CloseView

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CloseView

I use CloseView assistive technology for low vision. It magnifies the screen. CloseView came embedded in OS 7, 8 and 9. It appears to have been removed from OS X in favor of Zoom, which DOES NOT WORK. Zoom renders magnified text too fuzzy to be useful. CloseView renders magnified text in great, sharp detail that makes it useful for a low vision person. When I tried to install CloseView to an OS X machine from a floppy disc, OS X spit it out--not supported. Now I have a quandry--my old OS 8.5 Mac does not meet my needs. I'd like to get a more powerful Mac and OS X. But on the other hand, without CloseView, no computer is useful to a low vision person like me. How can I get CloseView on a new Mac?

mac, assistive technology screen magnifier

Posted on May 10, 2007 6:05 PM

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Answer 1

May 10, 2007 7:15 PM in response to riehles

Under 10.3 Panther that I use, there are some additional options that can make a difference.

1) You can turn on/off smoothing in the Zoom Options pane. This has smoe impact on the anti-aliasing -- surrounding of characters with gray dots to "improve" their shape.

2) You can adjust the Contrast in the Universal Access pane. This can de-emphasize the gray dots that have been added to "improve" character shape. Do either of these options help you?

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Answer 2

riehles Author

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May 10, 2007 9:28 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I'll give those two a try at the Apple store and report back to you....grrrrrr, I'll be trying to "fix" Zoom, when CloseView worked fine without these fixes. Do you have any clue why Apple and CloseView's developer were unable to carry CloseView forward to OS X? Does it have something to do with the Intel processor, or is it just a stooopid licen$ing dispute?

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Answer 3

May 11, 2007 6:11 AM in response to riehles

You can reduce your display resolution & everything will be enlarged.

 Cheers, Tom

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Answer 4

May 11, 2007 11:53 AM in response to riehles

riehles,

To add to Tom's comment about reducing the resolution for better clarity, consider a different monitor.

When I ran a used Mac store, we had a Quadra 950 with four video cards and five monitors to demonstrate the resolution of different monitors, including multi-sync. One 19" Super Mac monitor only gave 640 x 480 fixed resolution output but it looked nice. I still use a black and white 20" Radius display that is super sharp. Because it is not color, it does not have the potential for blurring caused by misalignment of multiple electron guns needed for color.

Do not limit your solutions to software only. Consider 15 year-old hardware. My son used a 20" Super Match monitor ( 18 years old ) with his G5 until he could afford a flat screen.

Ji˜m

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Answer 5

May 11, 2007 12:18 PM in response to riehles

As you probably heard, you can get it to speak text on the screen really easily (if it is not muted off in the store). It speaks all the options in the Universal Access panel as you roll the mouse over them.

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Answer 6

riehles Author

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May 27, 2007 6:34 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Turning off smoothing in zoom options did the trick. The default on contrast is "minimum" so that offered no additional help--it would not let me adjust contrast below minimum. With smoothing off, zoom is almost as good as CloseView under OS 9. Thanks for the help. With smoothing off, I felt good enough to about the visibility to purchase a new I-Mac 20".

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