[jaws-uk] Re: Office 2007

Hi Tim – I made the switch about a year ago – maybe a bit longer and you’re 
right in that it as painful for everyone, generally it isn’t any worse for you 
as a screenreader user. Life does get better as you get used to the new ways of 
working. Sure after so many versions which followed the same conventions of 
user interface there will be times when you want a rarely used feature that you 
can remember the old way of getting to that you can’t find even with hours of 
searching but that’s just a learning curve.  Over a year in I have to say day 
to day I now don’t notice much of a difference in most apps and in Outlook in 
particular the calendar I find things a whole lot better than in 2003. Access 
to multiple or shared calendars in 2003 was virtually impossible but isa breeze 
in 2007. I don’t use a Braille display much of the time so can’t comment on 
your particular question about that but would just say that in contrast with 
all the negativity you’ll hear around 2007, stick with it, whatever you might 
think about whether or not the change is worthwhile, what the point of it was 
etc you will get use to it and will be no less productive than in previous 
versions – eventually.


Adrian Higginbotham
Manager, leading edge research.
DD: 02476797333
E: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
W: www.Becta.org.uk
A: Becta, Millburnhill Road, Science park, Coventry CV4 7JJ.

From: jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of tim.pennick@xxxxxx
Sent: 23 June 2009 09:59
To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [jaws-uk] Office 2007

Hi All,

One of the machines I use has been upgraded to Office 2007.  I'm running the 
latest version of JAWS 10, updated earlier this month, and I'm really 
struggling with the new version of the office programs.  I'd be interested to 
hear others' experiences with Office 2007, and any tips and tricks people have 
come across to make life easier.

I have run through the Freedom Scientific Office 2007 training DAISY book, and 
found this useful, and my main problems are as follows:

1. the controls on the Braille display seem to give a much more limited picture 
of what is on the screen, e.g. in Calendar appointments and mail messages its 
much more difficult to move from the message body to the headers and vice 
versa.  Its possible that this is because the message body and the headers 
aren't on the screen at the same time, though I'm not sure about this.

2. The behaviour of JAWS in the ribbons/Tabs seems to be very inconsistent.  
The old familiar title bar and menu bar have been replaced with the tabs and 
ribbons.  Tabs behave a bit like the tabs in a multi-page dialogue, but using 
this analogy, you'd expect that if you start tabbing from one of the tabs, 
you'd go around all the available options associated with that particular tab, 
as you would in a dialogue.  However, repeated tabbing seems to move around all 
the options associated with all the tabs on the upper ribbon.  This takes ages 
as the individual groups of options are all expanded unless you navigate using 
the shift-right arrow combination which is supposed to hop from group to group, 
but fails if you land on a combo box.

I think a lot of my problems are going to be shared by anyone upgrading from 
Office 2003 to 2007 be they sighted or screen reader user, but I feel that I've 
regressed by several years in my ability to efficiently use the Office suite of 
software.

Regards,

Tim

Tim Pennick
Senior Researcher
BT Innovate
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