Hi, I think we sometimes romanticize the idea that things were fabulous when we used a screen reader that was developed by a company that specializes in screen reading. Don’t get me wrong, I very much appreciate what the screen reader companies have done for accessibility. At the same time, I did not usually get instant bug fixes when I reported them to the screen reader company. It often took months or years for things to get fixed. I just don’t see that Apple is any less responsive than the people who specialize in accessibility.
I think we sometimes forget that accessing these visual operating systems using speech and braille is a stretch for everyone from the engineers to the users. I thoroughly enjoy using my Apple devices every day. Robert Carter On Dec 17, 2013, at 2:21 PM, Teresa Cochran <vegaspipistre...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, alll, > > I wasn't going to post to this thread, but I've been thinking about this > issue of accessibility. When I decided to switch to a Mac, I knew I had to > consider the fact that buying a product off the shelf was going to mean > risking some accessibility features. Maybe mainstream developers are > sometimes not aware of how screen-readers work on a visceral level. Maybe > accessibility will not be as much a priority in this case as it would be for > an entity like Freedom Scientific. However, having tried Linuxx and using > various screen-readers and desktops on that platform, I still find that > Voiceover is far more stable and accessible than Orca screen-reader, for > example. I still explore and use various platforms, and believe me, I've seen > my share of bugs. So this update for Mac oSX is nothing to me. It has some > annoyances for sure, but imagine if it shut itself off every five minutes or > restarted the OS or just plain didn't read a good number of apps. > > Also, how much are we paying for these OS updates? How much did we pay for > this last full upgrade? Imagine having to pay an upgrade fee every time you > wanted to update just the screen-reader alone. > > So I think that before one uses software extensively, one has to consider > some factors. Is this something I want to risk my productivity on? If not, > should I stay with what i know? Do I like to learn new things, and how > tolerant am I of bugs in software? How much hand-holding do I need? If I buy > a product off the shelf, can I work around the accessibility glitches that > are probably going to rear their ugly heads? If not, maybe I should consider > getting something exclusively blind-friendly if I don't want to put up with > accessibility issues. > > In short, I really think Apple is doing a fantastic job, considering. And > yes, I would have higher expectations of a Freedom Scientific or Humanware. > > Just my two bits of currency. :) > > Teresa > > Sent using Alpine messaging system in Mac OS X Terminal > > On Tue, 17 Dec 2013, Buddy Brannan wrote: > >> BTW, for those who think that Tim Cook just doesn’t give two s**ts about >> accessibility, this is probably well worn a view. Be cynical and say it’s >> just Tim spewing a line or whatever you like, but I kind of don’t get that. >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNEafGCf-kw > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
