ATMac

A few days ago, Apple added a page to their website detailing 300+ New Features In Leopard which was divided into various categories. There are 17 features listed under the Universal Access Features category,
mostly relevant to users of VoiceOver such as support for refreshable braille displays, the new “Alex” voice, new VoiceOver features, and so forth.

Those 17 features are all great new things that will undoubtedly help people with various disabilities, no question about that - but are there only 17? When I take a closer look at the other categories of new features, there are a bunch that I think are relevant to people with a variety of disabilities:

Performance Increases

Advanced assistive software like word prediction and text-to-speech generation can take a lot of processing power, and not leave much left for actually doing stuff with the computer. Leopard will be able to use the hardware in newer Intel Macs much more efficiently and that means more power left for us to do the fun stuff.

DVD Player Features

For this should give much better functions for those of us who use their Macs for watching DVDs. And if you have the computer with you anyway, using the DVD player is a much cheaper alternative than a DVD player plus TV plus environmental control device.

Finder Features

Finder features will now let you specify default icon spacings more precisely, so hopefully for those with low vision we can now increase the icon and label sizes and still fit a tolerable number of icons on the screen.

Archive iChat Audio and Video Chats

For those who use iChat for audio or video chatting, keeping records has not been possible before. And if you use iChat video for sign language chatting, or iChat audio because speaking is a lot easier than typing, this means you will have the same ability to keep records as those who type their chats.

iChat Screen Sharing

I’m not sure if “iChat Screen Sharing” means you can let the other person see your screen or that you can let them interact with it, but either way it will be fantastically helpful for those with learning or memory problems who need extra help. And if this feature can work with the video archiving then keeping a record of the lesson will be easy.

Create to-do items directly in Mail

When my memory and concentration are bad, I can forget what I’m doing and/or get distracted between reading the email and making a note in my list of things to do. Being able to make notes directly in mail without switching around will be very helpful for people with memory and attention problems.

Grammar Checker

Having a grammar checker available in all the OS X applications will be great for those with dyslexia and other writing problems, and even helpful with spelling because regular spelling checkers don’t realise when your bad spelling comes out as something that’s just a different word.

And that’s just to pick the seven that jumped out at me first. There are other things that will be a boon to many people with disabilities in the long term. For one example, the new features available to developers in AppleScript and Cocoa will make developing assistive software and accessible software easier and that will undoubtedly have very positive effects.

I pre-ordered my copy of Leopard today … after all, I have to be able to write about it. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

- ATMac

Apple says there are 17 new features in Leopard for people with disabilities, but are there really many more?