OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Enabling Interaction Assistance

The third section in the Accessibility system preference is Interacting, which has three panes: Keyboard, Mouse & Trackpad, and Speakable Items.

Adjusting keyboard behavior

The Accessibility system preference's Keyboard pane offers two sets of controls—sticky keys and slow keys—to help people type more accurately if they have arthritis or other physical conditions that affect how they type.

The Keyboard system preference (see Chapter 27) also has options to help the disabled, as described later in this section; you can quickly go to that pane by clicking the Open Keyboard Preferences button in the Accessibility system preference's Keyboard pane.

Help for pressing more than one key at a time

OS X offers a feature called sticky keys to help people overcome difficulties in pressing multiple keys simultaneously, which most shortcuts require you to do.

In the Keyboard pane, select the Enable Sticky Keys option to enable this capability. If enabled, this setting lets you press modifier keys (Control, Option, Shift, and ) one at a time—rather than all at the same time as normal—and use them to create keyboard combinations. For example, you can press and then N, for example, to open a new Finder window, rather than use the standard method of holding and then ...