I saw a product mentioned on this list called Marvelsoft Digital Jukebox which
is suppose to be a PC based talking jukebox designed for the blind and visually
impaired.
I have had Marvelsoft's Digital Jukebox for a week now and quite frankly my
opinion is it is not ready for prime time.
As a partial sighted user the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is extremely
annoying.
The GUI is implemented with a crippled windows display. All standard window
decorations have been removed. No top window bar with iconify, resize,
minimize, maximize, close. Which would not be a problem except for the window
clips the content and there is no way to scroll. You have to go into the
applications "options" and play with text and box sizes until you get it to fit
in the fixed window.
One navigates within the application primarily with the 4 directional keys
which would be great except the display does not track the direction keys. If
you key past the end of the window display the contents does not scroll up, you
do hear what you can not see which is a help once you realize what it is doing.
Also, the 4 direction arrows will not take you to some of the items on the
screen. Most notable "back" is not reachable with the arrow keys, you either
have to mouse over it and click or use the "backspace" key. Once you know this
it is useable but why the arrow buttons dont just proceed to the "back" button
as it does with "ok" and "cancel" and every thing else is not intuitive.
It appears that this product, although marketed to the blind and visually
impaired, is primarily intend for the totally blind. My problems started when I
was looking for the licence key. The verbal directions say the key is on a
yellow card in the box. I could not find the card in the box with the key.
However, I called and was able to get the key over the phone. It turns out the
key is on a Braille and "raised text" card taped to the outside of the box with
no visible text printing at all. I thought it was just their logo on the box.
Also, there is no label at all on the product CD so the first thing I did was
print a label for it so it would not get lost.
If one is totally blind perhaps this product is more useful since one might not
be use to the GUI standards supplied in most applications. But any user will
find the setting of "options" annoying, since one constantly has to restart
from the top of the option menu for each change. That is you can not step back
in the menu tree once you start down a branch.
Also one can not navigate in the standard way through "My Computer." It is to
complicated to say how you have to do it, lets just say you can not select "My
Computer" and then the location you want. If your music is spread across
multiple drives and you want to keep it that way it will get real annoying.
When I purchased the product I was told they did not have a demo version. Turns
out the product will run in demo mode but they just will not give it to you
until you buy it. I STRONGLY recommend one get the demo version first or don't
buy it. The demo runs for 5 minutes at a time.
I sincerely wish I could recommend this product, since there is so little good
inexpensive software designed for the blind and visually impaired. Marvelsoft's
Digital Jukebox has great potential but it is not there yet, maybe when version
2.0 comes some of the comments above will be addressed.
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