Moderated Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac


Owais Patel <owaisipatel@...>
 

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime. I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Dan Longmore
 

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A
Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use
both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing
down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over
using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you
always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please
explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...>
 

Switch to Jaws and Windows, it is superior in so many ways.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Owais Patel <owaisipatel@...>
 

Thanks. Where can I get resources to learn about Jaws and Braille support in ithis

Sincerely,
Owais

On Apr 13, 2018, at 7:05 PM, Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...> wrote:

Switch to Jaws and Windows, it is superior in so many ways.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais









Steve Matzura
 

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.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Richard Turner <richardturner42@...>
 

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.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...>
 

Hi Steve and Richard,

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.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan
Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To
Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais


Owais Patel <owaisipatel@...>
 

Hello everyone. The one thing I love about MacO is although there is interacting everything is really organized therefore the operating system itself isn't too messy. I find Windows really messy because there are different things when you use the Tabkey to navigate and when you use the Arrow keys. I'm considering buying textbooks to learn Windows because I think that before learning MacOs I didn't know how the operating system works either. I think that same will happen for Windows. I believe that in order to use a Coputer you should know the operating system up side down and all around without using shortcuts. The reason is that for once there might be a time when Keystrokes don't work but the long way will always work. I think that learning Windows will journey but nice to know more than one operating sthstem. Thanks for all the opinions. Are there places that I can go for now to ask questions in regards to Windows and its layout like Email Lists or Web Pages that I can visit to learn the Operating System which is Windows 10 from a new user's perspective?
Sincerely,
Owais

On Apr 14, 2018, at 10:51 PM, Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...> wrote:

Hi Steve and Richard,

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.
I am making that statement in those similar words because the statement about Voiceover being superior is subjective and may apply to the person who made it.
However, without Jaws and Windows and before Windows DOS, both accessible solutions, many blind people would not have had work and careers, those solutions were available almost 20 years before OSX and Voiceover became even available.
No system is perfect, but there must be a reason why very experienced people who use both the Mac and Voiceover and Windows and Jaws often prefer Windows and Jaws when they want to be truly productive. Jonathan Mosen is one example who has written extensively about this and I wouldn't hesitate to bet that if computer experts designed a test with a number of different day-to-day tasks like word processing, working with spreadsheets, email, web browsing and so on that I would beat most Mac/Voiceover users in how well and fast I can do them.

Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dan
Longmore
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 6:22 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

If you can stay w Voice Over. Compared to many areas JAWS is inferior.

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Owais Patel
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2018 9:51 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Making The Use Of Both Hands When Navigating With Jaws To
Make A Similar Experience Like Voiceover On The Mac

Hello everyone. I have been a Voiceover on the Mac user for quite sometime.
I'm considering a move to Jaws. One of my big concerns are I love to use both hands when navigating around. Because in Voiceover I'm used to pressing down the Modifier kys (Control+Option) all the time. I preper that over using the Quick Nav feature. Is it possible to use Jaws in a way that you always have to hold down the Modifier Key? If yes how do I do that? Please explain in detail as I'm a new user of Windows itself. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Owais









Steve Matzura
 

On 4/15/2018 4:07 AM, Owais Patel wrote:
The one thing I love about MacO is although there is interacting everything is really organized therefore the operating system itself isn't too messy. I find Windows really messy because there are different things when you use the Tabkey to navigate and when you use the Arrow keys.
That is my Number One complaint about VoiceOver. Sometimes TAB takes you through all the fields in a dialog, sometimes VoiceOver+Right-Arrow will do it. The point is that the user must try both, there is no one hundred percent sure way of knowing which way is the correct way. In Windows, there's only one way--the TAB key. I am not saying there should not be more than one way to do something, but if there is, make those two ways functionally equal. Don't skip anything.


Sieghard Weitzel <sieghard@...>
 

Hi Owais,

I think you are over complicating this. I would just get a Windows PC or laptop and start using it, learn as you go. There is no point in reading 3 books trying to remember everything so, as you say, you "know the OS inside out" when afterwards you only use 30% of all that stuff. Maybe you are somebody who can remember everything you read and later recall and apply it, I am not that person, I find it much easier to just use it and then if I need to do something which I don't know I can find out by trying or asking and then I am more likely to remember it. I doubt Windows is more messy than OSX and on nice thing is that there are many way sto do something in Windows. Especially Windows 10 now I find is quite easy to use, you have two main areas where you ca go to make changes to all sorts of settings and that is either the main Settings app or the old Control Panel which still exists. Otherwise if you know where the Windows key is and you know about Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+F4 to close things and the arrow keys you are already well able to do things.
For us blind folks there is of course the additional learning curve for the screenreader and I would say that is probably the larger learning curve. You will need to know how to navigate with Jaws, but Jaws has a very good set of help files and other resources online. I am not sure what kind of computer user you are, if you plan to buy a laptop and are often mobile where you want to rely using the laptop's keyboard which may not have a numeric pad you should probably learn how to use Jaws with the laptop keyboard layout. But if not or if your laptop has a numeric pad (I would never buy one that doesn't) than do yourself a favour and use the desktop layout which uses the numeric pad for almost all things Jaws. The 0/insert key on the numeric pad is the Jaws key, the NumPad minus is the Jaws cursor key and the NumPad Plus is the PC cursor key, double pressing it twice quickly turns on th eso-called Touch cursor which in Windows 10 can be quite useful as the Jaws cursor often does not see as much information as it used to. As I said, don't over-think this, if you are an experienced computer user it's not that difficult.


Regards,
Sieghard

-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Steve Matzura
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2018 6:35 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

On 4/15/2018 4:07 AM, Owais Patel wrote:
The one thing I love about MacO is although there is interacting everything is really organized therefore the operating system itself isn't too messy. I find Windows really messy because there are different things when you use the Tabkey to navigate and when you use the Arrow keys.
That is my Number One complaint about VoiceOver. Sometimes TAB takes you through all the fields in a dialog, sometimes VoiceOver+Right-Arrow will do it. The point is that the user must try both, there is no one hundred percent sure way of knowing which way is the correct way. In Windows, there's only one way--the TAB key. I am not saying there should not be more than one way to do something, but if there is, make those two ways functionally equal. Don't skip anything.


Steve Matzura
 

Here's a thought: Put Windows on your Mac via Bootcamp. Do not do it with VM Fusion. You have to split resources if you do it that way. With Bootcamp, you actually bootstrap into Windows, not run Windows while running Mac OS.


Owais Patel <owaisipatel@...>
 

Hi there. I really agree with Steve. I've done that and whichenough I say that I have Windows installed on my Laptop that's the one I'm refering to.
Sincerely,
Owais

On Apr 16, 2018, at 5:58 PM, Steve Matzura <number6@...> wrote:

Here's a thought: Put Windows on your Mac via Bootcamp. Do not do it with VM Fusion. You have to split resources if you do it that way. With Bootcamp, you actually bootstrap into Windows, not run Windows while running Mac OS.