[access-uk] Re: Why I hate Word - from a JAWS user
- From: "Paul Leake" <paul.leake@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:28:15 -0000
Why I hate Word - from a JAWS useryes Daman, it was designed for mouse users I
think? i suspect that any screen reader users will have the same issues
whatever screenreader they use!
Cheers
Paul
paul.leake@xxxxxxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: Damon Rose
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:37 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Why I hate Word - from a JAWS user
Microsoft Word is meant to be brilliantly accessible. And indeed you can tell
that Freedom Scientific have put a lot of work into it to make it as accessible
as possible, it being a fairly indispensible part of the software port folio in
your average office.
Tables are accessible. You can increase font and change colours. You can
alter margins, add page numbers, use hyperlinks, there's a hundred things you
can do with it and they're all accessible. However, if you aren't a mouse user
and can't whizz your way across the screen and appreciate the results once
you've altered them, then it takes absolutely blinking ages to read and create
documents that your sighted colleagues take minutes to create.
Want to make your heading a bit bigger? And perhaps embolden it too? Well if
you're not too careful, you might accidentally do same to the text below it in
a last minute change of heart about the content. Result: it looks
embarrassingly rubbish.
Create a bullet point list and find yourself playing around with it for
several minutes because you've got one too many bullet points and you can't get
rid of the unnecessary bullet, or Word decides it wants to bullet point things
that you didn't want.
The best most accessible documents are the ones you create. You know them,
you know your way round them. But it's still difficult. The documents that your
colleagues like the most because they're 'at a glance' user friendly, are the
ones you find most difficult to access.
Access to Word is a myth because it's so time consumingly unusable.
When you launch Word it takes 20 seconds before a blank document opens,
longer if you're clicking on a pre-existing document. There's so much lag and
there's a lack of control that makes me want to scream.
So that's why I use Metapad and .txt files for as much of my work as
possible, only transferring to Word if I need to spellcheck or format it in a
fancy way. It's faster, unbelievably faster. Or that's my finding.
And yes, I have had Word training, I do understand how it works, but there's
so much darn pussyfooting around when creating documents that I can't help but
think there must be a better way.
That's all I wanted to say. Do have a nice day. Xxx
Damon Rose
Senior Content Producer bbc.co.uk/ouch
BBC Vision Learning
Tel: 020 8752 4427 (x0224427)
email: damon.rose@xxxxxxxxx
Have you heard the award-winning Ouch Podcast yet? A razor sharp disability
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