John, Seems to me you didn't really address some of Chris's specific issues with Mac as compared to his use of Jaws or NVDA with Windows. pdf on the Mac is a joke compared with Windows; sorry, but cutting and pasting in to text edit isn't my idea of reasonable access. And the fact that I can't read tables in pdf documents is a serious drawback. I know there are work arounds involving the use of Pages with tables and numbers, but again, cutting and pasting back and forth just to do something that ought to be done within a single app is not the same level of usability as you get with a good Windows screen reader. If Apple fixes this issue with the next release of iWork, which ought to be coming soon, then good for them. In the mean time, I don't see how you can say Mac is just as good as Windows for folks who need to do a lot of table reading and editing, or document changes tracking, which is working in MS Word for Windows with screen reader but not with VO and Pages. You made a statement that a lot of folks who criticize Apple accessibility as compared with Windows don't have sufficient knowledge of Mac usage to make such a statement. I would argue that the opposite is also true. I've seen statements from people who admit to not having used Windows ever or to not having used it in years, but they nonetheless feel justified in making statements that are as exaggerated about Windows as the ones you rightly call out re the Mac. There are plenty of things I like about the MacMy other complaint about use of the Mac, which isn't an Apple issue but does affect the usability of the system is the problem producing braille. I understand that there is a Duxbury product in the works for the Mac, although it will be interesting to see how that's going to work, given the state of inaccessibilitry of MS Word and uncertainty about whether Dux will be able to tightly integrate with the new iWork, as it does in Windows with Word. I have a use case involving the receipt of pdf documents that are both text and pictures. I have to integrate these by running ocr on the image only document, then pasting that in between sections of the text-based pdf that have been pasted in to Word. Then I produce ahard copy braille document from that for use each week. I can't do that at all on the Mac. It is easy with Windows. I admit that is a specialized use case. But it does highlight some of the shortcomings that may be encounter ed by blind folks who want to produce hard copy braille and need to do so in an efficient manner. One of the things I think that some folks minimize is the difference between something that is accessible, at least in name, and something that is efficiently usable. Some of this is learning curve, to be sure. But some of it is just simple efficiency and/or ergonomics, e.g. the business with the cutting and pasting of tables between Pages and Numbers.
I really hope that Mavericks sees some VO improvements and especially that the new iWork becomes as efficiently usable with VO as it is with JAWS or even NVDA. My Windows machine is close to the end of its life, and I don't want to buy another one, but given some of my use cases, I will need to do that if some stuff isn't made more efficiently usable or accessible at all with the Mac in the next several months. Mary Mary Otten motte...@gmail.com <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
