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

Fri Feb 21 22:30:10 UTC 2014

Does anyone know if the edit boxes in question provide TextPattern
interfaces? I don't yet know which screen readers can handle those,
but I do know that JAWS 15.0.6025, and possibly 15.0.5056, can handle
at least some things in that interface. If you think the controls
offer that interface, it might be worth my looking at it via JAWS
Tandem if your JAWS is new enough for that exploration.

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 03:12:50PM -0700, Curtis Chong wrote:
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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