Category: Geeks r Us
I'm looking for some accessible antivirus apps. It seems to me that a lot of the ones out there right now are either really clunky/hard to use with a screen reader (because you have to use the review cursor a lot) or downright inaccessible because of their window class structure and the lack of information they give the screen readers. So...what are you guys using that you think 1) works well and 2) is accessible for the most part? Some of the ones I've tried are Avast 5 (downright inaccessible), AVG 9.0 (um...sorta accessible), and Kaspersky (that one certainly won't work). I used to use an old version of Symantec Anti Virus, but that one had some broken menu commands and stuff.
Avira works well for me, once you realise that to start the scanning you need to press the f6 key (no idea why this is and I did not see it documented anywhere, just something I tried randomly).
Avira iss free and fairly decent, a paid version ofers more active protection of course.
You can find it via www.filehippo.com.
I use that and, for MalWare, use either Malwarebytes anti-Malware (fast, but you need virtual cursor to find the update button on top of the screen) or super anti spyware, fully accessible, not as fast and I find it not quite as thorough sometimes, but it is definitely pretty good.
For personal use, Microsoft Security Essentials seems to work pretty well and most importantly isn't a resource hog, I realize the irony of what i just said.
[OT] Yeah, M$ is known for having apps that're resource hogs or that start multiple instances of themselves (i.e., svcHost.exe). I don't understand why that little-understood program doesn't simply thread itself off when more than one service is under its control (one service per thread). That'd make the process list in Task Manager a lot less cluttered.
Microsoft Security Essentials is the one I use and really like it.
svcHost.exe is not Microsoft Security Essentials and most users don't have to worry about it.
I never said it was MSE...because I know it isn't. Or...were you simply trying to clear up any possible confusion?
I'm not sure which screen reader you're using, but there is a program out there by PCtools I think is just called PC tools antivirus. Also, possibly threatfire is another. I mainly operate under Linux, so I'm not sure what is or is not accessible these days.
Tyler I was clearing up confusion. Most of these are basic users, and wouldn't know the difference, yet basic users though they are, they have complex data / identity info on their machines needs protection. As a software engineer, think of them first in a public situation. Consider this board topic and who asked what.
Microsoft Security essentials is very nice. However Avast just issued an update to V5 thats supposed to be fully accessible again. They appearantly worked with some blind users to make it fully accessible again. Though the article i read only mentioned Jaws and "basic screen reader" so not sure how it works with everything else.
I'm a JAWS 11 user, so think I'll give it a try.
i'd keep MSE in your options though, it's quite nice. even put it on my old box with 512 mb of ram and it's doing fine