OS X

How To Optimize Your Mac If You Have A Disability

It can be hard to use computers successfully if you have a disability. While Apple have made it much easier with the iPad for disabled people to use it, the Mac without anything remains a struggle. However one of the less talked about features of OS X is the built in ‘Universal Access’ feature, which allows you to customize all your Mac’s settings to cater for the disability you have, whether it be eyesight, dyslexia or something else. Here’s how you can find it and use it to cater for your needs.

1. Open System Preferences.

2. Open the ‘Universal Access’ tab, which is located under the ‘Personal’ panel.

With all these options you can toggle your display colors, instead of black on white you can have white on black as well as turn on zoom so you can focus on a piece of text if you struggle with eyesight. You can also enable the Voiceover function, and completely customize it to suit your needs with the VoiceOver utility. Things like sticky keys and mouse options can be customised and enable screen flashing when an alert sound occurs.

Your Mac can really be completely customised to your needs, so if you have a disability of some kind, I would highly recommend buying one over a Windows machine, where a ‘Universal Access’ functionality isn’t built in.



About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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