Thanks for the info. The below implies that speech is still there when doing a telnet into the os, is this correct? If not, are there any speech options, including a possible speakup variation, for working in the os with a shell? "You can telnet into osx with ssh and it's got a ready made set of shells right out of the box. You can use the terminal application on the mac its self but the interface with VoiceOver needs some work." XB IC|XC