lets make one thing clear. This is about us. About our personal opinions and experience. Yours may differ.
To sum it up: we’re done. You might understand us a little better if you listen to episodes 22 and 23 first. …And we mean listen, not just read show notes.
Thanks for listening,
The Voiceover On Team.
Universal Access. Zoom.
What?
Similar to
Brief History.
Features, performance.
Zoom Window layout modes.
Zoom offers no other window layout modes. Terribly inferior accessibility of Microsoft Windows do. Either built-in or freeware magnifiers.
Zoom keyboard shortcuts.
Zoom keyboard shortcuts conflict with VoiceOver keyboard shortcuts. Can reassign but near-impossible to do with just VO so useless task for users with very low vision.
“Zoom follows keyboard focus”.
Zoom It
Conclusions.
Nonetheless Zoom is built-in, smooth, has some nice visual FX. Would like to see a good thing improved rather than wasted away as its currently happening.
He’s back, due to popular demand, and wealth of knowledge, we have James Teh of NVAccesshttp://NVDA-Project.org and developer of NVDA back on. We talk screen reader models http://goo.gl/O4HXf (object navigation, flat review, portable, and read text under mouse, OCR (print document and screen reader [Jamie’s eexperimental NVDA OCR plugin: http://goo.gl/ueMa5]), WebDocuments and WebApps, Jamie’s Google Docs http://goo.gl/asVTUand Twitter http://t.co/dxdXL2zK accessibility fixes Greasemonkey http://goo.gl/Gg3WE scripts, Yahoo! Mail and Search being very accessible WebApps that use ARIA, why WebApps are not used/liked compared to desktop apps, and the need for community involvement (Mozilla, Yahoo!, and NVAccess). Please, donate to NVAccess, allowing the assistive technology/screen reader industry to move forward, commercial/political challenges to not be in the way, and to promote community interaction: http://www.nvaccess.org/wiki/Donate. NVDA is the only screen reader developed, used, tested by blind people. NVDA is the only screen reader with innovation, rapid development, and works as a community.
This is a very different episode, where instead of having a primary focus on VoiceOver, we have NVAccess Vice President and Co-Lead developer, James Teh on to talk about NVDA, specifically how it compares and contrast to Apple VoiceOver for Mac OS X and iOS. James answers to who and the what of NVAccess, himself, and NVDA. We then go into user experience, where we have nothing but positive things to say, such as: ease of use, intuitive, non-intrusive, light weight, effective, and Kevin Chao uses it most of time as primary desktop screen reader (yes, desktop, not just Windows and we all prefer it over other desktop screen readers, such as Mac OS X VoiceOver.). The user experience of NVDA and VoiceOver are huge contrast in every single aspect. We then compare and contrast the development model, where NVDA is open, designed, developed, tested, supported, and has lots of blind people involve in every aspect. VoiceOver is closed, designed, developed, supported, and has lots of sighted people involved, but it’s used by blind people. Apple iOS is one model that works very well (we are all in absolute agreement), but huge pieces to the puzzle are missing for Mac OS X, and we encourage you to listen in for all the specific details.
This is a very different episode, where instead of having a primary focus on VoiceOver, we have NVAccess Vice President and Co-Lead developer, James Teh on to talk about NVDA, specifically how it compares and contrast to Apple VoiceOver for Mac OS X and iOS. James answers to who and the what of NVAccess, himself, and NVDA. We then go into user experience, where we have nothing but positive things to say, such as: ease of use, intuitive, non-intrusive, light weight, effective, and Kevin Chao uses it most of time as primary desktop screen reader (yes, desktop, not just Windows and we all prefer it over other desktop screen readers, such as Mac OS X VoiceOver.). The user experience of NVDA and VoiceOver are huge contrast in every single aspect. We then compare and contrast the development model, where NVDA is open, designed, developed, tested, supported, and has lots of blind people involve in every aspect. VoiceOver is closed, designed, developed, supported, and has lots of sighted people involved, but it’s used by blind people. Apple iOS is one model that works very well (we are all in absolute agreement), but huge pieces to the puzzle are missing for Mac OS X, and we encourage you to listen in for all the specific details.
In this podcast, we discuss implementation of Braille in Mac OSX Lion and in iOS. We talk about what works and what does not with some thoughts for the future. We also spend some time on how to influence future development with apple and 3rd party developers.
Our guest, Deb Lewis, works for the Centre on Technology and disability Studies at the University of WA in Seattle where they support individuals with disabilities to use specialized and mainstream technology. Deb has been around a long time, working in the field since 1974.
*Note that this episode was recorded before iOS5 was released. All changes to iOS braille implementation will be covered in our iOS 5 specials.
In this special episode, we talk about iOS 5 new features, our focus is on 38 of the VoiceOver ones. These features are working very well on a macro and micro level and that’s due to Apple and beta testers all communicating via radars on bugreport.apple.com. Kevin Chao filed 150 radars, which ranged from feature request, enhancement, UI/usability, serious bugs, crashes, and much more. Anything and everything is possible. Do not speak on behalf of Apple, developers, try to reason why something isn’t possible, it can’t be done, or why it should not be done; instead, provide constructive detailed and quality feedback to Apple and it will happen. This is part of a multi-part series on iOS 5, which will go into other new features, enhancements, bug fixes, and much more—all about iOS 5 and VoiceOver.
Its now possible to browse educational sites with Google chrome, work with documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs. Google Accessibility and this cool thing called Chromevox finally made it possible. Get and find out more about ChromeVox here: http://code.google.com/p/google-axs-chrome/wiki/InstallingChromeVox
Otherwise sit back, listen to Kev and I both rant and rejoice. We cover lots of things. Don’t miss the special announcement by yours truly (aka Access Wizard).
Macmacs? Who are these creatures? Where are they spawned?
We don’t know who breeds them but we sure know where too find them. Idiot Macmac mailing lists have Macmacs in abundance. In the simpleton land they inhabit:
• Productivity = Twitter, Skype, Adium, Piano Pub, VLC player and OMG did you just hear that loud truck outside!
• Advanced document processing = Textedit. All that stuff you can’t do with TextEdit is just fluff. Spreadsheets are not a problem because nobody needs them.
• Geeky = opening Xcode once in a blue moon and may be occasionally typing a couple of things in the terminal not expecting text output that exceeds 2 lines.
Their vocabulary is mostly limited to phrases like: “User error”, “Nothing is perfect” and “Hopefully they’ll fix it”.
Their favourite tactics are to ignore any/all specifics and just say that all screen readers and all operating systems have problems. Therefore nothing is a problem
So instead of contacting accessibility@apple about any issues with VoiceOver they write 5 page letters of gratitude. Because thanking Apple over and over and over for “free” VoiceOver and a pony is what they call being “constructive”.
If you encounter any issues with VoiceOver don’t waste your time with these forum/mailing list dwelling entities and just contact accessibility@apple.com and/or if you have a developer account bugreport.apple.com. Be specific, provide exact steps to reproduce the problem and there’s a good chance Apple Accessibility will do something about it.
“Question: If you’re blind and you use OSX for work or education and you’re not an audio engineer please contact us.”
Lets preface by saying that we asked this question back in August 2011. To this day (its now January 2012) we haven’t heard from anyone who had any real answers/ was able to understand the question. So its pretty safe to conclude that the only blind users of OSX who do any real work are audio engineers.
At this point we’re not interested in what the rest of the OSX/ VoiceOver users are doing and what they’ve got there Macs for.
Original show notes:
Access Wizard and kevin Chao talk about their experiences with the Mac. What they can and what they can’t do. Going over the list of VoiceOver shortcomings and quirks as well as accessibility issues of various applications.
Ivan (aka Access Wizard). Audio engineer. Has been happily using his Macs since the mid 90s. currently owns half a dozen macs. Is able to use Voiceover with Pro Tools. Would like to see improvements to accessibility of Pro Tools and 3rd party plugins, would like to see glaring accessibility bugs and issues with Voiceover ironed out. However represents a fraction of Voiceover users who are able to work on the Mac.
kevin chao. Student. QA, alpha/beta tester. First experienced the Mac ages ago. As a sighted user. Many years later after losing his eyesight got his first iPhone. Found its accessibility very impressive. Naturally assumed that the mac can do even more. Was in for a disappointment.
That’s our story. If you are blind and you do any work on your Mac that isn’t audio then please get in touch with us. For clarification work does not involve posting in mailing lists all day long, chatting to friends on Skype, tweeting what you ate and playing music in Piano Pub.
instead by “work” we mean working in the office, coding, working in education and/or using Macs for education. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Oh and did we say “mac”? we’re not interested in those running Windows on Mac to do work on mac. Nope, VoiceOver users only please.
