The Mac-cessibility Network - News [Lioncourt.com] » Quick Tips [Mac]

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #24

Cara — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:05:12 +0000

Many Skype users like to update their mood texts throughout the day to reflect their situation or as the name implies, their mood.

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 Tip #23

Lioncourt — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:43:18 +0000

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 Tip #22

Lioncourt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:00:58 +0000

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 Tip #21

Lioncourt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:51:17 +0000

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.

Navigate to your iPod in the Sources table in iTunes 8.
Press Command-Return. VoiceOver will announce "Unknown".
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.
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 Tip #20

Lioncourt — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:32:37 +0000

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 Tip #19

Lioncourt — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:00:47 +0000

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 Tip #18

Lioncourt — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:13 +0000

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 Tip #17

Lioncourt — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:00:39 +0000

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 Tip #16

Lioncourt — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:00:20 +0000

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 Tip #15

Lioncourt — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:00:43 +0000

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 Tip #14

Lioncourt — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:00:31 +0000

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!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #13

Lioncourt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:00:34 +0000

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard includes a new VoiceOver feature to select text that is not editable. (i.e., text on a web site.) To do this, interact with the text in question, and then use VO-Return to start the selection mode. While this mode is on, move the VoiceOver cursor through the text that you wish to select. You will hear a sliding sound as the text is highlighted. When you’re done press VO-Return to stop the selection. VoiceOver will beep to confirm the action. Now you can perform a copy with Command-C or any other valid command with the selected text.

This function will work with any text that can be selected.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #12

Lioncourt — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:00:51 +0000

One often overlooked feature of VoiceOver in both Tiger and Leopard is its ability to select non-contiguous items from lists, tables, and the like. This is useful if you have a group of files you wish to copy from one folder to another, for example. If the files you are choosing are all in a row in the Finder’s listing, you can use shift and the arrow keys to highlight all the files in a row. If they are scattered throughout, say one at the start, one in the middle, and one at the end of the listing, you have to use non-contiguous selecting to choose them.

Here are the steps to get this done:

Use VoiceOver to interact with the Table, Icon View, or Column Browser where the items you wish to select are displayed.
Navigate using VoiceOver navigation commands to the first item you want to select.
Turn off Cursor Tracking with VO-Shift-F3.
Move to and select each of the other items you wish by pressing the VoiceOver Multiple Select command, VO-Command-Space.
When you’re done selecting items, perform the keystroke for the command you wish to perform on them, such as Command-C to copy, Command-Delete to move to the Trash, etc.
Turn Cursor Tracking back on again with VO-Shift-F3.

Of course, these steps may vary if you keep your Cursor Tracking off, but chances are if you do that, you already know this tip.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #11

Lioncourt — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:40 +0000

Many visually impaired users use the Finder’s built-in ability to jump to and select files by typing the first few letters of the desired file’s name. This proves to be a quick way to navigate through large file lists, as long as you know what you’re looking for. In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, this can be a problem, however, if the file in question includes a space in its name, especially if that space appears early in the file name. An example might be a file named "A letter to Jane.rtf". As soon as you press the spacebar, QuickLook launches, and chances are you are not on the file you wanted. To avoid this, press Option-Space in place of the spacebar alone. This adds the space character to what you’re looking for, without activating QuickLook.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #10

Lioncourt — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:25:02 +0000

While reading long documents with VO-A in programs like TextEdit and many others, you likely already know that pressing the Control key by itself will stop VoiceOver’s narrative. This key also works as a pause key, however. If you don’t press any other keys in the interim, press Control again to have VoiceOver resume on the next line from whence it stopped. This proves to be extremely handy if the phone rings, you spill a Coke on yourself, or Johnny needs help with his homework.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #9

Lioncourt — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:18:50 +0000

After a break for the holidays, we’re back with Mac-cessibility Quick Tips, a weekly 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!

Unlabeled or unidentifiable links getting you down? Want to check the destination URL of a link before you click it, just to make sure it is connecting to a reputable web site? In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, VoiceOver provides this functionality with a simple command available anywhere you can interact with HTML. VO-Shift-U will announce the URL to which a link is pointing. Such information can also provide enlightening information about links that are otherwise uninformative, where the web site developer has…ahem, forgotten…to label graphical links properly.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #8

Lioncourt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:13:36 +0000

Mac-cessibility Quick Tips is a weekly 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!

This week’s tip is exclusive to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. When browsing a web site, or any HTML content, you may sometimes want to hear the destination URL of a given link. With VoiceOver it’s easy. Navigate to the link and press VO-Shift-U. VoiceOver will read the URL where that link leads. This is particularly useful on pages where image links provide little or no useful information. (VO = Control-Option.)

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #7

Lioncourt — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:25:58 +0000

From time to time, VoiceOver users may encounter the dreaded "Unknown". However, just as in the real world, you need not always fear the Unknown. Instead, try interacting with it with VO-Shift-Down Arrow. Many times you will find that the Unknown control is just a container holding a host of other controls and information that VoiceOver can read just fine. An example of this type of Unknown is in the error window that Mac OS X displays when you try to connect to a network drive that isn’t there. The information in this window is contained in an "Unknown", but interacting with it gives you access to all the information.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #6

Lioncourt — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:56:43 +0000

When using iTunes to enjoy music, video, or podcast content, you may want a quick way to control the playback of your media. Many of these controls are located in the Controls menu, but two of the most useful ones are mysteriously absent. When a file is playing, (or even when it is paused), you can use Command-Option Left or Right Arrow to Fastback or Fastforward the track. Holding down the hot keys is a quick way to skip through that boring guitar solo or the intro to your favorite podcast you’ve heard a million times before and get right to the good stuff.

Until next time!

Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #5

Lioncourt — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:45:09 +0000

Mac-cessibility Quick Tips are a weekly feature of Lioncourt.com to help blind and visually impaired Mac users improve their computing experience. Not all tips will be specific to VoiceOver, and most will apply to both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Now, on to this week’s tip.

Many applications on the Mac sport a toolbar which provides quick access to common commands, or else access to commands that are not readily available anywhere else. Toolbars are also common in application Preference windows to house buttons that switch from page to page within the preferences. Many users don’t realize that you don’t need to navigate to the toolbar with VoiceOver and, in the case of Leopard, interact with it. Instead, simply use the Mac OS X hot key Control-F5 to jump directly to the first item on the toolbar. You can then use VoiceOver to navigate through the controls on the toolbar, or else tab through them. No interaction required.