SEN & Accessibility
Assistive features are built into every Mac and iPad to help with vision, hearing, motor skills, learning and literacy to create opportunities for all learners. All stored together under Accessibility in System Preferences on macOS and under Settings on iOS.
Our Managed Service for Schools can deploy Shared iPad to your students with these features enabled and along with staff training delivered by our Apple accredited trainer Chris Smith, ensure that the learning becomes inclusive.
VoiceOver
VoiceOver offers support for more than 30 languages and quite simply will tell you exactly what is happening on the screen of your Mac or iPad, when you can’t see it. Giving auditory descriptions and helpful hints, the speaking rate and pitch can be adjusted to your preference.
Display Accommodations
To help with colour blindness or other vision challenges, iOS will let you invert colours, enable greyscale or colour filters can be applied. These settings will apply to everything once set and can be customised to what works for you.
Onscreen Keyboard
In macOS, the Keyboard Viewer allows typing without a physical keyboard connected. Input keystrokes via a mouse or other device, using the “floating” onscreen keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts can also be entered when Sticky Keys is enabled.
Zoom
Working in full screen or picture-in-picture, Zoom is a built-in screen magnifier that can be adjusted between 100 and 1,500% allowing you to see the zoomed area in a separate window. It also works with VoiceOver.
Dwell Control
A new macOS feature that can move the cursor on-screen, by head- or eye-tracking hardware. A timer appears when the cursor dwells on a certain location, like on the Dock. A timer then appears and when it expires, a mouse click is prompted.
Switch Control
Another macOS feature for those with physical or motor skill limitations. It gives the ability to navigate the screen using “scanning”, using a variety of adaptive devices like switches, joysticks or even a keyboard space bar.
Safari Reader
Safari Reader will reduce the visual clutter on webpages to help navigate the web by stripping away ad and banners. It also works with VoiceOver and Speak Selection.
Slow Keys
This adjusts the sensitivity of the keyboard, building in a delay which can be adjusted to suit. Choose a sound to play when a key is entered.
Speak Selection
This feature will speak the words you have selected and even highlight them at the same time to help with speech development.
Sticky Keys
macOS allows you to combine keyboard strokes using Sticky Keys, by pressing keys one at a time, instead of together to enter commands.
FaceTime
A great way to communicate using sign language, the high quality vide will capture every expression, available on mac OS and iOS.
Siri
Ask Siri to make a phone call, send a message or enable some of the assistive features listed above, it is your intelligent assistant on macOS and iOS.
Contact the Education team
For more information about Mac and iPad Accessibility features or to arrange an in-school demonstration, please get in touch with our Education team on 0115 985 1797 or email edsales@krcs.co.uk