Hello Mark, I haven’t found any reference to Microsoft selling standalone licenses for This version of Outlook. They seem to really be pushing Office 365, though it is possible that there is some other way to get it.
In terms of browsing through mail in conversation view, I’ll admit that unless you interact with the messages table and move through a specific column or columns of choice, the verbosity is a little verbose because Outlook has numerous columns that it displays and VoiceOver reads all of them, including the column headers, with a pause for thought in between each spoken chunk. However, you can hear the subject of the thread as well as its authors in a manner similar to how the stock mail app works. You can expand and collapse a conversation using the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW KEYS or by using VO+SPACE on the “disclosure triangle” in column one. I love how in the stock mail app, you can press ENTER on a conversation to open a view where all the messages are displayed. That isn’t how Outlook works; pressing ENTER on an individual message will open it as you might expect, but pressing ENTER on the conversation itself will open all the messages in separate windows. Keep in mind that there are literally pages and pages of options that can be adjusted in Outlook to control its behaviour, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on Outlook for Mac yet, quite the contrary. However, I did want to let people know that it appears to be accessible. :) I’ll update the list with anything else that I discover, and if you have any other questions or things you would like me to try, feel free to let me know. Grant On 2014-11-10, 8:47 AM, "M. Taylor" <[email protected]> wrote: >Hello Grant, > >Thank you so much for this report on Outlook. > >I have two questions: > >1. >Can you please report on how well VoiceOver and Outlook do with reading >messages in a threaded view? > >2. >If one does not have a Microsoft 365 account, can one still purchase >Outlook as a stand alone solution on the Mac? > >Thank you again for taking the time to let us know about MS Outlook for >the Mac. > >Mark > > >From: [email protected] >[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grant Hardy >Sent: Monday, November 10, 2014 12:22 AM >To: Mac Visionaries List >Subject: The latest version of Microsoft Outlook appears to be accessible > >Hello all, > >When Microsoft released a new version of Outlook for Mac last week I was >as curious as anyone else to know whether or not it would be fully usable >by VoiceOver users. Eventually, I just decided to install it and give it >a go. I am very happy to report that my first impressions have been very >positive. I will admit that Microsoft Outlook has crashed a few times and >is sometimes sluggish, but that is probably because for a first test I >chose to open a huge data set from Outlook for Windows. > >I have by no means played with all or even most of Outlook for Mac’s >features, but I can confirm that the following is working just fine with >VoiceOver: >• Editing a contact >• - Composing an Email (like this one) and moving through the text >• - Setting up an appointment in the calendar and finding it in the >default month calendar view >• - Navigating your folder list, and the list of messages >• - Expanding and collapsing folders, as well as messages in conversation >view >• - Editing preferences and Email accounts >• - Using the search feature to search through messages and browsing the >list of results >• - Opening and reading plain text and HTML messages >• - Hearing formatting (for example, Outlook is generating a bulleted >list for me and VoiceOver is announcing that; voiceOver also correctly >reports that Microsoft Office’s default font of Calibri is in use) > >There is much more to play with but I am very favourably impressed. Let >us hope that the rest of the forthcoming Office for Mac suite is as >accessible as this. And for everyone with an Office 365 subscription of >some kind, you might want to give this a try. > >I will admit though that I’ve really grown to love the mail, contacts, >calendars, notes and reminders apps in OS X and will continue to use >them, for now, for my day to day activities. > >Grant >-- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >"MacVisionaries" group. >To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >email to [email protected]. >To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > >-- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >"MacVisionaries" group. >To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >email to [email protected]. >To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
