[blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes

Tue Dec 18 20:05:46 UTC 2018

Dear Steve,

I really appreciate your response and all of the points it raises.
Rest assured I had a very long talk with a Freedom Scientific
representative about exactly what engendered my original post to this
list.  Whether he plans to pass that on, I have no idea.  But I did it
for the precise reasons you expressed, and I think that doing it in
person is essential compared to over email so that they can tell how
deeply problematic the situation is.

That being said, I think that blind people have a responsibility to
step up and help each other out, even if we aren't specifically
relying on a buggy aspect of jaws.  You are absolutely correct that
companies must prioritize the bugs that impact the most users, but the
sad fact is that, right now, this will likely mean that the bugs that matter
most to those who are using their technology to access education or a
profession will be farther down the list.  It's also the sad fact that
the more that these bugs exist, the fewer people will be able to
actually **access** that same education and professional
opportunities.  So yes, I suspect that of all blind users of Jaws,
there are not terribly many that use track changes.  Of those, there
are fewer still who heavily edit, or incorporate multiple streams of
edits.  And of those, how many use Braille displays?  But we all
understand that track changes are necessary to be gainfully employed
in 2018, to be a member of a law review, to co-author a paper with a
professor, etc, etc.  We can look beyond ourselves and our own
circumstances and throw our hat into the ring to say, this
**is** important.  This does need to  be fixed, even if I only use
this feature sporadically or I used to use it in school but don't
right now, etc. etc.

For instance, I had no idea about the bug with insert+F.  I use that
feature constantly, many times a day.  I imagine most other lawyers
who are peer reviewing or editing their own work do also.  But even if
I didn't, I understand the importance of needing to reliably access
that information to produce work on par with a sighted peer, and I
gladly would have called up and pointed it out and asked for change if
I could replicate it.  If we communicate with each other more, we can
be a larger collective force, even if what we require differs
according to our professional experiences.

So, in that spirit, I would like to say that the three things that
hinder my ability to be a productive lawyer, to do the same work in
the same amount of time as my sighted peers without needing to
self-edit my billables, yada yada, are the following
1. Track change issue rehashed ad nauseam here.
2. The fact that, although I have been reporting this since 2016, Jaws
is still incredibly slow in footnotes, will not let you select
multiple words of text without starting to unselect those same words
again, and does not announce the number of the footnote you are in.
(note: every single time I raise this issue, I'm told by the FS rep
that they "don't use footnotes much," so they're "not terribly
familiar with what you mean."  Inexcusable.
3. The fact that the Braille display raises dots 7-8 for all footnoted
text, making them even more difficult to read.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you, Steve.  Your points are all
valid.  I'm just calling on the community to examine whether we've
ever been negatively impacted by FS's refusal to deal with this issue
in a substantial way and, if so, to take five minutes to voice our
discontent.  Now, I have to end this, as my Jaws has crashed.

Laura

On 12/18/18, Steve Jacobson via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Laura,
>
> First, I share some of your frustrations with the state of technology today.
>  I am not a lawyer, and I do not use Microsoft Word at the level of
> sophistication that you and others here probably use it.  However, I do work
> as a volunteer as part of my responsibilities as an officer in the National
> Federation of the Blind in Computer Science to try to get problems resolved
> when we are aware of them.
>
> If this is an issue that a number of people are facing, it is essential that
> it be reported to Freedom Scientific.  Yes, I realize that they were VFO and
> are not Vispero, but the Freedom Scientific name still works for email and
> web site access.  There isn't much that they will be able to do, though,
> without an example document.
>
> While I think it is reasonable to expect that when a number is given that
> the number should be accurate, it helps to know exactly how it impacts
> people when it is wrong.  It seems unlikely that you are counting revisions
> and then stopping when you reach the number of revisions that JAWS provided,
> so it will help prioritize this bug to understand the real impact on you.
> The cold hard facts are that the day of releasing any software when it is
> close to being free of bugs is gone and is probably not returning soon.  I
> am not talking about JAWS specifically, but am including Microsoft Office
> itself and all software companies.  As a person who has been programming and
> working in the Information Technology field for forty years, I hate that
> this is the case, but my dislike of the situation is not going to change
> anything.  The result is that companies like Vispero are forced to
> prioritize the bugs they correct and knowing the impact on you is part of
> that process.  If this isn't an issue that is bothering a lot of people, it
> would make sense to try to find out why others are not bothered, and how
> others are dealing with this.  I have reported, as has the NFB, a bug in
> Microsoft Word that can incorrectly report the color of the current text in
> Word as Black on Black or "Default Color" without providing the correct
> information.  Yet, that bug remains because it isn't something that bothers
> most people, apparently.  For some reason, it is something I must use more
> than most people, or perhaps I am particularly crabby about it.
>
> Finally, and this is not a criticism of NVDA, but one can't assume that NVDA
> is handling this correctly without trying the same document.  .  .  There is
> a possibility that the problem is with a value returned by Microsoft, for
> example, and that could affect both screen readers.  Even then, there is so
> much constant change in Microsoft Word that it could even be the case that
> it has already been addressed in a version of Word that is not commonly in
> use yet.
>
> If people on this list find this particular error to be important, it is
> essential that someone produce or provide a sample document that shows this
> error so others can investigate it and help bring the problem to the
> attention of the correct people.  It also helps if those using JAWS bring
> this to the attention of Freedom Scientific as paying customers, but they
> will need an example to have any chance of resolving the issue.  Also,
> sharing how others work around this problem is a realistic short term
> solution.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 4:55 AM
> To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Rahul Bajaj <rahul.bajaj1038 at gmail.com>; Steve Jacobson
> <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>
> I've reached out to NVDA folks and heard that in theory it works.  But I
> don't know if they are working with files as large/with as many edits as I'm
> talking about.  The problem is that I can't test a work doc on my home PC,
> and I'll need to get permission to download NVDA at work.  So if anyone
> could assist with confirming or denying that it's better, I'd appreciate it.
>  I truly believe the NFB has to throw its clout behind this--how can a
> professional function in any aspect of society in this day without reliable
> recourse to track changes?  We can't all keep spare machines from 2005
> around, what with the cost and firms having this funny hang-up about
> security breaches and all.
>
> On 12/18/18, Rahul Bajaj via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> Steve, many of us reached out to Freedom Scientific about this and the
>> somewhat improved, albeit imperfect, system that we now have is the
>> product of that exercise.
>>
>> Best,
>> Rahul<div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br /> <table
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>> On 18/12/2018, Steve Jacobson via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> Has anyone verified if NVDA provides more accurate feedback?  Also,
>>> is anyone in communication with JAWS on this?  I am sorry if this was
>>> stated earlier.  However, if NVDA handles this aspect correctly, then
>>> one can definitely lean on JAWS.  Ideally, the problem should be
>>> described to JAWS and a document exhibiting the problem should be
>>> attached as well.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Steve Jacobson
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Laura Wolk
>>> via BlindLaw
>>> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 8:25 PM
>>> To: tim at timeldermusic.com
>>> Cc: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>; Blind Law Mailing List
>>> <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>>
>>> Nope. Not an option. And though 2010 didn't crash nearly as much as
>>> the newer versions, it still couldn't handle documents with more than
>>> a hundred or so revisions. Which, you know, is basically every round
>>> of editing a brief or large filing of any kind. Using 2010 was my
>>> work-around for 6 years. But I'm really getting fed up. It'd be great
>>> if we all colectively could put pressure on Jaws to actually give us
>>> the tools we need to succeed and be on equal footing with our peers.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>> On Dec 17, 2018, at 8:05 PM, <tim at timeldermusic.com>
>>> <tim at timeldermusic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Track changes in newly created Word documents still work reliably in
>>> Office 2010 if using an older machine for this kind of task is an
>>> option.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 11:22 AM
>>>> To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Subject: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>>>
>>>> I'm providing an update to this topic, as it generated a lot of
>>>> traffic
>>> and I'd love to spare another lawyer the risk of relying on this
>>> $1,000 disappointment to his professional detriment.
>>>>
>>>> Jaws still does not announce the correct number of revisions.
>>>> Instead, after taking up to 30 or 45 seconds sometimes, it will
>>>> announce a
>>> much larger number that still isn't always accurate.  This is
>>> actually worse than when it simply said there were no revisions to
>>> display, since we all knew that was incorrect.  now it gives the
>>> false sense of security that you have, in fact, looked at every
>>> revision when there could be a hundred more that are not displaying
>>> that you haven't reviewed.  note that though this isn't a terrible
>>> inconvenience when you are integrating all changes into one draft
>>> from only one document, it is a huge problem if you are receiving
>>> multiple streams of edits from multiple sources that you are trying
>>> to accept/reject and then compile into one final draft.  So be
>>> forewarned, Jaws is sstill failing abysmally at providing us with the
>>> elementary tools needed in 2018 to maintain "Job access."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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