[Trainer-Talk] the New Outlook.com

[David Goldfield]

First, in order to avoid any confusion, let me start out by saying that 
this has nothing to do with Microsoft Outlook or with Windows Live Mail. 
If you use Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, Windows Live Mail, 
Thunderbird, etc., this will have no affect on your software. What I'm 
writing about concerns the actual outlook.com Web site, where you can, 
with a Web browser, check and manage email. I rarely used this site at 
home as I prefer using an email program but occasionally used it on 
other computers while I was away from home.
I just received an email from Microsoft indicating that Outlook.com has 
undergone some changes and I decided to visit it to see how it worked 
with my screen reader.
On my computer at home, I have NVDA and Window-Eyes installed. As of 
now, I have not tried the site with Window-Eyes but worked with using 
NVDA, which is my preferred screen reader.
At first, the site seemed to take a long time to load. To be fair, my 
DSL connection is a bit slow and my wife is currently watching TV via 
our Roku in the other room, which shouldn't slow down the connection 
but, with our DSL connection from Verizon, can be a factor. Once it 
loaded, there were some intro screens, where I had to press a "next" 
button a few times until I got to the equivalent of a "finish" button, 
which I eagerly pressed.
Microsoft has implemented some interesting Web navigation which reminds 
me of some amazing things done by Yahoo several years ago and, in my 
opinion, got far less attention than it deserved.
Now, using Outlook.com feels, in many ways, like you're using Outlook. 
In the message list, NVDA's browse mode turned itself off (this is 
turning forms mode on for JAWS users) and, when pressing down arrow, I 
could move through my message list and the from and subject headers were 
very nicely spoken, just as though I were in Outlook. Pressing enter 
opened the message but I needed to turn NVDA's browse mode back on in 
order to read it. As I tabbed around, I eventually found a "settings" 
button which opened up a treeview of various options. Pressing spacebar 
seemed to be the easiest way to select an option, browse mode would turn 
on and I'd be in a list of form elements with various checkboxes and 
radio buttons to adjust options. It seems pretty comprehensive but I 
played around with very little of them except for the junk filtering as 
I had hoped for a way to tell Outlook.com to not place any messages 
whatsoever in the junk folder. It's possible I'm missing something but 
there seems to be no obvious way to do this, which, if true, I find a 
bit annoying.
I'll report later on as I work more with this interface. However, for 
those who actually visit www.outlook.com with your favorite Web browser, 
I wanted to at least warn you that what you will encounter will be quite 
different from what you've been working with so far.

-- 
        David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology Specialist

Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.Info