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.

Apple put on a September Special Event yesterday, announcing iTunes 8, the iPod Nano 4G and other smaller upgrades to software and to the iPod Touch. These announcements, especially that of iTunes version 8 now with full accessibility for Windows and OS X Mac, are fantastastic for users with a disability and reaffirm Apple’s commitment to accessibility.

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.

Most of the software we review and recommend at ATMac is created by individuals or companies with just a few employees. This “indy” software, as it’s known, is usually available to be tested before you buy it and very reasonably priced but if you want a bunch of different pieces of software it can still add up quickly. How can you best save money when you’re buying software?

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.