Archive for September, 2008

Today, AOL released a public beta of their new AIM for Mac software for the popular AOL Instant Messaging service. The new application, still in beta, includes accessibility with VoiceOver on par with Apple’s own iChat program included with the Mac OS. There are a handful of buttons without labels, though these all [...]

Assistiveware has posted a pair of videos on the popular video sharing site YouTube.com demonstrating the iPod Nano 4G’s talking menu capabilities using both their French and British text-to-speech voices, available as part of their InfoVox iVox product for Mac OS X. This is a great way to see how the speaking menu feature [...]

Mac-cessibility Quick Tips is a 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 [...]

Today, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) announced a cooperative agreement with Apple Inc. to make Apple’s iTunes software more accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Earlier this month, Apple released iTunes 8 with substantial improvements to accessibility for both Mac and Windows users. Under the agreement between Apple and the NFB, Apple [...]

Today, Freedom Scientific announced support in Jaws for Windows versions 8, 9, and 10 for iTunes. As we reported previously, access to iTunes 8 under Windows was a result of an effort between Apple and GW Micro, the makers of Window-Eyes. Freedom Scientific has used this implementation of MSAA to build support into the [...]

Lioncourt.com is pleased to announce that you can now keep up with the latest Mac-cessibility news on Twitter! Simply follow the user name "Maccessibility", or visit our Twitter page. To learn more about Twitter, or to register, click here.

In episode #26 of the ScreenlessSwitchers Podcast, hosts Darcy and Holly are joined by Josh de Lioncourt of the Mac-cessibility site, Steve Sawczyn of the Assistive Technology Show, and Shane Jackson of the BlindWorld Blog and Podcast. The quintet discuss iTunes 8 accessibility, the new iPod Nano 4G and its speaking interface, Apple’s new [...]

Shane Jackson has had some quality time with the new iPod Nano 4G, and has written up a review for Lioncourt.com. In "Shake, Shuffle, and Roll", Shane discusses thevarious methods blind and visually impaired users have employed to utilize their iPods in the past, and what makes the new Nano, with its speaking interface, [...]

We’ve just published a new Lioncourt.com editorial. In "Don’t Panic: Your First Trip to the Apple Store", Josh de Lioncourt provides the basics to get you up to speed with the Mac and VoiceOver before you take your first trip to an Apple Store. The article can be applied to any first-time Mac [...]

Apple has five new Apple Stores opening this weekend. They include locations in the Irish city Belfast, as well as US openings in Lancaster, Pa., Colorado Springs, Co., Escondido, Ca., and San Mateo, Ca.
Apple Stores are a great place to check out Macs and other Apple products first hand. You can activate VoiceOver [...]

Today, VMWare released version 2.0 of VMWare Fusion, its award winning desktop virtualization software for Macintosh. Fusion allows users to run Windows side-by-side with Mac OS X. The new version includes over one-hundred new features, including enhancements to stability and performance.
Despite the accessibility issues in early beta versions, which we reported on earlier, [...]

Today, Apple released the fifth major update to its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system for Macintosh computers. 10.5.5 offers a wide array of fixes, as well as improvements to stability, reliability, security, and much more.
A note in the knowledge base article about 10.5.5 notes that the update "IMproves speech dictionary." This [...]