Welcome to the list! I am too am blind, pretty much went completely blind since last year. I’m considered profoundly deaf and wear a digital hearing aid and I can hear my Mac and iPhone thru my bluetooth device called a Phonak Compilot. So I understand your frustration. Expecially learning Voiceover. I got my Mac since last March and I had zero experience with Apple. Everything I learned was thru just randomly typing the keyboard and reading help menu and from what others said. I tried several times calling the Apple accessabilty hotline, and they are not very knowledgeable.
I for one do not use dictation because i don’t hear and speak that well. And by now you probably can tell my grammar is horrible. My english was never was good. I am right now am trying to type up a book and have no clue what to do. My grammar is so bad, will need a serious editor. So I can understand about editing using a screenreader and no braille display. Just recently I just completed grade 1 braille, so I am going to get a braille display soon. So hopefully I can edit better. I’m courious, what novels do you write? Daniel Hawkins - Posted from my Macbook Pro 2012 15in. Macbook Pro 2.3 Quad-core i7 4GB DDR3 500GB HDD Dual Boot: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-bit On Jan 7, 2014, at 12:30 PM, April Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Alex, > > Thanks for letting me know. I thought dictation was supposed to be for > full dictation, instead it's a helper program which is okay. > > I've looked at the Applevis site some. I haven't done any of the > videos or podcasts as most of those speak too fast for me to comprehend. > > I wouldn't try Dragon again. I think it was installed over 20 times > on three different windows machines. One day when my eye hurt so bad I > couldn't keep it open, I looked up and the only thing it had on the screen > was a pop-up asking me if I wanted to uninstall Windows. So apparently my > voice is too strange for Dragon. They also say I had to reinstall Windows > several times because Dragon would crash it to the point where it wouldn't > even turn on. I will keep looking though. Once I learn Braille well enough > there are Braille displays that can be used. > > Thanks, I won't feel like I'm doing it wrong now. > > April > > On Tuesday, January 7, 2014 12:37:31 PM UTC-5, Alex wrote: > Welcome to the list. > > Dictation on the Mac is not meant to be a keyboard replacement across the > board - there is no way to teach it new words or enter alternative modes to > get it to input numbers instead of words. If dictation is your primary means > of interacting with the computer, you might want to look into paid solutions > like Dragon Naturally Speaking. Unfortunately, I have no experience with > Dragon so cannot say how well it will work with Voiceover or Zoom. > > As for Voiceover training, it is quite a learning curve, to be sure. I'd > first go to www.applevis.com where you will find podcasts and guides on all > things Voiceover for the Mac and iOS. They also offer app entries which > discuss apps from an accessibility perspective. Most visually impaired Apple > users consider this to be an indispensable resource. > On Jan 7, 2014, at 11:05 AM, April Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I am legally blind, and wear a hearing aid, among other health problems. In >> this cold my fingers are not able to use the keyboard at all. >> >> I am trying to learn the dictation program and having difficultly. I bought >> my new Mac mini about three weeks ago. In general, dictation works well in >> e-mail and social media. There are some words it cannot seem to understand >> no matter what and other words it gets part of time. >> >> I did contact Apple customer support chat system, as well as have had one on >> one training on Saturday. It seems, that my issues with dictation are >> unknown, and I was told I wrote too much. It also seems that the store >> representatives do not have much training in VoiceOver or dictation. Also >> the person I spoke with him a chat did not have much training in them >> either. I attempted to call the one 800 number. However it was playing hard >> rock music that hurt my ear. After six minutes I gave up and contacted the >> chatline. I don't comprehend spoken very well. Even though I'm going blind I >> still comprehend written better. Yes I'm learning braille, that's a slow >> process to >> >> I am also a writer. As a writer I typically write novels, and a typical >> 80,000 word novel might be 300 doublespaced pages. I am finding that in the >> Pages program, if the document is over 20 pages long, Dictation crashes and >> I cannot reopen even in social media. Currently, I am dictating in a >> smaller document, and then copying and pasting it over into the main >> document. >> >> I am also noticing some other odd glitches. Frequently after a comma, >> Dictation capitalizes the next word as if it were in a new sentence. I am >> also not sure how to get it to recognize some names. It never gets them >> right. >> >> I also have to learn VoiceOver eventually. Just looking at the training on >> that has overwhelmed me. >> >> How best to work with dictation in Pages, and editing it, so that I don't >> look like I don't know how to spell or what words mean? >> >> Most people who know me consider me rather computer savvy. However, since >> trying to learn how to use some of these programs, I don't feel like I have >> any computer knowledge. For me, reformatting a hard drive is easy. Though, >> before long, I will no longer be able to see to do so. All these tech terms >> I just can't seem to understand are confusing me. It may be possible that >> some of them are just different terms than what I call something. >> >> On anyone who follows writers, agents, and editors on Twitter has seen the >> ridicule that they happily dish out regularly on someone who makes a grammar >> or spelling mistake. The thing is, many days I can't see the errors that >> dictation makes. I can't correct them, if I can't see them. And once you've >> been ridiculed a few times by the industry standard people, no one will take >> me, or my work seriously. They commonly say, if there is a single error in >> your writing, any novel you write will be lazy and poorly constructed. It's >> a bit paralyzing. I have to learn how to use these programs so that I can >> continue writing and eventually be published. >> >> Thank you. >> >> -- >> 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/groups/opt_out. > > > > Have a great day, > Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) > [email protected] > > > > > -- > 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/groups/opt_out. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
