June 2026 – MacAdmins Meeting

11 Jun June 2026 – MacAdmins Meeting

June 17th, 2026 – University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting

The University of Utah MacAdmins Meeting is held virtually monthly on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 11 AM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This month’s meeting will be held on Wed, June 17th, 2026, at 11 AM MT virtually using Zoom. Live broadcasts and archives are available to the MacAdmin community 2-3 days post-meeting.

Accessibility is for Everyone – Damien Barrett, Corning Inc.

Accessibility is not a niche feature set. It is part of how we help everyone work, learn, communicate, and participate more fully. In this University of Utah MacAdmins session, we will explore Apple accessibility tools across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, AirPods, and visionOS, with a focus on features that support people with vision, hearing, mobility, speech, sensory, and cognitive needs.

Building from real-world Mac admin experience, this presentation highlights practical tools such as VoiceOver, Zoom, Spoken Content, Dictation, Live Speech, Personal Voice, Background Sounds, Reduce Motion, display contrast controls, Sticky Keys, Slow Keys, text replacement, AirPods hearing features, Assistive Access, and emerging Vision Pro accessibility capabilities. Apple’s current accessibility ecosystem includes features such as Personal Voice, Eye Tracking, Live Listen, Magnifier, and AirPods hearing health tools, while Apple has also previewed 2026 updates involving Apple Intelligence, richer VoiceOver and Magnifier support, on-device subtitles, and Vision Pro wheelchair-control capabilities.

Attendees will see how accessibility features can help users with disabilities while also improving everyday workflows for all users: presenting more clearly, reducing visual strain, improving focus in noisy environments, capturing meeting notes, enlarging small text, simplifying iPad experiences, and supporting users whose needs may change over time. The session also emphasizes the role of IT professionals as advocates who can connect people with built-in tools they may not know exist. Participants will be able to identify key Apple accessibility features, understand how they apply in real support scenarios, and leave with practical ideas for making their own technology environments more inclusive, usable, and humane. The original presentation emphasized that MacAdmins can use their technical skills to “be an advocate” and help people with disabilities have better lives; this updated version keeps that message at the center.

About Damien Barrett

Damien Barrett is a well-known Apple platform engineer, educator, and prominent figure in the global Mac admins community. With over 20 years of experience managing Apple devices in both education (K-12) and large-scale corporate environments, he is best recognized in the community for his regular conference speaking, mentorship, and extensive volunteer work.

• Video – To view the archived presentation video, click here.
• Slides – To view the archived presentation slides, click here.

Introduction to DDM Explorer 2.0 – Mark Buffington, Jamf

Declarative Device Management (DDM) is now the standard for much of Apple’s device management functionality. While many of the benefits of it (such as on-device activation predicates) can be done without a device management service’s direct involvement to take action, testing installation, device outcomes, and status reporting still require a management service to help. Custom profiles or scripting can’t replicate the real thing when deploying declarations, and your management vendor may not have support for something you want to use yet.

Meanwhile, when new beta releases from Apple occur, there can be a wealth of documented and announced features you want to assess immediately for your own organization’s plans, combined with testing new features in your own environment. If something goes wrong or has unexpected results, testing early and filing Feedback with Apple ASAP is the best way to make an impact for an upcoming release.

 

This session will go over updates and changes to the Jamf DDM Explorer application and the 2.0 release. This app takes Apple’s GitHub documentation for declarative management and allows you to browse and build declarations based on shipping/released OS versions, or beta branches of documentation, when available on GitHub. You can then export declaration objects to deploy with your device management service to test. The new Status Explorer view also allows for viewing your test device’s declarative status channel data from Jamf Pro, allowing you to see real-time feedback for declarations you are testing.

About Mark Buffington

Mark is a Senior Consulting Engineer at Jamf, and has been here for the past 11 years or so, helping various internal teams and customers with a focus on helping to get “unstuck” from challenges. I’m always focused on the latest from Apple, and love to test all the things to learn from and share knowledge with tech enablement and documentation. Application development is new to me; however, I’ve been an avid user and fan of the DDM Explorer app since its first release. I was recently allowed to update and enhance the app, resulting in the 2.0 release and the upcoming enhancements.

• Video – To view the archived presentation video, click here.
• Slides – To view the archived presentation slides, click here. (coming soon)

Open Discussion

Questions, comments, problems, and fixes.

Directions

This meeting will not be held in person but virtually via Zoom video communications architecture.