I’m Matthew, 33, and I have spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. I use a power wheelchair and enjoy finding accessibility features people may not know about.

What I personally tested

While exploring my M4 Mac mini, I enabled Head Pointer with my Logitech C922e webcam. Moving my head left moved the pointer left; moving right made it follow. I explored facial-expression options, including opening my mouth, smiling, and raising my eyebrows, but didn’t finish configuring and testing every action. I eventually switched Head Pointer off because I was experimenting.

That distinction matters: the setup information below includes documented capabilities beyond my own test.

Getting started

Keep your usual controls available. Use comfortable seating, a stable webcam near eye level, and even lighting. Adjust the camera to your position instead of forcing yourself into an uncomfortable posture.

Open Apple menu → System Settings → Accessibility → Pointer Control. Enable Head Pointer, then open its information button to configure it and select your camera.

Options vary by Mac and macOS version. Use Apple’s guide version selector to match your installation.

Movement and clicking

Head Pointer offers two movement styles: following head movement, or moving toward the screen edge you face. Try a slower pointer speed first.

In the same Pointer Control settings, enable Alternate pointer actions. Open its information button, add an entry, choose a facial-expression trigger offered on your Mac, and assign an action.

Possible assignments to try—not Apple defaults or my tested configuration—include:

• Open mouth: left-click
• Smile: double-click
• Raise eyebrows, if available: right-click

Start with one action. Choose expressions you can make comfortably and deliberately.

Comfort and reliability

Spasticity, fatigue, and involuntary movements can change what works from one session to another. Take breaks and change one setting at a time. A compatible webcam may be enough to experiment without buying a dedicated tracker, but this won’t suit everyone.

Apple’s setup guide:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchlb2d4782b/mac

Have you used head tracking, switches, or facial expressions? What made computer access more comfortable for you?

The use case: a Deaf creator who signs wants the content to reach hearing viewers scrolling with the sound on, and blind viewers who can't see the signing at all. Captions solve part of that. A voice solves a different part.

Voxally is a new marketplace app built for the voice part. Deaf and hard of hearing creators, businesses and organizations upload signed content, and vetted human interpreters claim it and voice it. Creators can also send work to favorite interpreters, and a transcript comes with it.

I sign, and every episode of my review series already goes out signed, captioned, and voiced. In this one I lay out a test I run next week: the same clip posted with and without a voice, with Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok splitting the audience. Results go public either way.

For the people here who work on AT: how close is AI sign-to-voice to doing this job, and what would it have to get right before you'd trust it?

Disclosure: my episode. Not sponsored. I booked this episode's voice through Voxally, paid by myself.

Mac Head Pointer: webcam setup, facial-expression actions, recalibration, and Dwell

I tested Head Pointer on an M4 Mac mini with a Logitech C922e webcam. I’m 33, have spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, and use a power wheelchair.

My test confirmed head-controlled pointer movement. I also explored facial-expression settings, but I haven’t tested every action or established this as my everyday input method.

**Configuration**

Open **System Settings → Accessibility → Pointer Control**. Turn on Head Pointer and open its information button.

- **Relative to head:** movement follows head motion; stopping your head stops the pointer.

- **When facing screen edges:** turning your face steers the pointer; facing center stops it.

- **Pointer speed:** begin slowly and adjust.

- **Distance to edge:** applies to edge-facing mode; increasing it requires more turning before movement begins.

Apple documents these controls; it does not list a separate Head Pointer smoothing or movement-delay setting here.

**Facial expressions**

Enable Alternate pointer actions, open its information button, and use **+** to add a trigger/action pairing. Follow the dialog to choose a facial expression and action.

Supported action types include left-click, right-click, double-click, and drag-and-drop. For dragging, activate the assigned trigger once to pick up and again to release.

Camera Options lets you select the camera and expression thresholds: **Slight, Default, or Exaggerated**. These camera and expressiveness settings are shared with Head Pointer.

**Pause and recalibrate**

Head Pointer options let you assign switches or facial expressions for pause/resume and recalibration. Use distinct, deliberate triggers.

For recalibration, settle into your comfortable position and activate the assigned trigger. A countdown starts at three; stay still when it reaches one. Tracking resumes after the countdown disappears.

**Dwell**

Dwell is configured separately under **Accessibility → Keyboard → Accessibility Keyboard → information button → Dwell**. Enable its toolbar or menu-bar controls, select an action, and hold the pointer over a target for the configured dwell time.

This provides another route to clicks, dragging, and scrolling when facial triggers are tiring.

**Practical testing**

Try horizontal and vertical movement, selecting an icon, each assigned click, dragging a harmless file, pausing, and recalibrating. Test one function at a time.

For unreliable tracking, check camera selection, obstruction, lighting, and distance. Reposition the camera after seating changes. If another input feature interferes, test configurations individually while keeping backup control available.

Apple references:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/unac899/mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchlb2d4782b/mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dwell-mchl437b47b0/27/mac/27

Select the guide version matching your macOS installation; labels and available options can differ.

For people using these controls regularly: which movement mode and clicking method have been most reliable?

Hi everyone. Last weekend I was at a hackathon in Paris and built Murmure. Sharing it here because it might be useful to someone.

It started with a simple thing: a blind person watching football hears the crowd explode but has no idea why. Audio description exists for some films, almost never for live TV.

So Murmure is a web page, nothing to install. You put your phone in front of the TV and it tells you in your earbuds what’s happening, live, like a radio commentator: the action, the score, names and banners on screen. In the street, phone against your chest, it reads store signs, street signs and bus numbers. It never tells you it’s safe to cross and it’s not a replacement for a cane or a guide dog.

I tested it on a real match at home (about 110 sentences in 7 minutes, with around 3 seconds of delay) and walking around my neighborhood. It still has rough edges, and I haven’t properly tested it with VoiceOver yet.

It’s free and open source (MIT). For now you need your own OpenAI key to try it; it stays on your phone.

Code: https://github.com/phrnl0xyz/murmure
Try it: https://murmure-phrnl.vercel.app
2-min demo video (the app narrating a football match on TV, then reading signs in the street): https://youtu.be/pU1EvKQauzo

If you know someone who could use something like this, feel free to pass it on.

The use case: live captions in your line of sight, in a room where you cannot bring a phone up to your face every time someone talks.

The MemoMind One puts green text in both lenses, weighs 47 grams, and has no camera. That last part matters more than it sounds. No camera means no questions at a hospital, a courtroom, or a school. In my latency test, same TV clip and distance as my last glasses episode, captions landed 1.38 seconds behind the speaker. Live UK TV captions ran 5.6 when Ofcom measured them.

There is also a design-patent case against them that paused shipping to Europe for a few months, which I cover in the episode because anyone buying AT should know it.

Disclosure: it is my episode. Not sponsored. MemoMind sent a review unit. They did not see this episode before you did.

For the people here who fit AT: where does no camera matter most in your work?