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Apple’s Accessibility Options

Something for Everyone

Our Macs, iPhones, iPads, and iPods are an indispensable part of our lives, whether it is for listening to music, staying in touch with other people through e-mail and social media, or doing computational tasks that would have previously required multi-million dollar mainframes. 

But what about people who can’t see the screen on a Mac or a iPad? Or people who are troubled by flashing lights, dancing icons, or specific color combinations? Or people who cannot hear?

Apple does much to make iOS and MacOS accessible to those people through their appropriately-named Accessibility Options. These tools allow the computers of blind users to speak to them. They allow users to control how motion is used on iOS screens so that susceptible individuals are not made nauseous or driven into epileptic fits. Persons who can see but not hear can adjust their computers so that audible messages and warnings are displayed as on-screen text.

But accessibility options are not just for people with physical challenges; they are useful to all of us. They give us control over the user interface in ways that go far beyond the normal controls. If you have trouble reading the lovely, but oh-so-delicate, fonts of the latest iOS release… no problem… just use Accessibility Options to make them thicker. If you want to save some battery power, then you can use Accessibility Options to turn off the parallax view on iOS.  

In many ways, Accessibility Options are the key to making iOS work the way you want it to, even if you aren’t facing special physical challenges.

In our presentation this month, Dave Whitby and Warren James will show you how to use Accessibility Options to improve the iOS and MacOS experiences for all users.

Regular Features

Apps & Traps – Our essential monthly feature on interesting new products and services for iOS and OS X, brought to you by Dave Whitby.

appleSTEMs – Warren James presents interesting Apple science, technology, engineering, and math software.

Apple News & Updates

Q&A

Our rewarding Monthly Prize Drawing includes a $25.00 Best Buy gift card, a Mybat iPhone 6 Plus case, an Insignia Bluetooth speaker with Power Bank, and iHome anti-static cleaning wipes. Don’t forget: members receive one free ticket for the drawing. Bring a guest and get another free ticket! Support our group and increase your chances of winning some goodies – drawing tickets are $1.00 each or six for $5.00. The odds are great that you can be a winner!

The meeting will be held in the Donald Wright Auditorium, at the Pasadena Public Library Main Branch at 7:00 p.m. Following the general meeting, we have our informal Meeting after the Meeting at Coco’s Restaurant, 77 N. Lake Ave. (between Union St. and Colorado Blvd., at the southwest corner of Union and Lake).

If not, you missed a lot of stuff your iDevices need you to know, and a chance to buy the winning golden ticket!

At Coco’s, it was AES and Schrödinger’s cat.

That’s my story; I’m sticking to it!