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!