Updates, 2/1/12

Just as a couple of pieces of information, over the last day, Apple released an update to both their Airport Utility and a firmware update for all of their routers, the Airport Express, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. For 802.11G or earlier users, the version for Airport Utility is now 5.6, while 802.11N is 6.0. For the router firmware, the version is now 7.6.

What is of note for VoiceOver users is that the Airport Utility interface has changed to resemble how it appears in the iOS Airport Utility App. If you have used Airport Utility in the past only on the Mac, the change might be a little disconcerting at first. Just interact on the network group and then the image of your Airport router to get to the interface. You can also VO-space on them to bring up a popover with specific information. You will first have to VO-space on the edit button once you interact with your router to make any changes and get to the relevant tabs. There is also a scroll area you can interact with as well once you have interacted with your router. It’s actually pretty straight forward once you have explored a bit.

Everything, thus far, I have found to be accessible with VO. Even the image of your router will identify the status of the router and let you know the color of the light that is displaying, such as green or amber. It seems like Apple paid close attention to accessibility in this update.

The only downside, beyond having to figure out where to find things, is that I have read that some more advanced features that would be of more interest to IT folks has been removed. It is not known if this is just a temporary situation that will be corrected in future versions of the software or not. You can, however, read about the opinions and information on the missing features in several places, including macworld.

Additionally, today, an update for Mac OS X Lion was released. The current version of the OS is now 10.7.3. Thus far, there doesn’t seem to be anything new in regard to VoiceOver as of yet.

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