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