M12Y

 


How to install Dropbox on the Mac using VoiceOver

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The popular Cloud service Dropbox is a great way to back up important files, and keep those files in sync across multiple devices.  Unfortunately, installing the Dropbox client on the Mac using VoiceOver has been problematic at best.  When you open the Dropbox application, VoiceOver either sees nothing at all, or it sees Dropbox with no open windows.  There is in fact a completely accessible setup, but it appears to be hidden from VoiceOver when you open Dropbox in the normal manner.  Here’s how you get to it.

  1. First, make sure Dropbox isn’t already running.  One of the first things the setup program does is to place Dropbox in to your login items.  So even if you were unsuccessful installing it in the past, the app may be running.  Go in to Activity Monitor and look at the process table.  If there are any entries for dropbox, you can remove them by selecting “quit process” from the toolbar.
  2. Make sure you have the latest version of the Dropbox software in your Applications folder.  At the time of this writing, the latest version is 1.1.34.
  3. In the Finder, go to your Applications folder, select Dropbox, and press VO-Shift-m From the resulting context menu, select “view package contents”.
  4. A folder called Contents will appear.  Open it and select the MacOS folder.
  5. From here, you’ll find a file called Dropbox, that you need to open.  This is a unix executable file, and will open in the terminal.  You can ignore this terminal window for the time being.
  6. After a few seconds, the Dropbox setup will appear.  This setup dialog is self explanatory and completely accessible.  At some point during the setup, you may hear VoiceOver announce the presence of a new window.  This is an authentication dialog, where you must enter your admin password.  If focus does not shift to this window, you’ll have to use the VoiceOver window chooser to get there.

 

After you’ve completed the setup, Dropbox should be properly configured and working.  It’s worth noting that since you launched Dropbox from the terminal, that’s where it will be running.  So if you quit the terminal, Dropbox will quit as well.  Once you’ve done this, you can reopen it in the normal way, the way you would open any other Application.