Notes
URL
V Apple wants to help
* OS X and iOS have a bunch of features that are there to help us accomplish tasks and get work done.
* Some of these are obvious and some aren't. Also some are designed specifically for users with special needs, but those features are automatically available to all users so everyone benefits.
V Assistive technologies
V Zoom
V On OS X Lion
* System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing (tab) > Zoom: section
* Options… change depending on if 'Zoom in Window' Is checked or not.
* Useful for presentations and screencasts
* Zooming in on the detail of an image to maybe make out some text
V On iOS 5
* Settings > General > Accessibility > Zoom. Toggle on or off.
V While on
* Double-tap with three fingers to Zoom
* While zoomed use three fingers to move around
* to change Zoom level, use three fingers to double tap, holding on second tap and dragging to adjust zoom level.
* Help show someone some text in an app that doesn't support pinch to zoom
V Screen captures some detail
* Press home and sleep/wake buttons together to take a screen shot and save to your Library
V Large Text
V OS X Lion
* Typically under the Format menu in most app Command+ '+' or Command "-'
* In Finder you can change the View options for a folder or the desktop
* combine with Zoom
V iOS 5
* Settings > General > Accessibility > Large Text
* Works for the Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Messages, and Notes apps
* Can help if you forgot your reading glasses or are needing to show something to a small group
V Speak Selection
V OS X Lion
* Should be part of the built-in Services
* In most apps where you can make a selection you'll find it under Edit > Speech > Start Speaking (or End Speaking)
V Adjust your Voice setting in System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech
* Select from Default voices or choose 'Customize…' to sample and download additional voices. This includes international ones. They take up a lot of space.
*
V iOS 5
* Settings > General > Accessibility > Speak Selection. Toggle on or off.
* When you make a selection you now see an additional 'Speak' option in the copy/paste pop-up
* You can also control the speech rate with the slider.
* Useful for having selections read to you while you do other work.
* I've also found it useful for proof reading, sometime you hear errors that you may miss reading, although with the quality of the voice there can be false positives.
* Can also write a Simple service in automator to convert selections to audio files and add them to iTunes to take for listening in the car or while you do other things.
V Custom Vibrations and LED Alerts
* iOS 5 and iPhone only
V Settings > General > Accessibility > Custom Vibrations > On or Off toggle
* Settings > Sounds >Vibration (under Vibration Patterns)
* There are some built-in ones
V Create New Vibration > tap out a custom one.
* Records when you start tapping.
* Play to "feel" back the pattern
* Save to name it
V Can assign as default or use for specific contacts
* Find the contact in Address Book
* Click 'Edit'
* Under Vibration' you can assign a custom pattern to just that person.
* Now you can identify individual callers when you phone is in silent mode (assuming you feel the pattern). Useful to know if you need to step outside and take a call or can ignore it all without taking your phone out.
V Settings > General > Accessibility > LED Alerts > On or Off toggle
V I could not get this working reliably
* Change notification to old "banner style"
* Turn off custom vibrations
* Hard reset phone
* Did work once, and could be useful in situations where you have the phone in silent mode and visible. Say while in a power dock.
V Assistive Touch
* Another iOS 5 only feature, but cool and what prompted this episode
* An older gentleman at my IOS group had this on and said a friend enabled it. I thought the device may have been jailbroken
* Settings > General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch
* Adds a 'circle' icon to the side of your display. Always there, but you can move it around the edge and it dims when not active
* Tapping it give a pop up with gesture options.
* Gestures, 2 3 4 or 5 "virtual" fingers. you now swipe with 1 finger, but it acts like multiple
* Device, virtual controls
* Virtual home button
V Favorites
* Pinch, grab handle with one finger
* Record gesture "macros". Tap to play once active.
* tap edit from the main Assistive Touch screen to delete custom touch gestures.
V I had to play with it a bit, but was able to create 4 finger swipe left and right gestures on the iPad for Multitouch gesture actions
* 2 taps and I could do a 4 finger swipe
* did have some glitches at first. Make sure you swipe all the way when you record the macro.
* The "shake" gesture is good for undo. I always feel still and worry I may drop my device.
V Incoming Calls
* iPhone only.
* Always send incoming calls to a speaker or headset.
* Useful for when you know you'll be in the car (should happen automatically), but still.
* Also when you know you want to get calls and go right to speaker phone. Maybe in conference situation.
V Triple-tap home
* Toggle different features, or ask.
V Auto-correction
* I call this "mini" TextExpander
V OS X Lion
* System Preferences > Language & Text > Text tab
* Add your own text "shortcuts" by clicking the '+'
V iOS 5
* Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Add New Shortcut
* Good for auto replacing words with specialized characters or accents
* Also if you often misspell a word that built-in auto correct may not pick up.
V The "Rotor"
* This is one gesture I'd like to see leveraged and go main stream
V It's part of VoiceOver on iOS and allows you "rotate" a virtual knob with two fingers to change how Voiceover behaves
* For example rotate from a control to read character by character, word by word, or line by line.
* Once set a flick up or down advances or reverses the selection.