ATMac

For users with general intellectual impairments.

The Finder, iTunes, and iPhoto all now let you browse through your materially visually if you wish, instead of looking at lines of text. The address book program Espy is a third party utility we reviewed that does the same for address book entries, and now we have Webbla which does the same for bookmarks.

There are lots of very simple things which can improve the accessibility of iTunes for those with low vision and reading impairments. This tutorial will take you through them step by step.

The Laboratory for Understanding Collaborative Technology at Northwestern University is working on a project to build and evaluate new original technologies for users with disabilities. They are currently recruiting subjects with a variety of impairments (cognitive, sensory or motor) from the Chicago area.

This video is about the use of video iPods in a special education classroom which caters for children with intellectual disabilities and language or hearing difficulties such that sign language (ASL) is their primary mode of communication.

AlphaOmega Software’s Function Keys Mapper guides you to set your function keys to launch applications or open specific files or websites.

The Mac Tips & Tricks website have a nifty little post up which guides you through how to Print Envelopes From Address Book. Very handy if handwriting isn’t your greatest ability!
- Ricky Buchanan, ATMac

Espy is a newly released Mac OS X Address book program whose browsing is based on pictures of your contacts. It’s a great example of a program not designed specifically for people with a disability but having great applicability for people with memory, intellect, or reading problems.

Virtually all computer keyboards in English speaking countries are arranged so that the letter keys, if you read from the top-left, start of with QWERTY. What are the alternatives and why would you want to change anyway?

Icon previews are new in Leopard. Instead of showing one icon for every text document and one for every spreadsheet and so on, you get a tiny peek of what’s inside the document. This is great if you can see tinsy icon-sized pictures, and not so good otherwise. Luckily, Apple left us with some options here.

A few days ago, Apple added a page to their website detailing 300+ New Features In Leopard which was divided into various categories. There are 17 features listed under the Universal Access Features category,
mostly relevant to users of VoiceOver such as support for refreshable braille displays, the new “Alex” voice, new VoiceOver features, and so [...]