I am also not used to having to remember all the different shortcut key combinations that you need to use in Windows, like F6 to move around in Slack but no where else, and the keys to get to and from the ribbons in Office apps. This is a learning curve issue and I think I will be much faster once I memorize a good core of these, but the VoiceOver model where you use the VO navigation gestures to get around the program breaks in NVDA more often than not. (8/12)
Another positive aspect of NVDA that's been especially nice in my crash learning phase is the large commmunity and amount of content on YouTube like tutorials for how to use Visual Studio: Code. The macOS screen reader community is a lot smaller and less public, so I was always trying to do things in isolation. And submitting feedback to Apple using their opaque feedback app feels like an exercise in futility compared with NVDA's open source structure. (10/12)
MS Office apps also just seem to be a lot busier UI-wise than Apple's Mail and similar apps. Trying to use them with the VoiceOver model always felt like a slog. Conversely, though, it does feel still like NVDA on Windows is only giving me access to a subset of the ways a power user interacts with Office apps. Again, though, I have a lot more to learn in this regard. (9/12)
I can get much more done in Microsoft Word and Excel apps on Windows with NVDA than trying to use them with VoiceOver. NVDA definitely benefits from its big user community who actively uses MS Office apps here. I don't think anyone on Apple's accessibility team has ever put much effort into making VoiceOver specifically work with a particular 3rd party application. (5/12)
I've been a long time hater of Electron apps as they feel like an ugly over-engineered way to avoid writing native apps. So when I watch videos from NVDA power users and they speak positively about an app being Electron - since that means there's a decent chance they can navigate through it is still funny to me. (7/12)
VoiceOver is also just faster overall and the human-like voices are fast enough that I never got into using Eloquence.
On NVDA everything feels sluggish, I have to wait for the browse cursor a lot more and it feels like I'm using some kind of overlay on top of the real OS where VoiceOver just feels like I'm using my own computer.
Positive aspects of NVDA: (4/12)
The attitude seems to be that as a macOS app you have to implement their accessibility hooks the way the OS wants and if you don't it's your problem to fix.
Apple has also severely dropped the ball on VoiceOver support in Catalyst apps, and I've almost given up on trying to use the Music app on macOS for that reason. (6/12)
The biggest difference from the get go is that you really notice that VoiceOver is part of the OS and NVDA is just an app. I have done all sorts of system-level tasks on my own on my Mac like re-installing OSs, repairing drives, that sort of thing. So it's a very negative jolt to have been confronted with a boot error screen a couple of times so far with the laptop and having no recourse except to ask a sighted co-worker what is going on. (3/12)
The transition from high contrast and zoom use to VoiceOver was a smooth one where I used VoiceOver more and more while still taking advantage of the other two.
I've been using a Dell laptop for a few days now and still have VMWare Fusion running Windows 11 on my home Mac mini. (2/12)
Some quick thoughts I wrote in Facebook in response to someone asking me about my learning to use NVDA on Windows as a long-time macOS VoiceOver user:
OK, sorry this took a while but I wanted to get my thoughts down when I could take some time.
Perspective: I am a very low vision user, becoming dependent on screen readers about 5 years ago and exclusively using Apple products the whole time. (1/12) #ScreenReader #VoiceOver #NVDA
