Hi all! New to the group, but have been lurking and reading for a while and wanted some input on some of my specific questions.
A little about me: I still have a fair bit of usable vision left, though my eyes get tired quickly and thus I use a combination of Zoomtext (with the doc reader) as well as Jaws for longer texts as I find constantly scrolling back and forth with the magnification very tiring and disorienting as I have to bump up magnification more and more. I also used OCR and readers (K1000 traditionally) for school reading. I’m going to law school in the fall, and so will obviously be doing a TON of reading and writing, for which I rely entirely upon my computers. In the past, I’ve run into issues during research when neither ZT or JFW could easily interface with the various databases, and I’ll be working with these even more come September. I’ve hummed and hahhed about making a switch to Mac after hearing almost nothing negative about them, and I’ve read and reread discussions on this and other sites about comparisons between ZT vs Zoom and JFW/NVDA/etc vs VoiceOver. I’m aware that all these products have their pro’s and con’s, and while I would love further input or feedback on these tools, my specific concerns are outlined below. 1. Can anyone provide specific insight on how well Zoom interacts with advanced word processors and office suites, specifically iWork or Office for Mac? I’ve heard mixed reviews regarding tracking, font smoothing, but will have to write long papers and put together presentations that need to be compatible with other students’ systems for group assignments. 2. Could anyone offer insights on how VO and/or Zoom might be able to handle online databases with a variety of html, scanned and .pdf based documents, hidden frames, and other database programming that I’m just not familiar with? JFW and ZT often can’t find any text to lock onto in my previous experience with these databases. 3. What are the best OCR options for the Mac? Other general comments or recommendations about making or not making a switch to the Mac for someone who will be doing extensive document- based research and writing would also be more than welcome. Thanks in advance for any and all feedback! Cheers, Will -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@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.