Fareham — Dec 10th 2016
John gave us a talk today about the various features built in to OSX and iOS that could help anyone with poor eyesight.
Each demonstration was done on a MacBook, and then the equivalent one on an iPad, although some of the features would not have been available on earlier devices. The iPhone was not covered, but it was assumed that some of the features would work in a similar way.
First of all, John showed how you could zoom in on any text displayed on the screen, either using Fullscreen mode or Picture-in-picture mode. The latter produced a rectangular magnifier, that could easily be moved around the screen.
Next, he demonstrated how you could get the text read out from your device, and as someone suggested, it could be very useful to proof-read numbers on a spreadsheet. The many built-in real-sounding voices could easily be changed, and also the speaking rate adjusted as required.
Another feature was voiceover, and this is designed to read out various things that are selected on the screen. Although the iPad version worked properly, it took much longer to carry out a procedure, especially when you wanted to stop it. This was because the first tap always read out the item, then it needed 2 more taps to open or run it.
Probably the most useful reading feature was the Picture-in-picture Zoom mode on the Mac, since you could also set it to read out what the cursor was pointing at, even if zoomed in.
Unfortunately Siri couldn't be demonstrated, due to the Wifi limitations at this venue.
John then showed how easy it was to dictate to the Mac and iPad, and how it will follow you quite accurately when composing a document or email etc. However, the iPad must be connected to the internet, since the processing is done at Apple.
Luckily, the Mac will still work off-line, as long as it is switched to enhanced mode.
A brief experiment was done, requested by a member, and this involved dictating a couple of sentences to the Mac, then getting it to read the text out loud. The result was very amusing, since some words had been totally misinterpreted and others added, probably due to the acoustics of the room.
All these features, that can assist people with vision impairment, could work independently from each other, but might cause a good deal of confusion if you're running more than one simultaneously. Each had other variables that could be tweaked.
We didn't have any other questions this time, just individual discussions between members.
Finally, just to get us into the Christmas spirit, Euan showed us a short Christmas movie that he'd made for the Dorchester group, using some special editing techniques.
The next meeting will be on Saturday 14th January starting at 10.30am.
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