I have a friend who just got a new Mac. He is blind and has the use of only his right hand. He is a good iPhone user with voiceover. He has learned that although Mack has sticky keys, it does not work with voiceover because it only holds down one key for you. I am looking for anyone who has assisted a person with one hand to learn to use Mack And voiceover. I am familiar with. Vosh and was hoping this would be a solution, but at least not as of right now as the developer is not able to continue working on it. Anyway, I am looking for hardware software or anyone experienced in doing this. I am familiar with the fact that one can assign and reassign gestures and commands, but I would like to know someone who’s actually done it and what they found. thank you.
By Pat Pound, 15 July, 2024
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Trackpad Commander
I was one of the people who replied to you with suggestions on the other thread, and am replying again because I just remembered about Trackpad Commander, which uses the same gestures that your friend is familiar with from iOS on a Mac Trackpad. To enable Trackpad Commander, press the VO modifier while performing the clockwise rotation gesture with two fingers on the trackpad. Enabling and disabling Trackpad Commander requires two functional hands, but once enabled there's little reason to ever disable it again.
NumPad Commander
I replied with this on the other thread, but in case you didn't see it - the numpad commander is a really great way to control your Mac one handed. You can assign a shortcut to every key on the numpad, then you can use the 0 key as a modifier to double up the commands you can use. I use this all the time and can do most VoiceOver navigation with just my right hand. So I can hold numpad 0 and use 4 and 5 to navigate headings for example.
You can buy separate bluetooth numpads if the keyboard he is using does not have a numpad of its own.
Single Key Nav and Quick Nav
I almost forgot about these as I don't tend to use them.
Prior to Sonoma they were both part of quick nav but I believe they are now separate but still configured together in VO Utility.
If quick nav is enabled you can toggle it on and off using left and right arrows at the same time. It's been a while since I did this, but I think left and right arrows then become VO left/right. And you hold down up and use left and right to change the rotor, then up and down to navigate depending on what rotor item is selected. I think maybe up and down together to to select something.
And single key nav can be enabled with VO+Q and at that point it works a bit more like Windows screen readers. So H for heading, shift+H to go back and so on.
The keyboard commander might also be useful for some lesser used things. It typically works by holding down right option then pressing another key but is completely customisable. Not ideal one-handed but you could certainly put some other shortcuts there which may help in addition to one of the other suggestions.
It's probably a good idea to get the VO modifier changed to allow Caps Lock as an alternative to Control and Option.
Also worth mentioning then if you press VO+H twice then you go to the commands help. From here you can type for something you are looking for and press enter to do it. So you can enable any of the commanders doing this. Possibly not a very comfortable shortcut but might help to get started.