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Re: Acrobat Read Out Loud mistakenly reads letter asRomanNumeral

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jul 17, 2014 4:19PM

Christopher wrote:
" I feel we do a disservice to those who are newly blind by not teaching
them the better free solutions which exist. "

I agree with you!
However, I'm not in charge of the budgets and funding of small local
community groups and publicly-funded programs, which most of these
organizations come under. They run on a shoestring. Their funding from
governments (like the state of Maryland) and major donors (like United Way)
have been cut drastically over the years.

Therefore:
- They do not have IT support of any kind.
- Their equipment is usually donated old, out-of-date systems.
- Social workers et. al are often not familiar with computer technology of
any sort.

The need for accessibility hardware and software is so great, but the
resources are so meager.
Before we can make any progress, we need to educate social workers and care
providers about what is available and then train them to train users.

IMHO, this entire quagmire is a disservice to society. After 30+ years
volunteering for these organizations, I don't have any solid solutions.

-Bevi Chagnon
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Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.
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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Nusbaum,
Christopher
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2014 2:48 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Acrobat Read Out Loud mistakenly reads letter as Roman
Numeral

Bevi:

I understand what you are saying, but could those users of whom you speak
not use NVDA, WindowEyes for Office or even Narrator? If they're using Read
Out Loud only when using Acrobat to read PDF's, what are they using in all
other situations? It is true that seniors or the newly blind want something
simple with a more gradual learning curve, and therefore wouldn't be as
interested in a more advanced program like JAWS or VO on the Mac. However,
there are free solutions which support more functionality and are more
robust than Read Out Loud. I agree with you that our ultimate goal ought to
be a more robust and reliable version of ROL from Adobe. Until that day
comes, however, I feel we do a disservice to those who are newly blind by
not teaching them the better free solutions which exist. All of this, of
course, is IMHO only.

Chris

Christopher A. (Chris) Nusbaum, Intern
Technology Services Department
Assistive Technology Program
Carroll County Public Schools
Phone: (410) 751-3428
Cell: (443) 547-2409
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>