hello everybody I think that everybody on this list probably knows how Gordon and I feel generally regarding all things Microsoft. However, I have been using VoiceOver deliberately for a couple of hours this morning as I often do, just to keep my hand in. And I have to say that I am becoming frustrated by the "busy" "busy" messages in Safari.
I am now deliberately trying also to become familiar with using Windows 7 with speech, owing to the fact that I want to be able to write my upcoming article for the upcoming Techno-Chat blog, which I'm still trying to think of a good title for. But I want this article to be based on the experience of accessibility tools on the part of those such as myself who don't depend upon them. Much has been written regarding the various screen-readers available for both Mac and PC, and I want to try as much as I can before I put this article together as I want it to be based on absolute fairness and totally devoid of bias of any kind, for or against any OS or accessibility solution. Reading the message that Dane posted earlier to the group about his new toy reminded me that I haven't yet got properly started on this; so it's high time I did. I will be using Microsoft Windows 7/64 as a base OS. I can tell you based on my very limited activities so far with a screen-reader under that OS that the difference in performance between 32 and 64-bit using speech only is startling. In fact I am concluding that having a high spec machine and running a low spec operating system is actually very wasteful, not to mention debilitating. Obviously its entirely down to personal decision; but running a 64-bit hardware-based machine with a 32-bit operating system is a bit like running a Role Royce car with an engine designed for a Mini. It's a waste. But that's only my take. The performance improvement is noticeable even when running things like Jarte Plus, FireFox 6 or even Internet Explorer 9. Anyway, to the point. I am looking for ideas as to the best things to try in order to get a good overview of accessibility under Windows to start with. I hope, at a later time, to explore VINUX; but that will have to wait a while as we don't have the right hardware at the moment to use it properly. Our NetBook is currently out of commission, as Windows crashed shouting about hardware changes, just after running Windows Update. So lord only knows what we're going to do about that since I can't even get at the so-called recovery partition. So for the moment I'm sticking to Windows. Any suggestions, comments or other ideas are welcome. Lynne ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
