I don't think a more efficient tactile or auditory interface causes one to turn off his brain, quite the contrary, it gives the user an ability to avoid all of the highly repetitive jabber that all screen readers spew out while you look for a bit of information. We have no way to divert our gaze and, in a matter of milliseconds, find a data point of interest - the bit of information our brain really wants to know - simply speaking and/or Brailling items of the unsorted caca on the screen puts us at a huge disadvantage to our sighted colleagues and, as a result, we are less likely to get promotions and other benefits of a corporate life (I probably have a pointer to the article written by the RERC on Workplace Accomodations on this notion, a project on which I participated and sadly looked at the results as we started gathering them).
Of course, a whole lot of features to improve efficiency can be present but the user can turn them off and get a bare bones screen reader if they so choose. There's no reason we need to force people into the 21st century <smile>.
cdh On Feb 2, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Krister Ekstrom wrote:
I will probably be flamed to bits for saying what i say below but i say it anyway, ok here goes:2 feb 2009 kl. 16.33 skrev E.J. Zufelt:Like it or not a screen-reader is an alternate interface, why not take advantage of it?Because i for one don't want to see the screen reader on this platform become either like windows, tied up to one and only one program making company, in windows's case M$ or in the case of Linux, be tied to only one program of every sort, that is one web browser, one mailer, one office suite and so forth. here on the Mac platform we have a wonderful opportunity to have accessibility as well as freedom of choise and i for one am ready to fight to make it stay that way. VO may not be perfect in every imaginable sence, and there are still some rough edges to smoothen out, but i'm sure they will be smoothened out over time without changing the screen reader to an excuse for turning off ones brain.That's my 2 cents worth. /KristerClick on the link below to go to our homepage. http://www.icanworkthisthing.comManage your subscription by using the web interface on the link below.//www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover Users can subscribe to this list by sending email to macvoiceover-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxwith 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by logging into the Webinterface at //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover
Click on the link below to go to our homepage. http://www.icanworkthisthing.com Manage your subscription by using the web interface on the link below. //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceoverUsers can subscribe to this list by sending email to macvoiceover-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by logging into the Web interface at //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover
