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

Wed Feb 26 15:14:55 UTC 2014

Interesting twist to this discussion: It now seems that GW Micro is
giving away a free fully functional copy of Window-Eyes to anyone with
a valid license for MS Office 2010 or later.

I didn't read all the recent messages on this list, so hopefully this
isn't old news.

http://www.windoweyesforoffice.com/

Aaron

On 2/25/14, John G. Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
> Please define "what  you mean by emphasizing ""bringing the screen
> readers into the second decade of the twenty-firstcentury."
>
> On a related note, all the issues I've seen mentioned  in this thread
> specifically mention jaws. It's not clear if other screen readers,
> Window-eyes or nvda, have the same issues.
>
> On 02/24/14 12:26, Gary Wunder wrote:
>> Dear Mike:
>>
>> Perhaps one of the things we need to address is whether or not making
>> things
>> screen reader compatible truly does limit innovation. Is screen reader
>> technology so far behind state-of-the-art technology that this is the
>> case,
>> or are we talking about the failure to add a few lines of code in this
>> new
>> technology that makes it play well with the assistive technology we need?
>> I
>> lack the expertise to answer this question, but it seems to me to be all
>> important. We go to Congress each year with the message that
>> accessibility
>> is easy and doable. I have never heard the software companies argue to
>> the
>> contrary. What I do often hear from software developers is that it is too
>> costly to go back and modify their legacy code but that new development
>> will
>> certainly incorporate accessibility. Only recently have I heard the idea
>> that demanding accessibility threatens innovation. Can someone with some
>> expertise in state-of-the-art coding and state-of-the-art screen reader
>> technology set me straight. It seems to me that this argument, if true,
>> changes where we need to place our emphasis. If it is false, it needs to
>> be
>> revealed as such. If it is true, then we need to place more emphasis on
>> bringing the screen readers into the second decade of the twenty-first
>> century.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mike Freeman
>> Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 11:00 AM
>> To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress
>>
>> Gary:
>>
>> I confess that I am beginning to think we're running up against something
>> we
>> ought to be familiar with, being Federationists, but that we don't want
>> to
>> face. That "something" is that we, the blind, are a minority. This is
>> something we're going to come up against more and more as the general
>> universe seeks bling more than information.
>>
>> I confess that I'm beginning to suspect that unless and/or until we come
>> up
>> with *absolutely* iron-clad legislation that, in effect, limits what
>> software vendors are allowed to do to those things wherein we can
>> guarantee
>> accessibility -- in effect, limiting innovation  -- something which I
>> obviously know won't happen -- we're going to be behind the eight ball
>> even
>> with vendors who claim to put accessibility first.
>>
>> I think more and more we will find ourselves forced to old,
>> tried-and-true
>> but much-forgotten and much-maligned strategies -- such as -- gasp -- use
>> of
>> readers.
>>
>> I believe Deborah Kent-Stein and I talked about this a while back and
>> *she*
>> thinks we'll eventually have to come round to a TapTapSee-like app that
>> allows us to point a camera at indecipherable screens and have someone
>> tell
>> us what's going on. I don't think even that would work as corporations
>> would
>> frown on their networks being used for such things and might balk at the
>> possibilities of theft of corporate secrets or intellectual property.
>>
>> Mike Freeman
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Gary Wunder
>> Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 7:09 AM
>> To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress
>>
>> I still respectfully suggest that we put Microsoft on the agenda and try
>> to
>> find out why accessibility always seems to be at the bottom of their
>> priority list. Did screen reader developers have a look at this before it
>> came on the market? Why is it that we were still wrestling with problems
>> in
>> Outlook 2007 when Outlook 2010 hit the market? Is there any kind of
>> consistency between the statement "computing for all" and the kind of
>> release strategy we see from Microsoft?
>>
>> Gary
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Elizabeth
>> Campbell
>> Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 8:08 AM
>> To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress
>>
>> Hello Curtis,
>>
>> I am using Office 13 at home on my laptop running Windows 8. I must
>> confess
>> that I did not have  the installation headaches as I purchased my system
>> and
>> software from Bestbuy. The store in my area has a very helpful geek
>> squad,
>> and I explained that I wanted to put the computer through its paces using
>> JAWS and so forth before I purchased it.
>> The Best Buy folks took care of all of the installations for me as I
>> purchased a year of tech support for my devices.
>> I primarily use office 13 for Outlook and Word. I am a fan of outlook, so
>> I
>> was very disappointed to see that it often crashes, sometimes while I'm
>> reading or writing a message then mysteriously restarts. IN Word, I
>> haven't
>> used the return address features since I'm creating documents for use at
>> home or at work, and I send 99 percent of my correspondences via email.
>> However, I've had a lot of frustration accessing documents that are
>> protected.
>> JAWS will start reading the file and then stop. I believe what happens is
>> that Word shuts down and then restarts because I get a prompt about
>> recovering files which I can never find.
>> Interestingly enough, I ran in to this problem last week when accessing
>> some
>> documents for a Newsline seminar.
>> I believe there is a way to unprotect files, but I haven't found it yet.
>> Curtis, I agree that Office 13 is very much a work in progress, and I
>> hope
>> Microsoft does come out with a service pack that will repair these bugs
>> which make it almost impossible to use Office reliably.
>> At work, I an using Windows 7 and Office 2007,and I haven't had the same
>> frustrations.
>>
>> Best regards.
>>
>> Liz Campbell
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Curtis Chong
>> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 11:06 AM
>> To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>> Subject: [nfbcs] Office 2013: Very Much A Work In Progress
>>
>> 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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>
> --
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu
>
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