M12Y



AccessWorld Takes Another Look at VoiceOver

A couple of years ago, AccessWorld, a publication of the American Foundation for the Blind, published a review of VoiceOver full of inaccuracies, misleading statements, and inexplicable falsehoods, for which they’ve been widely criticized by the growing community of visually impaired Macintosh users.

In the most recent issue, Mr. Jim Denham takes a fresh look at VoiceOver. This time, it’s clear the reviewer has taken the time to learn both the operating system and the tools provided by VoiceOver. While not all the information is perfect, this is an honest attempt to look at VoiceOver objectively, and it is a fair analysis.

Aside from some errors, such as in describing the complexity of spell checking, which Apple makes note of in a response at the review’s end, this article shows a dramatic improvement in providing factual information about VoiceOver and the Mac OS X operating system from the previous review. Obvious to most daily users, there are a huge number of accessible applications for the Mac, and TextEdit is by no means the best or only word processing option.

In a forthcoming editorial, we’l take a closer look at spell checking on the Mac with VoiceOver.

Still, this article amy begin to help repair the damage to AccessWorld’s credibility among VoiceOver users. It’s certainly a huge step in the right direction, and we applaud Mr. Denham for an unbiased review.