Home Login
Add a new review for Google Chrome version 0.2.149.29

Reviews For Google Chrome version 0.2.149.29
Average Rating: 1.67 Based On 3 Reviews


Date: September 10, 2008, 6:20:41pm


user: gepley
computer: AMD Turion 64 Mobile, 1.58GHZ, 1 GB RAM
operating system: Windows XP Pro
screen reader: JAWS 9
rating: 1
comments: Having heard that Google's entry into the browser market was based on the Mozilla Firefox code, I was eager to see what Google had come up with.

Download and installation of Google's Chrome browser was easy enough, and though the setup process was a little strange... you only download one of those tiny setup launchers that, when run, actually downloads and installs the approximately 47 megabyte application... the setup process was still highly accessible. All the information from Microsoft Internet Explorer is even imported during the first start of the browser.

But I was sadly disappointed when the browser finally came up.

I was dumped into some sort of location window, where I guess you're supposed to type a URL, but this is an odd place to drop focus, since the little start wizard had already asked me if I wanted to keep my default Yahoo search engine or change it. One would expect focus to be placed in an actual web page, whether that be my default page of yahoo.com, or some other page.

Instead, I found myself in the strange location box, and using the Tab key and four arrow keys didn't seem to get me anywhere useful. When I tried to explore the screen with the JAWS cursor, all I could seem to find was a title bar, some mention of a "new tab", brief tab-like mentions of several of my Internet Explorer bookmarks... which sounded like they were arranged in a tab style across the screen... and some mention of a "graphic" where one would think the status bar was located.

No menu strip. No web page content. Efforts to even try to bring up an actual web page didn't seem to produce anything recognizable, other than a change in what the title bar said.

Perhaps the initial browser presentation is in some sort of thumbnail view, which I understand is an option with Google's browser, but, nevertheless, Google apparently didn't think about blind or visually impaired users, or this "Chrome" browser would just work, out-of-the-box, so to speak, without any JAWS scripts or other special "enhancements". I was able to bring up a system menu, but this seemed to have nothing in it of any use to somehow configure the browser, and I did try maximizing the application's window, which didn't seem to help. I was also able to locate several different right-click application menus, depending on where I was when I right-clicked, but again, none of these menus seemed to have any options in them to help the situation.

Other than the download and setup process, I'd give this application a 0 rating, if that were possible, but as it is, I must give it a 1, because an application like this should just work, out-of-the-box, especially considering the number of programmers who worked on it, the amount of time Google's had it in development, my experience as both a sighted and blind programmer over the past 26 years, and the availability of plenty of free screen readers to use to test the application's accessibility. There's simply no excuse for Google Chrome's development team NOT downloading and trying out their browser with the demo copy of JAWS 9, or any other screen reader, other than lack of desire to do so, which is a sad commentary on all those sighted people associated with the project. Tells me volumes about where their focus really lies, and it's NOT on producing the best product possible, free or not.

Consequently, I uninstalled Google Chrome and have no plans to EVER give it a second chance... because Google didn't even want to give me a first chance as a user of their browser product.


Date: June 13, 2010, 8:50:30pm


user: Brendon44
computer: Laptop
operating system: XP pro service pack 3
screen reader: Jaws 11
rating: 1
comments: I do not like google crome because 1. it is not very good with Jaws at all 2. it is not a good program for the blind 3. one thing that I don't like at all is when you put a program on your computer google crome comes with it and you don't offten get a check box to tell the program not to be put on the computer.

Date: June 27, 2010, 1:12:17pm


user: devinprater
computer: HP Pevilian 400GM ram
operating system: Windows Vista home premium
screen reader: NVDA
rating: 3
comments: in the latest builds of google crome, using NVDA, latest snapshots, an app module has been made to make google crome as accessible as it can be, but its still buggy



accesswatch review system custom -designed  by Tyson Treasure