Hey guys, I recently got a Macbook Air (early 2015 model running OSX 10.11.5 Elcapitan). I’m a visually impaired user and having serious difficulties using Voiceover on the Mac.
My problems/questions are as following:
- In safari, voiceover pronounce the text after a link after a long time. In short words, voiceover pronounces the links, heading Ec. Slowly. For example in windows I use NVDA screen reader. When I’m navigating the web it says for example link sign in, compared to this voiceover says link and then after a time sign in. Voiceover= link,,, sign in. How can I make voiceover speak the link and other items more quickly while browsing the web. I have tried changing many setting such as verbosity but than it does not tell me the visited links and headings.
- How can I create new pages documents directly in the finder. In windows I’m able to click in the contextual menu new> word document. Is there any way to do similarly on the mac with pages?
- In pages, it is very difficult to work with tables. Firstly, if I interact with a table, how can I type in a table without interacting with every single cell where I need to type/edit. On windows I can just go on a table and type without interacting with any cell at all. It is very time-consuming especially when I have to follow the class and take notes in a table. Secondly, when I start to interact with a cell within a table and type in it, voiceover loses focus a few times. Sometimes it goes up and down several pages or totally out of the table in the body area of the document.
- In pages it is very frustrating that when I’m reading/ scrolling with the arrow keys, voiceover does not move onto the next page of the document automatically. For example, if a document has 3 pages, when I’m reading it, I reach the end of the first page; and then voiceover says something like “page 1 of 3.” It does not move automatically on to the next page, I have to move it to the next page by scrolling with 3 fingers on the trackpad or using the next page keyboard command. When I move it to the next page, voiceover sometimes instead of reading from the next page, goes on the top of the document (at the start). This is very frustrating especially when having to work with a table that is laid out on several pages, voiceover just messes the table up and only read the first page. In windows, I can just move on the next page while I’m scrolling with the arrow in word. I don’t have to use any command/ gesture, and it works very well with tables as well.
- Voiceover does not read headings while word-processing.
- Any way to make office 2016 for mac more accessible for voiceover?
- How can I make voiceover work with LibreOffice/opppenoffice?
- Can I install the Espeek synthesiser voices on the mac for voiceover?
Can anyone help me to solve these problems. For now, I have no alternative other than using windows on the mac via Bootcamp. However, I think that spending so much noney only for then ending up using windows is useless, I want to be able to fully use my mac osx.
Any help/answer will be appreciated. If there anything that you don’t understand in my question/are not shore, please contact me via mail at the following address: haseebhaseeb332@yahoo.com
Thanks
Comments
Accessibility Problems with Voiceover
I would suggest that you are more likely to get answers if you did not post multiple questions at once. It is quite hard to remember all the points you raise. In relation to three of your points. I never use Pages for reading documents precisely because of the difficulty you face. Luckily there is an easy alternative in Text Edit which I use for reading microsoft and other formats, this will readd to end of documents happily. In relation to creating a new document from Finder the way |I personally do this is to create a blank document called blank.docx or whatever format you want and simply use the Mac duplicate funtion on this document. That is use Command D. This is not the same as windows but just as fast. Just type bl and you will almost certainly jump to blank.docx. Then press command D and you will creat a copy of that. Press enter to rename the file and command down arrow to open it once renamed ready for opening. Finally I have no personal success using Voiceover with any of the alternative Libre
or other Free Office suites. David Griffith.
blanck.docx
thanks for your responce. But how exactly can i create blanck.docx or other format documents in the finder?
Creating Blank.docx
1. Find any Microsoft Office docx file in Finder.
2. Press Command D to create a duplicate copy.
3. Rename this to blank.docx
4. Open up this document in TextEdit.
5. Press Command A to select all and then press the delete key.
6. Now just resave this empty file.
David Griffith
You can also use the terminal
You can also use the terminal. I do this.
cd ~/documents && touch "blank.docx"
You cannot create a document from the finder. This is app dependent. I actually like this a lot better. By the way I have training materials for you if you are interested. Go to http://tffppodcast.com/premium and email me on the page if you are having issues. I just rebuilt the site and want a positive customer experience should something go wrong.
To answer yoru safari question I have links be sounds. so I hear a click then the link spoken. this works much much better. I'll be training a student on how to do this in about a week.
Blessings and happy Wednesday