Has anyone else noticed that the latest versions of Icloud and Itunes have lost some accessibility with the JAWS screen reader? I can't navigate Icloud hardly at all, and Itunes is hit or miss. Crazy thing is, Narrator in Windows 10, makes those apps more accessible than JAWS does. Just curious if anyone else has noticed this, and if there is a work-around besides having to load narrator, every time I want to use one of these apps on my windows machine. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Guy
Comments
iTunes
No issues with iTunes in my windows 10 and jaws 2020. iCloud is hard move around but I can do it. It is not easy but can do so.
iTunes and JAWS 2022
Every time there is an update to iTunes, some things get better, and some things break. Currently, I can do everything I need to.
One trick that helps me out a lot is to ALT TAB away from iTunes and back again. Many fields that otherwise are unspoken, are spoken.
iTunes
Also it might be how old the PC is. If you have a fast PC and good processer it might help. I am able to create playlist, find a song, go to the sstore, and search for an album or song with no problem. I am able to ad albums from my external to iTunes. Play my audiobooks.
I also have trouble with iTunes
I've had this problem sincejaws 2021. Every time I tab around iTunes, only a few of the fields are spoken. I have to bounce between Windows Narrator and Jaws. I'm using Windows 10 and the latest version of Jaws.
I have a computer with 16 GB of RAM, Windows 11, and Jaws 2022
On the computer with the specifications I listed above, iTunes is extremely slow, to the point that it almost freezes the machine. I have to exit iTunes, in order for the machine to return to normal. And it could be the amount of podcasts that I currently have, which at the moment, is over 300.
Has anyone else seen this issue?
Freez
My PC is over 8 years old and it does freezes sometimes. Once in a blue moon. However it does work well with iTunes. Never had issue where jaws did not read a tab.
Jaws 2020
Just for grins, I did go back to Jaws 2020 last night, and was able to navigate around iTunes, with no issue. Wondering if this is something that should be reported to freedom scientific, about 2021 and 2022. I still couldn’t navigate iCloud at all though, unless I used narrator. I have yet to try it with NVDA.
JAWS and ITunes and ICloud
one thing that folks might try when using JAWS is to go into the JAWS Settings and search for the "Use Accessibility Driver" setting. In older versions of JAWS, this option was checked which means that JAWS is using the legacy OSM method of detecting text on the screen. Due to changes under the hood of newer versions of Windows, FS has been moving to the new GDI-Hooking method of capturing text written to the display. Thus many newer applications with newer versions of Windows will not work well with the legacy driver. Uncheck the "Use Accessibility" setting to use the newer driver. That helps with many programs and will be the approach used by future versions of JAWS.
Just as an aside, I've never found the UI of iTunes to be very user friendly, not only to those using screen readers, but also to sighted folks who often complain about it. Apple could have done a better job here for everyone.
As for iCloud on the PC, again, it has never been as accessible as one would like it to be. again, Apple could have done better here, but I don't think they give attention to having their apps work on the PC as muchy as they do on their own devices.
Oh well.
--Pete
where you got iTunes from matters
If you download iTunes from apple's site, it seems to work better than the version you get from the Microsoft Store. I'm hoping that will change with the updates that are supposed to be made to the store as Windows 11 grows, but we'll see.