[nobe-l] accessibility of Google products

Wed Sep 7 08:52:03 UTC 2016

Hello,
Are the apps on the iPhone the same for the Mac? I'm thinking of getting a MacBook because I am going to start teaching by next year, and need to learn how to use the Mac just in case I go to a school that uses it a lot.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 30, 2016, at 9:09 PM, Geogie via NOBE-L <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey there,
> I have some experience with Google tools that I can share. I just finished
> working at a Public Charter School as a literacy tutor/teacher for sixth
> grade. I'm also blind and have been all my life, and I was the only blind
> person working there. We used Google Drive, Docs, Forms and Sheets all the
> time. I struggled for the first few months, because I honestly couldn't find
> any blind folks who used Google stuff extensively who I could discuss it
> with. But here is some of what I picked up from trial and error.
> On my PC I used the latest version of JAWS at the time with FireFox. There
> is an accessibility mode in the different Google tools that you should turn
> on right away. And you'll want to keep it on, because it doesn't work well
> at all without it. Google Drive is accessible, but you'll need to tab around
> a whole lot. Same situation with Google Docs. I also found that the speech
> will lag a bit, especially inside of a Doc or Sheet. It's not much of a lag,
> but it's enough that it drove me crazy. But you can use the same commands
> from Word when in a Doc, and the same ones from Excel when in a Sheet, so
> aside from the lag it's not bad. Google Forms is very accessible most of the
> time, but if you run into trouble with something in a Form, one great
> work-around is to have the form sent to you in the body of an email. This is
> one of the options when you make and send a Form, but it's not the default I
> don't think. I never had any trouble with Google Forms once I had them sent
> this way, and I received four or five every week.
> I would definitely recommend using the iPhone aps. I found them very
> navigable with VoiceOver. I liked the Docs and Drive apps, but did not find
> Sheets to be accessible. If you open a Google Sheet in Safari, then it's
> pretty easy to navigate by moving by rows. For some reason I can't get the
> roter to give me the rows option when in the Sheets app, and that was a big
> drawback. Also, one very important feature for me as a tutor was the
> comments feature. Unfortunately, after a recent update, the comments feature
> is not accessible at all in the Docs app. It's a shame, because it used to
> work very well, and I would type comments to my students about there work
> using a Bluetooth Keyboard. Another useful feature when teaching that is
> missing in the Docs app is the extended time breakdown of recent edits. On a
> computer, a teacher can pull up a list of when all of the changes were made
> to a document. Great way to keep an eye on a student's progress on an
> assignment. The app doesn't allow for this detailed time log, but it will
> tell you what time the most recent edit occurred.
> Sorry if this is too much Google info! I just want to make sure you don't
> have to figure it out from scratch like I did!
> Georgie
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NOBE-L [mailto:nobe-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David Andrews
> via NOBE-L
> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 10:30 PM
> To: National Organization of Blind Educators Mailing List
> <nobe-l at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com>
> Subject: Re: [nobe-l] accessibility of Google products
> 
> Google has been doing a great deal of work on the accessibility of these
> products. While not perfect, they have improved a lot.  Use Google (LOL) and
> search for accessibility topics with the products, there is stuff out there.
> 
> Dave
> 
> At 08:38 PM 8/30/2016, you wrote:
>> Thank you for asking this. Whoever answers, please share wisdom as far 
>> as both jaws and window eyes. We are heavily into google this year too, 
>> and I am struggling a bit.
>> 
>> Kathy Nimmer
>> Even in the valleys, keep believing in the mountains.
>> 
>>>> On Aug 30, 2016, at 9:01 PM, Craig Cooper via NOBE-L
>>> <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Greetings,
>>> Today, during our teacher meetings, we had an extensive discussion 
>>> on using various Google products, including Google Docs, Google 
>>> Sheets, Google Forms, and Google Apps.  These products are widely 
>>> used in schools, as they allow teachers to be able to do a number of 
>>> creative and interactive lessons, along with making it easy for 
>>> teachers to collaborate on documents.
>>> It can be a bit overwhelming, learning the products and determining 
>>> whether they are accessible with screen readers.
>>> I would love to hear your experiences with these various Google 
>>> products.  Do you use them in your teaching practice?  Are the 
>>> iPhone apps or PC Google products more accessible?
>>> Thank you so much.
>>> Craig Cooper
>>> Teacher: U.S. History, World History, and English III Brookings 
>>> Harbor High School
> 
> 
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