Further to this, in OS X you use the tab key to get to important items more quickly, while you have the option of the VO keys to pass everything. I use the item chooser a lot though. I had been wanting something similar in windows for a very long time, something that worked in all programs, but Windows screen readers are nowhere near that level of advancement since they have been scrabbling to deal with complex new interfaces on a program by program basis! I love the universality of OS X
Cheers Dave On 11 Oct 2010, at 12:58, Ricardo Walker wrote: Hi Neil, Correct. If your in an application or web page and someone gives you the physical placement of an item, you can find it on the track pad which gives you the layout similar to what a sighted person sees on the screen. Just like on the iPhone. This leads me into my comment. I don't think moving your hand from a keyboard to a trackpad to a number pad necessarily makes you slower. For example, If I'm in iTunes and I want to reach an item using JFW I might have to tab 4, 5, maybe 6 times. If I know the layout of iTunes on a Mac, I can just touch that location on my track pad. If your in an environment where you have to work side by side with sighted people this can really clear some communication hurdles. I thought just like you when I first made the switch. "Why do I have to press 4 keys to accomplish the same task the only took 1 finger with Jaws?" And it annoyed me. But then I realized that the number of keys 1 must press doesn't have a direct relationship to speed and or productivity. I also didn't like the concept of interacting with elements. This is before I completely understood it's advantages. Again, I use iTunes as an example. If you have your IOS device hooked up to your windows PC you go to the sources list and arrow down to your device. Same with the Mac. Then, on Windows, you tab and tab and tab. Then when you've reached the button you want like music, you select then tab a whole lot more. On the Mac, I could use the iTem chooser to find music and it takes me right to it. Lets say for some reason I did want to press VO right arrow instead of using the item chooser. Once I've reached music and selected it, I can keep going until I reached the scroll areas that contain the information for the button I've selected. If I don't want to view them I don't have to. You don't have this choice on windows. Your forced to pass every element which takes up time when you know what your looking for. On Oct 11, 2010, at 3:47 AM, Neil Barnfather - TalkNav wrote: > Laura, > > good post, appreciated reading it... > > can I ask, you and others have mentioned simply targeting an area of the > screen, such as in your example where you say top right of a page etc. > > how is this achieved? using the touch pad presumably but how? are you > meaning you drag the mouse up there, or that the touch pad in some way > represents the screen? > > thanks. > > Twitter @neilbarnfather > > Neil Barnfather > Talks List Administrator > > TalkNav is a Nuance, Code Factory and Sendero dealer, for all your > accessible phone, PDA and GPS related enquiries visit www.talknav.com > > > -----Original Message----- > From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com > [mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Laura M > Sent: 11 October 2010 02:50 > To: MacVisionaries > Subject: Re: Can keyboard only navigation ever be... > > Neil, I get where you're coming from--the first couple weeks I spent > with the Mac, I had exactly the feelings you describe. I had no > problem learning the OS, but I couldn't possibly figure any way that > it would be more efficient than JAWS. I have done a complete 180 in > the year or so I've had since then. With quicknav, I can do more with > one finger than I could with JAWS, and I can do so more conveniently. > I'm not using the number row to jump through headings on a website, > for example, then coming back to the arrow keys to continue reading. > I've made a couple changes in keyboard commander, and they've also > improved things, but those changes are no more extensive than anything > I did with the JAWS keyboard manager. > > There are three things that really make it quicker for me: the > trackpad, the item chooser, and--pretty surprisingly, given that I > hated it at the start--the need for interaction. > > With the trackpad, if I'm on a page or a program I'm familiar with, I > can instantly get to what I want by just touching it, as opposed to > tabbing or arrowing however many times it takes to get there. It does > mean taking your hand off the keyboard, yes, but the time saver is > more than worth it, imo. There are many, many times in work now, when > I'm using a Windows machine with no option but to tab and tab, that > I'm beyond frustrated not to have it. That's also why the model of > interaction helps. At the beginning, it seemed like a lot more work to > have to interact just to get to a button, but if you've got a program > with a lot of controls, skipping over them by groups, as opposed to > painstakingly going past each control until you find the one you want, > is far more efficient. > > The item chooser is extremely useful for similar reasons. It's not > just present on webpages, where it gives you the JAWS functionality of > narrowing down headers or form controls or whatever; it's in every > program Voiceover works with. The more complicated the program, the > more beneficial it is. > > I don't think Voiceover is perfect by any means. There's a level of > customisation possible in JAWS that isn't there yet, but if we're just > talking navigation, I think a lot of the solutions that seem backward > at first really do pay off. And I'd also add that I feel much more > like I'm using the Mac as sighted people do than I ever did with > windows. With Voiceover, I'm not forced to do everything linearly; a > friend can say, "You want the icon at the top right of the screen," > and that's actually useful information now. There's a context to > things that the Windows screenreaders simply didn't provide me. > > I also suspect there are duplicate VO keyboard commands for existing > OS shortcuts because it was probably far more useful and common to > lock the VO keys before quicknav came along. It's maybe not ideal now, > but I can see why it made sense then. I listen out for whatever > keyboard shortcuts the program menus list, and learn them, instead. > There are also good resources on the web that list the most common > keyboard shortcuts, which might help you out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
