ATMac

You are browsing the archives of 2008 February.

ATMac is moving to a new web host - there may be some time where you can’t access the site. Don’t panic.

Did you know you can generate mouse clicks using a laptop trackpad without using the trackpad buttons? If you have a fairly new MacBook, you can even use this method to generate right clicks without touching the buttons.

Somewhere within the recent updates of OS X and iLife ‘08 the accessibility of GarageBand was greatly improved. GarageBand is now almost fully accessible to VoiceOver users and others who need the accessibility API.
On the MacVisionaries list Lewis Brock reports about GarageBand:
There are one or two main areas which are not very accessible:

Pan controller not [...]

In October 2007, Mike Shebanek ran a webcast with with MacLearning entitled Mac OS X Leopard Accessibility Update, focussing mainly on Leopard and VoiceOver improvements in Leopard. Leopard had not been released when the webcast was made, so Shebanek spends some time describing Leopard updates not related to accessibility.

And I’m happy to announce that the Alltop Macintosh site now happily sports stories from ATMac along with well known Mac sites like MacSlash and MacWorld.

If you have a MacBook with a trackpad or a mouse with a scroll wheel, there’s a very simple way to zoom in to see something small on the screen.

When ATMac wrote about KeyCue in October last year I wrote to the company and asked about adapting KeyCue to make it more accessible for users with vision problems. Ergonis, who produce KeyCue, were very receptive to the idea and I’m happy to report that today KeyCue 4.1 was released with new themes especially designed [...]

SmartNav is a hardware and software package that replaces a regular mouse by tracking small head movements - head tracking. A Mac OS X port of the SmartNav 4 software expected to be released by the end of March.

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?

Apple released two updates for Leopard today - first the Mac OS X 10.5.2 update and then a graphics update. What accessibility improvements are included with the update?