[access-uk] Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: new iOS-style Accessibility

From: Gordon Keen <gordonkeen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:02:40 +0100

They keep on improving, long may it continue.

I'm looking forward to getting the mountain lion upgrade when it is released.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/18/inside_os_x_108_mountain_lion_gm_new_ios_style_accessibility.html

Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: new iOS-style Accessibility

By Daniel Eran Dilger

Published: 07:32 AM EST (04:32 AM PST)
In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple is radically improving the layout of Universal
Access features for users who are sight, hearing or motor impaired, and
changing the name of its portfolio of features to match iOS: "Accessibility."

Apple has long been associated with making technology easy to use, and a
significant part of that commitment has applied to users with special
challenges in seeing, hearing or physically interacting with the company's
devices.

The company pioneered many early concepts to help disabled users gain expanded
access to computers, including features such as Mouse Keys and Sticky Keys on
the original Macintosh.

In OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple added a spoken interface called VoiceOver, which
built a screen reader (previously an expensive third party option) into the
operating system to allow sight impaired users to navigate windows and menus
via auditory cues. VoiceOver has since been incorporated into iOS for use on
Apple's mobile devices, as well as on the iPod Shuffle.

In 10.5 Leopard, Apple added the advanced Alex voice to make VoiceOver even
more useful, and it has further expanded its voice selection since, using
RealSpeak voices licensed from Nuance. VoiceOver currently supports over 30
different languages and dialects.

Along with VoiceOver, screen zoom, contrast, cursor size and related features
for making the desktop easier to use by people with visual impairments are
currently squashed, "Panther Era style," into the Seeing tab of the Universal
Access preferences pane (below). Other tabs contain Hearing, Keyboard features
and Mouse and Trackpad options related to accessibility.

In Mountain Lion, these features are given a facelift for the new Accessibility
pref pane, which presents a more modern looking, graphical menu of options
related to the Display, Zoom, VoiceOver, Audio, Keyboard and Mouse & Trackpad
(shown below).

The new pane also presents the Speakable Items section that has been removed
from the Speech pref pane to make way for Dictation features. Once referred to
as "Speech Recognition," the Speakable Items features are now most applicable
to users who rely on them for accessibility features.

This revamping of the user interface isn't the only new accessibility feature
in Mountain Lion; Apple says it is adding support for 14 new braille displays
(on top of the 40 USB and wireless devices Apple already supports out of the
box), and Mountain Lion's VoiceOver now supports press and hold buttons,
dragging items to hotspots, and drag and drop modifier keys (such as Command
and Option). The Accessibility pane also now has a universal keyboard shortcut:
Option+F5.

Late last year, blind-from-birth musician Stevie Wonder praised Apple for its
pioneering efforts in making its devices accessible to users with disabilities.
"I want you all to give a hand to someone that you know whose health is very
bad at this time," Stevie Wonder said to his audience. "His company took the
challenge in making his technology accessible to everyone. In the spirit of
caring and moving the world forward, Steve Jobs."

[access-uk] Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: new iOS-style Accessibility

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