[nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress

[Curtis Chong]

Steve:

I did experiment with NVDA and Window-Eyes, and my findings were confirmed by Microsoft--that is, the data in those edit boxes is not being passed through to the screen access programs. Go figure<grrr>.

Office 2013 has been out for almost a year now, and you would think that by now, the problems would have been handled.

Cordially,

Curtis Chong


-----Original Message-----
>From: Steve Jacobson <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2014 2:52 PM
>To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress
>
>Curtis,
>
>This is an important issue in that it is next to impossible to reliably buy older versions of Office any longer.  
>As you may remember, someone I know bought Office 2010 from a source that turned out to have already sold the 
>product key to someone else.  I don't know why it has to be this way, but I've come to expect that I will have 
>more trouble with Microsoft installs as that has been my experience over the years.  
>
>Have you experimented to see what NVDA does with the return address?  As you know, I am concerned about the state 
>of accessibility just now even though we have made many gains.  More often than ever I see inconsistencies between 
>screen readers, but I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't have some responsibility for all this.  My employer uses Sky 
>Drive Pro, and I am finding it to be somewhat flaky with Window-Eyes, but it is not all that straight-forward for 
>sighted employees in terms of when you have to supply logon credentials.  However, it just seems that Microsoft so 
>often is pushing the envelope without regard to how it affects screen readers or even general stability.  Thanks 
>to your comments, I'm going to hang on to my older versions of Office with both hands.  <smile>
>
>Best regards,
>
>Steve Jacobson
>
>On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:06:18 -0700 (GMT-07:00), Curtis Chong wrote:
>
>>Greetings and felicitations:
>
>>Early this month, I took the rather bold step of upgrading from Microsoft Office 2010 to Microsoft Office 2013. I 
>am running the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Professional.
>
>>I am interested in hearing from anyone out there who has taken a similar journey. Permit me to provide a brief 
>summary of my experiences so far.
>
>>To begin with, the upgrade was not at all a trouble-free experience. The first thing that Office 2013 wanted me 
>to do was to link to either an existing or new Microsoft account. There appears no way to avoid this step. Since I 
>had a Microsoft account (which I had never used for years and years) I had to spend considerable time trying to 
>get my password back. This was only the first problem.
>
>>Then, Office wanted to set up Sky Drive on my computer, which I allowed at first and have since removed.
>
>>After the install was finished (hours of work), I tried starting Word. Right away, I received a message (which 
>was not spoken by JAWS for Windows) indicating that the program had stopped working. There seemed to be no way 
>around this problem. In the end, I had to contact Microsoft Support over the telephone so that someone could 
>remote into my computer and run some kind of a repair.
>
>>While I am now using Microsoft Office 2013 to do real work, I must point out that using this software is not 
>without its problems. For one thing, there are many situations during which JAWS goes silent and during which one 
>simply has to wait for something to happen. For another, there are frequent instances when either Word or Outlook 
>will crash and then recover--all in complete silence (from a nonvisual access standpoint).
>
>>I don't know about the rest of you, but one strategy which I often use is to open a master document from Windows 
>Explorer, bringing it into Word, then save the document under a different name so that I can work on it. On my 
>system right now, there is no way to do this anymore. As soon as I hit F12 to invoke the "Save As..." dialog, Word 
>will immediately crash. Interestingly, this does not happen on the Office 2013 system I am using at work. Go 
>figure.
>
>>There are two other problems worth mentioning. First, in Word, the return and delivery address edit boxes in the 
>Envelopes dialog are not accessible with any screen access program. You simply cannot read the text that may (or 
>may not) be in these boxes. Secondly, in Outlook 2013, the Signature dialog's edit box is just as inaccessible to 
>a nonvisual user as the Envelopes edit boxes in Word.
>
>>These days, for new users, it is just about impossible to acquire Office 2010. This is most unfortunate inasmuch 
>as I consider Office 2013 to be very much a work in progress. I very much am looking forward to a service pack on 
>this from Microsoft.
>
>>Cordially,
>
>>Curtis Chong
>
>
>
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