Author: Ronan McGuirk, December 2008
Introduction
This is an evaluation of the accessibility of the Apple Macintosh for blind users. Many blind computer users interact with a computer using a Screen Reader. A screen reader is a software system that attempts to interpret what is displayed on the computer screen, and convey the information to the user through synthetic speech or a braille display.
I am a long-standing member of the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland and have been a screen reader user on Windows PCs for over 10 years. Most blind computer users in Ireland use Windows PCs and may not be too familiar with the Apple Macintosh. This review is an attempt to summarise the type of screen reading capability now available on the Apple platform.
Apple is probably best known in the consumer electronics business as the producer of the iPhone and iPod. Apple has been producing a range of personal computer products called the Apple Macintosh (or Mac for short) since 1984. Apple designs both the hardware and operating system software for the Mac. Like Windows PCs, Apple Macs are available in a range of desktop or laptop versions. You can get details on the Apple Macintosh range of computers from the Apple site. Apple Mac computers are most commonly aimed at the home, education and professional design markets. Since 2005, Apple has built accessibility for blind users into the Mac operating system, initially in version 10.4 Tiger. This evaluation was carried out on an Apple MacBook laptop computer running the Mac OS 10.5 operating system, known as Leopard. There are a number of significant improvements to screen reading in the Leopard release of the operating system, particularly in the quality of the synthesizer. In this review, I am only dealing with the screen reading accessibility solution and am not looking at the screen magnification and Braille output at this stage.
The concept of building accessibility into the operating system is different to a Windows PC. On a Windows PC it is necessary to install a separate package such as JAWS or Window Eyes in order for a blind user to operate the system.
The idea of built-in accessibility is that the Apple Mac should be accessible "out of the box". Apple have done this by building a screen reader called VoiceOver into the operating system and providing screen magnification and support for Braille displays. So how well does it work?
First Impressions
When you purchase an Apple Mac and turn it on, it speaks to you straight away and guides you through the system. This includes a VoiceOver quick start tutorial. If you ever want to re-run the quick start tutorial, you can do this by entering a simple keyboard command.
The first thing that struck me was the quality of the synthetic speech. VoiceOver uses a synthesizer called Alex. Alex is very human sounding. You can even hear the synthesizer breathing. When I read about this before I used it, I thought this sounded a bit silly but it really does help understandability especially when reading long blocks of text at high speed. It is very understandable at high speech rates.
The main challenge to a screen reader user who is used to JAWS and Windows is to understand the Apple Mac environment. The keyboard is a little different to a Windows PC and the operating system is quite different from Windows.
Learning VoiceOver
The first thing to learn is some new keys on the keyboard. To the left of the spacebar is the command key. This is in the same place as the alt key on a Windows PC. To the left of the command key is the option key and to the left of this is the control key. Most VoiceOver commands require you to hold down the control and option keys . For example to read the current line, the command is control option l.
There are some differences in the keyboard layout of a desktop and a laptop Mac. On a laptop there is an additional key to the left of the control key called the function key. It is normally necessary to press this key together with the function keys on a laptop. VoiceOver on Leopard can use the numeric keypad on a desktop Mac if you prefer to control VoiceOver from the numeric keypad.
VoiceOver provides an easy way to learn the Apple keyboard. Press control option K and VoiceOver will echo any key combination that you press and tell you what the VoiceOver commands do.
As I mentioned above, you can run the quick start tutorial at any time by entering control option command F8. Apple provides a set of VoiceOver manuals in different formats that you can download and read either on a PC or an Apple Mac. I would definitely recommend reading the manual if you are new to The Mac as it provides an extremely good introduction to Mac concepts and screen layout.
There is extensive interactive help available within VoiceOver.
In addition to learning the screenreader itself, it will be necessary to become familiar with common Apple Mac shortcut keys. Unfortunately these are a little different from Windows. For example, instead of alt F4 to exit an application, the Apple uses Command Q as the shortcut key. Command S is the shortcut key to save rather than Control S as in Windows. To open a website in Safari you use command L, rather than Control O to enter the web address. However, these shortcut keys are all included in the menu options so they are easy to learn.
Accessible Applications
Apple provides a list of applications that are accessible with VoiceOver.
The applications cover a wide range of computer activity and should cover most people's requirements.
Instead of using Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail, the default mail program on the Apple Mac is called Apple Mail. I found this program fully accessible with voiceOver.
When I went into Apple Mail for the first time, I was presented with a screen that asked me for 3 items of information: My name, email address and password. I entered my Name, GMail account email address, and password and Apple Mail immediately began downloading my mail. I found it easy to set up mail folders. For example, I set up a folder for the VICS email list. I then set up a rule to automatically move mails into the VICS mail folder if the mail contained the text string [VICSIreland] in the subject line. I found that setting up mailbox rules was fully accessible and easy to do.
The mail program is a good introduction to the hierarchical way that VoiceOver works with an application window. You can move around the window by holding down the control and option keys and an arrow key. As I did this, I came to objects called Mailboxes table and Messages table. VoiceOver doesn't try to read the contents of these objects until you tell it to interact with the object in question. With VoiceOver, initially you see the object at a high-level for example, a scroll area, a Mailbox table or a sidebar list. You may not be interested in reading the contents of a screen object immediately. When you wish to read and manipulate the contents of an object, VoiceOver provides a way to interact with the object. Once you do this, VoiceOver is concentrated only on the contents of the object until you stop interacting with it.
When for example, I came to Mailboxes table, I asked VoiceOver to interact with it by pressing control option shift down arrow. I was then in a list of mailboxes such as INBOX, OUTBOX and VICS. Moving the cursor up and down I could choose a mailbox. Once positioned on the mailbox I wanted, I then stopped interacting with the mailboxes table. I then moved to the messages table and interacted with it. The messages table then contained the list of messages in the mailbox folder that I had just chosen. Although this is a different way of working, you soon get the hang of it and it does seem fully accessible. As you would expect, you can create new mails, reply to mails, forward mails and so on. You can do this by choosing a button on the screen, choosing an item from the message menu, or hitting a shortcut key. The menu options also include the shortcut key for that activity so the menu is an easy way to learn them. Once you learn the shortcut keys, these are the simplest and quickest way to operate mail. For instance, to reply to the mail you are currently reading, the shortcut key is command R.
Internet Browsing
The standard Apple browser is called Safari. This allows you to browse the internet just as you would with Internet Explorer or Firefox on a PC. Safari works well with VoiceOver. When you open a web page you can read the page from the top and use VoiceOver commands to move from item to item. VoiceOver says link when it encounters a link and says heading 1 heading 2 etc when it encounters heading text. You can call up a list of links with control option U and then use the cursor keys to move to the link you want. When you choose the desired link and hit enter, you are then positioned within the current page on the link. To go to the link you need to activate it by hitting control option spacebar. You can move from heading to heading or from headings at the same level by VoiceOver commands. VoiceOver seems to handle forms quite well. It doesn't have a forms mode, but when you come to an editable field it will say edit text or secure edit text for passwords. For example I looked up train timetables on the Irish Rail web site. The dates appear in what VoiceOver calls pop-up menus. You enter a pop-up menu by hitting control option spacebar and then you move up and down with the cursor keys. You then choose the option you want by hitting control option spacebar again. I was easily able to select the date time and destination and read the resulting set of train times.
VoiceOver makes a series of sounds as you move around a window such as a web page in Safari. If you are using headphones or stereo speakers, you get an indication of the screen location of objects from the direction of the sounds.
When browsing the web, I found it useful to lock the control and option keys by entering control option semicolon. When the control and option keys are locked, you only need to use a simpler key combination. For instance instead of entering control option l to read the current line you only need to enter l. With control and option locked, you can move around a web page with the arrow keys in a similar way to JAWS and Windows. Locking control and option is just like the caps lock and control option semicolon is a toggle command.
VoiceOver generally seems to be able to read the same set of web pages as JAWS, with the exception of some of the functionality added in the most recent release. The overall impression is that VoiceOver is more than capable of doing the type of internet browsing that I do on a regular basis.
Office Applications
I have created this report in TextEdit. This program is a bit like Wordpad. You can read and edit plain text, RTF, Word documents or html files.
Editing a document on the Mac is done in a similar way to that on Windows, however there are a number of small differences. A peculiar difference is the way VoiceOver echoes the cursor. If you type a word like "hello", VoiceOver will echo each individual letter. If after typing the o of hello, you move the cursor to the left, VoiceOver will say o again. If you then hit a letter, this will be inserted between the l and o. Because this is different to the way JAWS works on Windows, it took me sometime to get used to it. Fortunately, spell checking is easy in Textedit. You can use the shortcut key command colon and a window like the MS Word spell check appears. Alternatively, you can use the shortcut key command semicolon and this will place you on the first misspelled word.
Although TextEdit can edit html documents as they will appear on a browser, I was not sure I fully understood how this worked or if it was fully accessible. I have edited this document in plain text., rather than trying to use the html wysiwyg editing function. (Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to mark up the tags myself. ) . VoiceOver doesn't currently support Microsoft Office but it does work with Open Office. I installed Open Office.org version 3. Open Office includes word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation and publishing programs. I have begun using it. and have created and edited documents and spreadsheets. So far it seems accessible although it contains so many features that it is difficult to assess just how much is accessible with VoiceOver. It appears very accessible but it would be interesting to establish if it can easily do all the tasks that would be needed for a test such as the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL).
Audio
iTunes is the program on the Mac that allows you to manage and play music and audio files. I used it to subscribe to podcasts and to download mp3 files and to manage these on an iShuffle. I found that VoiceOver interacts very well with iTunes on the Mac and I didn't encounter any accessibility issues. For example, I am a member of the Talking Newspaper Association (TNAUK). Using Safari, I logged onto TNAUK and selected a magazine to download. This downloaded into the Downloads folder. Once the download had completed, I went into the Downloads folder through Finder (the Apple equivalent of Windows Explorer) and selected the downloaded file. This launched iTunes and immediately the audio magazine was read out. I plugged the iShuffle into the USB port. This added the device with the name of my iPod in the sources table within iTunes. I went into the recently added folder in iTunes and selected the audio magazine and moved it to the iShuffle. to listen offline. I found all of this easy to do with keyboard commands.
PDF files
VoiceOver doesn't work with Adobe Acrobat. However, this isn't a problem because you can read PDF files with Apple Preview. This works very well with VoiceOver, and indeed, the manual for the screen reader itself is published in PDF format. You can save PDF files from Open Office Writer.
Advantages of built-in accessibility
Having accessibility built into the operating system provides a number of advantages. It means that every Apple Mac running Tiger or Leopard has VoiceOver available and this can be launched by the keystroke command F5. Software updates to the operating system include updates to VoiceOver so it is always the correct version for the operating system. Because it is built into the operating system, it is likely to be much more stable than a bolt-on access solution. An application developer working on an Apple Mac will have VoiceOver available by default and will easily be able to test if the application is accessible. But of course, to the user, one of the biggest benefits of a built-in solution is that there is no extra cost for accessibility.
Further Information
There are plenty of online resources if you would like to do some further reading. A good place to start is theApple Accessibility site. The MacVoiceOver list is an email discussion list for those learning VoiceOver. Articles and discussion lists can be found at the MacVisionaries site and at the Mac-cessibility site.
Conclusions
VoiceOver on Leopard is an impressive accessibility solution. If your school or college uses Apple Macs or friends or family members are Mac users, then you should really consider it as a personal computing platform. If it is in use in your college or workplace, there is no additional cost for accessibility. It is important to make sure that the types of program that you want to use are accessible. VoiceOver is a bit different to Windows screen readers and some of the commands require some getting used to, but overall I found it easy to learn. I felt that the speech quality was superb, and extremely responsive, and the system itself proved to be very stable, with no need for periodic re-booting. Finally, I am really impressed with VoiceOver and hope it continues to develop and get an enthusiastic following among blind users.
