RE: LV Settings for Mac OL

I personally find the Mac keystrokes non-sensical (control+f1-f7, etc.) for many things and there are just some things that don’t work e.g. being able to open a context menu from a keyboard focused item.  Also first letter navigation in finder never really seems to work for me – but perhaps I missing something.   Enter to open an item makes more sense than enter to rename – but opening an item requires command+o.  So my feeling is that this is really a personal preference issue as there are examples on both sides where Windows Explorer excels.

There are other areas where the MacOS and hardware is superior for low vision users.  The text size and font boldness is better and in particular better on a laptop screen.  The quality of the screens are excellent and the trackpad the best I’ve used.

Regarding Chrome – the high contrast extension is an SVG filter and doesn’t provide the same level control that actually existed in Windows High Contrast Mode.  Filters can only solve so much.  I find to actually use Chrome I really need to use the Stylus extension – whereas I had more control directly in Firefox or IE.  But given that Chrome is so much faster I use it.  Chrome also has no keystroke for selecting non-contiguous items in a list box – both Firefox and IE do.  Overwriting CSS in stylus can be trigger because some page rules can be very specific and generic rules in Stylus can’t overwrite them without you going in and finding the specific selectors to get the same level of priority.  So user styles which trump document styles are preferred and supported in IE and Firefox.

Jonathan

From: Andrew Somers <me@AndySomers.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 5:00 PM
To: Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
Cc: public-low-vision-a11y-tf <public-low-vision-a11y-tf@w3.org>
Subject: Re: LV Settings for Mac OL

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Indeed — Apple has been a consistent leader in accessibility for computers — I’ve been using macs since the 80s, and even the first mac in 1984 could speak (though real, useful screen readers (i.e. VoiceOver) wasn’t really useful till about 15 years ago.).

Nevertheless, in the early 90s I could control my Mac by voice, and have it read selected text to me. Even then the System& had a lot of accessibility built in.

Windows has consistently lagged behind Mac as far as the OS is concerned.

One aspect of the Mac vs Windows is particularly important for low vision: On a MAC, the menu bar is always fixed at the top of the screen. In Windows, the menu bar is always the top of a window, which is an inferior design especially for accessibility (not to mention fatigue).

With the Mac’s menu bar, when you drag the pointer UP, the top of the screen stops it at the menu bar, regardless of how fast it is moving. With Windows, you have to slow and stop the pointer, and waste more time and effort position the pointer over a menu, which is always going to be in a different position depending on the window.

When MS released Vista, they removed a lot of the direct key commands, forcing users to use the mouse more often, another de-enhancement for unfortunate windows users.

HOWEVER,

I’ve been examining different browsers — CHROME seems to have the best native “relative” accommodation built in, and there are several free extensions such as COLOR ENHANCER (it’s a Daltonizer - recolors to improve color discrimination and provide a better user experience for CVD) and DARK READER, a very good polarity inverter with lots of adjustments.

Andy


On Sep 18, 2019, at 11:02 AM, Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com<mailto:wayneedick@gmail.com>> wrote:

Mac OS Low Vision:
Keyboard access to: Zoom, Inverted Display Color, VoiceOver - One key command toggles built in assistive technologies
Zoom provides: Scroll Gestures, Smooth Images, Full Screen or "Picture-in-picture"
Accessibility Display: Invert, grey-scale, differentiate without color, reduce motion, increase contrast, reduce transparency, contrast can be set by slider, cursor size can be set by slider, shake pointer to locate
The general display also offers: Flexible resolution,  Brightness slider and Night Shift Colors,