Hi, see my comments below. Erik Burggraaf Join me Wednesday, May 26th at CNIB Tech Aids fair in Toronto. I'll be at the assistive computing booth from 2 to 4 in the afternoon and circulating for the rest of the day. http://www.erik-burggraaf.com 888-255-5194
On 2010-05-25, at 10:34 AM, Alfredo wrote:and would really appreciate if you answer, > How much would you pay (regardless of where you live) for a one hour > session on basic to advance apple computer skills with voice over? I suggest you hook up with your local apple store and try to find out what they pay their trainers. Then decide whether you are going to go to the client or whether the client will come to you. Set your price higher if you plan to go to the client, basing it loosely on what you would be paid to deliver training by the apple store. Offer a 10 to 15 per sent discount to users who pay you for a block of hours in advance. This will protect you against people who sign on for a block of hours and then fail to book or fail to keep their appointments. You can see from my website http://www.erik-burggraaf.com that this is what I have done. My private training rates are based on the fact that government funding here is $40 per hour, and I will be going to the client as opposed to having them come to me. > What is your age? I am 28, and I learned voiceover myself with the help of the manual, the great people on this list, and a lot of emercive use. I have trained clients literally ranging in age from 8 to 88, but the average age of my clients is about 70 years old. I have a 72 year old mac switcher on my books right now, and he is doing great. I do wonder how older people would fare on the mac though because I see a lot of people with touch sensativity issues, fine motor problems, and arthritis. My 72 year old client is really lucky in that regard, but I suspect some of my other clients wouldn't do so well on the mac because of the feel of modern apple keyboards and the intensive use of multi key combinations. > Do you think that you could have learned the apple OS with voice over > as easily as you did jaws or window eyes, if you had not had these screen > readers? Actually I think it's a bit harder to learn when you come over from another screen reader. I personally was a self-teacher from the age of 8 or 10 or so. I remember listening to chapters of the bex docs tapes and blazey tutorials in bed and saving out little tidbits to try the next day. Being a trainer has made me a student of the learning process. Everyone learns in a different way, but I've been working on me for the last 20 years or so and I have the ropes down pat. There are two problems initially with learning to switch from another screen reader. The first is that Voiceover approach is inside out from windows and ubuntoo linux approach. I've written about the dropped penny often before, but if you can't find it in the archives, let me know and I'll draft it up again. I really need a blog or something. In order to really get to grips with VO coming over from windows, you have to turn your thinking inside out and that's not easy. The second drawback is that simple tasks take much longer initially. When you want to burn a CD, you have to learn the mac process for burning CD's, and you catch yourself thinking, "Damnit! this would be done already if I were on my old windows box." Of course, having done the task a number of times it becomes seemless and you have taken another step away from the old thing into the new. If you do a lot of tasks, You may get the relearning blahs, even though learning the tasks is not so arduous. It's the idea that you used to do all this stuff and now you have to stop and relearn. Another possible drawback of switching is that the documentation for mac OS puts you totally into the screen reader and hides mac OS from you. Mac OS is highly accessible with numerous keyboard shortcuts, but if you allow yourself to be guided by the inline help, you will never be exposed to the keyboard side of mac OS. For example, if you are on a dock item, voiceover will tell you something like, "you are on a dock item. to move between the dock items, press control option left or right arrow. To activate a dock item press control option space." Of course, no one in their right mind would be bothered with that. You would just type the first two or three letters of the item you want and press enter on it. at the very least, you would use left and right arrow on their own to browse dock items because why not? Mac OS allows you to do this, so what is the point of holding down two extra keys? OK, so that may make it harder to switch as well, but that's my complaint. Most of my clients don't think that deeply about such issues. > > Was it hard for you, economically, to buy the mac? Mac systems are funded here in the province of Ontario. That of course opens up a whole variety of financial headache for some one getting a new computer, but it can be done. Blind people tend to be a low income demographic on average. Still, I don't think there's a fear of spending the money. Apple systems and windows systems (with... the... equivalent... hardware...) cost roughly the same, give or take a hundred or two dollars. I want to be really clear on that, because a lot of silly people compare a macbook pro to a dell vostro and claim that macs are rediculously overpriced. From the feedback I get, I'd say the issue is not so much price as it is a fear that the accessibility features in mac couldn't possibly be as good as people say they are. No mainstream company could really be so in tune with the needs of such a small community, and there's no way any one could deliver a really full featured access technology at such a small price point. We are getting away from a lot of that fear now. Apple is proving itself to it's customers, and as more and more old windows xp computers bite the dust, we're seeing more and more mac gravitation. > How did you learn about the Mac voice over screen reader? > > I and most of the other people I've trained in the past two years have found > out by word of mouth. For me it was podcasts on the internet along with a > friend who bought one for work. A surprising number of blind people here in > Ontario Own a mac now, and so if you live here, you probably have a friend or > a friend of a friend who owns and uses one. Tomorrow at the trade show > almost every table is going to have at least one mac system on it. > Please answer these questions as specifically as you can, this will > not only help me but others in the board since they might find tips > and tricks on how to better learn the mac. I hope this has been of some help, and I haven't forgotten about you by the way. It's just been really busy updating the website and getting promotional materials together for the trade show tomorrow around bookings and trolling for bookings and the usual business of running a consultancy. Things will slow down the end of the week, and I'll be in touch. > Thanks, > Alfredo > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
