Hi there
On the whole I have no regrets switching from Windows to Snow Leopard for most of my work. However Apple is far from perfect as I found out today.
I just got my father a Macbook Pro, April 2010 edition from the refurbished store on Apples Web Site. It's got 17" screen. He's also visually impaired so he'll be using the accessibility features. It's great that Apple provide these as default. However it was here the problems started.
1. I started the voiceover quick start tutorial. Next decided go out out of it to adjust the voice as it was far to quick to understand. This is a common complaint I've had myself with all screen reading software I've used. They always start it too fast. I'm not visually impaired myself but I have used screen readers in the past.
2. Having adjusted it I then switched to bring up the tutorial but I couldn't figure out how. So I went to their Web Site. They said all I press is: CTRL-CONTROL-COMMAND-F8. So I pressed those and nothing happened. The web page I used is here: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
I then thought perhaps the keys pressed had changed in Lion. So I went to the way back machine and did a search. No it was the same in Snow Leopard: http://web.archive.org/web/20110207212757/http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
Eventually I worked out I needed to press fn as well. Surprised no one has spotted this before and if they have, that Apple hasn't updated their Web Site. So you press fn-CTRL-CONTROL-COMMAND-F8. Took 15 minutes to work that out! My father would have stood no chance.
3. However it wasn't much use because despite slowing down the voice, it was still to fast. Turns out we can slow down the voice but the tutorial doesn't respect this setting. In fact the tutorial respects no setting. It only uses the default everything for the voice, including the voice itself and the speed.
4. So I thought about using CONTROL-COMMAND-s to read the text I had selected but that failed too. I thought Mac's were suppose to be interactive and user friendly. I guess this isn't always the case and I doubt this is something Apple would be to keen on documenting to loudly.
I then worked out it was possible to press CTRL+mouse click and select start speech from the speech menu. However as my father is visually impaired and he has no useful computer knowledge to speak of, the chances of him being able to do that himself are non-existant. You'd think Apple would make this easy for him and others. After all they are visually impaired and that's hard enough to live with, let alone learn how to use a computer.
I get the impression Lion might be just as bad but perhaps someone with better knowledge them me that me might know. I'm not on Lion myself so can't test this out.
On the whole I have no regrets switching from Windows to Snow Leopard for most of my work. However Apple is far from perfect as I found out today.
I just got my father a Macbook Pro, April 2010 edition from the refurbished store on Apples Web Site. It's got 17" screen. He's also visually impaired so he'll be using the accessibility features. It's great that Apple provide these as default. However it was here the problems started.
1. I started the voiceover quick start tutorial. Next decided go out out of it to adjust the voice as it was far to quick to understand. This is a common complaint I've had myself with all screen reading software I've used. They always start it too fast. I'm not visually impaired myself but I have used screen readers in the past.
2. Having adjusted it I then switched to bring up the tutorial but I couldn't figure out how. So I went to their Web Site. They said all I press is: CTRL-CONTROL-COMMAND-F8. So I pressed those and nothing happened. The web page I used is here: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
I then thought perhaps the keys pressed had changed in Lion. So I went to the way back machine and did a search. No it was the same in Snow Leopard: http://web.archive.org/web/20110207212757/http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
Eventually I worked out I needed to press fn as well. Surprised no one has spotted this before and if they have, that Apple hasn't updated their Web Site. So you press fn-CTRL-CONTROL-COMMAND-F8. Took 15 minutes to work that out! My father would have stood no chance.
3. However it wasn't much use because despite slowing down the voice, it was still to fast. Turns out we can slow down the voice but the tutorial doesn't respect this setting. In fact the tutorial respects no setting. It only uses the default everything for the voice, including the voice itself and the speed.
4. So I thought about using CONTROL-COMMAND-s to read the text I had selected but that failed too. I thought Mac's were suppose to be interactive and user friendly. I guess this isn't always the case and I doubt this is something Apple would be to keen on documenting to loudly.
I then worked out it was possible to press CTRL+mouse click and select start speech from the speech menu. However as my father is visually impaired and he has no useful computer knowledge to speak of, the chances of him being able to do that himself are non-existant. You'd think Apple would make this easy for him and others. After all they are visually impaired and that's hard enough to live with, let alone learn how to use a computer.
I get the impression Lion might be just as bad but perhaps someone with better knowledge them me that me might know. I'm not on Lion myself so can't test this out.
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