Moderated Re: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac
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Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...>
Hi Steve and Richard,
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Wow, I heard about "interacting" with elements and things with Voiceover, but I didn't realize it was this involved and complicated. I once tried Voiceover on a Mac at an Apple Store because I was curious but that was 4 or 5 years ago and I forgot most of it. The one thing I remember is that I had a lot of problems with many of the keystrokes because when I became blind a long time ago I also had extremely serious hand injuries and end up with index and middle fingers missing on each hand. I can usually use 1 finger to cover Control and Shift if I have to or Control and Windows Key as long as there is no FN key in between, but I honestly could not press all the keys which were often required for Voiceover. Regards, Sieghardtwo lost -----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 8:20 AM To: main@jfw.groups.io Subject: Re: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac Owais, I usually do not chime in on this kind of a thread, but I have to heartily agree with Steve and Sieghard for the most part. I do miss some of the things I could do in DOS, but I'm quite happy with Windows. I have been using computers with speech for about 35 years, a bit more if you count the Commodor 64 and the OPTACON then a speech cartridge, but I don't want to go far down that path. I work at a vocational rehabilitation agency for the blind and I can say, at least in the United States, there are a ton more jobs open to a blind person using Windows than using a Mac. I know one person who worked in an office that used Mac computer and she is sighted and it was a small law office. A couple of clients have done home businesses I think with a Mac, but most of the people who have a Mac, use Windows at work and often end up adding Windows onto their Mac so when they want to be particularly productive, they can use Windows. The only argument I've heard that seems to carry any weight for going with a Mac is that the Screen reader is built in and doesn't cost over a thousand dollars. But, as NVDA and Narrator are improving, that is no longer a real issue for many things. What Mac people who say you get the screen reader for free fail to mention is that you are going to pay an awful lot more for the computer, at least if it is a laptop. Now that you have Windows and are learning it, I think you will find that navigating web sites and other html content with one finger will be very nice. I do know blind people who love their mac and VoiceOver, but the honest ones admit that producing a well formatted document is most definitely easier in Windows with Word. You want to create a heading, select the line, pull down the home menu, arrow left twice to styles and hit enter and arrow to the heading level you want and hit enter. Done. Or, use the shortcut keys to get there with alt+h, then alt+l and select your heading level. None of this four or five finger key combinations to interact and then stop interacting only to have to interact again in the body, etc. Best of luck, Richard “The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.” - Mitch Albom from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, page 1 -----Original Message----- From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Steve Matzura Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 7:05 AM To: main@jfw.groups.io Subject: Re: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac Owais: What is the impetus behind the move to Windows and JAWS? i.e., if you're successful and feel you are productive on Mac OS, why the change? Why fix what ain't broke? What do you feel would be the advantage for you to move away from an environment and procedures you know well and obviously enjoy using? I'm not trying to dissuade you from making that change--in fact, I support it strongly. I'm mainly curious about why, if you're willing to embrace a different operating system and accessibility paradigm, the first thing you want it to do is to behave like the one away from which you wish to move. Love to use two hands to navigate? That statement makes no sense to me whatsoever. Do you use two hands to turn a doorknob just because you like holding it with two hands? Do you use two hands to turn a switch on or off? Of course you don't. The only reason you are forced into these motions is because of the way VoiceOver was designed to work. I and thousands of Windows screenreader users, not just JAWS users, will tell you using two hands to do something isn't always the most efficient methodology, especially if you are a braille user. If you don't use braille, don't discount the one-handed approach to controlling your computer. Once you get used to it, you'll in fact find it quite liberating. I use both Windows and Mac OS, and it is my considered and unhumble opinion that whoever thought up the wacky system of having to interact with a control before manipulating it needs to be taiken out back and put out of our misery. Think of how much time a JAWS user would waste having to press two additional keystrokes just to change a pop-up menu, radio button, list view, etc.--one to open it, another to close it to prevent making further adjustments to that control. Then there's Web-browsing, a true productivity disaster. For the uninitiated, every browser session starts by having to interact with the Web content when the first page is loaded. Then, the user must interact with every heading in order to read its contents. And it just goes on and on. There's no ability to list links to find what is wanted quickly, navigating by Web object exists, but hoops must be jumped through in order to enable it and it's not intuitive, ... I could go on, but I would be considered a Mac-basher, which really I am not. There are programs I use for which a Mac is required, sure, but to live one's accessible online life on one? No, I would not recommend such torture even to my worst enemy. I watch very experience VoiceOver users go flip-flip-flipping around on a Mac, looking like they're trying to beat the speed of light the way their crazy flipper fingers are flying over their keyboards, but after all the mad typing is over, all they've done is to open a Web page, find a specific link or control, and activate it. In Windows, I can perform that task in far fewer keystrokes with any of the three major screenreaders, and yes, I do consider NVDA one of the Big Three now. When Narrator gets a little better, it will join the others and we'll have the Fab Four. And don't let the Mac proponents fool you into thinking VoiceOver works with everything "out of the box". It most decidedly does not. That's why there are tools like Keyboard Maestro, a program controlling language called Applescript, and just recently, Tesseract OCR has been brought onto Mac OS through a project started by a visually impaired Mac user. And what about updates? VoiceOver users are justifiably concerned every time a Mac OS update is applied because (unfortunately just like dear old JAWS) something is bound to break, and it's very likely to be something most users require to get stuff done. In Windows, when that happens, we have alternatives; in Mac OS, it's VoiceOver or bust. Once again, these opinions are my own, and they are not posted to bash any accessibility solution. However, I thoroughly believe that one should go into investment of one's time and money with one's eyes (and mind) wide open to the pros and cons of all aspects of a choice. As I said before, there are reasons why I own and use a Mac, but if I could, I'd take some of the software I use on Mac OS and make it equally or better accessible on Windows if such were possible because of the way Windows screenreaders work as opposed to how VoiceOver works. Old-timer Mac users tell me access used to be better before OS X and VoiceOver, back in the OS9 and Outspoken days. That's a shame, but it's probably similar to saying access was simpler and easier back in the dark days of DOS, which means with advancement comes complication,and users requiring special access solutions sometimes--OK, often--get the shorter end of the stick. On 4/13/2018 9:05 PM, Sieghard Weitzel wrote: Switch to Jaws and Windows, it is superior in so many ways. |
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