Does anyone know how a blind person would detect incorrect capitalization issues in a word processor on Mac? For example, suppose I capitalize some random word in the middle of a sentence. Unlike Windows MS Word, the spelling and grammar checker fails to detect these types of grammar mistakes.
The only solution I've found so far is to copy and paste the text into an online grammar checker such as grammerly.com, but this is really tedious. I wish there was a way to detect these grammar mistakes with a native Mac tool or something in VoiceOver.
If there really is no way to detect this natively short of arrowing one character at a time and listening to the VoiceOver pitch of each letter, then I'll email accessibility@apple.com. They've been responsive and helpful lately. Thought I should check here first though.
Comments
VoiceOver's Solution
Hi Paul,
Try this:
1. press vo-f8
2. interact with the table and arrow to verbosity
3. uninteract
4. vo-right arrow to the text tab and press vo-space
5. vo-right arrow to the "when reading a capital letter" pop up button and press vo-space
6. vo up or down arrow to "say cap" and press vo-space
7. press command q
Hope this helps.
Joy!
Bruce
Changing Caps Verbosity
Hi Bruce. Thanks, but this doesn't help. If I read a word or sentence at a time, or read the whole text with VO+A, the setting you describe has no effect. Only if I arrow one character at a time does your setting have an effect. That is not a solution when I'm looking for capitalization issues in a 20-page manuscript.
Odd
It works fine for me in line by line proofing. Perhaps it would be worth your while to use windows.
And then there's
Hello again Paul,
Before I retired, back when I practiced law, I spent substantial time proofing my own work. In those days, I used WordPerfect on windows, which worked quite well for me. Nowadays I believe it is available for MacOS. Have you tried it? I imagine you will probably be able to open your 20 page documents directly into it without any change to formatting, proof it, and then close it back out or print it and still have it available to you in your preferred word processing app.
Good luck! Smile. I sure don't envy you. I don't miss proofing . . . at . . . all.
Bruce
List of things to try
Thanks Bruce. It's frustrating because it's so easy for a sighted person to do this with a glance, yet there is no tool to perform this task accessibly.
I did not try Word Perfect yet, but I see they have a free trial. I'll add it to the list. Also on the list is Microsoft's free online version of Word. I tried LibreOffice, and sadly it doesn't catch these types of mistakes.
There are several grammar checkers available from the App Store, but their vague descriptions don't provide enough information to know if they'll do the trick. I could spend a lot of time and money trying them out and still end up with no solution. Sigh.
My sympathy
Hey Paul,
You might need only track down a few blind lawyers and ask them. I am pretty sure they've already individually addressed this problem and have either found solution or have given up. Might save you time from doing all the leg work all over again.
Good luck!
Bruce