Dear fellow members of the AppleVis Forum,
As a blind person who uses MacOS 13 with M1 or M2 chips, I am writing to share with you a call for suggestions to Apple's accessibility department about adding screen recognition to MacOS 13 or Higher on this platform. This would provide blind people with the ability to identify non-labeled elements on the screen in real time, just like the screen recognition capabilities found on the iPhone.
Unfortunately, at present, MacOS Ventura 13 does not have screen recognition capabilities, making it difficult for blind people to navigate and interact with their computer without sighted assistance.
Screen recognition would enable VoiceOver to identify buttons, links, and other elements on the screen, even if they are not labeled, and describe them to the user. This would greatly enhance the user experience for blind and visually impaired people who use MacOS 13 with M1 or M2 chips, allowing us to navigate our computers more independently.
As members of the AppleVis Forum, we understand the importance of accessibility and the role it plays in our daily lives. We also know that Apple has a strong commitment to accessibility and has been a leader in this area. Therefore, I call upon all of you to join me in requesting that Apple's accessibility department consider adding screen recognition capabilities to MacOS 13 with M1 or M2 chips.
By working together and voicing our concerns and suggestions, we can make a significant impact in improving accessibility for all. So, let's come together and make our voices heard, and help Apple make MacOS 13 with M1 or M2 chips more accessible for blind and visually impaired people.
Would you have any better idea please let me know.
Thank you for your attention and support.
Best regards,
Comments
I use a Mac regularly, an…
I use a Mac regularly, an Intel model, pretty successfully without screen recognition. I'd much, much rather the small accessibility team work on fixing bugs and stablizing VoiceOver, Safari, and MacOS rather than adding new features. For instance, if you use VO Shift L to get an image description, do you know how much memory that takes up, and that sticks around? A good 600 MB. And it isn't unloaded until you restart VoiceOver. I'd rather memory issues and instabilities like that be fixed than add more features.
A suggestion.
Try the app VOCR. I'm curious though, where are you running into issues? if it's the web, you should contact the developer of the website and let them know it's not accessible. chances are if it's not working on the Mac, other screen readers on other platforms could be affected as well. I would find Screen Recognition an interesting feature, but I think it would need to be made site specific. I would hate to forget I had it enabled for Safari when I only need it for one site. Also, Chrome will read things Safari won't sometimes.
agree with suggestion
I agree with your suggestion.
You can
you can send email to accessibility@apple.com
Would Be Good for Music Lyrics
I'm currently using an M1 Mac and really like it. But I do agree that there are some places where native screen recognition would be good. For instance, just a bit ago I tried activating the "Lyrics" button in the native music app to see if VO would read out the lyrics of a CD of choir music that my parents brought back several years ago for me from their trip to Germany and Austria. This music is sung all in German, and I've forgotten most of the German I learned back in fifth grade. It seems that even with VoiceOver recognition enabled, these lyrics don't speak. I'll definitely check out the app mentioned in an earlier comment on this thread though, because perhaps I am missing something. Contacting Apple's accessibility team is of course a great idea as well.
I use VoCR all the time. I…
I use VoCR all the time. I have no choice but to use it with the 3D printing applications I use. I'd like to see apple bring this on board. It seems like a no brainer. Probably a more useful update than including new voices. We do need more power user centred developments such as improvements to terminal, better options for coding and general maker stuff. I have to use VOCR to flash raspberry pi cards too as the raspberry pi imager isn't accessible. They are aware of the problem but haven't done anything about it.
VOCR rules, apple, integrate it. Can only be an improvement.
600 mb of memory, really?
I'm not a mac user but that's insane to me.
I hope that's fixed for you guys.