[macvoiceover] lots of questions from a lurker

  • From: "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:46:39 -0800

Hello folks. I was subscribed here some while back, but decided that I
wasn't ready for Voiceover. I'm a long time Windows user, and it didn't
seem to me that the learning curve would be worth it. But I've been
reading about the advances in Voiceover that became available with Snow
Leopard, and it looks like Voice Over has really come of age in web
browsing, which is one of the main activities that I do on a computer.
I still have questions about a couple other areas and am looking for
input, especially from people who have used Windows apps in the past
with reasonable efficiency. I note that, according to the accessible
applications list on Apple's website, neither MS Office nor IWork are
accessible, but Open Office and Nisus writer are. I don't make great
demands of a word processing app, but I need to exchange documents with
people using Word, including the latest Word. I also need to read pdf
documents, and I did see a couple pdf viewers, but not Adobe Acrobat.
So my questions are, how well do these viewers work? And for those of
you who need to work with documents produced in Word, how do you find
this process using the Mac and the accessible word processors? 

The other area that interests me is email. I actually have a friend who
has a Mac, but hers is running Leopard, not Snow Leopard, and she's
sighted, so doesn't really know much about Voice Over. She did turn it
on when I was at her house and went through email. The process seemed
painfully slow, but again, she really didn't know how to operate VO.
I'm looking for an efficient email experience that will let me zip
through lots and lots of email without having to hear a whole lot of
header info for each message. I'd like to be able to go down the list
of messages in a given folder, hear who they are from and what the
subject is and then press a key to delete or another key to start
reading the message body. I love my old email app that I've used for
ages in Windows, but its showing its age, in that it does not do html
messages particularly well, hasn't been updated in years and will,
sooner or later, not run any more on new pcs. 

Finally, I scan lots of material, and I use Kurzweil 1000 to do so. I'd
like to keep using that if I bought a Mac, and I understand there are
solutions for running Windows on a Mac, but don't know how well they
work with Kurzweil. Has anybody had experience with this combo? I
understand Read Iris is accessible, but I'd like to stick to Kurzweil,
which has tons of good features that make document handling and masses
of scanning easy.  Sorry this went on so long, but I thought I'd get my
questions out there and see what answers people have. If this is boring
to a list of old hands, please feel free to reply off the list to me at
maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxx

Mary

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