If you have finished typing a word, and you hear that an AutoText will take effect when you press the space, you can negate the correction by selecting "AutoText" from the VoiceOver rotor. Flick up or down to hear what the AutoText would be. If it is not what you want, double tap, and it will be dismissed.

Locate the text you’d like to start selecting, using  Voiceover navigation, on the web page or in the email and then double tap and hold, anywhere on the screen. You’ll find, now, when you rotate the rotor, there is an edit option, and you can use the familiar pinch gestures and edit controls to select text. Once you have the text selected, the copy option will be available to you.

NOTE: if you try to select text which is positioned in or near a group of links, this may be difficult, or may not work at all, as the links themselves might be instead, activated by the double tap and hold gesture.

Another thing to note is that while selecting, if you switch the rotor to characters, words or lines, you can add or remove that type of text block from your selection. I.E. choosing lines in the rotor, adds or removes a line at a time from your current selection.

From here you can work with your copied text as you normally would.

Enjoy!

For all you shutterbugs, in the iPhone 4′s camera, you now have access to the zoom feature! Simply bring up the camera; double tap on the viewfinder and then flick to the right, three times. YOu’ll now see the zoom control.

Flicking up or down on this control with a single finger will increment or decrement the value by ten percent respectively. the highest value is 100 and the lowest value is 0.

NOTE: Each time you flick once your focus will be moved to the viewfinder again, so you’ll need to flick right three times to get to the zoom control.

Enjoy! and happy shooting!

Until next time!/p>

…you can copy an SMS message to the clipboard with VoiceOver. Simply touch the message in the list, whether it is a message you sent or received in a conversation, then use the VoiceOver rotor to choose "Edit". You will have one option if you flick up or down, which is "Copy". Double tap, and the message will be copied to your clipboard for pasting anywhere you like.

This has been another edition of iPhone Quick Tips. Enjoy!

Simply locate the app that is being downloaded (whether it is waiting or loading) and double tap it. The message ‘paused’ will then be spoken after the app name, and the download will be paused.

To resume the download simply double tap the app’s icon again and the download will resume.

NOTE: the app may show a zero percent download amount immediately after resuming its download, but this will update in a few seconds to reflect the proper downloaded percentage.

Enjoy!

To change VO’s speech volume, simply do the following; While VoiceOver is speaking a word or phrase, move the switch up or down during the time VO is actually saying that text. This may take a bit of practice, and you might want to start by finding a nice long sentence for VO to speak, but you’ll be able to comfortably work with this in no time!

This feature works with any audio on the iPhone as well. When you hear the audio whose level you’d like to change, simply use the rocker switch to do so. If you’d like to change your iPod volume, for example, let the music play and use the volume rocker switch.

This way, you may change the level of whatever sound you happen to be listening to at the time. When no audio is playing, and no speech is happening, you may use the rocker switch to change the iPhone’s ringer volume. -Enjoy, and rock out!…

with the virtual keyboard showing on the screen, hold the iPHone as you would hold any other mobile device, while typing on it. I.E. so that your thumbs are hovering comfortably over the virtual keys.

Now, find a letter on the right side of the keyboard using your right thumb, and type it simply by tapping your left thumb wherever it happens to be.

Try the same thing now, the other way; find a letter on the left side of the keyboard with your left thumb, and once again, type it by just tapping your right thumb wherever is comfortable. You won’t even need to move your hands at all, to do this, if you wish.

With practice, you may find that you can simply automatically locate the letters you want, with each thumb, without looking for them, just as you might do with a standard mobile ‘qwerty’ keyboard. -Enjoy, and happy texting!…

You’ll still see your home screen, and can access anything on its pages, so this is an excellent way to enjoy your productive time. If you’d like to skip to the next or previous songs, or change your volume level perhaps; simply press your home key twice, quickly, while the music is playing, and voila, up comes a compact version of your iPod controls in a neat little window.

To stop the music again, either use these controls, or close the window and as before, tap twice on the home screen, with two fingers, and bask in the silence! -Enjoy!…

When using the latest Skype beta (version 2.8.0.X) a VoiceOver user can do this very quickly by doing the following:

• In the Skype main window, use VO to navigate to the ‘Edit Profile’ button

• Tab once which will place you in the mood text edit field

• Simply input the text you’d like shown, and press enter! Your mood text will refresh with the text you’ve just entered

NOTE: When in the mood text edit field, tabbing again will bring you back to the ‘Edit Profile’ button and continuing to tab will cycle between the field and the button. If you have trouble leaving the text field with VO navigation, simply tab to the button and then use VO to navigate again in the main Skype window.

Happy mood texting!…

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 Quick TIp #23!

When in iTunes, you can rapidly jump back and forth between the Sources and Songs tables by pressing VO-J. (Ctrl-Option-J). This useful VoiceOver command often gets overlooked by new and experienced users alike. It provides a way to rapidly jump between related controls without need to traverse the other controls in a window.

Other great uses for the VO-J command are in Mail where it will let you rapidly jump back and forth between the Messages table and the Preview of a message, and in System Profiler to jump between the Content table and the detailed text display.

Experiment with this command. You’ll find it a underrated and useful addition to your VoiceOver repertoire.

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 editing ID3 tag information on your media in iTunes, there’s a plethora of options, divided into many pages of the "Get Info" window, which can be accessed by selecting the track or tracks you want to edit and pressing Command-I.

To make navigating this window easier, use Command-the number keys to select the tab you wish to work with. For example, Command-1 opens the "Summary" tab, Command-2 opens the "Info" tab, and so on. Focus will automatically be placed on the first field of the selected tab.

This tip also works in the window to edit information for multiple tracks, as well as the iTunes Preferences window.

Happy editing!

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!

So, you’ve got your fresh new iPod Nano 4G with speaking menus, but that’s just not enough. You’d like to personalize your iPod with a custom name that will be shown in the iTunes Sources table and in the Finder. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Navigate to your iPod in the Sources table in iTunes 8.
2. Press Command-Return. VoiceOver will announce "Unknown".
3. Type the name you want. Note that VoiceOver does not give any feed back during this step, so type carefully. If you make a mistake, you can always try to rename your iPod again by following these same steps.
4. Press Return.

That’s it! Enjoy your freshly renamed iPod. And, as always, listen without prejudice!

Thanks to Shane Jackson for the tip.

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!

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.

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!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tips is an ongoing 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!

Finding it hard to remember all those great VoiceOver navigation commands while browsing the web? You can bring up a complete list of them in a menu, including their key commands, by pressing VO-Shift-F for "Find". And, as an added bonus, did you know that those same commands will work in documents as well, such as those created with TextEdit?

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!

Did you ever wish there was a quick and easy way to copy the text from a dialog box? A way to copy a serial number or password from one window to the next when it isn’t provided in text that can be copied? Maybe you just want to copy an error message to a friend who is trying to give you some tech support. VoiceOver provides an easy way to do this. Simply move VoiceOver to the item in question, and then press VO-Shift-C. This command will copy the last thing spoken by VoiceOver to the clipboard in a textual form that can be pasted anywhere text can be placed with the standard Paste functionality. (i.e., Command-V).

Until next time!