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.

This journal aim to be of interest to all OS X users and developers with an interest in disability.

One feature missing from the still-new MacSpeech Dictate program is the ability to control the mouse. This addition won’t let you control the movement of the mouse, but we can teach you how to use your voice for mouse clicks. For those who have the ability to move the mouse, this could make the difference between a usable computer system and an unusable computer system.

Nate Sharpe is investigating possible assistive technology adaptions to improve iPod usability. Do you use assistive technology with the iPod, or would you use it if it were available?

The Firefox web browser offers an interesting alternative to Safari, but at the moment it’s not compatible with Apple’s accessibility API. VoiceOver users can’t use it, programs like the Dictionary and the services menu programs don’t work within it, and third party enhancements like Quicksilver can’t access it. Aaron Leventhal from the accessibility team at Mozilla explains some of the reasons the incompatibility hasn’t been fixed yet, and may take a long time to be fixed at all.