[libreoffice-users] LibreOffice and VoiceOver

I am a visually impaired and committed Mac user for over 5 years. Being blind I rely on VoiceOver 
screen reader which is a superb example of this type of assistive technology.

While looking to see if Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 would be accessible, rather than pay then be 
disappointed I went on the Apple site and looked through FAQs for MS Office 2011. One of the first 
questions was from another VoiceOver user asking that very question. Back came the answer that MS 
Office was still not accessible (no surprises there!). However the person answering the question 
then complained bitterly about "paid for" office products being non-accessible and citing MS Office 
for Mac and Pages.

I have used Pages for some time and find it accessible but irritating that it cannot do everything 
I need. It is endowed with keystrokes but lacks those I need.

The answer to this FAQ then went on to recommend LibreOffice and OpenOffice as being accessible.

I tried OpenOffice first some time ago and found it OK but not accessible when doing basic stuff 
like spell check when it failed to read dialogue box control labels or even focus the VoiceOver 
cursor in some dialogue boxes. I therefore discarded OpenOffice in favour of Pages which did all 
those basic things.

So the other day I downloaded LibreOffice and found it even less accessible with VoiceOver than 
OpenOffice and far inferior in that respect than Pages.

This is what I could not do:
Write text and hear speech feedback as I typed;
Select text at all;
Find it nearly impossible to edit text because of not knowing where the editing cursor was;
Complete failure to bring up any help screen from within LibreOffice;

At that point I gave up.

Please someone tell me this maybe a faulty installation and what I can do about that (yes I can 
download again but don't want to waste time if this lack of accessibility for VoiceOver is reality. 
Or perhaps there are some settings that need altering, I could not make any sense of the settings 
window, nothing worked and nothing led to anywhere.

Can anyone help?

Patrick Adams


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