Blind developer here. I could never recommend VoiceOver on MacOS to anyone. 10 years ago before I lost my eyesight I was a huge fan of Apple - everything was just working so much smoother than in Windows world. And much more visually appealing. However, after losing eyesight, I had to switch to Windows. I learned VoiceOver on Mac at first, but working with it was so unbearably frustrating,, even back in 2016 when I was trying. Here are some of my complaints that I still remember:
* Many actions work every other time. I remember that interacting with text area of terminal app was especially painful since the sequence of commands was non-deterministic.
* Hierarchical navigation model is more cumbersome than flat navigation on Windows. In XCode to access some project settings you need to interact with some panel, which has two horizontal subpanels, so you need to interact with the right one, which in turn has two more vertical subpanels, you interact with the bottom one, which has three more subpanels... The recursion depth was 9 levels, I kid you not; and making a single mistake will lead you to wrong place.
* Searching webpage in a foreign language doesn't work. Because Command+F needs to be presssed in English layout and this would open VoiceOver search window, where switching to another layout doesn't work.
* No easy way to open a link in another tab in browser - as opposed to Control+Enter on Windows.
* Too difficult keystrokes - I remember one of keystrokes involved 5 keys: Fn+Ctrl+Option+Command+Up/Down. By now I forgot what it means, but I remember that it gave me plumber's disease - pain in my left wrist from having to press too many keys for extended periods of time.
I probably forgot a bunch more. Not sure if any of these have been fixed since then. But my general impression was that Apple is not very interested in fixing bugs, but instead, they appear to care a lot about presenting shiny keynote slides every year on WWDC claiming how much they care about accessibility.
In Windows world things are considerably better. Jaws is much more convenient to use, even though I've heard many reports of them not willing to fix bugs. NVDA is open source and it is my favorite, since if something doesn't work for me - I just go and fix it myself, but in general things are rarely broken to that extent in NVDA.
Also if I remember correctly Jaws and NVDA share about 45% of marketshare in the screenreader world, while VoiceOver is about 10%. So judging from this point alone anyone would be much better learning a Windows screenreader.
> I remember one of keystrokes involved 5 keys: Fn+Ctrl+Option+Command+Up/Down.
What the actual fuck. This is ridiculous if you are blind and otherwise abled. Now imagine what it’s like if you have incomplete control over your fingers, or tremors, etc. At that point it’s simply impossible. Apple, with all those billions in the bank, maybe you could spend a few million getting these problems right.
If someone came to me with that, I'd recommend either sticky keys, where you can just press a key and the system holds it down, or VoiceOver's "trackpad commander" which basically gives VO control of the trackpad, so the user can swipe left for the previous item, swipe right for the next, that kind of thing. Of course, you then need to turn the trackpad commander off when you type cause any little tap will be sent to VoiceOver and your focus is moved from the text field you were in, to the submit button right as you press Enter for a new line...
There's also the "numpad commander" for external keyboards with a number pad. I like this; you navigate with the 4 and 6 keys, 4 moves back and item, 6 moves forward, and there are keys to skip to the next heading and such. Of course, for hand tremors, I'd really hope one day Apple's voice control and VoiceOver work well together. Right now, it's kinda harder to do if you don't know the name of controls to click on before you get to them with VoiceOver, or if you don't have headphones, the voice output will interfere with the voice input.
I haven’t seen that key combo before, but I wonder if part of the thinking is that they are all next to each other. I’m not sure fine motor control is needed for fn+ctrl+option+cmd; the side of the hand would be enough.
> But my general impression was that Apple is not very interested in fixing bugs, but instead, they appear to care a lot about presenting shiny keynote slides every year on WWDC claiming how much they care about accessibility.
yes, you could say the same about their sustainability /environment/ (and arguably /privacy/). it's more about marketing and owning the narrative than it is about actual substance imo.
iOS VoiceOver is better than Google TalkBack on Android. Although I've heard recently that Android is catching up fast.
I mean it's amazing that blind people can use such a portable device; but I don't quite like that there are only so few gestures that can be made using touch screen. That's the reason they had to invent rotor, I personally find it inconenient compared to using a full size keyboard; but given touch screen rotor is probably the best you can get out of it.
But also I need to mention again my complaints about bugs that never get fixed. Just in case someone from Apple is reading this:
* In some apps the focus jumps about 1 second after opening a new screen. This is especially bad in YouTube app, but also can be rreproduced in other apps albeit with lower delay.
* Back in the days when iPhones had a physical home button, tripple press was supposed to toggle VoiceOver. But the problem is that in more than half iPhones (mine and friends') it stops working after a few weeks of usage. Yeah it can be argued that it's hard to reproduce, but this bug was so well-known and infamous in blind community that shame on Apple for not fixing this.
In general I'd think that a smart decision would be to make both iOS and MacOS VoiceOvers open-source, so that blind people themselves can fix all the bugs. Until then we're left with the situation that a bunch of disinterested sighted devs work on VoiceOvers, and as I already mentioned they are more interested in implementing some shiny new features instead of fixing decade old bugs. And as far as I know being an accessibility engineer is kind of considered one of the worst in the pecking order of engineers, so only those people who couldn't find a better career become accessiblity engs. engs.
* Many actions work every other time. I remember that interacting with text area of terminal app was especially painful since the sequence of commands was non-deterministic.
* Hierarchical navigation model is more cumbersome than flat navigation on Windows. In XCode to access some project settings you need to interact with some panel, which has two horizontal subpanels, so you need to interact with the right one, which in turn has two more vertical subpanels, you interact with the bottom one, which has three more subpanels... The recursion depth was 9 levels, I kid you not; and making a single mistake will lead you to wrong place.
* Searching webpage in a foreign language doesn't work. Because Command+F needs to be presssed in English layout and this would open VoiceOver search window, where switching to another layout doesn't work.
* No easy way to open a link in another tab in browser - as opposed to Control+Enter on Windows.
* Too difficult keystrokes - I remember one of keystrokes involved 5 keys: Fn+Ctrl+Option+Command+Up/Down. By now I forgot what it means, but I remember that it gave me plumber's disease - pain in my left wrist from having to press too many keys for extended periods of time.
I probably forgot a bunch more. Not sure if any of these have been fixed since then. But my general impression was that Apple is not very interested in fixing bugs, but instead, they appear to care a lot about presenting shiny keynote slides every year on WWDC claiming how much they care about accessibility.
In Windows world things are considerably better. Jaws is much more convenient to use, even though I've heard many reports of them not willing to fix bugs. NVDA is open source and it is my favorite, since if something doesn't work for me - I just go and fix it myself, but in general things are rarely broken to that extent in NVDA.
Also if I remember correctly Jaws and NVDA share about 45% of marketshare in the screenreader world, while VoiceOver is about 10%. So judging from this point alone anyone would be much better learning a Windows screenreader.