ATMac

For users of Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader. VoiceOver is primarily used by blind users but some users with severe dyslexia use it, and some users who can’t use a traditional pointing device use it for navigation on the screen.

Allison Greene is quadriplegic due to multiple sclerosis (MS) and must spend much of her day in bed. Bill Greene has ingeniously adapted his wife’s Mac-based computer system to allow her to use it either from her wheelchair or while in bed.

Snow Leopard is being billed by Apple as having most of the changes in “behind the scenes” things, but does this mean that there won’t be many enhancements for Universal Access users?

The iPhone 3GS has many new accessibility features, including a fully working screen reader. So what experiences are people having with this phone so far, and which applications are accessible?

For most people, dictation results in better structured and more creative writing of letters, essays etc. than either handwriting or typing out your own thoughts. Learn the principles of excellent dictation from somebody who’s dictated documents professionally for nearly fifty years.

There’s a new iPod Shuffle, and like the newest iPod Nano it can read out things like song titles and playlist names. Unlike the iPod Nano, the VoiceOver feature is enabled by default and is part of their standard advertising.

Martin Pilkington of M Cubed Software has made a blog post entitled The Accessible Mac. In the post he discusses the challenges and difficulties involved in making OS X software accessible. Martin pledges that all M Cubed’s software will be fully accessible by the end of 2009, challenging fellow developers to do the same.

Tim O’Brien’s blog is about photography and accessibility. He recently got an iPhone and had trouble finding information about its accessibility to the blind, so he’s doing something constructive about it.

Erik Burggraaf wrote on the MacVisionaries list about a metaphor which he uses to explain the differences in approach between Mac’s VoiceOver screen reader and Windows JAWS and WindowEyes screen readers. He calls it the “Dropped Penny Approach.”

Leopard has very useful feature called QuickLook that lets you preview files without opening them in an application. But how can VoiceOver users make use of this feature?

Neil has a question about track selection in GarageBand or iTunes for a musician that he works with.