i´m blind can i use an mac insted of pc?

Apple has Universal Access built into the OS that makes accommodation for people with disabilities. Here is a link to get you started. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/

Hope this helps, and Good Luck.

Many blind people use Macs in languages other than English. Most of those who have experience of PCs with JAWS come to prefer their Macs very quickly, though they are quite different in operation.

However, because Apple is an Anglophone company, at the moment there are no non-English voices delivered with the Mac. In order to run VoiceOver in Portuguese, you would need to buy a Portuguese voice pack from Assistive Ware. There are three voices available in Portuguese: two Brazilian and one European.

But that is the only additional expense beyond actually buying the Mac. This would mean you'd actually save quite a lot of cash over the PC/JAWS solution!

Good luck,

Archie

I´m portuguese, so i need to use it in portuguese..

Mac's generally lag behind Windows in providing non-English voice control and text to speech. I would be very careful about switching unless you were sure the capability you need is available. A good site for the general topic is

http://atmac.org/

at the moment there are no non-English voices delivered with the Mac. In order to run VoiceOver in Portuguese, you would need to buy a Portuguese voice pack

My understanding is the Voice Over does only 8 languages in Leopard and Portuguese is not among them.

http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

Apple has indicated that Snow Leopard, expected to be released in September, will do all 18 of the OS languages.

Apple OS has something called Universal Access. Apple calls it a System Preference, Windows calls it a Control Panel. Thru this system preference you will be able to control seeing, hearing, keyboard, and mouse and trackpad features. For instance, in the Seeing system preference, there are voice over, Zoom, and Display colors and contract controls features. I t also has a radio button that allows you to enable access for assistive devices.

Tom wrote:
My understanding is the Voice Over does only 8 languages in Leopard and Portuguese is not among them.

http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

Apple has indicated that Snow Leopard, expected to be released in September, will do all 18 of the OS languages.

Tom is quite correct here. However, the Portuguese voices will do a decent job of reading Portuguese text, and of reading the English tags and labels as if they were Portuguese. It's not ideal, but could well be good enough. I know people who managed to understand the English in VoiceOver when read in a French voice, though it was rather strange at times!

But certainly Snow Leopard will do a much better job.

For anybody to compare Jaws to the lame universal access on a Mac might be described as ludicrous. It's like comparing the lame *** "speakable Items" as being like Dragon NaturallySpeaking!

As good as Macs are I would not recommend one for anyone with disabilities. If I was Steve Jobs, I would be embarrassed with the lack of effort that Apple puts into assistive needs! They should be working with companies to develop these products for the Mac!

I have a friend who is blind and he uses Jaws, and Open Book ... he literally scans and reads 30-40 pages a night.

There is a company called Assistive Technologies and they have a product called "Independence One" that looks pretty cool! They are out there in Illinois somewhere ... you should check that out!

Well, Rick, in what way are you qualified to judge assistive technology?

You have a "friend who is blind and he uses JAWS". I have a wife who is totally blind and uses VoiceOver—as a professional translator. I know scores of blind people happily using VoiceOver and the Mac in professional and private circumstances. Some of them would scoff at scanning, OCRing and reading 30-40 pages a night as a distinct sign of under-achievement.

Large numbers of VoiceOver users are "switchers", having abandoned the JAWS/PC platform in sheer frustration at its inadequacies, instability, and complexity, not to mention the way it forces blind users to interact with a computer in a completely different way from their sighted colleagues and friends.

If you want some idea of the phenomenal energy and enthusiasm of the blind VoiceOver user community, have a look at Josh de Lioncourt's Mac-cessibility website, or Keith Reedy's I Can Work This Thing, both run by totally blind VoiceOver users. And if you can read French, have a look at my wife's site, CeciMac.

You speak in disparaging terms of Apple's efforts in assistive needs; are you aware that in just four years, Apple has produced a screen reader that is not only stable, reliable and usable, but does not ghettoise the blind user? There is only one factor hindering the wholesale take-up of VoiceOver, and that is the lack of accessibility to one suite — Microsoft Office.

You may also be unaware of the contempt with which many blind people regard "assistive technology" companies; their prices are usually excessive, their attitudes patronising, and their stranglehold on the disabled user unbreakable—until VoiceOver.

Finally, you may also be surprised to learn of the large numbers of blind people taking to the iPhone 3 GS — which runs VoiceOver too — and not all of them are Mac users either. As a result, quite a sizeable proportion of them have started saying "My next computer's going to be a Mac".

Your patronising attitude to blind people is rather unbecoming, not to say outdated.