Help! I’m a blind Mac user in search of accessibility assistance with Apple’s Yosemite OS X.
I can’t be the only one shouting those words into cyberspace, can I?At the urging of the hubs, I upgraded the operating system on my Macbook last week to Yosemite, also known as OS X. While software upgrades are intended to make user experiences more efficient, they also often come with frustrating learning curves. This is especially true for the blind user, as so much of today’s technological innovations are focused on vamping up visuals. Sure, this is awesome for sighted users, but what about the rest of us blind folk?My recent OS upgrade has put me in such a sour mood lately that I’m inclined to believe Yosemite was named after Yosemite Sam, the raging red-bearded cartoon tyrant of the Wild West (pictured below) because that’s exactly how I feel about the latest OS X.But I’ve only been running Yosemite for less than a week, so I hope to conquer these frustrations in another week or so. Some of my grievances included:
1. Not being able to save email attachments
Or maybe more accurately, not being able to locate these saved attachments. I used to manually select where I wanted to save an attachment, but after the upgrade, I couldn’t find them in the folder I thought I’d designated. I’ve also looked in the Downloads folder to no avail. It turns out you have to open the email instead of just highlighting it in the message table before saving the attachment. The problem lies in the fact that the “Save attachments…” command under the File menu is not deactivated when in the message table so that you can’t select the option. This is confusing for the user. Apple needs to dim the “Save attachments…” so that it’s not selectable. And while I’m ranting about Mail, what happened to the airplane sound effect that plays every time I send off an email? I miss that familiar little detail that signaled my email had successfully shot off into the ether.
2. Calendar events not being automatically read when I tab through
In the old OS, when I tabbed through the calendar events, VoiceOver would read aloud the event title. In Yosemite, I only got the words “blank text.” Someone on Twitter led me to a message board where I found changing the VoiceOver verbosity from low to medium solved this issue, but now Alex talks a lot more than I’d like him to. I know there are custom settings for VoiceOver verbosity, but figuring what all those mean is time consuming.
3. Screwy navigation
This is a given with every upgrade, whether just for a single app or an entire OS. I admit, I’m not entirely fluent in VoiceOver commands yet (yes, I know I’ve been using Mac products for over seven years—I just never took the time), and moreover, like any person getting along in age, I like things the way they were. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.We live in a world where technology is crucial, and our success frequently depends on the mastery of it. After asking around, I discovered the below online resources for blind Apple users. What a breath of fresh air to know I’m not alone in the dark (nyuk nyuk).
- AppleVis empowers blind and low-vision users of Apple products and their related applications.
- Maccessibility provides news & commentary, podcasts, and online communities to low and no vision users of Apple products.
- MacForTheBlind is a place for visually impaired people who use Apple products and services.
