Apple and Accessibility
Apple has been on the forefront of accessibility options for over 20 years and some level of accessibility can be found in every Apple product, from the humble iPod to the Mac.Whether this takes the form of text-to-speech, speech recognition, enhanced colours and support for assistive devices, Apple has always pushed the boundaries of what OS X can do to help those needing such assistance. Apple has won a number of awards because of this and in 2010, the company won the Dr. Jacon Bolotin Award from the National Federation of the Blind for their work in accessibility relating to visual impairments.
There’s a great set of accessibility features that OS X has that many of us simply don’t know about. I hope that by the end of this guide you’ll have a much greater understanding of not only these useful features but also how much they can help someone with a visual, audio or motor impairment.
Finding Accessibility
We’ll work our way through the preference pane, covering each feature.
1. Seeing
Accessibility has three different features for users with visual impairments: Display, Zoom and VoiceOver. Each of them provide a different use and benefit depending on the nature of the impairment.Display
Inverting Colours does exactly what it suggests, every colour on the screen is inverted to its opposite so white becomes black. This applies to images as well and is ideally used for those using their Mac to read and find it more comfortable to read white text on a dark background. Whilst I don’t use this feature, I do use a text editor that provides a similar option as I find I suffer far less from eyestrain with a dark background and lighter text.
Tip: With the exception of the cursor size, these
options only alter the final image that you see. If you take any
screenshots with any of these function enabled then they will still
appear normally. I’ve had to artificially invert the colours and
photograph my display in order to provide you with example images!
Zoom
You can enable or disable keyboard shortcuts which allows you to use ⌥⌘8 to toggle Zoom on or off. Try this now and then use either ⌥⌘= or ⌥⌘- to zoom in or out.
If you prefer using your trackpad or mouse’s scroll wheel, you can enable scroll gestures in the next option. This feature lets you use a single key to hold down (by default, it’s the Control key) and when you scroll up or down on your trackpad or mouse, the screen will zoom as well.
Should you use the Zoom feature, you can have it follow the focus of the keyboard so as you type, the zoom will keep fixed on the text you’re entering. Likewise, pressing tab to the next text field automatically moves the zoom for you as well.
There’s two different zoom styles, the first being the whole screen zooms in. A relatively new feature is Picture-in-picture. It’s similar to the loupe tool found in Preview, iPhoto and Aperture and turns your cursor into a magnifying glass.
2. Hearing
Audio
To see what the alert flash looks like you can press the Test screen flash button.
Although primarily to assist those with hearing impairments, it is a useful function to have and compares to how the iPhone’s vibrate function works when it needs to alert you of something without making a sound. The alert flash is useful to have enabled if you’re often using your Mac with the sound disabled (such as a library or place of work).
Within this section you’re also able to force the audio output to play as mono which will assist those with a hearing impairment in one ear and it will remove any stereo sound effects (such as games and movies) being played.
3. Interacting
Keyboard
Sticky Keys enables a toggle function for modifier keys (such as Command and Option) so you don’t need to hold down the key to perform a shortcut. Instead of holding down the Command key and pressing Q to quit an app, with Sticky Keys enabled you can just press the Command key and it’s held by OS X until you press a second key.
Slow Keys adds a delay to pressing a key. With it enabled, a key can only be triggered if it’s pressed and held down for longer than normal. The delay can be changed within the options for Slow Keys and allows an easier way of interacting with the keyboard.
Mouse & Trackpad
Mouse Keys provides an alternative way of moving the cursor by using the number pad of your Mac’s keyboard as a controller. With it enabled, 8 moves the cursor up, 2 moves it down, 4 moves it left and 6 moves it right.
In addition to customising the double click speed of the mouse or trackpad, you can also specify ignoring the built-in trackpad of a portable Mac when an external one is present. This was actually a very useful feature in earlier versions of OS X that has since migrated from the Mouse preferences to here. With it turned on, you can use an external mouse and the built-in keyboard of your Mac without worrying that resting on the trackpad will make the cursor jump about.
Something that might be useful for everyone are the Trackpad Options… that are available.
You can not only adjust the scrolling speed of the trackpad when you’re using two fingers to scroll but also disable inertial scrolling. This is a feature of OS X that mimics iOS’ scrolling whereby flicking the trackpad would scroll and slow down to a halt rather than immediately stop when your fingers are lifted. Some people aren’t a fan of internal scrolling so if you’re one of them, you can disable it here.
Lastly, you can also change how OS X controls dragging. By default, you press and hold the trackpad to drag a window. With Drag Lock, you double-tap the trackpad (tap, not click) to enable Drag Lock and it will let you drag the window around . But, when you lift your finger, it doesn’t stop the dragging, letting you go back to the trackpad and move it some more. Once you’re finished you then tap again to release it.
Mouse Options only provides one useable option which is adjusting the scrolling speed.
Tip: It’s important to note that these options can be different depending on the type of input device you’re using.
Speakable Items
In a nutshell, Speakable Items allows you to say commands rather than use a keyboard and mouse. To enable it, turn Speakable Items on and then select Calibrate…
Calibrating Speakable Items is needed so that it can understand you better. Unlike features such as Siri and Dictation, Speakable Items doesn’t connect to the internet and access a huge server that can perform advanced recognition without the need to set it up. Speakable Items uses slightly older technology so you’ll need to calibrate it first to get the most out of it.
Let’s give Speakable Items a try. Enable the feature and perform the calibration. Once you’re done and you’re ready to begin, ask your Mac to tell you a joke.
Tip: There’s such a range of commands, scripts and
features that Speakable Items has that it’s worth spending time going
through its preferences in greater detail than what we’re doing here.
Before we continue, there’s two options that Accessibility has: Enable access for assistive devices and Show Accessibility status in menu bar.Assistive devices provides additional ways of interacting with OS X via various scripts and clever software features. Certain assistive devices can be programmed to trigger scripts to open certain menus that are otherwise unavailable. You may have come across this feature before when using software such as Moom which, in order to work, requires the feature to be enabled.
4. VoiceOver
Starting VoiceOver
VoiceOver’s preferences appear somewhat sparse at first but this is because VoiceOver has a dedicated utility that is accessible through either here or through the Utilities folder.Using VoiceOver
Enabling VoiceOver is easy, you can either enable it through the preferences here or, alternatively, by pressing ⌘ F5. Once you enable VoiceOver, you’ll see a message along the bottom of the display alerting you to this.
Tip: To get to grips with VoiceOver, Apple provides a feature called VoiceOver Training.
VoiceOver is an extremely powerful tool and has many, many options -
more than we’ll be covering in this guide. If you want to learn more
about VoiceOver then this training feature is a great way to do so.
VoiceOver Utility
General provides you with options to customise the greeting VoiceOver provides as well as whether you’d like to use a service called Portable Preferences. For those who would be using multiple Macs and require accessibility options, you can customise them on one Mac and, using Portable Preferences, store them on a USB stick or other storage device and take it with you to another Mac. As soon as you load them, all your required options are automatically set.
Verbosity is where you can customise how much feedback the Mac’s voice can provide. Sometimes it can be a little too much to hear every menu item listed but thankfully you can customise it as you see fit. Additionally, you can adjust which announcements the Mac speaks, such as if a modifier or caps lock key is pressed.
Sound just allows us to customise whether we’d like to hear sound effects and what the default output device would be. Whilst we might not have any speakers connected, it means the use of an assistive device that helps with hearing can be used solely for VoiceOver, eliminating any other noise.
The number pad (if you have a Mac with an external keyboard) can be set up to do the same thing using NumPad Commander. This way we can also select between various areas that VoiceOver can assist with using the number pad if you don’t have a trackpad available.
To add an activity, simply click the + button and give it a name. In the example I’ve provided, I chose “Messages”. Once you’ve done that, you then customise the VoiceOver settings. I’ve reduced the speed of the voice feedback to make it easier to understand.
If you find the settings almost what you’d want to use for another app you can duplicate them using the settings cog, as well as being able to reset them back to default.
Wrapping Up
Despite this comprehensive guide, there’s still so much more that OS X provides in the way of accessibility options. It’s amazing to see the level of support Apple provides in aiding users with audio, visual and motor impairments so that they can still easily use OS X.If you or anyone you know has any experience using accessibility in OS X, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
