Editorials

A couple of weeks ago, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) published a "review" of VoiceOver and the Mac OS X operating system. You can read that article here.

The new third-generation iPod Shuffle has been unveiled, with nary a rumor to foretell it's arrival on store shelves. It's size, (now smaller than a AA battery), and its capacity, (now 4GB), are of course big deals to the legions of joggers, bicyclists, and gym-goers at whom the tiny stripped-down digital music player is aimed, but there are some interesting features under the hood that could have an even bigger impact for blind and visually impaired users of Apple products.

So there you are. You've walked into your local Apple Store and you, an average visually impaired Jane or John Smith, are ready to get your hands on the first Mac you've ever ventured near. In fact, this will be the first time you've ever been able to walk into a computer shop and actually use any one of the machines on display.

Okay, so why on earth then would someone like me be submitting to you, an article on using the keyboard in an OS that's famous for it's amazing user-friendly GUI? The answers are three-fold and elegant. They are; simplicity, intuitiveness and speed.

As blind users investigate or actually make the switch from Windows to the Mac, there has been a lot of discussion about the aspects of this change on the blind Mac users email lists. This is, in no way, an attempt at a tutorial or any kind of technical document. Reading about the common problems and difficulties and, of course, successes encountered by new Mac users has prompted me to think about my own personal experiences involved in learning VoiceOver and the Mac. Below are some of my reflections on this subject, which I hope might help or assist, or, at the very least, give encouragement to current or future switchers.

The following list is not meant to be all inclusive. It provides an overview of only the most common misconceptions about the Mac and VoiceOver.