Hello, I am writing to you since the progress of the accessibility features are really pour in the last releases of osx 10.10.2. The mac is still missing some important features against windows with a commercial screenreader, and this after more 6 years of voiceover as built-in screenreader. Ok, voiceover is still a free, built-in screenreader but on windows , there are 2 free screenreader for the windows platform that are better in some cases than voiceover.
Braille is still very basicnin osx: Some daily problems I discover with voiceover: I can’t follow courses with only braille output (without speech) during colleges. I mean: there is some important information missing on the braille display that’s only available with speech. What is missing: >> 1- no option for word wrapping: this can be useful for fast reading (loudly); >> 2- no different modes line, structured, speech (like in jaws): specialy >> structured mode in jaws is configurable, type of controls is shown, >> interaction-levels could be shown on this way. >> It’s e.g. very frustrating if you are in a text area and you can read all >> with the braille-line but you can’t edit or simply move the cursor to any >> position that is visible on the braille display. >> >> 3- to know if quicknav is on/off before moving isn’t possible also. >> On this way , it’s very easy to lose your position in a text-area or a >> window. >> The quick-nav option has also some bugs in general but is sometimes very >> useful for navigation (and specially on a macbook). >> 4- In some cases, the text that’s in the voiceover cursor is (always) >> underlineed with dots 7-8. On this way , no other attributes are shown and >> the cursor isn’t shown. If dots 7,8 are turned off, the cursor isn’t visible >> at all and capitals aren’t shown also. >> >> 5- When i put the cursor on a letter in a text I delete a .(dot) sign on the >> left sign of the cursor and voiceover says sometimes something else. further braille bugs: cursor routing on the first sign of the braille-display: the text on the display is gone; when composing a message to multiple recipients , while the speech is saying correctly the contact that has the focus, the braille display isn’t following. >> Further: Some bugs since 10.9 aren’t fixed: the icons in the statusbar like the third party app dropbox can’t be accessed with voiceover from there. The drag and drop-function with voiceover is not improved since the introduction in osx 10.7 and gives not the same possibilities for blind users as for sighted users. The button to mount all external (network)-stations at once in finder is not accessible with voiceover; And some different points: Ibooks was basically accessible with voiceover after one update from osx 10.9 to osx 10.10. iWork’s is mainly accessible but is still missing some important compatibility options to work together with ms office. (most of the people that work in a administrative job, use windows with ms office). I still love the mac because of some intuïtive features like the trackpad with voiceover, time-machine, the possibility to maintain the system as blind user on my own. But , I don’t know if the newest features for blind users are good and innovative enough to spend that much money on. With so great financial results the last weeks that where announced from Apple, I should hope that more innovation is coming for people with disabilities. Keep on the work that Steve Jobs has started. Kind regards, William Windels -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
