My thought is that, maybe it should be a general practice to unload your screen reader regardless of which one you use, just to make sure that there are no keyboard or voicing conflicts. --- In God we trust! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org> Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 12:00 PM Subject: [Audyssey] Screen Readers and Games
Hi Bryan, That's not so surprising really. When I first went blind the first thing they showed me was Jaws. As a result that is what I ended up with for school, college, and being new to blindness and screen readers in general I really didn't know anything different. I just assumed Jaws was the only show in town. It was only after I got to college not only did I discover there were several other screen readers out there, I found Jaws really wasn't so hot. Yeah, it was a decent screen reader, but Window eyes has always been a fairly decent product itself. The more current versions are a superior product in my opinion. However, this brings me to my point. If I assume most blind computer users in the United States were handled the same way I was they were given Jaws through some state or school agency, and it was assumed it was the best product for the person it was given to. As a result the blind computer user has no experience in using Hal, Window Eyes, or anything else. They may not even been shown their options to pick or choose the product they wanted. It was just assumed Jaws was what they would use for work, school, college, whatever. So as it happens most of our game developers are Jaws users. When they say turn off your screen reader in the manual I half to assume they know Jaws conflicts with games, and they have no personal experience with anything other than Jaws. Else you might get directions for how to set the game up with Jaws, Window Eyes, Hal, System Access, etc. As has been pointed out here Hal and Window Eyes don't really have serious conflicts with existing accessible games. Jaws, on the other hand, does. Therefore it might help if we educate the game developers out there on how various screen readers works with their games so that the manuals can be updated to reflect this more specifically. <Smile> Bryan Peterson wrote: > Doubtless Dark the reason for that is that while they may say "your > screen reader," a lot of game developers probably assume most of their > customer base uses JAWS. I myself was a staunch JAWS user until two > years ago, when I discovered that JAWS won't let me use the NeoSpeach > voices and Window-Eyes will. Then as I experimented I discovered that > Window-Eyes worked so much better with just about every program I > used. The bit with games was just an accidental discovery, but I still > turn off Window-Eyes out of habbit when I play games. > Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of > pizza? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
