‘Mac OS X’ Archives

Today, Apple posted its thoughts on Adobe Flash, and the reasons why it has not been included on the company’s line of mobile de ices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The piece is well reasoned and clearly presented, although it is interesting that the biggest reason to VoiceOver users not wanting Flash [...]

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 [...]

Today, Panic Software released version 4.0 of their popular Transmit FTP client. Transmit v3.X has been a longstanding favorite among VoiceOver users, given its high level of accessibility. Version 4.0 offers better accessibility, most notably in the identification of controls via labels and help tags. New features include the ability to mount servers in the [...]

Today, Apple released iTunes version 9.1.1. The release notes for the latest version of the popular media management and playback software is dominated by fixes for its compatibility with VoiceOver, among other enhancements. The release notes read: Addresses several stability issues with VoiceOver Addresses a usability issue with VoiceOver and Genius Mixes Addresses issues with [...]

According to the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)’s Access Technology Blog, a session focussing on Apple products will be taking place during their National Convention this summer in Dallas Texas. This appears to be part of a continuing about face by the NFB where regards Apple products. Here’s the session scheduling and registration information, [...]

Spring is here! Have you been contemplating ways to clean up your Mac’s files and folders? In our most recent editorial, we look at a simple way to use Mac OS X’s built-in Automator utility to help keep your "Downloads" folder tidy, so such cleaning projects are needed less often.

Yesterday, the Web Accessibility in Mind organization, (WebAIM), a group focusing on improving accessibility of web content for persons with disabilities, published the results of their Screen Reader User Survey, a follow up to a similar survey conducted earlier this year. VoiceOver was shown in the survey to have a fifty percent increase in users [...]

Yesterday, VMWare Fusion version 3 was released for Mac OS X. This version of the popular desktop virtualization software, which allows Mac users to simultaneously run other operating systems alongside OS X, boasts a variety of new features, including Windows 7 support, and has been optimized for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Unlike its [...]

In the latest installment of the Mac-cessibility Round Table Podcast, "Coo Coo for CocoaTouch!", our knights of the round table discuss the recent updates to Mac OS X, the iPhone OS, and iTunes, as well as the iPod touch, the AFB iPhone review, the NFB’s "second look" at VoiceOver, Josh’s cursor tracking experiment on the [...]

Last June, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) published a highly flawed and controversial review of VoiceOver and the accessibility of the Mac OS X platform. Shortly thereafter, we published an editorial discussing the article and the NFB’s "response" to criticism of the review. Steve Sawczyn of ATMaine.com and our very own Mac-cessibility Round [...]

Today, VMWare

An update has been posted at ProToolsPetition.org regarding Digidesign‘s continuing efforts to provide accessibility in its ProTools professional recording software to VOiceOver users. Slau Halatyn was invited to see their progress first-hand, and below is a copy of his report on the experience. At the end of August, I received an email message from David [...]