The last time I saw a Mac running VoiceOver, the OS version was on Snow Leopard, so that would have been around 2009.  At that time, my husband had recently purchased a Mac Mini so that he could learn VoiceOver.  In 2011, I followed suit and purchased a Mac, hoping to emulate him and become well versed in VoiceOver.  By then, Mac OS was calling itself Mountain Lion.  But neither of us warmed to Mac OS if I am being brutally honest, so we sold our Macs and scampered hastily back to our comfort zone of the Windows environment.

But, from what I have read, and having used iOS on an iPhone for the last 12 years, I decided that it might be appropriate and worthwhile to revisit and invest some time in the Mac.  To my astonishment, therefore, my husband presented me with a Mac Mini for my birthday in February this year.  This wonderful gesture left me with no alternative but to bite the Apple and tackle its steep learning curve of core features.  (Please forgive all the puns, I am sure they will give you the pip!)

So, armed with a brand new entry-level Mac Mini, my first task was to turn it on, then press Command+F5 to fire up VoiceOver.  Naturally I had to go through the whole signing in process once VoiceOver started to talk, just as I would do with the Narrator screen reader on Windows.  My husband had fortuitously kept his lovely aluminium USB Mac keyboard with numpad so this made connecting it to one of the rear ports on the Mac Mini very convenient.  Similarly, I attached a pair of headphones and set to work in my new environment.

Mastering The Mac

If you use a screen reader on a Mac, you only really have one choice, and that’s VoiceOver.  Many people make the mistake of believing that the VoiceOver you use on an iPhone or iPad can simply be transferred to Mac OS, but that isn’t strictly true.  You can purchase a Trackpad and customise the Mac to use some of the gestures familiar to VoiceOver on iOS, but the two systems, Mac OS and iOS, are still different to learn and conquer.

For the sake of background, my computing days started on a BBC Micro system developed by Acorn.  From there, I ventured to Microsoft DOS and used some pretty crude speech synthesis in those early days with a screen reader called Hal.  From there, I moved to Windows 95 and, as they say, the rest is history.  I am a competent Windows user, and work with JAWS (Job Access With Speech) as my primary screen reader on a daily basis.  So I don’t think too much about navigation and using Microsoft applications, I open them every day and concentrate on the content and delivery, rather than the stuff going on under the hood.

As with every new interface, however, it takes time, patience and a vocabulary of expletives to find your way round all the utilities and shortcuts you need to use.  My approach over the last month or so has been to learn something new each time I turn on the Mac Mini.  So far, I have been:

• Gathering as much material as possible about VoiceOver from Apple Support pages and the AppleVis community
• Learning to interact with VoiceOver
• Entering my WiFi password
• Customising VoiceOver by adding a different voice and adjusting its speed
• Opening and closing applications
• Updating the system software
• Adding my printer
• Connecting a Braille display

It doesn’t sound like much, but I have achieved all these things, and try to set myself a task of doing something different every weekend when I have more time to devote to the Mac.

I would like to be able to reach a point where I can perhaps consider offering basic Mac training using VoiceOver.  I don’t want to be a Mac expert, I just want to know enough to get me by and be in a position to help someone else.  I much prefer the Windows way of doing things, but I know that is because it is instinctive, I don’t have to give the same level of thought to opening a browser or looking for a file I am working on.  With the Mac, everything is currently an effort and a huge learning curve.  The way VoiceOver works is different to how I use JAWS, and it still feels alien.  But if I work at my own pace, and don’t feel under pressure to learn something that is going to take time, I might just learn enough to get by.

Resources

There is now a huge volume of resources for the Mac if you use VoiceOver compared to my first jaunt with the OS.  The

AppleVis

website is vibrant and full of guides, tutorials and useful information so do bookmark this invaluable resource.

Apple’s own

Support Pages

offer a VoiceOver user guide you can download, plus lots of other help from their

Accessibility Support Pages

Apple Stores also offer lessons by appointment that enable you to get the most out of your device, so there is now far more help available than there ever was before.

Conclusion

I don’t want to get into the debate of Mac versus Windows, or JAWS versus VoiceOver, that isn’t the point of this piece.  My goal is simply to learn something new and share it with you as a rich resource.  At the end of the day, I may well give up and find the learning curve too steep to grapple with.  But my use of iPhone and iPad over the last dozen years has given me a lot of encouragement and a greater knowledge of VoiceOver, so I am much more hopeful that I can Master the Mac … eventually.