Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

VoiceOver

The Mac has always been able to read stuff on the screen out loud. But Apple has taken this feature light-years farther, turning it into a full-blown screen reader for the benefit of people who can't see. Voice Over doesn't just read every scrap of text it finds

UP TO SPEED: For Laptop Lovers Only

Tons of the special VoiceOver keystrokes require the use of an F-key (like F2 or F5). If you have a Mac laptop, though, the F-keys come wired to functions like adjusting the speaker volume or screen brightness. The VoiceOver keystrokes won't work, in other words, unless you also press the Fn key at the lower-left corner of the keyboard.

If remembering to add Fn becomes a hassle (or you don't have enough fingers), open the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences. Click the Keyboard tab, and turn on "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys."

Now you've reversed the logic. You need the Fn key only when adjusting the volume or brightness, and don't need it for things like VoiceOver keystrokes.

on the screen—it also lets you control everything on the screen (menus, buttons, and so on) without ever needing the mouse.

As you can guess, learning VoiceOver means learning a lot of new keyboard shortcuts (see the massive table at the end of this section). Fortunately, most of them involve the same two modifier keys pressed together: Control-Option.

Note

VoiceOver works beautifully in Cocoa programs like Safari, TextEdit, and Mail, but doesn't work well in iTunes, Microsoft Word, ...