free options will give you most of what you need. The one serious game stopper is the inability of Voiceover to read Tables in Word documents. There are various clunky work around including converting the table into text and reading and handling tables in Numbers but if you need to use tables seriously for work or study you will probably find that you need to retain a Windows platform for that. This is what I have had to do as I constantly read or use Tables for study purposes. proper table recognition and a full range of table reading commands are essential for me. For example the last chapter of my thesis contained 10 tables and it is my biggest accessibility concern for the Mac. However by using VM Fusion you can have a good Windows option within the Mac which you can switch to fairly instantly. You will need a copy of windows on CD to install and a key that will register as well as VM Fusion so this does add cost. 3. Scanning. I use EyePal on the Mac. this work well but is very expensive and it is not at all certain that this will be usable under Mountain Lion. Other people have used Abbey Finereader and Vue Scan with apparently good results. If I can afford it I am considering switching to docuscan and Hovercam combination for the Mac. 4. Sound editing- I believe that this is where the Mac really comes into its own with free and purchased high quality options available. I do not currently use these.
There are many other things to like about the Mac. I much prefer Finder over Windows Explorer and every time I move to Windows I miss column view which makes navigation a breeze. Voiceover is also more stable alongside a more stable Mac. Voiceover is more key intensive than many Windows equivalent commands but using Numpad Commander greatly simplifies tings. There are also a whole range of accessibility options available through gestures which are not available on windows but again I do not use these. David Griffith 2. Spreadsheets. I bought numbers but did not find it at all intuitive to use. I have heard on this list that Tables is a more familiar experience for people switching from Excel. I do not have the time currently to learn numbers so have stuck with Excel in Windows for the time being. Numbers will almost certainly do all that you need to do but just warning that it will take some effort. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Catherine Turner Sent: 15 August 2012 09:48 To: [email protected] Subject: Considering Mac, questions about Voiceover/access Hi all, I don't have a Mac at the moment but am considering getting one and have some questions about Voiceover and general Mac access which I wonder if people could help me with? 1. With word processing, is VO able to give font/formatting information? 2. I use spreadsheets a fair bit and databases a little. I currently use Excel with JAWS and quite often monitor certain cells so I can at a keystroke find out what's in them. Does anyone here do anything similar on Mac? How configurable is VO when working in spreadsheets e.g. is there a keystroke for reading a column total and can you set which row the total is in either in VO or the spreadsheet program? 3. Scanning/OCR - what are people using for this? How do you find it and what sort of things do you scan? 4. Sound editing and MIDI - I do a fair bit of sound editing in wave format, currently in Goldwave. I haven't started doing any MIDI yet but hope to in the future. So I don't know much about the MIDI but am just wondering if anyone is doing any Mac and what you use, how you're finding it. If anyone has any comments/feedback on the above questions that'd be great. Or if anyone here has switched from Windows to Mac and has any other observations I'd be interested in hearing them. Thanks, Catherine <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
