High-functioning Apple workflows with peripheral vision loss

As far as I know there's no way to actualy make the text bigger, or at least it's not something i've learnt about.

Applevis is mostly completely blind users who use voiceover on their macs and Iphones.

Maybe r/blind might be useful, they even had a discord.

I have RP and used my Mac as a low-vision user before eventually requiring VoiceOver.

You can make things a little bit bigger on the Mac - there are a few display options but even the biggest one isn't that great, but obviously better than nothing. Many apps allow you to adjust their font size individually - things like Cmd with + and - usually increase and decrease the text, particularly in web browsers.

The mouse pointer can be made really big - this makes it a touch clumsy to use but I would recommend whacking that right up if you are forever losing the cursor like I was. This initially was made me fall for the Mac, believe it or not.

Obviously the magnification tool in the Mac is worth getting to grips with. I used to zoom in with, I think, option+mouse wheel and I was forever zooming in and out of the screen - it could make you a little sick if you were to really think about it but it was OK. There are likely better options than that.

Not strictly related to what you are saying, but I found light backgrounds intolerable. I switched the Mac to use the dark theme and installed Dark Reader in all my browsers. This extension turns all web sites dark. I then setup a shortcut to invert the Mac's colours for those times I found an app that didn't have a dark theme. This made a huge difference to me. I know there are other browser extensions to do this sort of thing so might be worth exploring.

If you are likely to need a screen reader in the future, I would start messing about with one as soon as possible. Even if you just turn on VoiceOver and get used to the constant noise without doing anything else it will help. To start with I found it incredibly intimidating and upsetting just to hear all that sound all the time, so giving yourself the space to get used to it before you need it is probably helpful. And then you can start playing about with it - use it for some things and build up from there. You could also dabble with Spoken Content on the Mac which will speak selected things to you without having to go the full fat VoiceOver approach. Or an even lighter way would be to use Microsoft Edge to speak web pages to you with those lovely natural voices. You can also do other things - if you listen to podcasts or use a smart speaker, try bumping up the speech rate a little to help get used to hearing things at a faster rate. Anything that gets you listening to information rather than reading it visually will help in the long run.

It took me a long time to get used to VoiceOver and I was glad I had put some effort in, but it was still a shock when I lost my last remaining sight and suddenly had to start depending on it, so the more you can do up front the better. It is quite complicated and buggy so getting some practice helps. I found text editing incredibly confusing and frustrating initially.

It might also be worth reviewing the apps you use on a day to day basis and make sure that their accessibility features meet what you need. For example, can you make things bigger, change the colours etc and do they work with VoiceOver. Start to use apps that will last you so that you don't have to suddenly learn new ones should your vision loss go that way.

In all cases, get used to keyboard shortcuts. If you have peripheral vision issues then this means you can do things without looking for toolbars or menus or whatever. The Mac menu bar is great because it usually lists the shortcuts there. If you find yourself routinely doing something with the mouse then try to bit by bit replace it with a keyboard shortcut as and when you can.

One interesting thing I learned recently from the Double Tap podcast was that you can assign any keyboard shortcuts to any application menus in the Mac. I believe it is under System Settings, then Keyboard, then there should be a list of apps in there somewhere.

Anyway sorry if you've already gone through these things or if they aren't relevant to you, but these are the things that helped me.