Question for Scrivener and Mac Users

I haven't used Scrivener extensively, per se, but I can say that as far as my experience goes, it's incredibly accessible. I haven't tested nearly all of the features (one of the beautiful things about Scrivener is it has tons of features and odds are most writers, in most circumstances, only need any given 10% of them, and the 90% they don't need stay out of the way), but I've yet to find any that don't play well with VO. Are there any in particular you want to know more about? I'd be happy to play around with them and let you know.

As for the Mac in general...I love the stability (my Mac is far smoother and more stable than any PC I ever had). I love the integration of the screen reader into the OS itself - it's hard to nail down exactly why this is better, but there are all these little ways in which an integrated screen reader just provides a more consistent and reliable performance than a third-party program. Then there are little Mac-specific things that don't seem like a big deal until you go without them - I am always catching myself trying to delete or highlight by word on my PC at work, only to remember with resignation that I can't.

It's a big change, and there are definitely things to get used to - but you've got a headstart if you're already using an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard, as there's a decent amount of crossover between the two. I'd say that, if you were willing to commit to it and stick through the rocky first couple of months, you would be fine. Does that mean it's the "right" choice for you? Ultimately, nobody can answer that but you.

Hope that helped; sorry if it didn't; let me know if I can answer anything specific about Scrivener, or Mac in general.

Scrivner is beautifully accessible. I would imagine it could be quite overwhelming as it is incredibly feature rich, however everything workss well with voiceover. It also has a great interactive tutorial to learn a lot of the features. It also integrates very well with index card for iPad and iPhone which is also really accessible.

The advantage of a Macbook obviously is that it's mobile - you could take it to a coffee shop or a park or on a plane or whatever and do your writing wherever you happen to be. Personally I even find that picking up my Macbook and moving to a room in the house that I don't usually write in can really spark more creativity. Change of environment is good for creativity, so I'd say the mobility of your writing platform is a big plus for a writer. That may be a point in favor of the Macbook Air.

I would have to revisit the index cards in Scrivener, but I remember the interactive tutorial (which is extremely well done, by the way) went over them and they worked fine. The binder is basically just a collection of different files associated with your document and is accessed via a list that you can navigate to very easily with VO, no accessibility issues here. In fact, you could probably assign a custom hotspot to your binder list that way you can jump right to it any time you want to go to a different document. (Custom hotspots are one of the things I love most about Voiceover.)

I don't know if I'd say it's worth switching just for Scrivener, per se - though I had that same thought when I was considering the change. In the end, Scrivener is just one program. Yeah, it's a great program - but it's not like you can't write without it.

Why I would suggest you consider switching to the Mac is because of what Scrivener *represents.* Scrivener represents everything I'm growing to love about the Mac ecosystem. On the one hand, it represents an ecosystem of apps geared towards creativity and powerful, intuitive user experience. On the other hand, it represents the way that an integrated screen reader like VO results in a lot of programs being accessible, whether the developers intended them to be or not. Of course there are bound to be inaccessible apps, though I haven't found them yet...but in my limited experience thus far, it seems far less likely to find an app that's accessible on Windows and not on Mac than vice versa.

Do you know anyone who has a Mac, or do you have access to one in some other way? It wouldn't hurt to play around for a bit - just bear in mind that certain things like the differences in the screen reader will take time to get used to - more time than you'll probably have; also you may not be able to customize things to your liking as much as you would with your own machine. But if you have the opportunity to try out a Mac, download Scrivener and take advantage of the very generous trial period to go through the interactive tutorial. By the time you're done, you'll know everything you need to about the app - and I think you'll be hooked, both on Scrivener and on the Mac OS.