How to Use Assistive Technologies That Help People with Visual Disabilities Experience the MacBook Pro

Apple has always kept in mind the various physical disabilities that people face and tried to make the experience of using a MacBook as helpful as possible via assistive technologies. For people who are blind or have other visual disabilities, MacBook Pro comes with an option known as ‘VoiceOver’ which helps read out all the information on a certain page or document. It can also be used for various other purposes to help someone with visual disabilities in using a MacBook Pro up to its full capability.

Follow the steps below to learn how to use assistive technologies such as VoiceOver to help people with visual disabilities experience the MacBook Pro:

Step 1
The shortcut to turning ‘VoiceOver’ on and off is ‘Command+F5’. It can also be toggled from the ‘Universal Access’ tab under System Preferences, where many other options are also available such as using VoiceOver at login window, etc.

Step 2
Once VoiceOver is turned on any page open via a web browser or any document open with text on it will be read out to the user. To pause the voice-over a simple ‘two-finger tap’ on the track-pad is sufficient, and the same to resume the app.

Step 3
Most Apple apps are integrated with the VoiceOver app, such as Siri, PDF reader, Safari, etc. Safari even has an option to translate any page in a foreign language and speak it in the user’s language.

The VoiceOver app is truly a marvel for anyone with visual impairment and it can also integrate more than 100 different refreshable braille displays. Use VoiceOver or various such other apps by Apple to help disabled people use a MacBook with ease.