Woopid is a website offering free short video tutorials on computer and gadget-related topics. Most of the tutorials focus on Mac computer topics, and there are many which are directly focussed on access related topics.

Increase The Text Size in Leopard - Seven short videos about increasing text size or screen magnification in different areas in Leopard.

Make Your Computer Easier to Use - Eight short videos on different areas of universal access.

You Speak, Computer Listens - Five short videos about the "command and control" style speech to text system built into OS X.

You can check out the topics covered by Woopid by seeing the different bundles on offer, or browse or search the whole library for individual titles. There are plenty of others which are also related in some way to access and assistive technology.

- Ricky Buchanan

Firefox version 3 has been released for a while now, so a lot of users are exploring its possibilities. One of the great accessibility-related things new to Firefox 3 is full page zoom, where zooming in enlarges not just the text but also the images and the whole layout of the page - so it's more like magnifying the page than just enlarging the text.

As somebody with low vision, this is a great help at times but I have been frustrated that using the keyboard command-plus method I could only zoom in to a certain extent and then no further. If I held down the command key and used the scroll wheel zooming the page would zoom in much further, but the keyboard commands are more convenient for me to use.

Yesterday I finally discovered a solution to this dilemma! The Mozilla Links magazine has an article on how to tweak Firefox 3 full page zoom and I was able to use their technique to change the maximum keyboard zooming level to 30 times bigger than normal, quite big enough for my worst eyesight days.

The instructions in the linked article are a little technical in places, but they're fairly clear. If you have any problems then let me know; if there's a need, I can make a tutorial which takes you through it step by step with screen shots.

- Ricky Buchanan

The keystroke ⌘+ (in other words command and shift and equals at the same time) will enlarge the text size in many OS X applications. If you're using Safari to read this, try typing it now - the text on the web page should get bigger.

As a general rule ⌘+ works where there are big blocks of text, but not for smaller amounts of text, menus, or any pictures. Try pressing it when you're reading mail with Mail.app, using Safari, or using the Help Viewer and watch what expands and what doesn't. If you are using TextEdit, then only the text that you have selected will enlarge. This may be similar for other editors too.

The keystroke ⌘- (in other words command and minus) will make the text smaller in all the same places that ⌘+ makes it larger, so if you overshoot or don't like the effect you can go back. Also, you have to enlarge the text for every new window and after you restart a program - the effect doesn't stick.

On the plus side, the command works on all OS X computers - there's nothing to download or configure or set up. And command-plus for bigger and command-minus for smaller is easy to remember. Try it anywhere - the worst that can happen is nothing!

- Ricky Buchanan