iWork ‘09 Accessibility Overview

By Ricky Buchanan • January 12, 2009

iWork is Apple’s office suite - it fills more or less the same role as Microsoft Office can but it’s made by Apple and is integrated with OS X much better. iWork ‘09 was announced earlier this month at MacWorld and is already available for purchase and trial. The good news is that for the first time iWork ‘09 is almost fully accessible to VoiceOver Users. It also sports the full 18 “standard” OS X language localisations for the first time, which is great for non-English language users.

iWork is a suite of three applications:

Pages, a word processor
Numbers, a spreadsheet
Keynote, a presentation program (like Powerpoint)

For existing iWork users there are bunches of new features in all three applications, the relevant ones we’ll go into in future articles. There’s also integration with the beta version of iWork.com to let you share and swap work with others.

You can also download a 30-day trial of iWork from Apple’s website. A license costs US$79, although there’s currently a cheaper price for a bundle consisting of iWork ‘09, iLife ‘09 and Leopard. Check the Apple store for details.

Website: iWork ‘09

- Ricky Buchanan

Categories: New Software, OS X, Users, VoiceOver
Tags: commercial, free trial, iwork, iwork 09, voiceover compatibility

About the Author

Ricky Buchanan

Ricky Buchanan is 34 years old and the founder and main writer for ATMac. She's bedridden with severe CFS/ME or perhaps a primary mitochondrial disorder - the doctors are not sure. When she's not working on ATMac or her other websites she composes music, listens to audio books, does other disability advocacy, watches TV with her flatmate, and enjoys her cat.

3 Comments For “iWork ‘09 Accessibility Overview”

atmacjournal (Ricky Buchanan) Jan 12th, 2009 at 4:49 am

New ATMac post: iWork ‘09 Accessibility Overview http://tinyurl.com/9jl2ab
Samuel Jan 21st, 2009 at 12:57 pm

Just picked up iWork 09 and look forward to the discovery process.
Ricky Buchanan Jan 26th, 2009 at 12:08 am

@Sam: I look forward to hearing what you think of it! At the moment I’m frustrated because I deleted the original disk image after installing due to needing the disk space back and the disk image seems to be the only place the uninstaller can be found. I want to delete it as I have no serial number and can’t afford it now, so I can’t use it, but it’s made itself the default for all my iWork documents so it keeps getting opened. ARGH.

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