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Common keystrokes (also available when you click Help from within Google
Docs):
http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=179738
I wonder how the Microsoft Web Apps compare to Google Docs. I want to
mention that I have experimented with the Word, Excel, and Powerpoint
Web Apps on the Microsoft Skydrive. You can try it yourself with a
hotmail account or live.com account at http://live.com. I have seen an
error come up that I had a missing plug-in for chrome on one of my
machines at home. I believe Safari needs to have appropriate plug-ins
installed too. I'm curious to know how common it is to see the missing
plug-in message for Safari and Chrome users.
Felicia
On 01/19/2012 04:18 PM, Michael S Elledge wrote:
> Hi Brendan and Al--
>
> Since Chrome is rarely used by screen reader users, maybe we should
> provide a link to a page containing its common keystrokes, and to the
> training video (if it is accessible).
>
> Mike
>
> On 1/19/2012 2:29 PM, Brendan Guenther wrote:
>> On 1/19/2012 11:20 AM, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
>>>
>>> An issue that comes into play here and is often overlooked is the
>>> matter of training. I can’t speak from a sighted user’s perspective,
>>> but I think it’s safe to say that visually, the various browsers are
>>> more similar than they are different. A long time user of internet
>>> Explorer could switch to Chrome and be comfortably up and running in
>>> a relatively short amount of time. After all, it all boils down to
>>> point and click. However for a screen reader user, this is
>>> unfortunately not the case. Each screen reader / web browser combo
>>> has its own idiosyncrasies, and the UI can vary tremendously. Note
>>> the following examples:
>>>
>>> This is a getting started tutorial for browsing the web with Chrome
>>> and Chromevox: http://goo.gl/5oScL
>>> Here is one for Jaws: http://goo.gl/6WfZk
>>> And here, one for Safari on the Mac with voiceover: http://goo.gl/luYcw
>>>
>>> I have been browsing the web the Jaws way for the past 20 years. I
>>> own a Mac and surf effectively with it now, but it took me months to
>>> become proficient. I have only recently begun exploring Chrome, and
>>> although I can use it, I am still at the point where I spend more
>>> time thinking about what I’m doing, which command key sequences to
>>> use, etc., than I do actually accomplishing anything online. It takes
>>> me many hours of self training to become comfortable with any given
>>> browser / screen reader combination, and I consider myself a
>>> relatively technical user. I truly wish the screen reader and browser
>>> people would get together and come up with a standard UI, but that’s
>>> a soapbox for another thread on another day.
>>>
>>> The bottom line is that it may not be realistic to expect a student
>>> who is a screen reader user to switch to an unfamiliar browser on the
>>> spur of the moment, and be immediately productive after doing so.
>>>
>>>
>> Thanks for sharing your perspective Al, this helps me understand the
>> difficulty. I've been reading support tickets for years, and am
>> currently in the State News Editorial Board's boiling pot about our
>> browser support on major services like ANGEL. This experience base
>> tells me that even sighted users have a strong resistance to leaving
>> their browser of choice, having learned how to best employ it. You've
>> provided a better perspective, especially through those tutorials on
>> the learning process for screen reader users. Sometimes "I don't want
>> to use Chrome" has more weight behind it then just personal
>> preference, and you've explained that well.
>>
>> I fear we are still in the pickle we've been in since we left Gopher
>> for the web: there will always be multiple browsers, that interpret
>> standards differently. Some of these differences will be exploited for
>> convenience or competitive advantage by the commercial interests. I
>> also fear that Google's chosen strategy may leave a gap between
>> satisfaction of ADA regulations (or MSU web accessibility standards)
>> and actual ease of use. That said, I'd still lean strongly towards
>> keeping the MSU Google Apps Suite available to our community.
>>
>> --
>> Brendan Guenther
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Michigan State University
>> Libraries, Computing and Technology
>> Director - Virtual University Design and Technology
>> Associate Director - Academic Technology Services
--
Felicia Berryman
Instructional Systems Team
Academic Technology Services
Michigan State University
(517)432-4040
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