[access-uk] initial comments on window-eyes beta
- From: "Brian Hartgen" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 20:48:07 +0100
Hi
Following Graham's comments earlier on in the week relating to the
announcement of the new Window-Eyes public beta, I thought having worked
with it a little today I would share with list members my initial thoughts.
There is undoubtedly a lot of good things in this release especially with
regard to support for Internet Explorer 7, and I think GW have done their
usual excellent job in this area as they always have.
I think their PowerPoint support is superb. I presented Window-Eyes with
some slides containing both text and photographs, and it not only did a
fantastic job at reading out the information in all of the panes, but of
course in the Slide show view as well. Window-Eyes was also very good at
letting me know information pertaining to picture dimensions for example and
whether or not the slide would fit onto the screen. The downside to that is
there is no way of reviewing the dimension information at a slower pace.
Unfairly I feel, some people who love Window-Eyes claim that its chief
rival, JAWS for Windows, has many bugs when a version is initially released
or indeed when it is in public beta. No software package is perfect, either
mainstream or specialist, and accepting for the moment that W E is in beta,
it does have some problems.
For example, when viewing the shared calendar on our exchange server,
Window-Eyes insists I am not in the calendar when I use GW's new hot key for
accessing their calendar support (Insert+C). Now I have to say that, by
default, JAWS does not accurately read our shared calendar out of the box
either, but with a lot of scripting on my part it now responds perfectly in
every way. But of course I have the facilities to do that with jaws.
However, undoubtedly the support for local calendars within Window-Eyes is
good as they have created a "special" dialog box for us so that the calendar
can be viewed to its fullest extent. One can select to view by day, week,
month and can have access to a multitude of viewing options including the
ability to determine blocks of free time. The dialog comes with the usual
Window-Eyes over-chattiness though. For example, if you do check the box
relating to announcing blocks of free time, as you arrow down Window-Eyes
insists on first reading out the day and the date followed by the word
"subject" followed by whether free time exists. This is also the kind of
information you receive when you arrow down the list view to obtain
appointments and I would love to know if there is a way of filtering that
"verbal clutter" out.
In Microsoft Outlook, I am unable to get Window-Eyes to read or focus upon
any of the fields with the ALT+1 through to 7 keystrokes which either read
or focus upon different fields, such as the subject or attachments field. I
don't know why that is, but I do have the very latest service packs for
Office 2000 and 2003 on several computers and I get the same results. I
figure it must be something I am doing wrong or misunderstanding because I
am sure a feature which is prominently advertised would be able to work even
slightly.
As for context sensitive help information relative to an application, I
personally cannot see any. Pressing the new control shift question mark
keystroke gives me the ability to add help information myself, but as far as
I can see there is no context sensitive help information for new users to
specific application controls.
Those are just some initial comments as I say, and are just restricted to
the areas I have tested today on several machines with different versions of
Office installed. I will be equally vocal to GW Micro in terms of the
difficulties I have found, as only then can they put problems right if we
tell them about those difficulties. I shall also be praiseworthy where
appropriate. But I thought list members may be interested in reading these
findings.
Brian Hartgen
MSN: brian@xxxxxxxxxxx
SKYPE: brianhartgen
SKYPE IN UK: 0208-133-7186
SKYPE IN US: 213-985-3581
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