A personal tech journey Why I switched back to Windows after more than 5 years.

Introduction

Back in 2010 fresh out of high school I decided to give the  Mac a try.

I had heard some podcasts by David Woodbridge of Vision Australia, and having had the iPhone for about 6 months I went in head first.

The good stuff

There’s something to be said for being able to set up/take any Mac out of the box and get VoiceOver running. With no sighted assistance I was able to set up the Mac.

Within a couple of hours I had the  machine up and running. Over the next 2 weeks or so I listened to all of David’s podcasts and visited Www.applevis.com to get a feel for how things worked on the Mac.

Being a long time Windows user. One of the things I had to get use to was interacting with webpages and alike. Although Safari was great this interacting drove me crazy.

The PDF problem

Windows screen readers have always worked better when working with PDF content. JAWS and other screen readers allow one to get a feel for how documents are structured. Not so on the Mac. I have emailed Appple’s accessibility department to no avail. This is one of the main reasons I have come back to the Windows platform.

Recently a friend told me that Word for the Mac had become accessible, but it’s no where as good as the version on Windows.

Conclusion

I really hope the state of PDF accessibility changes. When and if that changes I might return to the Mac. Until then it’s Windows all the way.