[RWP] Mobius looper results, now asking Vinux and Mac users to Speak Up

Wed Jun 25 15:39:20 EDT 2014

Couple of corrections to get on the record...

Jes wrote: "the bottom line right now is that if a program, be it
Reaper, PianoTeq, whatever, is not accessible straight out of the box
on Windows, it will not be accessible on the Mac side."
Scott says: not true. I'm pretty far from being an Apple fanboy
nowadays, but think it's important to point out that you'd miss out on
a lot of cool stuff if you were to use this as a rule of thumb, so
don't.

Indie wrote: "Calling all mac snobs, How about fessing up"
Scott says: hahahaha, interesting way to rally the troops. Good luck
getting constructive responses from that.

For what it's worth, my experience so far on the Mac side is that
VoiceOver is the weakest link in an otherwise pretty solid platform.
Apple's documentation re accessibility does seem to be the best that
there is though, and I like to hope that if they ever dedicate some
resource to a big VoiceOver bug squashing release instead of adding
new features to the precarious pile, that documentation could become
useful to what we do.

On 6/25/14, Jes <jessmith at samobile.net> wrote:
> Well, I first off should say I am not a programmer. I tried my hand at
> it in both the pc and Mac environments, found it to challenging and
> gave it up. Anyways, I have been a Mac user for five years, seemingly
> because voiceOver makes all the programs on the Mac accessible because
> it's built-in. With the current state of things in the audio realm, you
> won't get near the functionality with Reaper on the Mac that you do in
> Windows with ReaAccess, and I'll tell you why. Since the Mac's screen
> reader is built-in, it's design is to offer a solution right out of the
> box, with as little hastle as possible for the end user. VoiceOver can
> only tell you in auditory terms, what is visually displayed on the
> screen, providing, of course, that buttons, checkboxes, text areas and
> so forth are clearly labeled on the screen. If they aren't, then just
> as in Windows, VoiceOver and the app just fall apart. Even though there
> is a scripting language called AppleScript that VoiceOver works with
> that's a part of the OS, Since AppleScript was not designed to give
> access to poorly written apps by modifying the screen, it's really up
> to the developer how accessible an app is. You can't just script an app
> to be accessible, like you can with Jaws, since AppleScript was not
> designed with that much complexity. Even if you could make an app
> accessible with AppleScript like that, there are a heck of a lot more
> blind Windows screen reader users than there are VoiceOver users for
> Mac, and only a very few know what they're doing to be sufficiently
> skilled at programming. The good news is that most app developers are
> more than willing to help make their Mac apps accessible especially
> since all we have to do is point them to the accessibility page where
> they can learn about the tools that's already layed out for them, and
> how they can employ them to make their program usable to us. All
> VoiceOver is designed to do is to tell you auditorily what is visually
> on the screen, and whatever layout an application developer chooses to
> use, that's what you get with VoiceOver. You get the same layout as a
> sighted person gets. But in reference to this discussion, the bottom
> line right now is that if a program, be it Reaper, PianoTeq, whatever,
> is not accessible straight out of the box on Windows, it will not be
> accessible on the Mac side.
>
> Original message:
>> If Mobious on a PC won't do it with a screenreader and midi control
>> surface, perhaps Sooper-Looper will, on either a PC running Linux; or on
>> a mac.
>> Maybe blind Linux and Mac users would bring us up to date on access, is
>> the percentage of accessible programs as bad as for a PC, better or
>> worse.
>> I would hope that the blind-friendly, maybe blind-written, Vinux, with
>> an in-house screenreader, would run everything, or is it just a partial
>> hack like we have with our screenreaders in Windows?
>>   I'd love to get an older Mac and experience near zero core audio
>> latency on its in-house screenreader and speech, but would I bat any
>> higher on percentage of plugs that can be accessed?
>> Calling all mac snobs, How about fessing up, can you run more programs
>> than we can on PC and Windows, or is the reality that mac actually is
>> likely to run fewer programs we can access?
>> Thanks,
>> Indi
>
>
>> On 6/24/2014 6:10 PM, Jes wrote:
>>> Let us know how you get along!
>
>>> Original message:
>>>> In the Youtube on controlling Mobius, the sighted user configured a
>>>> midi
>>>> pedal to change the tracks.
>>>> Mobius is controllable from midi, plus it has a script.
>>>> I don't want to spend a lifetime on it, though, if I can't puzzle out
>>>> how to select its tracks, select whether to record, play or overdub,
>>>> select when to punch in and out with a footpedal plugged into my midi
>>>> control surface, I have several.
>>>> So far, in Reaper's effects routing page, I know how to find these
>>>> parameters, input and output track volumes, feedback volume, secondary
>>>> feedback volume, all for the selected track 1 in Mobius.
>>>> I'll try to get a recording going in it, then an overdub.
>>>> So much easier with a pedal, but so much more limited, in bit depth and
>>>> recording rate.
>>>> The TV says we'll have computer-controlled cars soon, so blind folks
>>>> can
>>>> drive ourselves around, and yet we still have plenty of inaccessible
>>>> computer apps, and a complicated hash of partial solutions.
>>>> I hope to give Mobius a look on XP, with Wineyes today.
>>>> Indi
>
>>>> On 6/23/2014 9:16 PM, Jes wrote:
>>>>> Hi Indigo and list,
>
>>>>> Having just been playing with Mobius for a few minutes, I can already
>>>>> tell you that setting things up must be done in the stand alone
>>>>> application, and it requires that you be familiar extensively with
>>>>> your
>>>>> screen reader's review cursor or mouse pointer--whatever your screen
>>>>> reader calls it, because although you have a nice standard menu bar at
>>>>> the top of the screen that you can get to with your traditional alt
>>>>> and
>>>>> arrow keys, that's about all you can do with the keyboard as far as
>>>>> navigating. Once you get into the dialogues to set stuff up, you will
>>>>> have to do a lot of mousing around and clicking and all that crap.
>>>>> There
>>>>> is no way to get any list of the hotkeys that Mobius uses, the only
>>>>> thing I got to work was R to record. When you hit R to record,
>>>>> assuming
>>>>> you've set your audio devices correctly, you should be able to record
>>>>> something and then hear a loop played over and over again. But when
>>>>> you
>>>>> press R to overdub, what you have recorded gets overwritten, and there
>>>>> is no way to check if overdubbing is turned on or off without trial
>>>>> and
>>>>> error. I'm going to see if I can make Mobius be the looper it was
>>>>> created to be by loading it on its own track in Reaper and sending
>>>>> other
>>>>> audio tracks to it but I'm guessing it won't deliver. So for now, this
>>>>> is all I've got to report. The plugin cannot be configured in Reaper
>>>>> it
>>>>> must be configured in the stand alone application, even selecting the
>>>>> tracks that Mobius should record from is not accessible. So, to recap,
>>>>> I'm not saying for certain, but right now it looks like we're going to
>>>>> have to try something else, as you will be spending most of your time
>>>>> dancin and prancin with your review cursor around the main
>>>>> application.
>>>>> The initial configuration of the software is a pain in the butt, and
>>>>> the
>>>>> program is already complex to use as it is, without all these pathetic
>>>>> accessibility barriers which don't need to be there in the first
>>>>> place.
>>>>> But hey, I'm going to try the Reaper trick like I said, and maybe that
>>>>> will give us something to work with after all, it will be awesome if
>>>>> this plugin works for us!
>
>
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