Over the years, Audible.com has made some changes to its site. SOmetimes these changes have improved accessibility. Sometimes, they have not. One of the changes in the last couple of years was to change the sample clips of their audio books to play in an Adobe Flash Player plugin. It is, sadly, not accessible.

Here’s a way to work around this problem with VoiceOver. It isn’t the most elegant solution, but it works.

• Search for the audio book you wish to sample at Audible.com
• Navigate with b>VoiceOver to the "Listen" text within the search result entry for the audio book of your choice.
• Press VO-Command-F5 to move the mouse to the VoiceOver cursor.
• Turn off cursor tracking with VO-Shift-F3. THis is not required, but will eliminate some potential problems.
• Turn on control-option lock with VO-Semicolon. This is not required, but will make the next step much easier.
• Using the physical mouse or the operating system’s Mouse Keys feature, slowly move the mouse to the left, checking your progress with the VO-F5 command. If control-option lock is on, you need only press F5.
• Repeat the previous step until VoiceOver announces "Scroll Area". This takes a little practice, but is easy once you have the hang of it. If using a MacBook trackpad, use the top edge of the mouse button to insure you are moving straight to the left and not wandering slightly up or down. You do not need to move far to reach the Scroll Area.
• Press and hold the Control key, and click the physical mouse, or press the center key of the numeric keypad if using Mouse Keys.
• A menu will appear with many options. Choose the "Play" option to start the playback. Remember if Control-Option Lock is on, you will need to press space to activate that menu option.

We hope this helps you use Audible.com more effectively with VoiceOver.

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 this week’s tip!

Safari’s Bookmarks Bar places a row of buttons beneath the Safari toolbar for quick access to your most important or frequented bookmarks. You can have fast access to the sites on your bookmarks bar by holding down the Command key and pressing one of the number keys across the top of your keyboard. Command-1 opens the first bookmark, Command 2 opens the second, and so on. This is a fast way to get to your favorite web sites.

If the bookmarks bar is hidden, you can choose to have it displayed from the "View" menu, or by pressing Command-Shift-B.

Until next time!

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 this week’s tip!

In Mail, you can quickly jump to the top or bottom of the mailboxes table with Option-Up Arrow or Option-Down Arrow. This is a great way to quickly get to the mailbox or RSS feed you wish to peruse, particularly if you have a large number of folders, mailboxes, and feeds to organize your mail.

Until next time!

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 this week’s tip!

When navigating the Songs table in iTunes, you can quickly move the Play Target to the currently selected track by pressing Enter. The track will immediately begin playing. Using the Spacebar will only pause the currently playing track, or start playing the track which is currently marked with the Play Target, regardless of which track is selected. The Play Target can be found in the Status column of the Songs table.