Golly,
This thread has read like a battle field.
I like what Paul said about the expenses that a company must go through
to output a quality product. And if wasn't for their effort and all
those who DECIDED to buy their products, hence supporting their further
research and development, all these free and great screenreaders and
such that we have today wouldn't be what they are.
that being said.
NVDA works great with Thunderbird and is much more "Maclike" than other
screenreaders (e.g. H for headings and other commands similar to
Voiceover when in Browse mode, for example).
Chris Johnson
On 12/28/11 9:45 PM, Dane Trethowan wrote:
Yep, I see where you're coming from in the below post, the points you rais have
been responsible for some very negative reviews of the Mac and its operating
system, I remember in one such case where around 90% of what was written was
totally wrong and inaccurate, I respectfully wrote to the author pointing out
the problems and suggested that he may wish to write a corrected version of the
review after doing a little more research and naturally I gave the author
several links he could follow, I've not heard of him since and that was quite a
few years ago.
I'm sure the same sort of scenario is true for many other devices, when transferring
from one mobile phone to another for example. Fact is that humans are very routine
type creatures<smile>.
I appreciate that a person migrating from Windows to a Mac may naturally have
some questions regarding the new environment and those questions should be
answered but comparing Windows to OSX is like comparing a car to a bicycle,
whilst they both move and get you from point A to point B they deliver you in
different ways, hence whilst both OSX and Windows are operating systems which
run computers they do that in different ways too!
On 29/12/2011, at 3:37 PM, Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith wrote:
Hello Mary
On 28 Dec 2011, at 21:10, Mary Stores wrote:
• Well, there is ZoomText, and also Drangon Naturally Speaking. Those are both
great AT products that do well with Windows, but many of our students have
reported frustrations on the mac to the point of returning the programs.
I would never claim that Mac accessibility is perfect. But I would like to raise one
point if I may. I am in regular correspondence with 3 people who teach VoiceOver and Mac
OSX in general, professionally in 2 cases. All 3 of them have told me repeatedly that
much of the problem with a lot of new Mac OSX users is an inability to "Let Go"
of the concepts and practices of their Windows working experience. I'm not in any way
criticising, because I am sure that it's a very difficult thing to do for some people.
But the point I'm making here is that this very issue often seems to distort
the picture because people assume that, because they can't master it, the
operating system itself must be flawed. Conversely, however, the same is
probably true of somebody used to Mac OSX and suddenly finding themselves
plunged into the Windows environment. So what I'm saying here is that the fault
isn't always necessarily the system itself, but user error or user lack of
knowledge.
• Firefox also have some very good web accessibility evaluation tools that have
been developed recently.
Under Mac OSX I agree that the Mozilla platforms are frustratingly
inaccessible. I do sometimes use FireFox on the Mac and the new functionalities
are actually giving it a significant edge over Safari. Now, yes, Apple is a big
part of that problem because they won't release the API's necessary to have
developers of certain applications enable their products for the VoiceOver
user. And yes, I'd be the first to agree that Apple is definitely selling the
vision impaired short on that count.
• But the term "versus," ... I have to say I don't like it. They are two
different OS's and there are different ways of navigating both.
That was merely a figure of speech. The discussion at that time was a direct comparison
between the two in terms of cost. Ergo, marketing philosophies made me believe, as I
still do in that context, that the term "Versus" was quite appropriate. In the
wider scheme of things, perhaps less so.
• Regarding Android, I do hope Google does a better job. The got booed off the
stage, so to speak, at last year's CSUN conference. Hopefully that has caused
them to ear alarm bells, but several of my friends who have gotten Android
phones have said they are very frustrated with their purchase.
As I understand it, there are several incarnations of Android. I've only
actually had hands-on play with 2 phones, a Samsung and another whose brand
name I honestly can't remember right now. Neither phone, as far as I am aware,
was equipped with accessibility and although some of the apps onboard were
quite visually appealing, I'm not sure how they would have worked with access
technology. Now, before anybody jumps; I' not pre-guessing or judging here. I'm
only commenting on what I saw; and my hypothesis could be way off the mark.
Lynne
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