• Retweet: @vmwarefusion : Fusion 50% off today, one day only. Details: http://is.gd/9Gqi Coupon code "CyberMondayDeal" # 2008/12/01
• It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States. We're thankful for Apple's commitment to accessibility in their products. # 2008/11/27
• We've added social bookmarking and "Send this to a Friend" to the Mac-cessibility Site as a trial. Let us know what you think. # 2008/11/27
• Apple released Safari 3.2.1 today. No known accessibility changes, but a good update to have nonetheless. Stability is the focus. # 2008/11/25
• News: Comparing Accessibility of the Big Three Operating System http://www.lioncourt.com/?p=247 # 2008/11/21

The fine developers over at OpenOffice.org have been working hard on full access to the popular office software suite with VoiceOver on Mac OS X. That work is starting to pay off. With the latest version of the OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta, we now have VoiceOver access to most of the features of this free and powerful application set.

To download the beta, visit the OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta download page. Be sure to report bugs to the developers.

OpenOffice.org includes a rich feature set for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. It is in ever increasing usage around the world, and has become the office suite of choice for many European government agencies.

Mac-cessibility Quick Tips is a feature of Lioncourt.com. It’s ongoing mission: To explore brief tips, to seek out new tricks to assist blind and visually impaired Mac users improve their Apple experience, and to boldly provide access where no Mac has gone before. 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!

MacBooks have function keys set to control aspects of the system’s hardware by default. Depending on your version of OS X, you may need to press and hold the "FN" key, located in the extreme lower left of your keyboard, to access this functionality.

The most commonly used keys are those to control the system volume. On models of MacBook released prior to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the "Lower Volume" and "Raise Volume" controls will be on the "F4" and "F5" keys respectively. On newer MacBooks, these commands will be located on "F11" and "F12" respectively.

Sometimes, though, controlling the volume this way can be a little frustrating. Often, you may find that the difference in volume between one level and the next is too great, and you just can’t fine-tune the volume to a comfortable level. Here’s a trick to remedy that problem. Hold down Option-Shift while adjusting the volume with the function keys, and it will change by much smaller increments, allowing you to find just the right level of audio output.

Until next time!