Should I switch to Mac? Coming from a student.

I thought about the points you raised about possibly switching to a Mac, and I can see why you're considering it. But when I weigh those reasons against the potential drawbacks—especially in terms of accessibility—it seems more reasonable to stick with JAWS on Windows.

VoiceOver on the Mac just doesn’t match up to JAWS in terms of functionality and efficiency. It’s far more limited, and for someone who relies heavily on screen readers, that difference matters.

Now, if your main motivation for switching is the Mac’s superior battery life or the appeal of its overall hardware design, then that’s a different story. In that case, I wouldn’t argue against the switch. But purely from an accessibility standpoint, staying with JAWS seems like the wiser choice.

In my experience using a MacBook Air M1 from 2021, I have found that Mac accessibility is significantly inferior compared to Windows. While VoiceOver is a capable screen reader, it falls short in terms of usability.

For instance, in the “Jaws,” navigating to the top of a webpage or other elements on Windows requires the use of the Control + Home keyboard shortcut. However, VoiceOver employs a different command for each specific task, such as navigating a webpage, text editor, or other Windows applications.
Furthermore, losing focus is another significant challenge with Mac accessibility. Understanding the Mac operating system is crucial for effective interaction, as VoiceOver heavily relies on interacted elements. Additionally, Mac operating system lacks the comprehensive functionality available in Windows, such as the numerous options and accessibility features in most audio editing software.
It is important to note that the performance of VoiceOver on iPhone or iPad should not be compared to its performance on Mac. These operating systems are fundamentally different, and while VoiceOver works well on these devices, its effectiveness on Mac is severely limited.

Sorry, but if you cannot get around different keyboard commands and therefore warn „do not switch“, that‘s simply no argument. The same goes for the Mac‘s Operating System. If you want to switch and expect the same keyboard commands and behavior that you know from JAWS / NVDA on Windows, it‘s obvious that Mac is not for you. But that is true then for every other operating system than Windows.
I‘ve been using macOS since February 2021 and here are just a few key points from my experience so far. Disclaimer: I use the Mac with a Braille display almost exclusively, so I don‘t run into issues that others may have with Speech.
The Mac does not require you to learn dozens of navigation patterns for each application, as you navigate with VoiceOver commands in every app. This is a key difference from Windows with JAWS, for example: Most of the time, you navigate with regular Windows commands. On macOS, you have a clear hierarchy that you can navigate. This makes much more sense in my opinion and is the point that bothers me the most on Windows. Interacting with elements makes it a lot easier to me navigating apps. You‘ll need to get used to it and the key is to not remember how it has been on Windows. You cannot apply Windows experience to macOS / VoiceOver at all.
What needs to considered, however: Apple is no screen reader manufacturer in the first place. VoiceOver can have, and has, bugs that may be long-standing and restrict productivity. A major issue has been the „Safari not responding“ issue which has been discussed broadly on this site. However, I‘m seeing this more rarely since Sequoia.
Also, and that‘s a real downside, text processing is not as efficient as it‘s on Windows. Maybe I‘m doing it wrong, i‘m not the one who uses text processors very often, but if I need to do it, I prefer how it works with JAWS on Windows. But I‘d rather assume that it‘s just me doing it wrong because I don‘t do this quite often.
If you want more detail, feel free to contact me via AppleVis contact form.

If you are use to work with MS word, and other program in window, it might be hard to find the same on apple. Voiceover is good on the iPhone but from what I hear those who use Mac, it is dificult and takes to many steps to make a command. Never had issue with jaws. Are you using current jaws 25? Which window? If you are determine to do so, find a mac from a friend and play with it.

On Freedom Scientific's web site, you can go to the training section for all kinds of Jaws training.
www.freedomscientific.com/training

Different keyboard command is not the only reason for me.
I’ve found it quite a bit more complex compared to Windows. In Windows, things are straightforward and easy to follow, while in macOS, it can be quite a bit more involved and time-consuming. I’ve found that repeating the same steps in macOS can be quite a hassle, especially when they’re already simple in Windows. That’s why I haven’t been a big fan of the Mac operating system.

I'm not a Jaws user, but when I installed it, I seem to remember that the main app has loads of tutorials and videos in it. They seemed really good, but I only watched one of them.

It sounds like the kind of thing you get frustrated with in Jaws you are likely to have all the time on the Mac.

In my experience, whilst there are some things to like about the Mac, you have to be prepared for a whole lot of frustration. Apple are not good at fixing bugs - there are some really painful ones that have been around for years. I would be amazed if they fared better than Freedom Scientific here.

The iPhone is an entirely different beast to the Mac. Although VoiceOver does have some similarities, the iPhone user interface is significantly simpler than the Mac.

You could also try NVDA on Windows and see if you get on better with that.

Bearing in mind I am not remotely competent with a screen reader on Windows, I would still suspect that you are better off sticking with it. But having said that, some people absolutely love their Macs so who knows it might just click with you. But if you want a nice, consistent experience without bugs, then you are unlikely to find it on the Mac in my opinion.

Also jaws is updated every 2 or 3 month to deal with bugs and every year is upgraded.

Like even if you can get to an Apple store every once in a while for a half hour or something, I'd say try one for yourself. I've used Jaws for years and then switched to NVDA exclusively back in 2013 or 14. I switched to the Mac about nine months ago, and I'm getting along with it just fine. Note though that I'm doing audio stuff as well as random daily stuff. I don't code, although I might start again, and I haven't done a ton of writing on it.

There are definitely differences, and I agree 100% with whoever said forget Windows. IMO a lot of the problem people have in transitioning is that they want to keep doing whatever they remember from Windows, and then they get frustrated when that doesn't work, or when they can do it in some places, and not others.

But this is why I say, try the Mac for yourself as extensively as you can, if that's at all possible. The second best option, although it doesn't work exactly the same way, would be to get a Bluetooth keyboard for your phone and use Voiceover with it. A fair number of commands overlap. I find that you need to use the touch screen a fair bit, e.g. to get VO to focus on a certain area, so I'm not sure if you could use it entirely with the keyboard and nothing else.

But for me, while some might see this as a huge issue, and yes it would be nice if you didn't have to, this is just what working with the phone is like. For example, I find that if I'm on a web page, sometimes I have to touch the screen to get it to focus on that page. Well, same thing with a Bluetooth keyboard, sometimes it's somewhere else, and you just have to touch the screen to get it back in the web page. Then the Voiceover keyboard commands work again.

This is why you get a lot of complaining on here, because people think it should be different. OK, sure. It's not. Can you put up with it or not? Only you can figure that out for yourself. It's the same thing with the Mac really. For instance, people want to use the arrow keys, just like Windows. Sometimes you can do that, e.g. while moving through files in Finder, the equivalent of Explorer for Windows. Or you could turn quick nav on, but then people complain that it does X some places and not others.

I, on the other hand, just use the Voiceover commands, caps lock and the arrows, unless I'm doing something specific where quick nav makes sense to me. So I don't get a lot of this stuff that bothers people. Maybe holding caps lock and the arrows would drive you nuts. Maybe you'll be fine with it. Maybe you'll be fine with using quick nav a lot and you'll be fine with knowing that it doesn't work for thing Y, and you have to do something else.

IMO I don't see this as much different from Windows. You have to do workarounds there too, e.g. in Windows when you're updating, unless it changed in the latest version, the only way I found to read progress with NVDA was to use object navigation to go down into whatever was updating, i.e. "windows 26H2", then down into it again which read the same text, then go right until you got to the progress area.

I realize this all probably sounds very complicated without experience to back it up, and I'm not trying to make it sound scary or anything. But this is why I say, try the Mac for yourself, if you can. GO through the Voiceover tutorial. See if you can think of some task you might want to try, and read up on how it might be done, one of the guides here for example. Then try it.

One final reason, one poster here said there's no access to audio software. I have no idea why. On Windows for making music using a digital audio workstation, you have Reaper and Ableton Live, and something else that's Jaws only so I keep forgetting what it is. On Mac you have Reaper and Ableton Live, plus Garage Band or Logic Pro, and Protools if you want to spend a whole bunch of money. So like, you *literally* have access to more DAW choices than Windows. This is nothing against Windows, it's perfectly fine and you can do everything you need to do on it.

But my point is, this is incorrect information, that there's no accessible audio software for the Mac. In fact the exact opposite is true. So again, this is why I say, if it's at all possible, try a Mac as long and as often as you can, and find out for yourself. This is especially true since you find Jaws to be confusing.

You might find the Mac equally confusing. It might be better for you. It might be confusing, but maybe you'll find a couple of things that make more sense to you, and you'll decide it's better to work through confusion on the Mac. Maybe you'll decide the Mac is too expensive and you'll stick with what you've got, and fight through that confusion.

Again, only you can know if it's going to make more sense to you or not.

I totally understand you because I had similar experiences with Windows. I switched to Mac in high school and it was excellent. I even studied natural medicine in an online USA college and now I am studying salesforce with my Mac. I have M3 MacBook Air and I am very satisfied. I don’t feel depressed anymore like I felt when I used Windows. With Windows I felt so depressed that I even refused to go to school with my computer but everything changed when I got the Mac.

Confirming, there are real choices on the mac for DAW, but that's not my expertise.
It's the first time I heard a person with jaws having issues to the point of considering a switch to the mac purely because of the screen reader experience. This is really not a good reason to go to the mac, as accessibility are rough on the edges there. I will put it this way. If you are not willing or able to put at least 3-5 hours a month (if not more) to consistently report accessibility problems on the mac, then forget it. Controversial take, I know, but this is the reality with the accessibility there. If you're having screen reader problem, look for resources to learn nvda, or even dolphin. I switched from jaws to nvda in 2016 and never looked back once since, though I have jaws around for the weird edge case where it's better in powerpoint and excel than nvda currently is...
Look. I am a student, like you. I am in computer science, and purely due to the program requirement I will have to use both, and I do have both windows and mac and I have been going back and forth between them everyday since the last 2 years.
This is a really complex question. The most important one, is, maybe not even the accessibility, but if the money on a macbook air/pro will be justified with your daily workflow, whether it tends more towards microsoft apps in terms of code or office apps, or if that workflow can be cross platform, or, if you personally use lots of web apps and you're used to that comfort on windows with windows screen readers. If you are heavy into rdp, visual studio, sql servers, then forget the mac. Yes, you can do virtualization to kinda have the best of both world, yes, any >m3 series chip even has nested virtualization (m2 has it hardware wise but apple hasn't exposed that to the framework though asahi team was technically able to do that, this is just apple for you), but if your goal is to use lots of microsoft products, then don't go outside windows.
If battery life is a criteria for you, then, yes, you will be very happy with an apple silicon mac.
But really, considering a switch to the mac because of accessibility issues on windows will not end well for you or anybody else. Look for a solution to your current sr problems first with what you have.

Sound designer here. Yes, I’d say you have more choices for digital audio workstations, daws, on mac than windows; but something of importance. ill use reaper, as that’s the digital audio workstation I use myself. On Mac? 95% of the plug-ins are accessible. And I mean fully accessible with VoiceOver via reaper's interface. On Windows? Not the case. For many plug-ins, you’re gonna have to rely apon OCR or other workaround to get them to work, I.e, nvda addon, etc. Do note though that, pluggin accessibility varies from daw to daw. I.e, a plug-in that is ffully accessible on reaper, might also be fully accessible on say logic; but not in pro tools... Saw this happen many, many times; so its something to keep in mind, then again that's because pro tools uses its own format for plug-ins, aax instead of the regular ones apple and everyone else use, au, vst, vst3 etc so, that might explaine the why of this.
With that beeing said, as others have pointed out; give the mac a shot if you can. And yeah... Agree with khomus, forget windows. Forget what you already know; start from 0 here. Its what you should do when learning a new OS or anything new; don't assume, oh if so and so worked there; same thing here.

As a general rule, I do not recommend the Mac for blind people unless:

• You have previous experience with a Mac and like the VoiceOver way of doing things; or
• You want to learn something new, for the experience, and have the time and patience to do it well.

The second point is really important. I have dabbled with Mac hardware over the years but always come back to Windows. In December 2020, I bought an M1 MacBook Air, because I was interested in iOS apps on Apple Silicon and the advances on macOS and wanted to give the Mac another try. I committed to really learning the Mac and using it for everything--And, this next part is key--I had the time to do it. At the time, I had a different job and did not work from home; and my computer was used for personal pursuits only. And so I had the time to explore, figure things out, and really learn how to use macOS without the pressure of having to get anything serious done. I used the Mac almost exclusively for almost 6 months. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, but one thing is for sure: I absolutely would not have wanted to undertake an adventure like this if I actually needed to get work done. Trying to complete a task--like a report or paper--on a deadline while also learning a new operating system... Is not a good combination. In the end, I went back to Windows full-time; as I found that I was faster and more productive with JAWS in Windows than I was with VoiceOver on the Mac. Fast performance is everything for me. JAWS and Windows... When I press a key, it instantly gets up and goes. VoiceOver on the Mac... Well, it tries. There is a slight lag when navigating and, for me at least, it slows me down and detracts from the experience in a big way. Having said all of that, I do really like a lot about the Mac. The software integration is great. Apple controls the entire experience, and the result is that everything works well together. Despite my frustrations with the Mac, I still keep coming back in the hopes that things are better. It is so close to being 'good'.

I'm not an efficiency dude. Even on Windows. I'm using Eloquence on Mac and I have the rate set to 70%. I don't likee faster rates because it sounds choppy. But I see blind people advocating for increasing the rate by a percent or two and getting used to it, then increasing it again, and so on. They're all like "oh I have my Eloquence set to a thousand words a minute because I code and I need to read fast"!

I just don't get it. Personally I don't really notice a difference between the Mac, base M2 Mini if it matters, and NVDA on Windows. One of the tests I made before I bought the Mini was writing something on a Mac in an Apple store and then moving by words.

Please note, I'm not saying Michael's wrong and the lag doesn't exist. I'm saying that for the stuff I'm doing and the tests I did between thetwo machines, I don't notice a difference. I, personally, am not being impacted by this lag. Other people will feel differently about this.

I've heard other people talk about lag before. One place I do notice a difference, possibly, is in browsing the web. If I do a search, it might take it slightly longer to load the Google results page. I say *might* because I didn't time them, Mac vs. Windows, to compare. It does feel slightly longer, but just because it seems that way, doesn't mean it actually is.

Another thing that bothers some people is extra keystrokes. If I want to do something with an email other than read it, e.g. click a link, I interact with it by hitting VO-shift-down arrow. Again, this doesn't bother me. It's something I'm just hitting quickly and getting on with my day.

But if somebody is into being as efficient as possible, I can see where having to do that would be annoying. Please note this is what I do, I'm not saying it's the only way to do it. I have the preview/message pane turned off so it only displays an email if I hit enter on it. So I mean, I just feel like the only way to get a real feeling for the Mac and how you'll take to it is to try one. I realize that's not always the simplest thing in the world to do, mind you, but there it is.

Indeed, I encountered similar challenges four years ago when I had to transition from Windows to Mac. While I anticipate that Mac OS offers enhanced accessibility compared to Windows, I have encountered persistent issues that have persisted for four years and have yet to be resolved. The software developers have been unable to address the bugs, which have manifested in various forms. Notably, the most prevalent issue is the inability of Safari to respond, and pages frequently become unresponsive upon opening the program. Although the frequency of these occurrences has decreased in the latest Mac operating system, they continue to occur . And losing focus is the another serious issue.

I'm very strongly considering the mac. This being said I know it will take time to learn. You have to go in willing to toss windows concepts out the window. Learn the new OS and realize it will take time.

The only real alternative in terms of os/platform aside windows and mac, is chromeos. Chromevox is an underated screen reader. Though in term of customization it's nowhere near close to VoiceOver on the mac, not to mention NVDA/JAWS on windows, chromeos is basically a browser os, and chromevox for my use case can give serious competition to nvda. Plus, you have a linux container where if you really want you can go out of google sandbox, and even install arch linux on that according to their own wiki. Even before the mac, I'd say that outside of the pure linux distros, because nowadays there's so much problem with wayland and blind accessibility infrastructure, chromeos is the best gui front end to what can be the closest you'll ever get to a real linux experience with the accessibility that can follow.
I am saying that because chromeos is like dolphin screen reader on windows, overlooked, unknown and ignored by the blind community, but it does exist. Plus, most of the really interesting comments in the chromevox discuss google group which is sponsored and actually read by google people (because some of my accessibility bugs posted there along with the public! google issue tracker got patched) are from blind linux nerd who ask nerd linux questions. Again, depends on your workflow and needs.
I also agree, forget any past platform/screen reader experience you think you know when trying the mac, it will not help but hurt you in great way.

If you find JAWS clunky, you'll be beyond miserable with VoiceOver.

The short answer: I recommend NVDA. It is what I use 90% of the time for personal use. I want to enjoy Mac - I love MacOS, but VoiceOver can hold MacOS back.

I'd say pretty much everything is inefficient, particularly text-editing and web-browsing. As others have mentioned, there's bugs that often pile up. It can feel like Apple forgot the VoiceOver portion of their MacOS userbase.

I don't hate the way VoiceOver navigation works, but even their first-party apps like Maps and Music are inaccessible. You'll be using Microsoft Office or Google Suite in your studies I'm sure, neither of which work easily.

I switched from Mac to Windows, switching to Windows was a more intuitive experience, but I do find myself going towards my Mac. Maybe because I'm in a toxic relationship with it, but right now it's not completely awful, plus it's working well for online shopping. I also love iMessage and the Mail app.

I recommend learning NVDA and getting further JAWS training, and please feel free to reach out if you need anything.

Per testing, excel works fine, powerpoint... no idea... word... That one is a heck of a mess; but that's on microsoft tbh.

Yes, excel is the most accessible out of the three on the mac. Word is more usable than powerpoint IMO. Outlook is great.

I'm leaning more towards Mac every day. Jaws should allow you to save things in folders in edge you can't if you try to arrow to the folders Jaws reads nothing. NVDA will. I don't like the lack of customization in NVDA. example if I don't want it reading the first line of an email message it does even if I have it turned off. so Voiceover is looking more and more promising every day.

Hello,
VoiceOver ceases reading the page after approximately 140 to 150 pages. I have a document containing 300 pages, and after the 150th page, VoiceOver stops reading any lines. The document is in Hindi. I am unsure of the appropriate course of action. This is a significant bug, but Apple has not provided a solution since long time. And another problem is that, every time when I scroll the pages, it says pages is not responding. It's occurred after 102 150 pages.

If the document is one you are able to include in your report, I would include it. It would make it easier for them to reproduce. What you wrote here was
very good.

I'm struggling to understand how anyone could realistically get a good feel for the Mac in a few half hour sessions at an Apple store. Maybe I'm just an old man and a bit stuck in my ways, but I would think learning the Mac would need a reasonably serious time investment. It took me a long, long, long time to get used to it, although it was my first screen reader. However, if I went into a shop and tried Windows with Jaws for 30 mins at a time I'd ever get anywhere. In fact when I did dabble with Jaws I got fed up because I was on the free timed trial and felt I couldn't get far enough without it rebooting.

Anyway, it's interesting reading all the mixed reactions to the question on here. I'm not sure we have collectively helped very much. I think you could summarise most of the above with "definitely no!" and "definitely yes!"

It's not about learning it. It's about trying to get a feel for it. If X in Jaws is really confusing, but the way Voiceover does it makes OP go, "oh, that makes sense to me, I get it!", then that's at least some indication of how they might get on with the Mac.

I mean, let's be real, the way to learn it is to get hold of a Mac somehow, a new base Mini, a used Macbook, so you can just play around with it to your heart's content, or at least for fifteen or thirty days or whatever the return policy might be.

But I don't know OP's situation, i.e. where they live, what kind of money they have access to, could they get a Mac donated or bought for them through a blindness agency or charity, whatever. So I'm trying to go with the minimal things that might be possible. This is also why I recommended the phone with a Bluetooth keyboard.

I agree with the other poster, the interface is simpler. Some of the commands are also different, e.g. in iOS Vo-h goes to the home screen while in Mac OS it takes you to help. But you'll at least see some of the Voiceover way of doing things, particularly where the keyboard commands overlap.

If that makes sense to OP, then there's more of a reason to look into Mac more. If it doesn't and it's just as confusing, then you try to figure out other issues, e.g. if OP is going to have to use Powerpoint all the time and it doesn't work on Mac and they can't use Mac's presentation software and export, then maybe a Mac isn't a good choice.

I'm starting from the perspective of OP's confusion. The simple fact, IMO naturally, is that the Mac is a viable platform. There are people doing their work on it, whether that's coding or writing or audio or whatever. This is not to say there aren't bugs or anything, just that it's a platform you can use to do the work you need to do, where work is very general, not just employment.

So while yes OP will want to consider specific accessibility issues, either generally or with particular software, IMO, we're not there yet. OP finds the basics of their screen reader to be confusing. They're wondering if Mac's way of doing things would fit better for them.

That's the basic question that has to be answered first, because everything flows from that. If Voiceover is even more confusing, then there's probably no good reason for OP to switch. If OP tries the phone with a Bluetooth keyboard, and just having to use caps lock or toggling quick nav on and off as necessary is something OP finds terribly inefficient and annoying, well again, probably no real good reason to switch then.

Before we worry about which of the twelve million languages OP might have to code in, and which of the fifty available editors they might want to try and whatever accessibility issues they might have, OP needs to figure out if Mac makes anymore sense to them.

I will add, I think I've pointed this out before, that I have a friend who wrote papers for both a bachelor's and master's degree in music, first with Pages and then with Ulysses. So I mean, maybe you *don't* have to use Microsoft 365 or Google Suite. She didn't, and obviously they were properly formatted and all of that good stuff. I don't know when she switched but I'm fairly sure all of her master's stuff was in Ulysses.

Again, maybe you say, "I don't want to do that". Or maybe you decide that you'll probably get a job using one or both of those, so yes that accessibility really does matter, even *if* there are perfectly viable alternatives. So I'm not trying to dismiss those issues. Butlet's start at step one. Does Voiceover make more sense to OP than Jaws?

Agree with khomus here; wrote an entire book with pages myself without a problem a while back. Granted not a very long one but still. Also, and this is just my 2 sents but; I almost never get safari / pages not responding. Weather this is because I have a arm mac and use an add blocker... It might be the case, but I'm not sure. As far as pages, I feel this one happened more on intel, but that's just my 2 sents, as haven't noticed it much to be honest.

No, pages with long document makes voiceover crash first, not pages itself. A similar problem was reported by me with numbers audio graphs where in any real world situation that feature crashes making it another cool in theory but useless in practice situation with voiceover on mac. A challenge to myself, properly document on applevis in a single post all the current bugs opened, they're all reproducible fairly easily so I will just submit some massive bugs report in the new form soon.

I agree with Khomus and Igna Triay. I have been using Mac almost 10 years and I have been able to do everything in Pages. So there is a very big chance that you don’t need to use Microsoft Word at all. Plus, you can convert Pages documents into Word, PDF, etc..

I totally agree with Dennis Long. I got lots of training for Windows but even the training didn’t help because there were so many accessibility problems with Windows screen readers so that I couldn’t do basic everyday stuff efficiently. Even accessing mail was painful.
So accessibility was the main reason why I switched to Mac. Learning for me wasn’t too difficult because I started reading about VO for Mac before I even got the Mac. So I already knew the basic commands when I got the Mac.

Today, Apple dropped a humorous presentation that students can modify and use to persuade their parents to buy them a Mac for college. It was clever, as only Apple can be, and made me lol.

I'm not a student anymore, but reading it also gave me that feeling of rules for thee but not for me. They give examples of majors and the programs people will use and how well they work on the Mac. But not having used a Mac for about 9 years, and just going by comments here, it seems like said software would, in general, not be great to use with VO. I.e. one of the slides mentions someone majoring in CS, and that pi charm is one of the programs they'd be spending countless hours in. I know @Mr. Grieves has mentioned using it, but I have no idea what extra complexity and stress VO adds to it.

This thread makes me wonder, how much of the issues discussed here are accessibility issues with VoiceOver, and how much is there just being a lack of good training resources? As much flack as FS gets, they do have a lot of great training resources for using JAWS, from webinars to their training podcast, to their new insert J club thing. Whenever I get emails announcing early stuff through that, I always think, where's that for Mac and iPad? The only thing today at Apple offers for VoiceOver is getting started sessions which most of us have blown past and I have actually taught the specialists at my stor teaching them a thing or two because I actually use it. Apple should bring on some experts to teach some more advanced accessibility-focused training and offer it in person and online.

Have you thought of suggesting it? it is entirely possible Apple didn't think of it. Thanks for all your good ideas.

The only reason why I mention MS Office and Google suite is because you might need them for group assignments - e.g. using Google Docs or Microsoft Teams. It's also advantageous to learn how to use Windows and Microsoft Office products now before entering the workforce, because they're industry standard.

And though I'm getting along with my Mac fairly well now, I would never, ever use a Mac in a workplace. It's too buggy and inefficient. (I also value having multiple screen readers just in case something goes wrong - for example, JAWS suddenly stopped Working with Microsoft Edge at work. I was stuck with Narrator, but that is better than being stuck with nothing at all.)

For me, learning Windows screen readers cemented learning VoiceOver in some weird way. I really recommend learning JAWS first, because you'll more than likely need it in the workplace, before trying to learn the Mac.

What are you specifically struggling with JAWS, and is there any way we can help?

I'm not saying anybody should switch to Mac. I'm not saying that because people can get meaningful work done on it that it doesn't have issues. I've tried to give examples of my thinking, e.g. having to hit VO-shift-down to interact is just something some people will not put up with. For me, it's just not a problem. I do it and I don't even notice it. I don't feel like it's cutting into my work, like oh if I didn't have to do this twenty times a day I'd be so much faster!

But this is kind of my point. Some of the things that drive some people nuts, that are real bugs, don't affect me at all, e.g. I have never used a read by paragraph command in a screenreader, except by accident maybe, and I've been using screen readers since the mid to late eighties. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, I agree it doesn't work right and it should. But it's just not something that enters into my life at all. Until somebody mentioned it in a thread I'm not even sure I was aware that Voiceover had a read by paragraph command.

I think some of you are also missing my point. Take Safari not responding. I use Firefox. I get that every once in a while, usually when I'm making it load multiple large pages and thrashing around in them. However, on Windows, instead of getting "Firefox not responding" and then generally having it work again after waiting a few seconds, it used to just lock up the entire system occasionally, and I'd have to reboot.

But my point is that, OK, Pages and Voiceover have an issue with large documents. Use something else. You have options. Again, I'm not saying you should have to. If you decide that Apple is just messing up too much, and you don't want to use a Mac because of it, awesome, you do you. But a lot of times, this doesn't happen. It's "oh Pages crashes with large documents and it won't read paragraphs in this one weird circumstance, never ever ever use Mac ever again, its so horrible"!

I mean, we see this right here in this thread, with just straight up misinformation being given, and people going "well I don't *use* a Mac myself, never touched one, I'm a phone dude, but I've *heard* people *say* stuff about it so I'm telling you no you shouldn't use it"! Like, why are you saying things like that, if you don't know what you're even talking about?

So what I'd like to see is a lot more, "Voiceover crashes in Pages with large documents. However, you can use X and Y instead to deal with large documents". If people go, "wow, I don't want to have to get three different writing programs just to deal with documents, that's not for me",fair enough. The friend I mentioned loves Ulysses because she can use Markdown for all of the formatting. For some people, that's not going to work, not because it's complicated or whatever, but just because it's another thing to learn, or they find it confusing, or what have you.

But again, the point is that real people are getting real work done on Mac. And it's not just "oh it's great if you do music", or whatever the standard responses are. And IMO, the only way to know if it's going to be for you or not is to try it, if that's at all possible, while of course getting information on any specifics you might have.

If you know you're going to be in Pycharm 37 hours a day, yeah, find out how it works with that. If you're going to need an alternative, find out if that's even possible, might not be if you're at an employer, and if it is whether that will work for you or not.

I still say the first step is just trying it though. Voiceover may have the best document composition system in the whole entire world. But if you feel like it's slowing you down, or it's just incredibly confusing for you, then you're just not going to want to use it, however great that system might be for you as a writer. That's why I feel accessibility is secondary, in some ways. Mind you, it's a hugely important second, don't get me wrong. But you need that basic first step, different operating system, different screenreader, can you deal with that? If not it could be the most accessible thing in the world, doesn't really matter.

that is a very well written response and sums it up perfectly

I actually had the opposite experience. I started my work using PC, and it got to the point where it drove me so up the wall that I had to say no; and ask if I could use switch to mac, old one i have but still; work said yes, long story short. But yeah I have to work with tables, pages, email... browsing... Pc just... No. And mind you; I know my way around pc's with nvda; its not that i'm a beginner, have 5 plus years using a vm in fact so... But yeah no. For me it was backwards, and I'd recommend a mac for work in a heartbeat, to be honest.

I guess it depends on what you do. For me, I rely a lot on Microsoft products - Office and Teams - and web browsing. And especially if you need specialised software or websites you use just won't work quite right, there's JAWS scripts and people who can write them. I'm not saying it's a bad option, but please learn Windows because it's always good to have multiple screen readers in your back pocket and at your disposal. Being flexible and adaptable will get you very far in work and in life.