Features that I'd give my right arm for

Today's accessibility features can help you work through a nasty injury, but there's still plenty of room for improvement

Far be it for me to start dispensing lifestyle advice, but if I can offer one tip, it’s this: don’t put the bins out in the snow while wearing your slippers. For it was this kamikaze scenario that resulted in me slipping, dislocating my shoulder and spending the next few weeks either in a sling or with very limited use of my right arm. I know. This kind of advice is worth the magazine cover price alone, right?

Of course, for a freelance journalist working for Tyrant Danton, taking more than a couple of days off to recuperate wasn’t an option. Our boss makes Jeff Bezos look like Gandhi. And so, in pretty short order, I was looking for ways to continue working with only one functioning arm.

Coincidentally, I’d written a feature last summer about the accessibility features in both Windows and macOS, so I had a good grasp of where to start hunting. Within minutes I’d turned on the Voice Control feature on my MacBook Pro, saving me from having to slowly hunt and peck with one hand when trying to write passages of text.

I don’t deny that the option to dictate prose to your Mac and have it automatically transcribe what you say is awesome. But it has its limits.