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Mac-cessibility Quick Tip #24

13/June/2009 — ♣

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p>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

2/March/2009 — ♣

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

13/October/2008 — ♣

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 this week’s tip!

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

27/September/2008 — ♣

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 this week’s tip!

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.

1. Navigate to your iPod in the Sources table in iTunes 8.
2. Press Command-Return. VoiceOver will announce "Unknown".
3. 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.
4. Press Return.

That’s it! Enjoy your freshly renamed iPod. And, as always, listen without prejudice!

Thanks to Shane Jackson for the tip.