Hey!
So I just re installed it because I need to use word for college in a specific class and in fact the reason as to why Word specifically is a good one so I was like why not? Last time I tried word was on Ventura and I didn't like the experience at all. TLDR, after the setup with little help of vocr but apparently I didn't need it at the end of the day...
The biggest thing for me is that voiceover is actually able to announce empty rows and columns when we create a new table.
With option left and right arrow it's still very sluggish so you have to be either slower than usual to read it word by word without VO doing this weird concatenating thing, but it's honestly a non issue since you can brows this with VO own navigation commands and selection works.
It announces misspelled in the text attributes with VO-t, navigation with paragraph can be very easily done with option up and down arrow and it reads the whole paragraph unlike everywhere else on the OS and voiceover paragraphs commands are messed up now...
I;d just like MS to do the word by word navigation properly like on windows, like what getbrains does so each symbol is treated as a word, then it will be even better, and of course correct the slowness with VO.
So I am quite impressed so far!
By TheBlindGuy07, 25 March, 2025
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Wake me up when track changes are usable
Track changes and comments is my biggest gripe. There's just no effective way to move between the document text and the comment bubble, or quickly accept, reject, or move to next/previous change.
Second gripe is that Word loses your location the second you switch to another app. Come back to word, and your cursor is at the start of page 1.
Google Docs is such a smoother experience.
I had Word on my Mac for a project I worked last year. It was a tedious experience. If I ever need Word again, I'll buy a cheap Windows 11 laptop with NVDA before I'll pay Microsoft money to put it on my Mac.
But Google Docs is so…
But Google Docs is so uncomfortable to use because of VoiceOver on the web...
this is something I'll have…
this is something I'll have to come back to with agents and editors. I would be interested to know how blind professional authors deal with this... Though, to be honest, they probably just use windows.
An addendum to Oliver statement
"...to be honest, they probably just use windows.", write along with Google Docs! 😉✌️
Large documents
MSWord on my mac becomes unresponsive when I open large documents. By large I do not mean a documents with hundreds of pages, but a fairly large document of 20 pages or so. It becomes unresponsive and when it responds VoiceOver gets very laggy.
Oh yeah, forgot about that…
Oh yeah, forgot about that one. Not great when you've got a 100 k novel.
Mac is great for blind professional musicians and those who work with audio... For everything else, it's a bit pants.
I'll have to check out google docks. It might be a solution. I know we can read tract comments in pages, but then we have to use pages... Which is pants.
Hope springs eternal
I hope you're right that it's improving, but my most recent experience would suggest it's not there yet.
As long as comments and tracked changes are not truly usable, it's not even an option for me to use it for real work.
I really wish they'd get their act together.
Dave
Large documents
Of Google Docs, Pages, and MS Word, my experience indicates Google Docs handles large documents the best. I agree that most blind authors are using Windows, where MS Word is fairly usable.
MS Word on Mac, who's responsible?
So, the subject most of it. If Office products don't work on Mac, who's u;timately responsible? Is it Apple, for failing to optimize VoiceOver to work with Mac, or is it Microsoft, for failing to adapt their tecnology to the Mac?