ATMac

I thought I’d pass on the news that MacWorld just published an interesting news item about one of our very own, Giesbert Nijhuis. Giesbert has started selling his own line of T-Shirts under the label, AssistiveWear. Congratulations Giesbert!
You can check out the full article here.
- Paul Natsch

MacSpeech Dictate is a great program but learning so many commands at once can be intimidating. I’ve put together two documents to help you learn and remember all the global commands found in Dictate version 1.2.1.

VoiceOver is a screen reader primarily used by blind Mac OS X users, but sighted people also use it for a variety of reasons, either for themselves or to better support a blind user. So, where would one start with learning to use it?

Power’s what assistive technology gives us, really. The power to communicate, to read, to type, to plan, to play, to control things. The power to achieve things that we couldn’t otherwise achieve. Here are some ideas for gifts to empower assistive technology users.

If your computer already has the assistive technology you need, then accessing things via a computer means you don’t need to deal with yet another set of accessibility aids. So what amazing things might your Mac be able to do?

Keeping your CD and DVD collections on the computer can make them much easier to access and use. ITunes makes it easy to keep music from your CDs on the computer - just use the iTunes “import” command and your music is copied to the computer. Keeping a DVD collection on the computer is a little trickier, but you don't have to be a geek to do it.

Most of the students with disabilities in an educational setting will have some type of print-related disability; having programs that support reading and writing available on all computers limits the stigma for students who need the help and makes these tools available to other students too. Access should be available to everybody.

All Mac users have been beginner Mac users at some point. Because the use of OS X is expanding so fast, there are a lot of new and inexperienced Mac users around at the moment. This is a wonderful thing for the Mac in general - it means there’s more users! Here’s some of the best resources I have to recommend to new Mac users.