‘iWork’ Archives

In a new editorial, we take a look at the width and breadth of Apple’s commitment to accessibility over the last ten years, and try to dispel some of the myths, rumors, and misconceptions which persist in the visually impaired community about Apple and its products.

On 29/April/2005, Apple Inc. released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the first commercial operating system with a built-in screen reader: VoiceOver. A lot has changed since the introduction of VoiceOver. Here are some highlights: The creation of the Mac Visionaries community of visually impaired Mac users The birth of the Screenless Switchers podcast The introduction [...]

After years of rumors, speculation, and legend, Apple has finally lifted the veil over its slate, (or tablet in you prefer), computing device. It’s called iPad, and it’s quite impressive. The iPad runs an expanded version of the iPhone OS, and therefore includes the VoiceOver screen reader, according to its product page. It looks similar [...]

After a couple of weeks, during which we saw the rumor mills heat up with speculation of an August 28th release of Apple’s latest version of their Mac OS X operating system, the company issued a press release this morning, officially announcing that date. "Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and [...]

The Mac-cessibility Podcast has been reborn as a round table discussion show, dealing with all things related to accessibility of Apple products. The show is planned to have a new episode once a month, starting with this week’s episode entitled "Reboot". Topics covered: Introduce this month’s panelists, including Holly Anderson, Darcy Burnard, Cara Quinn, Steve [...]

The new iWork ’09, which Apple released today, sports a slew of new features, but the most impressive to VoiceOver users will be its accessibility. Apple’s come through for visually impaired users once again. This powerful productivity suite has been beautifully set up to work well with VoiceOver. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all work well. [...]

Today, Apple announced updates to their iWork and iLife application suites. The new features are certainly impressive, and incremental, but we are uncertain at this time whether or not any accessibility enhancements are part of these updates. Additionally, iWork.com became a public beta today. This suite of browser-based applications allows users to collaborate on iWork [...]

We contacted Apple Accessibility about the access issues with IWork and ILife ’08. The response was brief but encouraging. Apple points out the dramatic improvements in accessibility with the IWork ’08 suite in particular, but is aware of the problems and is working to improve access in these products. Garage Band accessibility, according to them, [...]