Being a support specialist means having the answers when others have questions. If left unchecked, the relationship between knower and knowee can become full of friction, to the point where customers don't ask questions because they don't want to deal with an elitist response. It is important to remember that people are asking questions because they lack knowledge, not because they lack intelligence. I think Mike, Raul, and I do a pretty good job of remembering that throughout the day. We're not perfect, but we're the best in the business.

That being said, I have a complaint to lodge against a few of the people who call us. Don't worry; names will remain withheld. My complaint deals not with the content of the questions being asked, but with the language being used, specifically our company and product names.

We are GW Micro, sometimes abbreviated to just GW. We are not Microeyes. We are not GW Eyes. We are not, nor will we ever be, GW Microsoft. Our flagship product is called Window-Eyes, not Windows Eyes, not Windoweizer, not Micro Eyes. And, while I'm at it, Raul's name is Raul, not Rollo, nor Ralf.

There's one sure fire way to make any tech support specialist from any company moan, groan and roll their eyes (literally or figuratively), and that is to completely mangle the name of the company you're calling, or the product you're calling about.

As I mentioned before, we do our best to provide the same high quality answers in a professional manner, regardless of how the questions are asked. But if you go around mutilating company and product names, you can bet you'll be the subject of some pretty good bantering among the support staff once the call is over. Sometimes calls are logged, and you'd hate to be forever known as one of "those" people.

Show respect for the companies you call, and the products you call about, and you'll get respect in return. If you call up GW Soft, and ask about Micro Eyes XP, Rollo is going to come after you.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we're not up for sale. We've never been sold, we're not being sold, and I don't expect that we ever will be sold. It's just not how we do things. That's not a slam against anyone else, mind you -- this is a very competitive market, and everyone has different ideas on how to be successful. For example, we believe that high quality products and services result in satisfied and successful customers, resulting in positive business growth. But we're crazy that way. So far, our model is working well (although convincing the befuddled, self-proclaimed "experts" in charge of purchasing AT products who believe that the cost of a product is relative to its usefulness -- if it's more expensive, it must be better -- of their ignorance can be challenging. But I digress).

Recently, several AT companies have indicated they aren't where they think they should be financially, and are selling out to the highest bidder. I've seen posts from concerned customers asking, "What is this going to do to the AT market?" No one knows for sure. But I put forward this curious thought: when was the last time you saw a company go through buyout after buyout, and still produce quality, customer oriented products?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not against publicly traded businesses. But business decisions for the benefit of stock holders rarely have the customer's best interest in mind. That goes against our core beliefs, and it's probably the first of many good reasons why we aren't publicly traded. Once product development decisions start being made for the almighty dollar, a philosophy shift occurs. I won't compare to selling your soul. Well, ok, yeah I will. It's like selling your soul: exchanging your morals and principles for something much less valuable.

But, as I stated earlier, the AT market is very competitive, and that's a good thing for consumers. And these buyouts aren't necessairly a bad thing. If they increase capital to promote development of products that enhance the quality of life for people with disabilities, then that's terriffic. Time will tell whether these buyouts benefit anyone other than the people profiting from the sales.

This is just a general rambling about my experience with using Windows Vista. When I came to work for GW Micro, the machine given to me already had Windows Vista on it. In short, I was placed in a situation where I would be learning Windows Vista while at work. This was no problem since I like to tackle things head on. Using Window-Eyes with Vista was a non-issue since the access is there and it just works with no delays in speech. The below are just a small sample of my feelings on using Windows Vista for almost 2 months now.

There are a few things I don't like about Vista. These things come from the way Windows Vista itself does things and not the way Window-Eyes handles them. One of the most annoying things is that there are weird focus issues when having a folder open. Sometimes if you leave it open, you alt-tab away to do some other work, and

Alt-tab back in, you are not focused on the listview of files. This means that you have to press shift-tab at least once or twice to get back to the listview.

The volume controls are totally different and I have not gotten used to that. Because I like learning new things, it's not too bad, but I can see where it may be frustrating for some.

I realize of course that some may not want to learn a new operating system because they don't have time or because they simply do not wish to, and that is ok. I think that it took me almost 2 years before I switched from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. Back then, Windows XP did some things which I thought were different than Windows 2000, but eventually those things were just normal. Windows Vista will become the same way for many as they learn its ways of doing things.

Back on the volume controls now. Gone are the days of simply opening "sndvol32 /r" from the run dialog box to adjust recording controls. Now if you want to access your recording controls, you must go about it another way. The nice thing is that all these new ways of doing things are accessible with Window-Eyes, so learning the operating system is definitely possible. On a side note, I wonder if quick mix will work in Windows Vista. On my xp machine, I have short cuts mapped to different Quick Mix settings so that if I want to record from one source or another, I can do it without having to mess around with the volume controls. This method comes in handy for those Window-Eyes users who use software speech and accidentally mute their sound card. With the press of a Windows Short Cut, you can restore your volume, balance, and mute settings the way they were.

As far as the mail client that comes with Windows Vista, it's not too bad. Windows Mail seems to actually be better than Outlook Express in some ways. Although it's still the same program for the most part, some of the dialogs are arranged slightly differently and things seem to be worded more for the novice user. A new junk folder has been added and while it works half the time, there tends to be many good non-spam messages in there. This means I need to remember to check it from time to time. Of course I could always go turn off the junk filter settings, but that would require work on my part.

Web browsing is not really different in Windows Vista as it is in Windows XP. Of course you get Internet Explorer 7 installed with your system, and you can always install FireFox 2.0. Both work really nice as they always have and there are no conflicts, corruptions, complaints, etc.

All in all, my experiences with Windows Vista have been on the positive side. I hope that Microsoft can fix some of the focus issues, but you know the saying about holding your breath. Oh, if you are going to switch to Windows vista, I highly recommend 2 gigs of ram. The MS site says you can run it with less, but that's just asking for trouble IMHO. The key thing for having a smooth experience with Windows Vista is having lots of ram and having updated and working Vista drivers for little things like your sound card and your LAN.

That's it for now. As always, comments and complaints are always welcome regarding my opinions.

Windows Live Hotmail (a.k.a Hotmail 2.0) has been released. I took it for a test drive with Window-Eyes this morning, which resulted in the following email to our Microsoft accessibility contacts:

Greetings,

Does anyone know if developers on the Windows Live Mail project tried any screen reader during the development process? Accessibility in Windows Live Mail is greatly lacking in the "improved" layout: controls are not labeled, graphics are not labeled, many links (while focusable) are not activated by the keyboard. If Microsoft has a company wide commitment to accessibility, no one told the Windows Live Mail development team.

If Window-Eyes users want to continue using Windows Live Mail successfully, they will need to revert back to the classic view. Rumor is, the classic view will eventually be removed. I hope that's not true.

Any suggestions or comments?

Neither Yahoo! Mail nor Gmail are any better. Fortunately, for now, they also include "classic" views that provide the old school method of putting everything in clickable links -- what a concept!

So are these new layouts and views really that bad when it comes to Window-Eyes? Well, yes and no. Technically, although it takes a bit more effort and understanding, you can still navigate and successfully use the enhanced interfaces of these email services (I'll talk more about that in a bit). They prove, however, that the hard fought battle of impressing the importance of accessibility to developers during the initial design phase of web based applications didn't pan out like everyone thought it did (not that it's over, mind you).

Disregarding accessibility in this day and age shows a fundamental misunderstanding of your target market, portrays your business as ignorant about disability issues, and gives you an overall impression of being behind the times, and out of touch with current technology trends. Pioneering new ideas and techniques is all the rage with Web 2.0 applications among the Internet's biggest players. But when it comes to accessibility, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google all seem to be content to let someone else take the lead. Remember that when you're buying stock options.

With that rant out of the way, let me give you a few pointers if you want to use the new interfaces of these email services, rather than being forced to use their antiquated versions:

1. The interfaces are dynamic. That means, for the majority of navigation purposes, you'll want to have browse mode turned off.
2. The mouse is your friend. Once browse mode is off, you're at the mercy of the browser when tabbing around. So become familiar with the numpad mouse navigation keys for maneuvering through folders and message lists.
3. The find command is your second best friend. Almost all email services use common names for folders (i.e. Inbox, Drafts, Outbox, Sent, Deleted, Trash, etc.). Use the find command to navigate to these folders quickly, and then click on them with the mouse to load their messages.
4. It seems the point of these new interfaces is to make web based email applications look more like stand alone email applications (i.e. Outlook Express). If you know how stand alone email applications are generally laid out on the screen (folders on the left, messages on the right), you can usually figure out where things are, again by using the mouse hot keys.
5. Once you have an email message open, turn browse mode back on to read it. A quick way to jump to the meat of a message is to search for the word from, and then a colon (i.e. from:). That should take you right to the from line, with the rest of the headers, and message, right nearby.
6. Make use of any available keyboard shortcuts. Gmail is best at providing keyboard methods to get the job done. For example, in Gmail, you can press C just about anywhere to immediately compose a new email. Search through your mail app's documentation for available keys.
7. Most message folders highlight the selected message with a fake lightbar. You can get the color of this lightbar by placing the WE cursor on the text of a message that's selected (don't use the mouse pointer, because it could affect the color of the lightbar), and then listing the ANSI attributes (using CTRL-INS-DELETE). Once you have the foreground and background colors of a selected message, go into the properties of the active user window (INS-F7), enter the foreground and background colors in the Enter Highlight Attributes dialog, uncheck the Auto Determine Highlight Color check box, then select OK. Then, in the cursoring keys dialog, change up arrow and down arrow from their default setting of line to highlight. So what did all that do? We told Window-Eyes not to guess the color of the lightbar itself, but rather to use the colors that we specified. Then we told Window-Eyes to read those colors rather than the current line when using the up and down arrow keys. Now, when you arrow up and down with browse mode off, you'll hear the selected message just like in a stand alone client. When using Yahoo!, pressing enter on the selected message causes the message text to open up in a new page where you can use browse mode to read. Windows Live Mail, however, does nothing when you press enter. So you'd probably want to take advantage of the reading pane, which automatically displays the selected message (Yahoo! also has this feature). This method will work with any web page that uses a lightbar in conjunction with the arrow keys. Gmail doesn't, so it won't work there.

While it's frustrating to have to hack around a web application interface created by a company who claims dedication to accessibility, it's a welcome relief to have the power of Window-Eyes to get the job done. That's not a shameful plug; it's the truth.

Update: Jeff Bishop told me that MS has had enough complaints about the inaccessibility of the new interface that they've agreed to maintain the classic view. I don't call that a solution; they need to implement the basics of web design in their new interface. Non labeled graphics? Come on. That's unbelievable! We're talking HTML 101. At least users won't be left in the dark, so to speak. 

Last Saturday, Chris and I were in Indianapolis at the annual Indiana Vision Expo. Toward the end of the show, a man walked up to us, put his small briefcase on the counter, and said I want to show you something. At first, I thought he was going to try to sell us something, as can often happen at these types of events. But then, he pulled a SenseView out of his brief case and said, "You guys are the source of this, right?" Of course we responded in the affirmative. He went on to tell us that he used to be a human resources manager, and had to give up his job years ago because his eyesight began to decrease. He began to tell us how the SenseView has changed his life. He had been practicing with it, and was now going to his first job interview in many years. He was so happy. That's just part of what makes working at GW a great job. We're not just innovating technology, we're changing lives. We're making people employable, we're making them productive, increasing their self esteem, giving them confidence again, providing them with a way to make a living for their families. When you can change someone's life like this, what could be better than this??? Of course, we all have bad days, but we have these reminders of our great customers as Raul said in his previous post. For those at GW who don't get to leave the office much because they are taking orders or on the phones doing tech support, they don't always get to hear these great stories. If any of you out there have something to say about how one of our products has changed your life for the better, I'm sure everyone would like to hear your story. Feel free to post it in a comment here. After all, changing lives is exactly why we love what we do!

It's always a good feeling when someone says something to
make you feel appreciated. Earlier today, a customer called with a BrailleSense
problem. To protect the privacy of the customer, I will not say the customer's
name or what the exact problem was. Let's just say that the problem this person
had involved a little more than the usual answering of a question or two.

We must have been on the phone for about thirty minutes and
at the end of the phone call, the problem was fixed. Later on as I was reading
email, I saw a post on one of our mailing lists from this customer who was very
happy that the problem was fixed. The email was basically thanking me and
Jeremy for the help and patience while troubleshooting and fixing the issue
with the BrailleSense. It's because of customers like this that I'm writing this
post. This is not to say that customers who don't thank me publicly don't have
their place. If I did not like helping people out, I would not be here. It does
not matter if someone calls and has a quick question for which I have an
immediate answer, or if their question involves a little more time.

I just had a few minutes to share some thoughts and to return
the thanks to all the customers for helping GW Micro be the kind of company it
is. It's because of you that we are here.