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.

Something as simple as tapping the screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch can be a big problem for people with physical disabilities. Here are some suggestions and alternative solutions that may help.

APHont is a font developed by the American Printing House especially for low vision users. APHont embodies characteristics that have been shown to enhance reading speed, comprehension, and comfort for large print users. You can install it for free on your Mac computer by following these instructions.

OS X only offers US English text-to-speech voices, and they are not of a very high quality. What alternatives are available?

Keyboard shortcuts are a quick way of getting many things done without needing to access the menus or the mouse. If you know to press command-s to save your work, you’ve used a keyboard shortcut. For people who primarily use a keyboard or a switch interface, using keyboard shortcuts can save a lot of time and effort.