Mac Apps

We are pleased and excited to announce that voting for the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards of 2014 is now open.

This is our community’s opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous work by developers over the past 12 months in creating great and accessible iOS and OS X applications.

The shortlist for each Award has been compiled from the nominations that were submitted by members of our community.

Discord is a discussion forum tool that connects a network of participants. Discussions are grouped by servers that you create, so the topics and membership are up to you. My writing group recently decided to start using Discord as a replacement for discussing by email, which had become impractical.

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Update 29 October 2019: the macOS 10.15.1 release appears to have resolved the problem of not being able to interact with the preference windows of Catalyst apps when running VoiceOver.

In my early tests I have been able to access and configure settings in all three Catalyst apps which previously exhibited the problematic behaviour described in the post below.

It's great news that Apple appears to be making changes to the underlying app conversion process that should address some accessibility issues without developers needing to do anything.

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), and to mark this we are urging everybody to use it as an opportunity to reach out to iOS and OS X developers - to either encourage them to make their applications accessible and usable by the vision-impaired; or to show your appreciation for applications which already are.

It was a Thursday morning, and I was teaching a seminar to first year undergraduate students. I divided the students into three groups, then sent each group into a separate room to spend fifteen minutes discussing the material. Ten minutes later, I was still in the main room. My usual practice was to visit each room in turn, to listen to the students' discussion, answer any questions, and prompt them if everyone was a little too quiet. On this occasion, however, I couldn't find the entrance to the rooms. I'd never had this problem before.

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In the Summer of 2011 I was preparing to return to college for the first time in over 20 years, and the first time ever as a blind student. I hoped to be able to use my 11 inch Macbook Air for all of my schoolwork, but lots of folks cautioned I would not be able to succeed without having access to MS Office and other Windows-based applications. While I had an intimate working knowledge of many Microsoft products from 20+ years spent in corporate IT, I only knew them from the perspective of a sighted person.

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), and we are asking everybody to use this as an opportunity to reach out to iOS and OS X developers - to either encourage them to make their applications accessible and usable by the vision-impaired; or to show your appreciation for applications which already are.

I was sitting in my office. The lease had expired, the air conditioner was broken, and a fly crawled across my arm. I slapped him with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game.

Someone knocked at the door.

“It’s open,” I said.

I heard a dog’s claws on my linoleum floor, then a lady in high heels. She smelled pretty as a rose, and her dress swayed like tall grass in a cool summer breeze. The dog led her to a chair. She sat.

“I’m lookin’ for somebody to help me find something,” she said.