In the spirit of our popular screen reader user surveys, WebAIM has launched two new surveys – a Survey of Users with Low Vision and a Survey of Users with Motor Disabilities. We invite all individuals with these disabilities to complete these brief surveys.
The aggregate results of these surveys will be released publicly and will be used to inform design and development choices for those creating accessible web content. The surveys will remain open through March 15th.
I am the ‘seeing eye human’ for 2 blind friends. Our experience with Voiceover products has been dismal – Windows Eyes incomprehensible & unusable to those of us with working eyes; Apple’s talking pods mostly require gestures that are difficult to execute for sighted and non-sighted. We have had to go back to buy Nano 4th generations – voiceover + the wheel is what works best.
The recently blinded friend (woke up last month and all was black) is trying to decide which program to go with – never Eyes but question is whether to get JAWS for her older PC or to get a new Mac and run with something else there?
Recommendations?
Its a nice thing, letting the people out their air their view, and make recommendations on how to assist this disabled ones. i’ll advice these designers and programmers of computers to install biometrics, by the side of the keyboards meant for the blind, maybe close to the touchpad, which will serve as an external password device: which when the user places his or her finger, the system knows and clarifies it’s the owner. this will be of great help or what do you guys think?
i will publish this survey at site http://www.wsana.org. i hope more people know about this
Really? I’ve been using an iMac with VoiceOver for 3 and a half years now, and it works great. It’s especially nice for email, browsing the web, scanning, listening to music. It’s a little less accessible for creating well formatted word processing documents, but doable with some effort. Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet app is more difficult to navigate using VO than Excel is with Jaws, but, once again usable. I’d say that for a beginner, Jaws on a Windows machine may be the way to go. Also, VO on the iPhone or iPad is extremely accessible… of course you have to learn the gestures, but, once you do, it works great! Just my opinion.
On Windows it is always worth trying out NVDA (Non-visual Desktop Access), the free screenreader by nv-access.org (go to http://www.nvda-project.org/wiki/Download for the download page). If it turns out you are not happy with it – so what – it’s free, you could still at a later time shell out the money to buy a commercial option.
Olaf
A friend of mine has Multiple sclerosis. The main problem for him is that he is not good at controlling the mouse, because of his shaking hands.