Question about Mac Voiceover accessibility

[kestrell]

I've been thinking about possibly making the switch to a Mac at some point in the future and, although I've been researching hese questions, I still don't have a clear answer, so I'm hoping my knowledgeable friends can give me more definite answers.

Does Voiceover work with the following programs and formats:
Firefox
ePUB
PDF
Flash

Also, are there any Voiceover users out there who do a lot of scanning and OCR use and, if so, what program and hardware are you using? I'm really not keen on the Docuscan approach of having to send everything I scan to the Internet.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

I wish I knew the answers to these Qs off the top of my noggon. I know there are a number of VoiceOver users groups. The AT Mac site would have contacts I believe the V.O. U I is the same on iThings (what we are supposed to call iOS -- and how does yr screen reader handle that) as it is on full blown OS X lion (latest version announced Monday).

I'd be happy to do over ur shoulder tech support via phone.

One last grumpy thought: budget the cost of Applecare. Given the lively life yr portable will enjoy, it's totally worth 300 for cost free walk in repair of just about anything for three years. I dropped my 17in mac pro on a corner, bending its aluminum case enough that it didnt close right again. When my power supply clinked they replaced it with no side-eye in two days.

[jesse_the_k]

Sorry for the poorly spelled & poorly resourced post, which I made from my basement while hail pattered fiercly thanks to >50mph winds. (Lucy, on the other hand, loves the bed dispensation in the basement.)

Anyway, the AT Mac site is a dot org; here's their resources link
http://atmac.org/resources/links

There are a variety of tools for generating ePUBs. Calibre, which you're probably already familiar with, is here:
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx

Stanza converts from a variety of formats to a variety of formats. Its creators recommend using Calibre, but I've been using this "beta" version flawlessly for three years
http://www.lexcycle.com/download-macintosh

The Mac OS uses PostScript as its graphic model everywhere: for printers and to the screen. (What you see is really what you get.) This means that PDF is a native file format, and almost every Mac application can either open or view a PDF file. In addition to Adobe's own Reader, I use the free system tool Preview as a gen purpose file viewer for PDFs, photos, Word *.docs, rtf etc.

Finally, Flash is a sore point. Steve Jobs is allergic to Flash; there's no native support for it in the iOS. One can of course install Flash on any Mac browser; but Jobs &co are all about supporting HTML.

Last thing tonight: one of Apple's most useful things is that its site is full of actual information, and it's clear there are a couple score librarians keeping it organized.

I was about to sing the praises of its user discussions, but they seem to have recently changed them. (Darn, progress.)

Instead, here's a results page in software support for VoiceOver:

http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&src=support_site.kbase&locale=en_US&q=voiceover

There are some tutorial/in-depth papers in the upper right hand corner, and the main left column is packed with individual things.