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.

Most of the students with disabilities in an educational setting will have some type of print-related disability; having programs that support reading and writing available on all computers limits the stigma for students who need the help and makes these tools available to other students too. Access should be available to everybody.

Computers get dirty. Computers even get wet sometimes. They certainly get soiled despite the best of intentions. Even the most perfectly treated computers need occasional cleaning. Computers that are used all day, carried around, used with sticky fingers, used by multiple people, those ones are even more likely to need a good clean fairly often! Luckily, Apple’s online knowledgebase contains a wealth of articles about cleaning and disinfecting your iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook.

MacSpeech Dictate has finally been upgraded to version 1.2. The list of improvements and fixes is extensive, and essential function such as correction (they call it “phrase training”) and a spelling mode have been introduced.

Keeping your CD and DVD collections on the computer can make them much easier to access and use. ITunes makes it easy to keep music from your CDs on the computer - just use the iTunes “import” command and your music is copied to the computer. Keeping a DVD collection on the computer is a little trickier, but you don't have to be a geek to do it.