The purpose of this thread is to exchange ideas regarding visual impairment on the Mac platform.
This discussion originated in the thread labeled '10.7 Predictions'. See posts 49 to 56.
WPLJ42, here are some stuff from experimentation I did with VoiceOver in the past.
Have you tried the caption panel? I dragged a caption panel to the bottom of my screen (the dock is on the left of the screen). I made the font huge in size. For example, in the VoiceOver Utility, select on Visuals, then the Caption Panel pane. Check the ?Show Caption Panel? checkbox. For myself, I had the ?Caption Panel Font Size? slider set to 7 units up from ?Small? I see that I have the ?Caption Panel Transparency? set to 75%. Play with those parameters to see if you can make use of the Caption Panel. You can Zoom on top of that to get truly giant fonts. I find that white-on-black or black-on-white must be toggled before VoiceOver is activated. Zoom will work after VoiceOver activation.
Have you tried the above in combination with Tile Visuals? Control Option F10 to toggle on and off for Tile Visuals and Control Option Command F10 to toggle Caption Panel on and off. I am quite rusty on VoiceOver, so I re-checked how to control magnification on Tile Visuals. In the VoiceOver Utility, select Visuals, then the VoiceOver Cursor pane. I have the ?Show VoiceOver Cursor? checkbox unchecked. I was able to control the size of Tile Visuals via the ?VoiceOver Cursor Magnification? I had the slider at 50%. For the ?When reading text, move VoiceOver Cursor by?, the following multiple select box has 'Word'. Play with the cursor magnification. Again, you can Zoom on top of this set-up of VoiceOver.
On another front, are you familiar with ?Mouse Locator?? It puts a bulls-eye target around the mouse pointer. Software is free. There are a number of options to try out, and it will work in conjunction with a magnified pointer
Thanks for the information Bert. I have not tinkered with VoiceOver in a long time. I am familiar with the ability to put the text on the screen. Kind of like closed captioning. Just like it if you turn off the speech. Thank you so much for the link to the mouse pointer. Have it installed and it works nice. Here is one for you:
Hopefully, no one will complain that you have done this. I'm sure there are plenty of VI folks who want to share their ideas AND all the other things that AI has to offer. I don't always get along with other here, but it is still a VERY GOOD forum!
Thanks for the information Bert. I have not tinkered with VoiceOver in a long time. I am familiar with the ability to put the text on the screen. Kind of like closed captioning. Just like it if you turn off the speech. Thank you so much for the link to the mouse pointer. Have it installed and it works nice. Here is one for you:
Hopefully, no one will complain that you have done this. I'm sure there are plenty of VI folks who want to share their ideas AND all the other things that AI has to offer. I don't always get along with other here, but it is still a VERY GOOD forum!
I am not selling anything, so this thread should be OK. I have noticed that other AI posters use Zoom. If no one is interested, then this thread will fade out, and that is not a problem for me.
I came across the following info on the iPad from a review by Andy Ihnatko:
Zoom
white-on-black and black-on-white
VoiceOver
captions for the hearing impaired
So, maybe the iPad could be useful from an accessibility standpoint.
A number of reviews are popping up for the iPad. Apparently found its way to the Grammy's last night. Go Steve Go. At a base of $499, I'd rather have a Windows/Ubuntu notebook. Chances are, what I would want would cost more like a MacBook. I almost bought one, but could not see the screen. So I ended up with this 20 inch iMac. Steve Jobs claims the majority of sales are portable. Until I can see a MacBook screen, it is out of the question. Don't want an iPod of any kind. iPad falls short of being a good investment for me.
A number of reviews are popping up for the iPad. Apparently found its way to the Grammy's last night. Go Steve Go. At a base of $499, I'd rather have a Windows/Ubuntu notebook. Chances are, what I would want would cost more like a MacBook. I almost bought one, but could not see the screen. So I ended up with this 20 inch iMac. Steve Jobs claims the majority of sales are portable. Until I can see a MacBook screen, it is out of the question. Don't want an iPod of any kind. iPad falls short of being a good investment for me.
Right. That is exactly why I have a 24 inch iMac (mid 07) with 1920 by 1200 resolution. The graphic card is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. And yes, try the computer at a store before you buy.
OK. Look, I was a programmer in the past. With that experience, poor vision, a book on Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and magnifying glass in hand ? I knew I had to focus on tailoring the OS with the most suitable set of System Preferences I could come up with for my situation. Many hours going through all of them, with special focus on Universal Access. I tried VoiceOver, Zoom, etc., and determined Zoom could work for me in combination with white-on-black on my 24 inch iMac at 1920 x 1200 resolution with an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card. Then I documented that set of preferences by using Preview > File > Take Screen Shot > From Window to take a snapshot of each preference pane and putting that set of snapshots in a folder for my reference and disaster recovery. If Zoom didn?t work, I would have had to bite the bullet and learned VoiceOver thoroughly.
No thanks for Linux for now. It would require more effort from me to optimize than I wish to do, and I would be lost for a long time.
As for text-to-speech, in Snow Leopard (that where I am at), go to System Preferences > Speech and select the Text-To-Speech pane and you will find ?System Voice?. The default is ?Alex? because that is the latest and greatest available from Apple. There are female voices available ? they are voices from the past so to speak. I agree, it would be nice to have a new female voice of ?Alex? quality. It would cost Apple a bundle to develop the new voice, right? You do not get to make that decision. Bertrand Serlet, Senior Vice-President of Software Engineering has that authority.
So, when you go to TextEdit > Edit > Start Speaking, the voice will be ?Alex? just as in VoiceOver. If a file is in PDF format, then Preview > Edit > Speech > Start Speaking will do the trick.
I have some ?Take Control? e-books from TidBits. They are in the PDF format I mentioned above. One that I have is Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal?. But first, try an on-hand PDF available to you to see if an e-book would be workable for you. Here is the link.
With regard to the 24 inch iMac, or mine at 20 inch, the resolution is too small. Zoom just won't work unless I can get a new brain. What I would like is a 24 inch screen running at 1366 x 768. Like I mentioned before, a TV. Maybe just running a mini with a VGA adapter is enough. Rumor is, the mini will see the TV as a TV, and bring up the proper resolution. The older I get, the more troubles I have. I will not be able to use another iMac ever again. I should get rid of this one now, but can't afford to do so.
I use the right-click feature all the time, for Start Speaking. I especially use it here. I have to.
My text to speech post belonged there, since 10.7 could have some advancements to the quality. When you turn it on, a small circle shows up on your desktop. By default, pressing ESC will enable you to talk to your Mac. Unless things are better in SL, it isn't worth using.
Some people think your iMac has a better screen than mine. I have the first aluminum one from late 2007. As for a 20" @ 1050 or a 24" @ 1200, there is very little difference for me. Just for giggles, I switched my screen to 840 x 524. Perfect, except everything is jagged. That is also what I get, but not as bad, with zoom. Another point of reference. If I use CMD and + 3 times, I get a decent zoom of text in Safari. I am not sure why that does not get out of focus like the zoom feature does. Again, it might just be all in MY head.
Truth is, I should pitch my LCD iMac and buy a couple of eMacs. With a 17" CRT, I would use 800 x 600.
With regard to the 24 inch iMac, or mine at 20 inch, the resolution is too small. Zoom just won't work unless I can get a new brain. What I would like is a 24 inch screen running at 1366 x 768. Like I mentioned before, a TV. Maybe just running a mini with a VGA adapter is enough. Rumor is, the mini will see the TV as a TV, and bring up the proper resolution. The older I get, the more troubles I have. I will not be able to use another iMac ever again. I should get rid of this one now, but can't afford to do so.
I use the right-click feature all the time, for Start Speaking. I especially use it here. I have to.
My text to speech post belonged there, since 10.7 could have some advancements to the quality. When you turn it on, a small circle shows up on your desktop. By default, pressing ESC will enable you to talk to your Mac. Unless things are better in SL, it isn't worth using.
Some people think your iMac has a better screen than mine. I have the first aluminum one from late 2007. As for a 20" @ 1050 or a 24" @ 1200, there is very little difference for me. Just for giggles, I switched my screen to 840 x 524. Perfect, except everything is jagged. That is also what I get, but not as bad, with zoom. Another point of reference. If I use CMD and + 3 times, I get a decent zoom of text in Safari. I am not sure why that does not get out of focus like the zoom feature does. Again, it might just be all in MY head.
Truth is, I should pitch my LCD iMac and buy a couple of eMacs. With a 17" CRT, I would use 800 x 600.
Thanks Bert for all the posts and information!!!
You know best what works for you. I don't quite get the significance of 1366 x 768. The closest I can come is 1344 x 840. Zoom works OK, but on my iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card, zooming up can get into huge fonts, but eventually a blurring starts to occur. My mouse pointer will start showing jags, but then again, my mouse pointer is magnified beyond the current zoom.
With regard to Safari, I just opened a new Safari window, and tried Command + to the maximum. You are right, no blurring occurs within the Safari window even though it is on top of my current Zoom. So, this is how you read the AI posts!
OK buster, here is some additional stuff for you. On the link below is some Apple bragging about Safari 4 rendering 'beautiful fonts and graphics'. This probably has to do with the WebKit rendering engine behind the Safari application.
I don't use the larger fonts to read the posts here. I simply struggle with the native resolution. With my vision, everything is a little blurry. Probably the nystagmus. My reference to 1366 x 768 is the resolution for 720 television. TVs, and the latest iMac, are 16:9 ratio widescreen. We still have 16:10. Good old CRT TV was 4:3. That is how we can have old resolutions like 800 x 600. Safari, and many other browsers, now allow you to zoom the text only. As always, thanks for the links and info.
I don't use the larger fonts to read the posts here. I simply struggle with the native resolution. With my vision, everything is a little blurry. Probably the nystagmus. My reference to 1366 x 768 is the resolution for 720 television. TVs, and the latest iMac, are 16:9 ratio widescreen. We still have 16:10. Good old CRT TV was 4:3. That is how we can have old resolutions like 800 x 600. Safari, and many other browsers, now allow you to zoom the text only. As always, thanks for the links and info.
OK. So, even great rendering is not going to completely do the trick.
Just to go off on a tangent, Automator has a text-to-audio action. It will take text input and translate it into an audio file. Check it out.
You can also run a short cable from the audio out, to the audio in with your Mac. Then you could record anything you want, just won't be able to listen at the same time. On the other hand, Audio Hijack Pro will allow recording from individual applications.
My current TVs are CRT. Otherwise, I'd try hooking my iMac to the VGA port on something new. In theory, us low vision folks could pick our resolution 720 or 1080 (native) and then pick the TV size that fits our needs. While all new TVs better have HDMI, some will have DVI, and almost all will have VGA. The plus to HDMI, is picture and sound are all in one cable.
Apple TV has HDMI, but like the iPad, it isn't a computer.
My current TVs are CRT. Otherwise, I'd try hooking my iMac to the VGA port on something new. In theory, us low vision folks could pick our resolution 720 or 1080 (native) and then pick the TV size that fits our needs. While all new TVs better have HDMI, some will have DVI, and almost all will have VGA. The plus to HDMI, is picture and sound are all in one cable..
You can get a DVI to HDMI converter -- they sell them at the Apple store (where I got mine). It works okay -- I can watch iTunes and NetFlix streamson my TV. Even at 1080i, there are bits that fall off the screen.
Unfortunately, the audio is a separate connection.
Thanks Jason. If I had a TV connected to a Mac, it would have to work better than okay. It seems foolish to use a Mini DVI to DVI adapter, then a DVI to HDMI adapter. This is one of many things that bugs me about Apple. They indeed must be different. More and more, PCs are including HDMI, even netbooks/notebooks. It is silly for Apple to require not one, but two adapters. Are you using a mini?
Something is wrong when your short-cut keys are grayed out when in Zoom. Try posing this question in http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa You'll need to join this Apple forum.
Under the heading 'Mac OS X and related software', you can select on Leopard. Then you can select on 'Universal Access and VoiceOver'. Submit a question regarding your problem of grayed out short-cut keys when Zoom is activated.
I was doing some searching, and came across a discussion of Apple not varying from 72 dpi whereas in Windows and Ubuntu you can. What I saying here is that people on the Apple discussion forum are focused on helping each other out. Take advantage of that.
As for dealing with a small section of the desktop when in Zoom, what I do is to use the Zoom option to move the image continuously with the pointer. My dock is on the left, and the upper left corner of the desktop is my 'home' area from which I venture out.
Whenever I can, I will put an icon on the top menu bar just to the left of the date and time on the upper right corner. You can do this at the bottom of certain preference panes when there is a checkbox for that option. Here is what I have: Spaces, Scripts, Universal Access, Display, Time Machine, Bluetooth, Airport, and Keyboard. Then I can access those pull-downs, and remove any duplication in the dock to shorten it for other applications. In other words, Time Machine is on the menu bar, and not in the dock.
Then, on the right side of the desktop are my temporary items that I have in the Desktop folder. With Finder in the menu bar after Apple, go to View, go to bottom of the View pull-down, select View Options, and then Name. This will cause your desktop items to always be in alphabetical order, starting on the top right, and working down.
To re-interate, left is the dock, menu bar has many icons as possible, right is for temporary items. Another way of simplifying the desktop is to use Spaces ? namely virtual desktops. Space 1 is Mail, 2 is Safari, etc. An advantage of Snow Leopard is the re-written Finder application. The windows remember their positions between sessions, so this reduces the need for me to hunt down a window.
Thanks Bert! I have used the Apple forum before. That is where I found out the mini hooked to a TV with HDMI is a hit and miss situation. They seem very helpful. I don't use zoom that much, and normally just use the scroll wheel on my mouse. I moved it to work with the CMD key. I have nothing on my desktop but the photo. My dock is in the auto-hide mode and off to the right. Only three items are in the dock. Naturally Finder and Trash. Then my Applications folder. When I click on it, everything fans out onto the screen, and I pick what I want. I believe Snow Leopard handles that function differently. The way I'm set up, I get full top to bottom access of my screen. I use Safari the most, and it seldom occupies more than 2/3 of my screen. I could increase the Safari fonts five times, just tried it, and still not fill the screen horizontally. While zoom works, it isn't natural. Part of the problem is not being able to change screen resolutions at will, as we could in the CRT days. I ran my 15 inch iMac G3 in the 640 x 480 mode. By default it is 800 x 600. For that I'd need a 17 inch eMac. By the way, I do have smoothing enabled with zoom. Turning it off makes for jaggies. Turning it on makes for a softened/blurry look. I have to sit about 12 inches from the screen. So I have a more intimate relationship with them there pixels, doncha know. While moving around the screen continuously with the pointer works the best, it could induce nausea. I almost never have more than one app running at the same time. I do like my solitaire and play music at the same time. They never get in each others space.
?I have used the Apple forum before. That is where I found out the mini hooked to a TV with HDMI is a hit and miss situation. They seem very helpful?
Interesting stuff. Let me say some more regarding the Finder application, which in fact, displays the desktop for users. In Snow Leopard, it was finally re-written, meaning it was ported from the older procedural language approach of Carbon to the object-oriented approach of Cocoa. With this under-the-hood work, Apple pretty much retained the same function set. I hazard a guess that Mac OS 10.7 will shift back to the user as the focus of Finder development. You read a lot complaints about the need to upgrade the user interface, or, "take it to the next level!" Maybe that will happen, and you could gain or lose by that change. So, stay tuned to the Apple World Wide Developers Conference, probably this June. It is possible that new information will be released into the public domain about Mac OS 10.7.
But then again, there may a break for you in Windows or Ubuntu in the future.
A frustration I have is with the Time Machine interface. Zoom does not work there, so I have to re-set the display to a lower resolution, etc. I have a file that documents the best resolution, fonts, etc., that I could come up with. It is helpful to keep notes of good techniques or special situations.
I haven't used Time Machine. It does sound like you would not be able to use Mac OS if not for zoom and reverse image. Perhaps Apple needs to realize some people simply cannot use (enjoy) Mac OS without further enhancements. Mom has a 17" CRT. To increase the real estate for spreadsheets, my brother changed it from 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768. Text was too small. So the font size is now running at 125%. My brother has a 20" screen same resolution as mine. Matte finish, I believe. He too has to change the font size to 125%. These are two people with rather normal vision. I am not just after Apple on this. A lot of individuals need a better way to look at the screen. Since it doesn't seem possible to effectively modify the screen resolution, something else is gonna have to give. I was okay with my iMac 2 years ago, when it was new. That was then, and my vision is a little different. Now, I regret having ever switched to an LCD monitor. I don't normally pay any attention to the WWDC, but I will be interested to see if Apple addresses any of this. In the videos, it appears the iPad can zoom without any distortion. Same is probably true for iPhone/iPod Touch. A PDF can scale in size and stay crisp. Why is that?
I haven't used Time Machine. It does sound like you would not be able to use Mac OS if not for zoom and reverse image. Perhaps Apple needs to realize some people simply cannot use (enjoy) Mac OS without further enhancements. Mom has a 17" CRT. To increase the real estate for spreadsheets, my brother changed it from 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768. Text was too small. So the font size is now running at 125%. My brother has a 20" screen same resolution as mine. Matte finish, I believe. He too has to change the font size to 125%. These are two people with rather normal vision. I am not just after Apple on this. A lot of individuals need a better way to look at the screen. Since it doesn't seem possible to effectively modify the screen resolution, something else is gonna have to give. I was okay with my iMac 2 years ago, when it was new. That was then, and my vision is a little different. Now, I regret having ever switched to an LCD monitor. I don't normally pay any attention to the WWDC, but I will be interested to see if Apple addresses any of this. In the videos, it appears the iPad can zoom without any distortion. Same is probably true for iPhone/iPod Touch. A PDF can scale in size and stay crisp. Why is that?
Good questions and observations. You can do the research and so can I. I don't take the attitude that any vendor will cater to a small minority. I respect good software engineers because I have been on the inside of software development looking out. Our best offense is good information. I go through hoops to use Time Machine because I consider it important to backup your data.
I did some checking on the Mac OS Speakable Items. You can create new ones via the Speech > Speech Recognition. Or you can use AppleScript. Here is a link:
The Mac OS Speakable Items is really old; back before Mac OS X. I guess that it would have been called 'Speech Recognition' at that time.
I can get the Mac OS X Speech Recognition to work but my hit rate is very low because my own speech is not up to the regular folks standard. What would be great is to able to record your voice command as a sound pattern to a audio file, associate that audio file with a set of keyboard key and/or mouse click sequences, or an AppleScript. and that the Mac OS X would have a component to do a lazy comparison (some tolerance for your own spoken variations) between your command spoken to an internal or external microphone and your pre-recorded audio file. Then, the voice command recognition should be very high.
I know by repute that Naturally Speaking, and I presume MacSpeech, have 'trainable' speech recognition engines. But that is for dictation into the computer, and maybe more. I don't know if these products have the capability to to associate a so-called voice command to an action in an OS. I still believe that speech recognition technology remains immature.
You are right Bert. I have not used transit in San Francisco, but Muni buses have two voices to make announcements. One male and one female. Understanding what they are saying is much easier, because it isn't a human, but a synthesized voice. Some transit drivers, and microphone situations, can make a huge mess out of announcements.
Somewhere, I found a freeware program that replicates a radio station cart machine. You could assign various audio snippets to a hand full of buttons.
Your situation, like mine, is sort of unique. Guess we can't expect Apple to fix it, can we. For your speech recognition situation, you could use Alex to speak for you. Instead of using the VoiceOver keys, you could use CMD/ALT + letter keys to trigger voice commands.
?you could use CMD/ALT + letter keys to trigger voice commands.
I didn't understand the point you made about CMD/ALT + letter to trigger voice commands. Please elaborate.
I would say you are more hearing orientated to interact with the computer because you are dealing with a blur. I can achieve readability visually by Zoom. What is your hit rate using Speech > Speech Recognition?
If it is reasonable with a internal microphone, maybe you could improve it with an external microphone. I was looking at System Preferences > Speech with the Speech Recognition pane displayed, and clicked on 'Helpful Tips' in the lower right. That will bring up a 'Tips for Success with Spoken Commands' pane. In the lower left of that pane is a question mark. Click on the question mark, and you will get another panel titled 'About Speech Recognition'. On that pane is info about external microphones and a link to the Apple Store that would have compatible external microphones. This is just an idea for you to consider.
If you got a high hit rate with spoken commands, then you could follow-up with creating your own 'Speakable Items' to execute keyboard key sequences or AppleScript.
Comments
The purpose of this thread is to exchange ideas regarding visual impairment on the Mac platform.
This discussion originated in the thread labeled '10.7 Predictions'. See posts 49 to 56.
WPLJ42, here are some stuff from experimentation I did with VoiceOver in the past.
Have you tried the caption panel? I dragged a caption panel to the bottom of my screen (the dock is on the left of the screen). I made the font huge in size. For example, in the VoiceOver Utility, select on Visuals, then the Caption Panel pane. Check the ?Show Caption Panel? checkbox. For myself, I had the ?Caption Panel Font Size? slider set to 7 units up from ?Small? I see that I have the ?Caption Panel Transparency? set to 75%. Play with those parameters to see if you can make use of the Caption Panel. You can Zoom on top of that to get truly giant fonts. I find that white-on-black or black-on-white must be toggled before VoiceOver is activated. Zoom will work after VoiceOver activation.
Have you tried the above in combination with Tile Visuals? Control Option F10 to toggle on and off for Tile Visuals and Control Option Command F10 to toggle Caption Panel on and off. I am quite rusty on VoiceOver, so I re-checked how to control magnification on Tile Visuals. In the VoiceOver Utility, select Visuals, then the VoiceOver Cursor pane. I have the ?Show VoiceOver Cursor? checkbox unchecked. I was able to control the size of Tile Visuals via the ?VoiceOver Cursor Magnification? I had the slider at 50%. For the ?When reading text, move VoiceOver Cursor by?, the following multiple select box has 'Word'. Play with the cursor magnification. Again, you can Zoom on top of this set-up of VoiceOver.
On another front, are you familiar with ?Mouse Locator?? It puts a bulls-eye target around the mouse pointer. Software is free. There are a number of options to try out, and it will work in conjunction with a magnified pointer
http://www.2point5fish.com/
http://www.naturalreaders.com/
Hopefully, no one will complain that you have done this. I'm sure there are plenty of VI folks who want to share their ideas AND all the other things that AI has to offer. I don't always get along with other here, but it is still a VERY GOOD forum!
Thanks for the information Bert. I have not tinkered with VoiceOver in a long time. I am familiar with the ability to put the text on the screen. Kind of like closed captioning. Just like it if you turn off the speech. Thank you so much for the link to the mouse pointer. Have it installed and it works nice. Here is one for you:
http://www.naturalreaders.com/
Hopefully, no one will complain that you have done this. I'm sure there are plenty of VI folks who want to share their ideas AND all the other things that AI has to offer. I don't always get along with other here, but it is still a VERY GOOD forum!
I am not selling anything, so this thread should be OK. I have noticed that other AI posters use Zoom. If no one is interested, then this thread will fade out, and that is not a problem for me.
I came across the following info on the iPad from a review by Andy Ihnatko:
- Zoom
- white-on-black and black-on-white
- VoiceOver
- captions for the hearing impaired
So, maybe the iPad could be useful from an accessibility standpoint.A number of reviews are popping up for the iPad. Apparently found its way to the Grammy's last night. Go Steve Go. At a base of $499, I'd rather have a Windows/Ubuntu notebook. Chances are, what I would want would cost more like a MacBook. I almost bought one, but could not see the screen. So I ended up with this 20 inch iMac. Steve Jobs claims the majority of sales are portable. Until I can see a MacBook screen, it is out of the question. Don't want an iPod of any kind. iPad falls short of being a good investment for me.
Right. That is exactly why I have a 24 inch iMac (mid 07) with 1920 by 1200 resolution. The graphic card is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. And yes, try the computer at a store before you buy.
No thanks for Linux for now. It would require more effort from me to optimize than I wish to do, and I would be lost for a long time.
As for text-to-speech, in Snow Leopard (that where I am at), go to System Preferences > Speech and select the Text-To-Speech pane and you will find ?System Voice?. The default is ?Alex? because that is the latest and greatest available from Apple. There are female voices available ? they are voices from the past so to speak. I agree, it would be nice to have a new female voice of ?Alex? quality. It would cost Apple a bundle to develop the new voice, right? You do not get to make that decision. Bertrand Serlet, Senior Vice-President of Software Engineering has that authority.
So, when you go to TextEdit > Edit > Start Speaking, the voice will be ?Alex? just as in VoiceOver. If a file is in PDF format, then Preview > Edit > Speech > Start Speaking will do the trick.
I have some ?Take Control? e-books from TidBits. They are in the PDF format I mentioned above. One that I have is Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal?. But first, try an on-hand PDF available to you to see if an e-book would be workable for you. Here is the link.
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/catalog
I use the right-click feature all the time, for Start Speaking. I especially use it here. I have to.
My text to speech post belonged there, since 10.7 could have some advancements to the quality. When you turn it on, a small circle shows up on your desktop. By default, pressing ESC will enable you to talk to your Mac. Unless things are better in SL, it isn't worth using.
Some people think your iMac has a better screen than mine. I have the first aluminum one from late 2007. As for a 20" @ 1050 or a 24" @ 1200, there is very little difference for me. Just for giggles, I switched my screen to 840 x 524. Perfect, except everything is jagged. That is also what I get, but not as bad, with zoom. Another point of reference. If I use CMD and + 3 times, I get a decent zoom of text in Safari. I am not sure why that does not get out of focus like the zoom feature does. Again, it might just be all in MY head.
Truth is, I should pitch my LCD iMac and buy a couple of eMacs. With a 17" CRT, I would use 800 x 600.
Thanks Bert for all the posts and information!!!
With regard to the 24 inch iMac, or mine at 20 inch, the resolution is too small. Zoom just won't work unless I can get a new brain. What I would like is a 24 inch screen running at 1366 x 768. Like I mentioned before, a TV. Maybe just running a mini with a VGA adapter is enough. Rumor is, the mini will see the TV as a TV, and bring up the proper resolution. The older I get, the more troubles I have. I will not be able to use another iMac ever again. I should get rid of this one now, but can't afford to do so.
I use the right-click feature all the time, for Start Speaking. I especially use it here. I have to.
My text to speech post belonged there, since 10.7 could have some advancements to the quality. When you turn it on, a small circle shows up on your desktop. By default, pressing ESC will enable you to talk to your Mac. Unless things are better in SL, it isn't worth using.
Some people think your iMac has a better screen than mine. I have the first aluminum one from late 2007. As for a 20" @ 1050 or a 24" @ 1200, there is very little difference for me. Just for giggles, I switched my screen to 840 x 524. Perfect, except everything is jagged. That is also what I get, but not as bad, with zoom. Another point of reference. If I use CMD and + 3 times, I get a decent zoom of text in Safari. I am not sure why that does not get out of focus like the zoom feature does. Again, it might just be all in MY head.
Truth is, I should pitch my LCD iMac and buy a couple of eMacs. With a 17" CRT, I would use 800 x 600.
Thanks Bert for all the posts and information!!!
You know best what works for you. I don't quite get the significance of 1366 x 768. The closest I can come is 1344 x 840. Zoom works OK, but on my iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card, zooming up can get into huge fonts, but eventually a blurring starts to occur. My mouse pointer will start showing jags, but then again, my mouse pointer is magnified beyond the current zoom.
With regard to Safari, I just opened a new Safari window, and tried Command + to the maximum. You are right, no blurring occurs within the Safari window even though it is on top of my current Zoom. So, this is how you read the AI posts!
OK buster, here is some additional stuff for you. On the link below is some Apple bragging about Safari 4 rendering 'beautiful fonts and graphics'. This probably has to do with the WebKit rendering engine behind the Safari application.
http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html#graphics
Chew on that. And also chew on the Surfing Safari blog:
http://webkit.org/blog/
I don't use the larger fonts to read the posts here. I simply struggle with the native resolution. With my vision, everything is a little blurry. Probably the nystagmus. My reference to 1366 x 768 is the resolution for 720 television. TVs, and the latest iMac, are 16:9 ratio widescreen. We still have 16:10. Good old CRT TV was 4:3. That is how we can have old resolutions like 800 x 600. Safari, and many other browsers, now allow you to zoom the text only. As always, thanks for the links and info.
OK. So, even great rendering is not going to completely do the trick.
Just to go off on a tangent, Automator has a text-to-audio action. It will take text input and translate it into an audio file. Check it out.
My current TVs are CRT. Otherwise, I'd try hooking my iMac to the VGA port on something new. In theory, us low vision folks could pick our resolution 720 or 1080 (native) and then pick the TV size that fits our needs. While all new TVs better have HDMI, some will have DVI, and almost all will have VGA. The plus to HDMI, is picture and sound are all in one cable.
Apple TV has HDMI, but like the iPad, it isn't a computer.
My current TVs are CRT. Otherwise, I'd try hooking my iMac to the VGA port on something new. In theory, us low vision folks could pick our resolution 720 or 1080 (native) and then pick the TV size that fits our needs. While all new TVs better have HDMI, some will have DVI, and almost all will have VGA. The plus to HDMI, is picture and sound are all in one cable..
You can get a DVI to HDMI converter -- they sell them at the Apple store (where I got mine). It works okay -- I can watch iTunes and NetFlix streamson my TV. Even at 1080i, there are bits that fall off the screen.
Unfortunately, the audio is a separate connection.
Something is wrong when your short-cut keys are grayed out when in Zoom. Try posing this question in http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa You'll need to join this Apple forum.
Under the heading 'Mac OS X and related software', you can select on Leopard. Then you can select on 'Universal Access and VoiceOver'. Submit a question regarding your problem of grayed out short-cut keys when Zoom is activated.
I was doing some searching, and came across a discussion of Apple not varying from 72 dpi whereas in Windows and Ubuntu you can. What I saying here is that people on the Apple discussion forum are focused on helping each other out. Take advantage of that.
As for dealing with a small section of the desktop when in Zoom, what I do is to use the Zoom option to move the image continuously with the pointer. My dock is on the left, and the upper left corner of the desktop is my 'home' area from which I venture out.
Whenever I can, I will put an icon on the top menu bar just to the left of the date and time on the upper right corner. You can do this at the bottom of certain preference panes when there is a checkbox for that option. Here is what I have: Spaces, Scripts, Universal Access, Display, Time Machine, Bluetooth, Airport, and Keyboard. Then I can access those pull-downs, and remove any duplication in the dock to shorten it for other applications. In other words, Time Machine is on the menu bar, and not in the dock.
Then, on the right side of the desktop are my temporary items that I have in the Desktop folder. With Finder in the menu bar after Apple, go to View, go to bottom of the View pull-down, select View Options, and then Name. This will cause your desktop items to always be in alphabetical order, starting on the top right, and working down.
To re-interate, left is the dock, menu bar has many icons as possible, right is for temporary items. Another way of simplifying the desktop is to use Spaces ? namely virtual desktops. Space 1 is Mail, 2 is Safari, etc. An advantage of Snow Leopard is the re-written Finder application. The windows remember their positions between sessions, so this reduces the need for me to hunt down a window.
?I have used the Apple forum before. That is where I found out the mini hooked to a TV with HDMI is a hit and miss situation. They seem very helpful?
Interesting stuff. Let me say some more regarding the Finder application, which in fact, displays the desktop for users. In Snow Leopard, it was finally re-written, meaning it was ported from the older procedural language approach of Carbon to the object-oriented approach of Cocoa. With this under-the-hood work, Apple pretty much retained the same function set. I hazard a guess that Mac OS 10.7 will shift back to the user as the focus of Finder development. You read a lot complaints about the need to upgrade the user interface, or, "take it to the next level!" Maybe that will happen, and you could gain or lose by that change. So, stay tuned to the Apple World Wide Developers Conference, probably this June. It is possible that new information will be released into the public domain about Mac OS 10.7.
But then again, there may a break for you in Windows or Ubuntu in the future.
A frustration I have is with the Time Machine interface. Zoom does not work there, so I have to re-set the display to a lower resolution, etc. I have a file that documents the best resolution, fonts, etc., that I could come up with. It is helpful to keep notes of good techniques or special situations.
I haven't used Time Machine. It does sound like you would not be able to use Mac OS if not for zoom and reverse image. Perhaps Apple needs to realize some people simply cannot use (enjoy) Mac OS without further enhancements. Mom has a 17" CRT. To increase the real estate for spreadsheets, my brother changed it from 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768. Text was too small. So the font size is now running at 125%. My brother has a 20" screen same resolution as mine. Matte finish, I believe. He too has to change the font size to 125%. These are two people with rather normal vision. I am not just after Apple on this. A lot of individuals need a better way to look at the screen. Since it doesn't seem possible to effectively modify the screen resolution, something else is gonna have to give. I was okay with my iMac 2 years ago, when it was new. That was then, and my vision is a little different. Now, I regret having ever switched to an LCD monitor. I don't normally pay any attention to the WWDC, but I will be interested to see if Apple addresses any of this. In the videos, it appears the iPad can zoom without any distortion. Same is probably true for iPhone/iPod Touch. A PDF can scale in size and stay crisp. Why is that?
Good questions and observations. You can do the research and so can I. I don't take the attitude that any vendor will cater to a small minority. I respect good software engineers because I have been on the inside of software development looking out. Our best offense is good information. I go through hoops to use Time Machine because I consider it important to backup your data.
I did some checking on the Mac OS Speakable Items. You can create new ones via the Speech > Speech Recognition. Or you can use AppleScript. Here is a link:
http://www.mactipper.com/2008/05/mak...ble-items.html
Here is a Wikipedia link on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakable_items
The Mac OS Speakable Items is really old; back before Mac OS X. I guess that it would have been called 'Speech Recognition' at that time.
I can get the Mac OS X Speech Recognition to work but my hit rate is very low because my own speech is not up to the regular folks standard. What would be great is to able to record your voice command as a sound pattern to a audio file, associate that audio file with a set of keyboard key and/or mouse click sequences, or an AppleScript. and that the Mac OS X would have a component to do a lazy comparison (some tolerance for your own spoken variations) between your command spoken to an internal or external microphone and your pre-recorded audio file. Then, the voice command recognition should be very high.
I know by repute that Naturally Speaking, and I presume MacSpeech, have 'trainable' speech recognition engines. But that is for dictation into the computer, and maybe more. I don't know if these products have the capability to to associate a so-called voice command to an action in an OS. I still believe that speech recognition technology remains immature.
Right now, I am focused elsewhere.
Somewhere, I found a freeware program that replicates a radio station cart machine. You could assign various audio snippets to a hand full of buttons.
Your situation, like mine, is sort of unique. Guess we can't expect Apple to fix it, can we. For your speech recognition situation, you could use Alex to speak for you. Instead of using the VoiceOver keys, you could use CMD/ALT + letter keys to trigger voice commands.
?you could use CMD/ALT + letter keys to trigger voice commands.
I didn't understand the point you made about CMD/ALT + letter to trigger voice commands. Please elaborate.
I would say you are more hearing orientated to interact with the computer because you are dealing with a blur. I can achieve readability visually by Zoom. What is your hit rate using Speech > Speech Recognition?
If it is reasonable with a internal microphone, maybe you could improve it with an external microphone. I was looking at System Preferences > Speech with the Speech Recognition pane displayed, and clicked on 'Helpful Tips' in the lower right. That will bring up a 'Tips for Success with Spoken Commands' pane. In the lower left of that pane is a question mark. Click on the question mark, and you will get another panel titled 'About Speech Recognition'. On that pane is info about external microphones and a link to the Apple Store that would have compatible external microphones. This is just an idea for you to consider.
If you got a high hit rate with spoken commands, then you could follow-up with creating your own 'Speakable Items' to execute keyboard key sequences or AppleScript.