Chromevox On The Mac Cripples My Style

It is an amazing thing to think about is the reality of the world we experience in our day-to-day lives. When I was a child, I was told by someone – who’s name I have now forgotten – that “blind people can’t ride a bike because if one cannot see one cannot maintain balance.” Why should one be so limited? My curiosity got the better of me and my pride made a pact with my competitive self which caused me to learn how to ride a bike with no imbalance.

I have written about my experience with Voiceover both on the Mac and the iPhone. I can’t seem to remember a day when I didn’t use a touch screen to do all sorts of computer things; such as, browse web sites. It was not that long ago when the blind community was told that touch screens were out of bounds and we would need to be content with keyboards. Don’t get me wrong, I love the keyboard and I love the touch screen. Why should I be restricted to one or the other?

Now along comes Chromevox, the screen reader extension for the Google Chrome browser. I love the Chrome Browser. I greatly dislike the fact that ChromeVox only supports keyboard shortcuts and complete ignores the capabilities of the Mac to support touch gestures.

I had forgotten what it was like to try and remember complex key combinations to get things done. I will love Chromevox even more when touch gestures are supported.