Onex Trey is one of my video subscribers – and he has a question that I figured you might be able to help answer, especially if you have more experience with it than I do:

My name is Onex. Fresh out of Uni and travelling, exploring my options and getting to know my family roots. I’m writing from China. After Uni in Australia, I now live in Beijing and have been living in China for about 3 months now. I have never been to Seattle, and the one and only time I have been in Vegas was when I was 5 on a family vacation (so I was told, I don’t remember that trip).

Anyhow, I’ve subscribed to your YouTube channel and when I can, I watch the Ustream channel and chat. Sometimes the time differnce means I miss out on the live streams and have to settle with watching the recorded podcasts.

I have been using PCs for a while and currently run a WinXp, but because my degree surrounds Multimedia advertising, I have been advised by my Uni friends to invest in a Mac. Hopefully I will be able to enter into the Mac arena over the new year. From what I have heard from the Apple dealers in China, for consumer use (in China) Macs aren’t too common… yet. Although iPhones and iPods are very popular with a lot of westerners coming from abroad to mass purchase.

The question I would like to ask you Chris, frequently on your video podcasts I notice that you have a “zoom-in” function that you use with the Vista machine, (if I’m not mistaken that’s the machine with the 2 thirty inch monitors). As I am currently living with my grandparents, sometimes the text on webpages or when they are reading ebooks or just the desktop needs to be a bit larger.

I know for websites Firefox has text size increase and ebooks you can zoom-in, and winxp has a built-in magnifying glass (although not at all convenient to manage). I have also explored ZoomText from www.aisquared.com, Enable Mart’s BigShot Magnifier and Lightning, but after the trial period you have to purchase a full version online, and buying stuff online in China … well to my knowledge it’s not that trusty yet.

So, I was wondering, that zoom function that you use on your Vistas machine, what software is that? I’ve seen you use it and it looks very convenient, is that only available on Vista? Would you be able to recommend some other screen magnification software (preferably freeware)?

So, what kind of screen reader options are out there?

Screen Reader Software for the Visually Impaired

So, like… I’ve been dealing with thirteen private threads with fifteen different people I know at Microsoft RE: my recent problems with Vista. Some are quite sympathetic, and others don’t really understand why I’ve been so frustrated. Either way, I appreciate their friendship – including a new friend in Dean Rowe, who helped me through my Windows Movie Maker problem (which turned out to be “enabled” codecs that I had previously disabled to avoid conflicts). Then, there’s Charlie “Ecosystem” Owen – who has not only been quite tolerant of my concerns, but has taken the time to answer some of the questions I’ve passed along to him. Take the example of Emily Green, who commented on one of my earlier Vista posts. She was concerned that her accessibilty apps weren’t working in Windows Vista. Charlie responded directly to her:

It appears the makers of ZoomText are busy creating a Windows Vista compatible version and currently have a beta experience you can test. If you visit their website and select the ‘Support for Windows Vista, Dual Monitors and more …’ link in the bottom /left of the page you can fill out a survey (which is why I can’t simply send you a hyperlink here in this email) to gain access to their beta software which does work with Windows Vista.

According to the producer of Jaws’ website, this product supports Windows Vista – but it seems they mean they have a beta available which requires a bit of work by the user.

Do keep in mind beta software typically has bugs and may not have all features complete and therefore might not work as expected. If you choose to upgrade to Windows Vista (or it came preinstalled on your new computer) it appears you may at least have some alternatives to try if the built in accessibility features in Windows Vista does not meet your needs while these companies develop fully compatible versions. By my reading of their web information, it seems only a matter of time before these two programs are available to you on Windows Vista. And…the time might be shorter than we think given both of these companies have beta experiences working, and a pretty good list of known issues.

We strive to make application compatibility a priority and do a relatively good job considering the extremely large number of applications developed on Windows. In fact, I posted about where we were successful at maintaining application compatibility with a program written for Windows 95 – no changes needed . But…we can always do a better job – and your feedback helps us do that. Please feel free to route any wishes, praise or curses (ha ha ha) through me – if I am not the feature owner I’ll be sure to forward it personally to that person on your behalf.

Charlie didn’t have to do that. Dean didn’t have to do that. There are thousands of Microsoft employees who don’t have to do the things they do – but when they reach out to the community in this fashion, I’m more than impressed. I don’t disagree with Charlie’s statement about beta software, but I’ve seen plenty of “final” software that’s been more than buggy.

Windows Vista Accessibility Options