Issue keeping me from moving to mac permanently

My 2011 macbook isn't able to upgrade any more, so I'm stuck at mac OS high Sierra, but you are absolutely correct that safari on the mac is a train wreck. For me, there are not only focus issues, but sometimes VO will just randomly restart itself, and I get countless busy messages. Mind you, this system is almost never bogged down at any other time. I have a 2 TB solid state drive and 16 GB of ram; hoping to make this little machine last as long as possible. Interestingly, Safari works more or less decently on my phone, but I definitely prefer to do as much of my web browsing in Windows as possible. The only thing I actually use my mac for at this point is email. I was without windows for a couple of months, so had all my mail archived on the mac. Now, it's easier just to keep doing mail on the mac rather than trying to set things up in windows again. For some reason, I've been hesitant to install third party browsers on my mac or iphone, but I'm starting to wonder if, especially on the mac, it might make for a better web browsing experience.

Hi, I use Safari quite often, and don't really have issues. I'm running a 2017 MacBook Air with 8 gigs of ram and a 500 gig hard drive. When I use Safari, I have Quicknav turned on at all times. The only web-specific thing I have in my rotor are headings. I heavily use the find command, as well. I don't get many busy messages. I'm not certain what you could try to fix this, I was just giving you my experiences as a Mac user for about 10 years. But Quicknav is definitely your friend in regards to Safari. In fact, I use it almost everywhere.

Hello,
I also do a bit of programming and find Safari quite lacking. The issue with Quick Nav is that it makes it difficult to select and copy items. Selecting chunks of code from the web is something I have to do quite often. Safari is horrible at this. The focus issues make it very frustrating to find the lines you want to copy, Quite often you go to copy a line you need and all of the sudden you find yourself selecting a line back at the top of the page. Its why right now I mainly stick to Linux and Windows for web browsing and coding.

Besides the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge web browsers, I can't think of any other browser options that would be better.

Does anyone know if Mozilla Firefox finally works with VoiceOver on the Macintosh these days?

When I read this thread and the difficulties that you and some others are having with using VoiceOver on the Mac the first question that comes to mind is why you want to move to the Mac? If everyone in your workplace is using a Mac that might be understandable or if you are developing code for Mac's. But if you have a tools that is working why choose a tool that isn't as good?

Of course the other option is to continue using Windows on a Mac with Boot Camp.

--Pete

With all due respect, I've not found similar issues to those of which you speak in your post. I use Safari on OSX every day, and it works wonderfully. Admittedly, I'm no programmer or software developer, but from the front end user interface, it works very well.

If it doesn't work well for you, definitely consider Google Chrome. It's not an App Store app. You can download it directly from google. To me, it's kind of that "to each his own" thing.

Ben

Hi.

The lacking Safari experience and the constant needing to hold down buttons to navigate is one of the issues I'm having with the Mac OS system and one of the reasons why I will stick to Windows or Linux when it comes to working with the computer.

I find that there are multiple things not very much to my liking in safari, quick letter navigation didn't work as it should and using the rotor is just not efficient. If I want to do something on the web, I don't want to hold down some extra buttons just to move the screen readers focus around.
other reasons why the switch to Mac isn't an option is the terible word processing experiences with Word and Excel.

Greetings moritz.

Voice over is like the arthritic old man trying to keep up with the grand kids. Safari works ok, but of course I don't code much. I'm disheartened when someone tries to say well if it works, why change? I'd rather see more blind people using a Mac and sticking it to developers of sites applications and games. I think there are so many sighted and blind people using Windows that you are getting off easy. Your site works fine with windows because nine out of ten people use Windows. What if I use a Mac and have trouble? I'm not spending a hundred bucks, to bootcamp this, just to do something that in theory should work no matter what platform I use. I support whatever works for you. If you move to the Mac, awesome. I don't judge what others use. I do stick up for the Mac's side if only to get people's attention. we can't change things, if we don't stand up for what doesn't work or is clunky. Don't use Windows because it's easy, don't use the Mac because it's a learning curve. Use whichever makes you happy.

At this point in time Firefox is still inaccessible with VoiceOver but I heard from Jamie Teh that they are working on this right now, so we should hear something later this year. I for one am really looking forward this as dev tools in Safari are terrible. One reason I'm still on Windows.

Hello. I use both a Mac and Windows running Bootcamp. I'm not sure if you knew this but you can change the grouping behavior so you don't have to interact with items all of the time. This may help with the issues you're having with Safari.

Hello. Pressing control plus F5 will do the trick.

When I arrive at a page like this I first press VO. plus U. Then using the arrow keys I browse headings, links etc. Pressing the enter key will cause me to land on a place that I chose. The down arrow reads a line at a time. The right and left arrows reads a letter, and option plus right or left arrow reads a word at a time. I seldom use quick nav.

Hi.

Hmm, the grouping setting does sound quite interesting in my book, sadly it doesn't fix the other issues I'm having with the Mac platform. Don't get me wrong, but for efficient work I need a wird processor that actually works with doc and dox files, and a tool like Excel where I can create tables in an accessible way and also do calculations with like adding, subtracting and so on.

Greetings Moritz.

I have not have any issue using safari to navigate this page at all and didn't have to go through the step Peter has provided above. yes, I also use Quick Nav but I also use trackpad. you can use the trackpad on safari like you do on the iPhone. so it work the same for me either on phone or on the Mac. to select text, I don't have that problem either but I don't know what I can do to help you because I don't experience the same problem many of you do.

Hi.

Well an interesting article for sure, but I see two problems with it.
1: It's from 2016 and a lot might have changed over the years, for example Microsoft Office wasn't accessible at all back in the day, but now it is up to a point.
2: I think that Jonathan Mosen hasn't been that neutral or possibly overstated some accessibility related issues he had. My experiences with this guy are that he is extremely biased and is all for Jaws and extra blindy friendly scriptys that mae his oh so hard life easier even though other possibilitys would be there. Sentences like:

You only have to have a rudimentary knowledge of the blind job market to know that without JAWS, many people who are gainfully employed wouldn’t be keeping food on the table.

are just bullshit and we all know that.

Other issues were, when he talked about the fact that when he used the twitter streaming service and VO kept interupting the stream which got on his n nerves i wondered why the heck he didn't disable speach? Even I as a VO beginner know that this is possible.
Lastly, his hole talk about the removal of the headphone jack on the iPhone and the hole stress he had with a curier service to get his lightning to two lightning adapter was just laughable at best.
Firstly, if you have to worry about getting your product in time before going on a hollyday, what about ordering it earlier so it's there in time? And as well, didn't the guy ever hear of bluetoothk.

The article is technically good, but not really what I call great.

Greetings Moritz.