Apple iWork

By Louis, 2 August, 2012

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hello folks, Are there any podcasts on the Apple iWork productivity suite? i am going to start college soon and I would appreciate a guide to use iWork with Voiceover. Thank you so much for your help.

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Comments

By David Woodbridge on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

I haven't come across any good documentation or podcasts on using the iWork suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. I asked Apple this question a while ago, and they do not have any specific training material on using VoiceOver with iWork.

By billip on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

[Editorial team note: Below is a link to a Blind Cool Tech podcast.] http://ec.libsyn.com/p/8/4/f/84f8ae1ac9c9ca80/bct1474MacDemo13.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01cc843ed3ce5cb4cd&c_id=3022047

By David Woodbridge on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

May be working on a iWork podcast in the future, but probably not for another month or so.

By Signaltonoise on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

I wouldn't even bother with Iwork it's really not that accessible for a college student. Tables aren't accessible in Pages and you can only read a one page document in Pages. Keynote isn't even accessible and Numbers is a joke, I'd suggest for writing documents you check out Nisus Writer Express or Pro. I'll be doing a podcast on my website at signaltonoise.podbean.com a comprehensive review . I'd stay away from iWork and even sell your mac if at all possible if your not going to be an audio engineer like myself. Windows is much better at productivity then Apple at the moment and Word, Powerpoint, and Excel are accessible for a host of screen reading solutions like NVDA, Jaws or Window Eyes, as well as System Access. Aaron

Just a note about Pages, you can read more than just one Page: would be a bit odd if you couldn't (smile). Yes, it doesn't do tables, but it doesn't stop folks writing full documents. Numbers is accessible if you want to do basic spreadsheets. Some folks have used Keynote successfully, but Powerpoint with Windows based screen readers is certainly a lot more straightforward. I know a few academics who are blind who use the Mac with Windows on it, and get the benefit of both the Mac and Windows. At the end of the day, it is what works.

By Chelsea on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

Hello David, First, I love your Mac podcasts ; they've helped me get started and I still revisit them if I need a review. So it is humbling to me that you will be reading my thoughts. Back to the Mac and education; well put!! I am a college student who, despite all the accessibility issues with some programs, thought long and hard and decided to get a Mac anyway. I don't regret it. That said, I have a few other devices lying around here, including a few Windows boxes. But since my Mac, I only use them for MicroSoft office occasionally and some audio gaming. I split the word-processing between a computer and BrailleNote, so I only need to do some advanced tricks on the computer. I find myself doing more problem sets than papers, so that hasn't come up too much yet. In Textedit, coding Latex and HTML is straightforward, and I don't like a lot of functions getting in the way when I do those tasks. I love browsing the web and email on the Mac; once you get used to it, I find myself slightly more efficient there. As far as PDF's go, that is the realm of iBooks for me. It's amazing how the same screen reader can work differently on two platforms. I plan to run Windows for a laboratory program I use, but that is mainly due to the Mac model I have being physically lighter and smaller than my other dedicated machine without sacrificing keyboard space. It really depends on what you are doing and what works. For me, the Mac fits in quite nicely with my university; having Office would help a lot, but there are workarounds. Just like when the Mac first got VO, I've heard browsing wasn't as good as it is now. And now, it is one of the more awesome parts. So technology keeps changing, and it is nice to go into a roomful of Macs and be able to just sit down and work or ask questions to the users around you.

By David Woodbridge on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

Hi Chelsea, yes, I use nothing but the Mac at home for everything I need to do for home and to keep up to date with tech stuff. The only reason I use Windows these days is that Vision Australia still uses Windows and associated applications: so I also have a work Windows laptop. Even when I do presentations or workshops for work, I'm using all Apple Mac gear: from using the Appel TV to display web site navigation with a screen reader to using my iPad as my workshop outline notetaker. Daisy, eBooks, copying files to custom devices such as the Plextalk Pocket, OCRing, demoing Braille displays, voice recognition, demoing social media such as Twitter/Facebook, Skype conferencing etc all done on the Mac. Which is the reason why I keep doing podcast mainly on Mac and iOS devices, since 99 percent of the time for me at least it all just works.

By Jakob Rosin on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 06:21

I am also a student and bought my first mac 2 months ago. Before buying, I checked how accessible is the i Work on mac. Everyone said, that they don't like it much and use microsoft office. So I installed windows with bootcamp on my mac. Basic writing what I need to do can be done on text edit on the mac, If I need somthing more advanced, I switch to windows and office. This is theory. I'm going to write a blog post about how does it work in practical situations as soon as the school starts on september.

Over the past year or so I've successfully created a number of documents formatted in APA style including Headers, Footers, Bibliography, full paragraph, line and character formatting, etc. using Pages on my Mac. I've also created numerous smaller 2 page documents that included tables formatted with different line thicknesses, column shading colors, text attributes, etc. While it is certainly frustrating that the folks at Apple have chosen to deny VO access to tables and a few other items inside Pages on the Mac, it is quite simple to create a table in Numbers and paste it into Pages.

Hi, I am trying to set up a paper MLA style using VoiceOver and iWorks Pages. I need to get my last name and page number into the header. I can insert the page number into the header area but can't seem to interact with the header so that I can type in my last name. Are there any shortcut keys or swipes that will allow me to interact with the header?

By Bryan Jones on Saturday, November 10, 2012 - 06:21

1. Navigate to the Header field. A quick way to do this is via the Item Chooser. 2. Bring the mouse pointer to the VO cursor by pressing VO+Command+F5. This should place the mouse cursor over the Header field. 3. Perform a mouse click either by pressing VO+Shift+Spacebar or by clicking a physical mouse or trackpad button. 4. You should now be able to begin typing your desired text in the Header and hear feedback from VO while you are typing. 5. When you are finished typing in the Header field, you'll need to stop interacting with it in order to return to other sections of your document. HTH, Bryan

By KE7ZUM on Monday, April 10, 2017 - 06:21

Pages has finally become more accessible. I managed to change the names of tables, and the selection bug I reported in 2014 has finally ben fixed.