[bcab] Re: Accessibility of the Mac Minnie for office, web and development.

Just worth adding that you will be bound to struggle at first and that's 
nothing to do with the capabilities of voice-over but is because you're 
learning a new operating system.  Some of the navigation conventions are quite 
different to working in Windows so it takes a while to get used to which  
issues are you not knowing what you are doing and which are limitations in the 
screenreader.

Adrian Higginbotham
Project manager: Learning services
Becta
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ 


-----Original Message-----
From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Tristram Llewellyn
Sent: 29 February 2008 13:58
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Re: Accessibility of the Mac Minnie for office, web and 
development.

I own one of the first gen Mac Minis at home that were G4 based.  The form 
factor is very nice and is a nearly silent machine except if it has a lot to 
do.  The newer Mac Minis are both more powerful and have four USB ports to my 
two and is generally a much better machine, though I think Apple may abandon 
this line of machine shortly.  That is a shame because I really like the Mac 
Mini, and it is fantastic if you don't give it too much to do. 

With the introduction of Leopard the VoiceOver utility has made significant 
steps to being a useful screen reader.  The iTunes software is now pretty 
accessible and mac Mail is too.  

I believe it is still the case that Microsoft Office won't go, I don't have 
2008 to try but 2004 did not work.  There are however a large variety of third 
party word processors some of which may be more VoiceOver friendly than Word.  
I think a similar mantra may go for your text editor for development purposes.  
Underneath the pretty UI of course is Darwin Unix so you may be able to use 
some command line tools for Unix as well which you could access via Terminal (I 
haven't tried VoiceOver with Terminal though).

I still think that VoiceOver is not yet comparable with any of the commercial 
Windows screen reader offerings, applicatino specific support is missing for 
example, but it is going albeit slowly in the right direction.  A few 
evangelists out there claim that they can do everything they want on a Mac.

If you can afford to dabble then the Mac Mini is a good way to do it.
VoiceOver however needs some undivided attention before you can really exploit 
it to do some of the tasks you want.

Regards.

Tristram Llewellyn
tristram.llewellyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Technical Support
Sight and Sound Technology
 
-----Original Message-----
From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Nick.Adamson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 1:20 PM
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Accessibility of the Mac Minnie for office, web and development.

Hi All.

I'm sure this has been spoken about so many times but I've not been interested 
before.

One of the guys at work has been talking about his mac and I'm pretty impressed.

I'm thinking about one for home and I'm wondering about accessibility.
I know there's Voice Over which is the built in screen reader. How good is 
this, how does it compare to the plethora of windows screen readers.

Mostly I'd want to do email, office type applications, read books which are 
plain text or html, brows the web, maybe a bit of IM.

I'd also want to develop PHP on it and some C++. what are the development 
environments like, how accessible are they?

Any information gratefully received.
Cheers.
Nick.



Nick Adamson
Software Engineer
General Dynamics United Kingdom Limited

Email: nick.adamson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel: 01495 236467
http://www.generaldynamics.uk.com

General Dynamics United Kingdom Limited
Bryn Brithdir,
Units 3 & 4,
Oakdale Business Park,
Oakdale,
South Wales,
NP12 4AA.



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