Not everyone knows that all Macs come with a full-featured chess game. Even fewer know that this game is completely accessible, and can even pull some nice tricks to make the experience better for the visually impaired. Below, I will explain the different ways to move around the board, make moves, get help, and set up the game to speak hints and moves. Please note that you do not need to know how to play chess to read this article. In fact, once you know how to use the app,…
For a while now, VoiceOver portable preferences has bugged me, because it's so outdated. Today I decided to tackle the problem once and for all.
Aims:
What I wanted was a way to take my preferences with me wherever I go. I have 2 macs, one at my house, and one at the place I volunteer, which sort of doubles as a demo machine. So I wanted to be able to make awesome things happen at home, then have the changes reflected when I went to another mac, without the really serious…
The default Mail app on the Mac is easy enough to use once you set up your mail accounts. You up and down arrow through your messages, press delete to trash some, and… Wait, how do you read messages? Enter? VO-J? Use the preview? When writing a message, how do you choose contacts, or add multiple contacts to a field? Why is it so hard to view attachments? How do you add mailboxes to your favorites bar, so you can access them with hotkeys? Okay, so Mail isn't as simple as it…
When you first get a Mac, and are learning VoiceOver, it can be hard to remember the myriad commands available. Some are pretty easy, like control-option-w to read the current word. Some are quite complex or seldom used, such as control-option-command-f5 to move the mouse pointer to where VoiceOver is focused. Then there are the core concepts, like interacting, moving around dialogs, getting to menus, and plenty more. So, I wanted to offer a guide that does not explain most…
This is an updated and refined version of this guide, now that I've learned a little more, and stopped being so confused.
So we all know about the keyboard commander, and how you can make it read the time when you press option + t, but I personally find that method really really slow. In addition, for me at least, the date doesn't even read some times. So I set to making my own solution.
So, if you've got VoiceOver controllable by Applescript (in the General tab…
Accessing Audio Described DVDs on a Mac Computer.
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I was recently very excited to discover that I could play Audio described DVDs on my Apple computer. after inserting a DVD into my MacBook Pro and expecting my wife to have to help me turn on the audio description, I was shocked to find that I was actually able to do this independently, without having to rely on sighted assistance.
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I sat back and waited until the computer loaded the DVD which in this case, was a…
When you partition a drive, you essentially make your computer see two different drives where there used to be one. This is useful for a variety of reasons and is something you may find yourself needing to do, but the process on a Mac is a bit complicated. It may be easy to do visually, but using Voiceover, there are some tricks you should know. So, let's get started.
First, open Disk Utility. If you want to browse to it manually, it is in applications/…
Safari is the Mac's default web browser, and it does all the usual web browser things - opens webpages, downloads files, plays audio, all that. It has some neat tricks, too, like the Reader that can show you only the meat of an article.
However, if you are coming to the Mac for the first time, especially from a Windows background, Safari can seem like a clunky app at best, and a totally unusable mess at worst. As with all things on the Mac, though, you just have to…
Finder is the Mac's file browser. With it, you can look at files and folders on internal, external, and network drives; copy, cut, and paste items; tag files for easier locating later; search for files; and more. The problem is that, particularly for those transitioning to the Mac from Windows, Finder is a confusing mess that makes you scared to even go looking for a file. I understand that, because I was there too. Hopefully, in writing down what I've learned over the…
Hi all I have some good news if you want to use Windows on your mac using VMWare Fusion. I can now tell you how to re-map one of the keys on your mac keyboard so it becomes an insert key. Here we go.
Note October 17, 2016: a new and updated guide on iOS text editors is now available here.
iPhone and iPad users have a bewildering abundance of plain text editors from which to choose. For projects not requiring complex formatting, there's really no need to bother with a word processor. Devotees of minimalism will revel in the files these…
So, you're a developer of Apple software. You've followed Apple's guidelines for making your iOS app accessible , or making your OSX app accessible to…
iWork 13 was a big update. One that excited blind people, and at the same time annoyed power users. Because the iWork apps were rewritten from scratch, not every feature was included at first. One of these features is assigning hotkeys to styles, which later was brought back in an update. A couple times I’ve seen people asking how it works, so I sat down to figure it out.
Starting in macOS 10.9 Mavericks, files could be given one or more "tags", to help users keep things organized. A tag is simply a text label you can assign to a file, letting you organize your files with categories instead of, or in addition to, folders. For example, a student might have a science folder, holding a textbook, handouts, tests, notes, assignments, research papers, and more. What if a quiz deals with thermodynamics, as do some files of notes and a paper…
Though I’m not always the best writer, I do enjoy writing down my thoughts from time to time. There’s just one problem with that. It’s not secure.
Sure, there are all kinds of apps for the mac and your I device that allow you to journal. However, most of the apps I have seen are only somewhat usable, or just way too fancy for what I want to do. I played with the MacJournal app for the mac a few months ago, but I was not impressed. It would always crash on me while I was writing, and…
To complete this process, you must have agreed to the BARD Service agreement, and be signed in to a BARD account. This will not work for people who do not have accounts with the national Library Service for the Blind and Physically handicapped . For more info on whether you qualify, and to apply if you do, see the BARD Main Page
Note that the only reasons you would have needed to sign in is because the app will not work until you have done so. This…
Updated: iOS 9
Listed below are some common commands which can be used with Siri in iOS 9.