Parallels Desktop

You'll need sighted assistance to set up the VM but after that you can use the windows part if you have a windows screen reader like NVDA.

Apparently you can using VOCR. I have no experience with this. When I did use Mac OS, I would use either VMWare or UTM, both of which are actually fully voiceover accessible.

This is correct. You need to use VOCR.

I'd also say, however, though windows works fine once you have it installed, trying to access parallels settings is also difficult. There are some shortcuts you might want to play with or re-map within parallels, but it's really difficult to do.

I know parallels is the official way of running windows on apple silicon and may have some performance benefits but, considering you're never going to be running AAA games, it ight be worth looking at a different virtual machine environment which has better accessibility.

RIP bootcamp.

Use vo ocr, and you won't need sighted assistance at all. Re, shortcuts, realistically speaking, the only thing's you might want to remap are the vm shortcuts. This is fairly easy to do once you focus on the table with vo OCR then voiceover works as normal. That beeing said, however, other accessible options... The only other alternative is fusion which is kinda going down the drain. Utm, while it can run windows will not run it as smoothly as parallels, and of course, you will get the same problem with the lack of audio in Windows 11 you will need to plug in a external adaptor to get audio in the first instalation phase. Plus vmware no longer offers automatic updates which, given the headache the site is... I wouldn't recommend it myself. Vertual box... Might work however compared to Parallels... I have no idea how well.

I've found parallel settings quite easy to navigate without ocr passed the first not accessible setup screen for windows 11. Just for the price alone and given my needs, and especially considering I have only an m2pro and apple arbitrarily limits nested virtualization to m3>, I am fine with Fusion which is free and the only downside to it as far as I am concerned is the company owning it :(

How? I mean I tried it as far as shortcuts but getting to the table of keyboard shortcuts kinda, difficult without VOCR, any tips?

Has anyone gotten u t m to work successfully on mac, I never could get it past the installer screen. any advice is appreciated.

When you say passed the installer, of which OS? If windows, 10 or 11? Intel or arm? I'm asking because as said, windows 11 both for intel and arm as far as I can tell, don't have the audio drivers in the first installer phase so you'll either need a audio adaptor like a usbc to headphone jack to hear narrator during that first phase or VOCR or sighted assistance to get through that. Windows 10 doesn't have this problem if memory serves. But yeah, you can get passed the installer but you'll need either an adaptor or sighted help or to use VOCR to get passed it, its possible, however.

Given that you explicitly mention requiring sighted assistance, and other users have mentioned requiring using an OCR, I'm kind of confused on how that software can be considered accessible in any way. Therefore, as a mental exercise, what exactly would they have to remove from parallels for you to consider it inaccessible to blind people?

Being brutally honest here, I think that any disabled people who consciously decide to pay for software from vendors who demonstrate complete disregard for accessibility, which is the case here, are self-sabotaging by enabling bad behavior. UTM might not be as convenient, performant, and feature-rich as other alternatives, but on the other hand it's a highly accessible native application, and disabled people not making accessibility their top priority leaves me completely baffled.

Most of Parallels is accessible. The settings? Mostly fully usable with VoiceOver. The only other time you need VOCR is once during setup, to tick the “install Windows automatically” box. That’s not inaccessible software, that’s one checkbox with an easy workaround. Day to day, Parallels is perfectly usable.

Calling blind people “self-sabotaging” for using Parallels is laughable. If you want to talk about blind people actually self-sabotaging, I’ll give you real examples. Still paying thousands for JAWS or Freedom Scientific’s subscription racket when NVDA is free and often better, that is self-sabotage. Throwing money at obsolete junk like Kurzweil 1000/3000 long past its prime, that is self-sabotage. Buying overpriced blind-only hardware like Victor Readers, BrailleNotes, talking calculators, kitchen gadgets, when mainstream tech does the same for a fraction of the price, that is self-sabotage. Paying obscene monthly fees for Aira instead of using Be My Eyes or cheaper alternatives, that is self-sabotage.

Those are real cases of enabling companies that exploit blind people. Parallels doesn’t belong anywhere near that list. Most of it works natively, and the one checkbox that needs VOCR is nothing compared to companies that flat-out block us from using their products at all.

And your UTM point? Falls flat. Installing Windows 11 in UTM still requires VOCR, a sighted person, or an external audio dongle, because Windows gives you no Narrator at first boot. So pretending UTM is the accessible alternative is dishonest, it hits the same wall in the exact same place.

By your logic, using VOCR in Parallels equals self-sabotage. Okay then, let’s apply that standard. Using Screen Recognition on iOS to handle apps that aren’t accessible, self-sabotage. Using a cane or guide dog to navigate a sighted-designed world, self-sabotage. Shopping at a supermarket where aisles aren’t labeled in Braille, self-sabotage. Buying food or medicine where packaging isn’t blind-labeled, self-sabotage. Using barcode scanners or Seeing AI to identify products, self-sabotage. Cooking in a pan and flipping food by sound, smell, or timing instead of sight, self-sabotage. Using bump dots on a microwave, or tactile markers on a stove, or timers in the kitchen, self-sabotage. Crossing the street using auditory traffic cues instead of vision, self-sabotage. And while we’re at it, using screen readers themselves to access computers built for sighted users would count as self-sabotage too.

See how absurd your argument sounds when you follow it through? Adaptation isn’t sabotage, it’s how blind people live. It’s how we work, shop, cook, travel, and exist.

So no, blind people buying Parallels aren’t self-sabotaging. The real sabotage is pushing this all-or-nothing purity test that shames blind people for using tools that actually work for them. That mindset is the enemy, not Parallels.

I agree that it's not self sabotage. Once it's set up, I believe it is a better experience. Setup happens only once, you need to use it for the long haul.

I do get your point though. There is the question of giving our money, on mass, to a company who hasn't done anything about including accessibility for the last six years. On the other side of that, is personal choice and need. If one is willing to put up with the pain of it for a greater reward, it's really down to the individual but this is why forums such as this one are so good as, despite the hyperbole and between the flames, there is some good information that can inform people's purchasing decision.

Live and let live, I say. We're all different, we all have varying requirements and, though none of us like to admit it, we all make poor choices, from time to time... And learn from them.

It's pretty tiring hearing people get upset when they find out, yet again, people have a differing view. The world will be better when we finally understand that no one is objectively correct, and the more interesting thing is lots of people being correct about their own experience and requirements.

For me u t m gave this odd dialog with a lot of numbers in it, i will retry and see if i can reproduce this error. It was not your typical windows installer, maybe it got stuck on the step before the installation could begin?

See, they have done something though. If they hadn’t, most of the app wouldn’t be accessible — like the settings, which work fine with VoiceOver. So I wouldn’t say they’ve done nothing. It’s also worth noting that on macOS and iOS, accessibility can sometimes come about almost by accident. If developers use Apple’s standard controls and don’t screw up labeling, VoiceOver support is basically built in. That may well be the case here. But whether it’s intentional or accidental, the fact remains: most of Parallels is accessible.

And honestly, I wouldn’t call using VOCR once during setup “putting up with pain.” If it was constant, where you had to lean on OCR every single time you wanted to do something, sure, that’s a pain. But once? Not really. Here’s a better example of what I’d actually call painful: Pro Tools plug-ins. Most of them aren’t natively accessible, so you have to use OCR every single time you want to adjust one. Not once, not twice, but every time. That’s the kind of situation that deserves the “painful” label, not a one-off checkbox in Parallels.

And here’s the difference. I didn’t just stop at pointing it out — I actually contacted Parallels, sent them a detailed write-up with recordings, and they told me it’s being passed to the dev team. Maybe it takes a while, maybe not, but at least there’s a shot at progress. And nothing stops other users from doing the same. When feedback comes from more than one person, it’s harder to ignore. It’s easy to throw around dramatic lines like “self-sabotage,” but that doesn’t fix anything. What actually has a shot at moving accessibility forward is giving vendors detailed, practical feedback.

That’s why I think the “self-sabotage” line misses the mark. It’s the kind of absolutist policing that sounds dramatic but doesn’t actually help anyone. What does help is showing what works, what doesn’t, and giving vendors concrete feedback. Big sweeping statements don’t move accessibility forward — practical info and real feedback do. Would it be nice if Parallels fixed that setup checkbox so VOCR wasn’t needed at all? Absolutely. But once you’re past that, it works — and for most people, that’s what matters.

From how you described it, it sounds like you may have hit the point before Windows even gets into the installer — more like the Secure Boot/TPM check stage. I could be mistaken since you didn’t say it explicitly, but the odd dialog with numbers matches what I’ve seen when the VM is waiting for input and then times out, which is very likely what you described.

When I’ve dealt with that in UTM, here’s what works for me. After I press start on the virtual machine, I make sure the keyboard input is actually captured in the VM window so it’s receiving keystrokes. Then I press Enter four or five times, wait a couple of seconds, and run VOCR on the screen. If I did it right, VOCR will pick up the Windows setup screen. If not, that’s usually when it stops at the kind of error you described. It’s trial and error because there’s no audio feedback at that stage, so the only way to confirm is to OCR the screen after you try.

And this isn’t just a UTM issue — Fusion behaves the same way. Both leave you stuck in that first-phase installer where Narrator simply isn’t available yet. The reason Parallels feels smoother is because it handles that stage with an unattended setup file behind the scenes. It doesn’t skip it, but it auto-fills the language, keyboard, and region parts so you never have to. That’s why Parallels drops you straight into the actual Windows setup — the account creation, Wi-Fi, etc. — where Narrator is already available to be turned on if you need it.

In theory, you can make UTM or Fusion behave the same way with Microsoft’s autounattend.xml system. But it’s not as simple as just downloading one from a generator site. Even if the XML itself is valid, Windows setup only looks for it in very specific places: either in the root of the installer media, which means you have to unpack the Windows ISO, add the XML, and then rebuild the ISO as bootable; or on a separate virtual disk/ISO mounted alongside the installer. And even if you go through all that, it’s still hit-or-miss. Those generator sites spit out a file that might technically be correct, but if you get the Windows version or build number wrong by even a little, Setup can just ignore it. Different releases of Windows expect slightly different schema details, and one mismatched tag is enough to break the automation silently. I tried both methods in Fusion — rebuilding the ISO and using a separate autounattend ISO — and neither one worked. The file may have been fine, but the VM just didn’t use it. That’s the difference: Parallels has this pipeline baked in and guarantees Windows sees and applies the answer file, while with UTM or Fusion you’re left hacking ISOs and hoping it sticks. For most people, Parallels is the only option that reliably automates that first phase without leaving you staring at a dead screen of numbers.

I admit to really struggling with the concept of "self-sabotage" and the term itself. As it relates to matters of blindness, I feel that it isn't for me to say whether something someone else does is self-sabotage. When people give me that type of feedback, my experience is that it is reflective much more about them and their take on life than it is anything about me. It's like telling someone who works a minimum wage job and enjoys what they do, "That job is so beneath you." Say whaaaaat?
These things are not black and white, all or nothing. As casual observers of others' situations, I think the most we can fairly say is "I won't give my money to a company that doesn't prioritize accessibility," "I won't pay hundreds of dollars per year for a screen reader when free tools are available," etc. etc. These are individual choices where different people, who want the same basic things and have similar goals, can come to different conclusions.

I have an M4 MacBook Air and am interested in putting Windows on it, for curiosity more than any real need. With Parallels, is the inaccessible checkbox something that can be navigated to and used with something like Be My AI? Does VoiceOver see it as an element that can be interacted with? Thanks!