ATMac

You are browsing the archives of 2007 September.

This entry is part 1 of 15 in the series Mac Accessibility 101I have realised the need for a series of simple posts explaining the built-in accessibility and usability features of OS X and commonly used Mac programs. These will be tips that anybody can use, things that are simple to do and don’t cost [...]

This is a great article from MacTips explaining most of the many things the OS X Address Book app is able to do:
Although it at first appears to be a very simple application, Apple’s Address Book actually has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and some excellent plugins are available to guide its way [...]

Spark is a powerful, and easy Shortcuts manager. With Spark you can create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, control iTunes, and more…
Website: Spark
ATMac comment: This one looks useful for anybody who uses mostly the keyboard instead of the mouse, but who isn’t geeky enough to want Quicksilver. It’s also free, which [...]

Amsterdam - 18 September 2007 - ConvenienceWare™ / AssistiveWare® today announced the release of GhostReader™ 1.1.1 text-to-speech software for Mac OS X. GhostReader 1.1.1 is Leopard-ready, now creates true bookmarkable audiobook files from text, offers better PDF import and enhanced performance on large documents. Through a partnership with Application Systems Heidelberg a boxed version of [...]

I finally spent some time organizing the http://atmac.org/ website and there are some new pages that you might want to look at:

About Ricky is about me, the assistive technology that I use, and why I started ATMac.
About ATMac describes the aims of the blog and what I hope to do with it.
Links has links to [...]

Mail Type Select adds Finder-like keyboard navigation to the list of messages in Mail. When the list of messages has focus, typing a few characters selects a matching message, ^↓ and ^↑ select next and previous match, ESC and ⌘. cancel.
Website: Mail Type Select
ATMac comment: Looks like something useful for navigating Mail.app via the keyboard.
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Acapela Group and AssistiveWare have been busy - another voice for OS X less than 3 weeks after the release of Peter! This one is a female French speaking voice they are calling Alice.

Apple’s Mail.app program is a pretty good application for email, and pretty much accessible as far as I know. That said, there are always things that could be improved and people with different disabilities need different types of assistance and accessibility. These are some plug-ins that give Mail.app extra commands and functions that people with disabilities may find helpful.

A new version of iTunes was released yesterday, and the notes about new features includes this:
You can now also play purchased videos with closed captioning (when available).
Does anyone know how much iTunes Store material is captioned? Does it also play existing video with captions like QuickTime Player? I don’t use iTunes for video myself and [...]

Laptop users who don’t use an external mouse, or have trouble with bumping the trackpad while typing may find a useful preference hidden away in the System Preferences. From the Mac’s help file:
Making the trackpad inactive when a mouse is connected or when typing
If you’re using a portable computer, you can set it to ignore [...]