ATMac

The sub-categories within “Assistive Tech Needs” divide the posts up according to which are relevant to which users. For example, a post about keyboard shortcuts won’t be very useful to somebody who can’t use a keyboard but will be very useful to somebody who can’t use a mouse.

MacSpeech Dictate is a great program but learning so many commands all at once can be very intimidating. I’ve put together a full list of all the known commands for MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.*, ordered by their function, to help you learn and remember them.

The TandemMaster Morse-2-USB interface is a fantastic device which converts morse code entered by two switches into keyboard presses and mouse movements. It gives the user complete control of a computer, as much as any regular keyboard/mouse user would have and can be used on any computer, with no drivers or software needed to be installed on the computer itself.

Firefox generally doesn’t let you use a lot of OS X’s accessibility features, including the services menu and some of OS X’s regular keyboard shortcuts. Setting your Mac up to speak highlighted text when you press a key also doesn’t work in Firefox. The Firefox extension SpeakingFox fills this gap with some nifty context menu options to fill this gap.

How would you organise an iPod so an child with autism could listen to his favourite music during car journeys but not accidentally press the buttons and turn off the music? I thought of a couple of methods, and would love to hear about others you’ve come up with yourself!

It’s been announced that the MacSpeech company has been purchased by Nuance. Nuance are the company behind the Windows product “Dragon NaturallySpeaking“ and other recent Dragon products for iPod Touch and iPhone. So what does this mean for MacSpeech Dictate and the other MacSpeech products? What would you like to happen?

One of the major things that the MacSpeech Dictate family has been lacking is the ability to take pre-recorded files and convert them to text. Not any more: MacSpeech Scribe will do just that for you, with up to 99% accuracy.

When Apple announced the iPad the first thing I thought was “how, as a quadriplegic with limited use of my arms, will I be able to use this device?”. Fortunately I immediately already had a pretty good idea on how this could be accomplished being that I’ve been an iPod Touch 2G user for almost 18 months. Ultimately the iPad is probably going to be able to do quite a bit more than the iPod Touch but the iPod Touch is still essentially the iPad’s “little brother”. So I thought I’d share the methods I use to access my iPod Touch in hopes that these ideas may be useful for people with physical disabilities hoping to get an iPad.

As expected, at their press gathering this morning Apple announced their new product: the iPad. So what’s an iPad? Will the iPad be accessible, and what will it mean for accessibility in general?

The Mac Video Tutorial Subtitles Project captions Apple’s tutorial vdeos in multiple languages, including English. They want to make this great resource available to non-English speaking users, and to those with hearing impairments or language processing problems.

In December, Nuance surprised everybody by releasing two apps for the iPhone - Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search. Those apps are now also available for iPod Touch users and they’re free for a limited time.