MacVoices

Hello Chuck,

Just to let you kn ow that when I tried to enter the MacVoices website from iTunes I get a malware warning from Safari 3. This also happened when I tried simply typing the address into the address bar, it did not happen when I tried entering through the archive.
Anyway, the reason I was poking around your site was so that I could thank you for bringing up the topic of accessibility on the Mac. I know that as the ‘baby boomers’ age this is going to be be a growing issue and as you will see from the note I sent to Shelly, which I will paste below, this is one of the Mac’s strong points.
Thanks,

John
Hi Shelley,
As one who often listens to Mac voices and is also visually handicapped I was pleased to hear the issue of accessibility being discussed. As one who uses Mac’s exclusively I know that Apple has gone to a good deal of effort to improve the accessibility features of it’s operating system in recent years. I do not use an iPhone, but I spend a good deal of time on the Mac. In the last year or so be addition of the ‘Alex’ voice and making iTunes accessible to voiceover were big steps forward.
I am also somewhat familiar with the community of the blind having worked on the state consumer advisory board for vocational rehabilitation and having attended a summer session at the local school for the blind.
It seems to me that we in the Mac community are not doing a particularly good job of discussing the Macintosh’s accessibility features or promoting them. I would like to see this change. I think Apple has done an incredible job of making improvements in this area and in providing them , not only free,but with very little self-promotion. I suppose that Apple has a dedicated team working with the visually handicapped to have gotten things so right. I have recently, for the first time, experimented with Windows XP and Jaws. I cannot believe how poorly they preform. It was like going back to system 7, and I am shocked by the amount of money that individuals and institutions have shelled out over the years for Jaws. If they only knew! On the other hand I do not know how well some of the other features such as braille work . Perhaps you do? In any case for those with limited vision I would think that encourage them to use the Mac would be doing them a big favor. Would you agree.
I use a Mac Mini with two monitors and I am writing this using Dictate 9 and Alex is my guide. As my vision worsens I regard the Mac as a life preserver and want to encourage them to continue development. Do you think the time is right to write into places where the visually handicapped tend to go and encourage switching? I know how isolated and conservative the blind community tends to be. Lack of access to information and often not able to afford wasting large amounts of money coupled with the time it takes to learn new ways of doing things tends to discourage experimentation.
In any case I think what you are doing is important and I intend to check out the sites you mentioned in the interview with Chuck.

Sincerely,

John Goray

P.S.

I do have to say that I went back to Safari 3 after trying Safari 4 because I found the loading indicators so obnoxious.

John