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Accessibility on Mac OS X

At Ontario Mill, a shopping mall, I pulled out my new MSi Wind U100-279US. It is running Mac OS X 10.5.4. With a six-cell super extended battery, I figured I can get quite a few hours of work done before my baby Wakes up. After Mac OS X booted, I tried to turn on the wireless network card with Fn-F11. That didn't work. I pressed open apple-q to close the wireless program. No response. Strange. I loaded up Text Editor to test the keyboard. No response. That's when I realized that my baby had dumped juice all over the keyboard before we left. I had cleaned it up as best as I can. But it looks like it had fried something. Well, I decided to make the best of it and test Mac OS X's accessibility features.

After all, it is the year 2008, and most operating systems support handicap features. Windows comes with an On-screen Keyboard so that you can use its operating system without a real physical Keyboard, or without hands to use a real keyboard. It is slower to type on a virtual keyboard than a real keyboard. But at least I can get some work done.

So I went on a quest to find the on-screen keyboard for Mac OS X. After an hour, I realized that Apple did not include one in its operating system. I got no work done. Needless to say, I was disappointed with Mac OS X.

Did someone say Mac OS is easier to use? Not when you have special needs.

Chieh Cheng
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:23:13 +0000

It has it. You're on a pirated version of OS X, many things have been stripped out.

Sarcast
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:21:45 +0000

Thanks for pointing that out. Would you mind explaining to us how to get to it in the regular version of Mac OS X? That would help those of us who are searching for that tool.

Chieh Cheng
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:17:56 +0000

It looks like you are right that Mac OS X does have a virtual keyboard that you can use with the mouse. It's just very difficult and unintuitive to find. To open up the virtual keyboard, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Apple menu.
2. Click on "System Preferences..."
3. Click on "International".
4. Click on the "Input Menu" tab.
5. Check the box next to "Keyboard Viewer".
6. Quit "System Preferences".
7. Click on the American flag that has now shown up on the toolbar.
8. Click on "Show Keyboard Viewer".

Chieh Cheng
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:32:39 +0000

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