Simple: Alert Sounds You Can See

Mac Accessibility 101

• Series: Simple accessibility hints
• Simple: Enlarging Text
• Simple: Bigger Mouse Pointer
• Simple: Alert Sounds You Can See
• Simple: The Computer Tells You The Time
• Simple: Show Icons in open/save dialag box
• Simple: Zoom in to see screen details more easily
• Simple: Word Completion
• Make iTunes Easier To See and Use
• Simple Keyboard Shortcuts To Save You Time

Mac OS X makes an alert “beep” sound if you try to press a key that’s not recognised or do various other things that confuse it. Here’s how to set it up so you will get a visual screen flash instead of the audio beep.

Open System Preferences – it’s the fourth item in the Apple menu (the  shape) in the very top left corner of the screen as shown here:

In the “System” section, usually about the fourth line of icons in System Preferences, there is an icon labeled “Universal Access” which looks like a guy with his arms out on a blue circle. Click on the Universal Access icon.

The Universal Access pane has sections labeled “Seeing”, “Hearing”, “Keyboard”, and “Mouse”. Click on the “Hearing” section and you’ll see the option to flash the screen when there’s an alert sound – select that option.

You can also use the test button to see how the screen flash looks.

Note that once you’ve selected this option, you won’t get the audio beeps – it’s an either/or and there’s no “both” option which I think is a mistake. But I don’t code for Apple’s accessibility team so I guess I don’t get to choose.

- Ricky Buchanan