Hi Matt, VoiceOver was designed to let visually impaired users work easily with sighted colleagues, so there's no need to look for an alternative to Preview if you want your sighted peers to follow along with the text you are reading. You don't even need to change your cursor tracking mode under navigation to set "Mouse cursor follows VoiceOver cursor" as Colin suggests, although that's another option. Under VoiceOver Utility (VO-F8) navigate to "Visuals". The first thing I would check is whether you have either your screen curtain turned on, or your display brightness set all the way down to 0 per cent. That would instantly guarantee that your peers could not follow along as you read in Preview, since nothing would be visible on your display. Under the tab for "VoiceOver Cursor" make sure that the box for "Show VoiceOver Cursor" is checked, and you can also increase the size of the cursor by adjusting the slider for the VoiceOver Cursor magnification. Normally, the section of text that you are reading in Preview should be outlined with a black line that updates as you continue to read, and that by itself should be sufficient to allow them to follow along your reading. However, if you really want to make it obvious what you are reading, you can go to the "Caption Panel" tab under "Visuals" and check the box for "Show Caption Panel". You can also interact with the slider for the Caption panel font size to make it larger, or control the number of lines that are displayed in the Caption panel. You'll probably need to experiment with your sighted peers about window placement, font size, etc. if you choose to enable the Caption panel.
I don't think the Caption panel is necessary, but what it does is display within a separate window on your screen the current VoiceOver actions -- this is absolutely everything, and includes not only the text that you are reading in Preview, but if you bring up a help menu it will display that and your selections to navigate -- all shown in a dedicated window on the screen and optionally with a large font size. I don't use this, but if you want to show people how you are working with VoiceOver, this will do it. You can also tweak the settings for these "Visuals" options by bringing up the VoiceOver Commands Help menu (VO-H-H) and examining the items under the "Visuals" submenu. I recall that in an early presentation of VoiceOver that was offered as a podcast back in the days of Tiger (the first release with VoiceOver) -- maybe as an Apple Keynote -- there was an explanation that when they studied how people using VoiceOver worked with other users, the VoiceOver users typically navigated much faster, and options like the Caption panel and the outlined section of text were ways to make it easier for sighted coworkers to follow along. Since VoiceOver reads documents regardless of font size, and you may have Preview set to display a whole page on a small display screen, the caption panel might be of some use. (This is because although the region you are reading with VoiceOver is outlined, the fonts might still be too small for your sighted peers to actually read the text in the outlined region on the screen, while the caption panel can be set for really large fonts.) I think that the easiest thing is to experiment with the "View" menu settings in Preview and adjust the display window while your colleagues are present. (VoiceOver can read the text even if the display window cuts off some of it). Then you likely won't need to use the Caption panel, or maybe even can forgo enlarging the VoiceOver cursor. Just check that your display is viewable by your colleagues (bright enough, large enough fonts, etc.) Since they would be using Preview to read documents on a Mac, and since VoiceOver outlines the region of text it is currently reading, it should be possible for them to easily follow along with just a few tweaks. And you can always resort to the caption panel and other features if you need them. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Apr 3, 2011, at 13:15, Matthew Campbell wrote: > Hello listers. > Does anyone know of an accessible preview alternative? My biggest issue is > that I have to use the VO and arrow keys to navigate around a document which > doesn't allow my sighted peers to follow along with me. I'm looking for > something that'll allow me to just use the regular arrow keys to navigate so > that the cursor moves with the speech. > Thanks for any suggestions. > Matt Campbell. > > > -- 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.
