User fundamentals - accessibility on a Mac

Last November I needed to buy a new laptop and as my grandfather gave me his old iMac and I owned an iPhone the logical step was to purchase a MacBook Pro. Getting to grips with a new operating system has been quite challenging, particularly as I've only ever used a PC before.

Over the last ten years I've had a physical problem with my arms and hands which leads to discomfort if I repeatedly carry out the same action. Due to this I had taught myself to navigate through an operating system using only the keyboard, to rest my hands from using a mouse. However, I learnt this on a PC, now I have to get to grips with a Mac.

On a PC to get up to the menu bar in an application I would use keyboard shortcuts, but the same shortcuts don't work on a Mac. To find out which shortcuts I could use I visited the Apple website to read about how the Mac's operating system comes with a variety of assistive technologies. This gave a good overview, but I had to visit the Mac OS keyboard shortcuts page to get more specific information.

I tried some of the shortcuts, but frustratingly they didn't always work! I mentioned this to my tutor, Di Dawson, who helpfully found out that to get to get to the menu bar I needed to use the keys fn (function) + ctrl (control) + F2 (function 2). This is an extra key in comparison to on a PC and annoyingly I find it difficult to do with one hand.

Once I figured this out, I could then open and shut down my computer just using my keyboard. My peer, Kathy observed me opening and shutting down the computer and wrote a witness statement.

To close down applications I used cmd + Q or fn + ctrl + F2 to access the menu bar and then use the arrow keys to navigate around the menu, the enter key to select an action and then close the application. Finally I used fn + ctrl + F2 to access the Apple menu and then close the computer.

I'm disappointed that the Mac website doesn't provide all the information I need on keyboard shortcuts, I think the way forward is to ask other people for advice, such as using forums.

Update: I've just figured out how to reduce the number of keys I have to hit. I've changed a setting in System Preferences under Keyboard so that Function keys only work as standard function keys. For example, to access the menu bar is now only ctrl + F2 - which I can do with one hand, hurrah!