Listed below is a selection of posts from across the AppleVis website which have been especially selected to help you setup and get to know your first Mac.
If you’re new to the Mac, learning and mastering the VoiceOver screenreader can seem daunting at first. In an attempt to streamline the search for essential getting started information across the AppleVis website, I will provide a series of tips, along with links to more comprehensive guides and podcast episodes, organized by heading and subheading.
From personal experience, I have found that one of the most effective ways to learn a new screenreader is to read documentation with another more familiar one. For example, you could start reading this guide on iOS, Android or Windows, gradually try various things on macOS, and finally, see how you do relying on VoiceOver in macOS in addition to or in place of your other screenreader.
Compiled below is a rearrangement of Apple’s published VoiceOver key commands charts, edited/confirmed for macOS Sonoma.
Editor’s note: VO Key Commands are arranged by Levels. Press and hold the keys below while typing any other key.
Level One: Press Control-Option.
Level Two: Press Control-Option-Shift.
Level Three: Press Control-Option-Command.
Level Four: Press Control-Option-Command-Shift.
A “Combined Listing” has been provided at the end of this document. This offers an arrangement by keypress, with all Control keys and notes included, per key.
Except for the Combined List which is my own arrangement, all information is presented as true as possible to Apple’s original materials.
-End of Editor’s note.
All information provided is copyright Apple, Inc. All rights reserved.
The VoiceOver Modifier will be abbreviated as the VO key. The VO key/keys can be configured in the commands category, or in the general category if you are running macOS 14 or older.
By default, the VO key will be Control and Option.
- If the guide mentions pressing VO+H, for instance, this would mean that you must hold both the control and option keys as you press the letter H.
VoiceOver Utility main interface
The following options will be available in all of the categories in VoiceOver Utility:
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates the basics of using iPhone Mirroring, a feature that allows you to use your iPhone from your Mac, with VoiceOver. Topics covered in this demonstration include:
General description of the feature and its current issues and limitations
System requirements and setup
Navigating and dealing with various elements of the iOS user interface, such as the Home Screen, rotor actions, and context menus, using macOS
Controlling which iPhone apps can forward notifications to your Mac
In this episode, Tyler gives a demonstration and walkthrough of macOS Recovery, a suite of utilities that can help resolve issues with your Mac and manage startup parameters. From within macOS Recovery, you can:
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to create and use Safari website shortcuts or "Web apps" on macOS.
This feature allows you to create shortcuts to websites on your dock that when opened, behave as if the website was its own app. This may be useful for VoiceOver users, as web apps are included when pressing Command-Tab to cycle through open apps, making them easy to switch to and from. In addition, these web apps can be mapped to commands in Keyboard Commander so they can be accessed with a single keystroke.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates some of VoiceOver's command customization capabilities on macOS.
If you find a particular VoiceOver command difficult to perform, or discover a function in the Commands menu that doesn’t have a default command, you can assign your own custom command to it. In addition, you can configure commands to open apps and run scripts, so you don’t have to locate them manually.
Commands can be configured by going to VoiceOver Utility > Commands, selecting the “Command set: user” radio button, and clicking “Custom commands edit.” For ease of navigation, you can choose the type of commands you want to view or change, such as numpad, trackpad, keyboard, etc from the "Filter commands" popup menu, or use the search field to locate a particular command.
If you own a computer or mobile device, there’s one thing you’ve probably heard time and time again, back up your data. When your critical information is stored in only one medium, it is inherently vulnerable. The device’s internal storage medium could fail, complications could occur during an update or other system event, the device could get lost or stolen, or a flood or fire could break out at the device’s location. For this reason, it is advisable to always back up your data.
If you have an iOS or iPadOS device, you probably back up the data on it in iCloud. However, iCloud backup is not available on macOS. Thus in this guide, I will be discussing how to back up your Mac with Time Machine, the Mac’s built in backup utility.
If you’re a Mac Voiceover user, there’s one thing you absolutely hate hearing, that an app is “Not responding.” This may happen occasionally and only last for a few seconds, causing only minor annoyance, or it can happen frequently and significantly disrupt your workflow.
If it happens frequently or for more than a few seconds at a time when performing basic tasks, there is likely an underlying problem with your Mac, either software or hardware related. In this guide, I will give an overview of some of the most common problems and solutions, but keep in mind that slower than expected performance is a nonspecific symptom, so there might be other explanations for the issues you’re experiencing.
If you own a computer or mobile device, you probably know that while it can do some amazing things, the fact that it is used to store and handle some of your most personal and sensitive data makes securing it essential. In this guide, I will give an overview of some of the security, privacy, and anti-malware features included in macOS, in order to give you a clearer understanding of what you should and shouldn’t use in your situation. Keep in mind that this guide is not intended as a technical deep dive, nor is it intended to advise on a specific security threat that you may encounter. Rather, it is intended as a simple explainer of numerous features built into macOS that aim to keep your Mac, data, and online accounts reasonably private and secure.
This guide discusses the many ways you can change verbosity options in macOS VoiceOver, and how they work.
The Purpose of This Guide
This guide is here to explain in great detail how the plethora of verbosity options can affect the way VoiceOver behaves.
If VoiceOver is or isn't speaking something you want it to, this guide will hopefully allow you to configure VoiceOver the way you want it to behave.
Speech and Braille Verbosity options
I've condensed these two tabs into their own section because they are basically identical.
In my last 3 guides, I described how easy it is to create a document in Pages that looks aesthetically pleasing to a sighted user. If you have been following the series, you have learned pages is an extremely powerful word processor for the Mac. You can produce everything from letters, to flyers to fully laid out books that are ready for electronic or print publishing.
The last 3 guides focused on the basics of formatting, using styles, adding keyboard shortcuts and using the formatter to make changes to text. This guide will get into more specific areas of the app as well as describe how you can add the final polish to get your documents looking ready for print.
To help start off a new school year, Tyler gives us a podcast demonstration covering some of the aspects of Pages for macOS using VoiceOver. Topics covered in this demonstration include:
Pages versus Microsoft Word (high-level comparison)
recommended settings
navigating the app
creating a blank document
applying paragraph styles
navigating documents
text alignment
fonts and line spacing
saving, sharing, and converting documents to alternate formats
For information on more advanced formatting functions in Pages, the following additional guides may be helpful:
In this podcast, Steve Murgaski walks us through how to assign braille keyboard commands to VoiceOver actions. He also demonstrates how to change the way a braille display behaves through the Activity feature found in the VoiceOver Utility.
iWork 13 was a big update. One that excited blind people, and at the same time annoyed power users. Because the iWork apps were rewritten from scratch, not every feature was included at first. One of these features is assigning hotkeys to styles, which later was brought back in an update. A couple times I’ve seen people asking how it works, so I sat down to figure it out.
Macs have been fully accessible since 2005, but those who have never used one may still believe the myths about VoiceOver that have been around almost as long as VoiceOver itself. Even long-time users may be doing extra work, not even realizing that there are shortcuts or steps they can skip. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel these long-standing myths, and maybe make you more comfortable with the idea of switching to, or at least trying out, a Mac.