Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mavericks Edition

Accessibility

The Accessibility panel (formerly Universal Access) is designed for people who type with one hand, find it difficult to use a mouse, or have trouble seeing or hearing. (These features can also be handy when the mouse is broken or missing.)

Accessibility is a huge focus for Apple. In fact, there’s a whole Apple Web site dedicated to explaining all these features: www.apple.com/accessibility. Here, though, is an overview of the noteworthiest features, broken down according to the tabs at the left side.

Display

If you have trouble seeing the screen, then, boy, does OS X have features for you.

“Invert colors” swaps the colors of the screen, so that text appears white on black—an effect that some people find easier to read. (This option also freaks out many Mac fans who turn it on by mistake. They think the Mac’s expensive monitor has just gone loco. Now you know better.)

“Use grayscale” banishes all color from your screen. This is another feature designed to improve text clarity, but it’s also a dandy way to see how a color document will look when printed on a monochrome laser printer.

The “Enhance contrast” slider makes blacks blacker and whites whiter, further eliminating in-between shades and thereby making the screen easier to see.

At the bottom, you’ll find the Cursor Size slider. It’s a godsend not only to people with failing vision, but also to anyone using one of Apple’s large, super-high-resolution screens; as the pixel density increases, the arrow cursor gets smaller ...