After a break for the holidays, we’re back with Mac-cessibility Quick Tips, a weekly feature of Lioncourt.com to provide brief tips and tricks to assist blind and visually impaired Mac users improve their Apple experience. Not all tips will be specific to VoiceOver, and most will work on either Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Now for this week’s tip!

Unlabeled or unidentifiable links getting you down? Want to check the destination URL of a link before you click it, just to make sure it is connecting to a reputable web site? In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, VoiceOver provides this functionality with a simple command available anywhere you can interact with HTML. VO-Shift-U will announce the URL to which a link is pointing. Such information can also provide enlightening information about links that are otherwise uninformative, where the web site developer has…ahem, forgotten…to label graphical links properly.

Until next time!

Microsoft has altered the EULA (End User License Agreement) for the Home Basic and Home Premium varieties of its Windows Vista operating system. Previously, it was technically possible, but illegal, to run either version of Vista in a virtual machine with software such as VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop for Mac, much to the aggravation of Mac users who need, however reluctantly, to run Windows. Microsoft has relented, and users of the Home Basic and Home Premium versions of Windows Vista will no longer b in violation of the agreement.

At MacWorld Expo, MacSpeech announced the release of MacSpeech Dictate, which is new voice recognition software for the Mac. In their press release, they talk about compatibility in this product with Apple accessibility standards, particularly VoiceOver.

This is a fantastic development, and we hope other developers will also take this kind of initiative.

MacSpeech Dictate will be priced at $199.00, including a headset, and is expected to begin shipping in mid-February. For more details, read the press release.

We’ve just received word that Microsoft has acknowledge that Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 does not meet Mac accessibility standards as outlined by Apple. This is a real tragedy, given that Microsoft has had four years to work on this product, developed it with the Mac native XCode and Cocoa tools, and had all the tools at their disposal to make this product accessible.

Fortunately, visually impaired Mac users have alternative applications that will work with Microsoft Office formatted documents from Word and Excel in an accessible way. Still, it is a pity to see Microsoft, who claims a commitment to accessibility, choosing not to implement it in a flagship product.

We encourage you to contact Microsoft and voice your opinions.