[Electronics-talk] outlook.comser of outlook.com
phil templet
phil70802 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 8 04:53:29 UTC 2013
I am a new user to outlook.com. Can anyone explain as to how to
attach a document to an outlook.com e-mail message?
Thanks
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of electronics-talk-request at nfbnet.org
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 11:14 AM
To: electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
Subject: Electronics-talk Digest, Vol 84, Issue 8
Send Electronics-talk mailing list submissions to
electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
electronics-talk-request at nfbnet.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
electronics-talk-owner at nfbnet.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Electronics-talk digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: Good article on android versus iOS accessibility.
(Julie Phillipson)
2. Chrome os (was Re: Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.) (Jim Barbour)
3. Re: Good article on android versus iOS accessibility. (Chun
Chao)
4. Re: aps for IOS device (Ashley Bramlett)
5. Re: aps for IOS device (Jim Barbour)
6. Re: aps for IOS device (Christopher Chaltain)
7. Re: aps for IOS device (Tom Lange)
8. Re: Good article on android versus iOS accessibility.
(Christopher Chaltain)
9. Re: aps for IOS device (Annette Carr)
10. Microsoft Surface (Tracy Carcione)
11. Fw: Windows Phone Accessibility Update (Frida Aizenman)
12. Re: Microsoft Surface (Jim Barbour)
13. Re: Good article on android versus iOS accessibility.
(Jim Barbour)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:14:43 -0400
From: "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
To: "'Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances'"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
Message-ID:
<!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAANHYk8os5otHncn1nsCCa07CgAAAEAAAAHxhslOPZeFLpFGr3a7s
Hm0BAAAAAA==@verizon.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Ok thanks. I want to use it mostly for GPS but there are a whole lot of
other aps that I like on both that I would like. I'm sure I would use it
for all sorts of other things to. I originally started looking to replace
my netbook but well they seem to be disappearing. As far as I know chrome
seems to be the thing with smaller computers that are mobile but has chrome
gotten accessible? The last I knew it was not compatible with Jaws or any
other screen reader. Is that still the case?
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jim Barbour
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:26 AM
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
I don't think Marco is saying that android is not usable by a blind person,
I think he is saying that iOS is more usable by a blind person. I would
agree with this.
I have used an iPad, and a Nexus seven, And I believe the accessibility
outcomes would be about the same as a comparison he did between iPhone and
Nexis for. However, the hardware does not compare equally.
Bottom line, if you bought a Nexus seven, You would be able to use it. If
you spend extra money for an iPad, you would notice the improvement for
sure.
Thanks,
Jim
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net> wrote:
> I've been investigating both an I pad mini and a nexus 7 does this article
speak the same to nexus 4 as to nexus 7? I listened to a pod cast on That
Android show on the Nexus 7 and it sounded much more accessible. It also
sounds like many of the things he talks about in this article could be done
with an external keyboard or on a full computer more easily. The price
difference between the two is significant too Nexus 7 $249.99 I pad $450 for
a 32 gb tablet, but if its not very usable to a blind user then what good is
it? So how inaccessible is it really? I want to get one or the other and
I'm only going to buy it once and not both, like a lot of you tech guys do!
I'm pretty good with figuring things out on the computer but I don't want to
be frustrated to the point of giving up on it either. Just a lot of
conflicting information out there. I also wonder if he was taking advantage
of all the aps available for blind android users?
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:51 AM
> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
>
> Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
isn't up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility
issues though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to
every smart phone user.
>
> He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
at Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria in
comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think it's
pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no reason
to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from someone who has
a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible they find the
platform.
>
> I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
and it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some of
the situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
>
> On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
curious how others felt.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s
>> accessibility blog
>> http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-
>> e
>> xperiment/
>>
>> A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to switch
to full-time, away from an iPhone.
>>
>> Background
>>
>> I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back then
was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and services to
people with vision impairments without the need to purchase extra assistive
technologies at prices that were again the amount of the phone they were
supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS,
was bundled with the operating system for free.
>>
>> At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility for
Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a command
shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
>>
>> Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android apps
in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited compared to
Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
>>
>> In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step forward in
terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB review spells out,
it offered touch screen access for the first time, more than two years after
Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a model that still left a lot to be
desired.
>>
>> The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced Android
4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch screen access,
called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the model Apple, and now
also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures allow for easy transition
between platforms.
>>
>> We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we did,
and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low vision
community has been humbling and inspirational!
>>
>> So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that it
was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my regular
smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast episode,
where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android
device, not from an accessibility, but from a general usability point of
view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take
advantage of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
>>
>> First steps
>>
>> So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go for
a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android fastest.
Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing home-grown like the
HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my partner?s HTC One, for
example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the dial pad to enter a phone
number.
>>
>> The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on the
front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone quality is a
bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving end. My best friend
who has a slight hearing problem had trouble understanding me. The speaker
on the back also leaves a bit to be desired, esp since the speaker in the
iPhone 4S that I am used to is quite good. I also found out during the
course of my testing that I have occasional problems with Wifi connections
becoming very slow, download rates plunging or downloads breaking up
alltogether. Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems to have, at
least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed lively in
the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my device
alone.
>>
>> I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide for
both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would not start
at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We could then
turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable
the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is
running regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
with me.
>>
>> Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my calendars
and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud installation at my
web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the Google Contacts route
because of recent announcements that left me uncertain whether this would be
supported across platforms in the future. For OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV
and CardDAV provider software from the Play Store that works like a charm
with the Nexus 4.
>>
>> However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
Calendar in iOS.
>>
>> BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
>>
>> Multi-lingual input
>>
>> Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem with
one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will often try
to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice versa.
Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In Languages and
Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one needs to disable the
System Language checkbox and then enable the languages one wants to have
supported. Next to the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles
through available languages.
>>
>> BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack doesn?t.
>>
>> This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
languages frequently.
>>
>> The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap the
a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the ?
character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither TalkBack
nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be long-tapped. On
iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter in question and
leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second finger, and can then
double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose
the relevant special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with
dedicated umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
character has a dedicated key.
>>
>> On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative keyboards
from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German keyboard with
Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears that accessibility is
tightly integrated with the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the
community did also not yield any positive result on this matter.
>>
>> BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
>>
>> Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the cursor, do
text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and paste. On
Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or paragraph, but
there is no way to select text or bring up the editing functions of a text
field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to have to always use an
external keyboard!
>>
>> Moreover, if you do not swipe, but use the one-finger exploration method,
it depends on where on a text field your finger lands, where the cursor goes
once you double-tap. Unlike on iOS, where it always goes to the beginning or
end first, or indicates where the cursor goes once you touch a text field?s
contents, on Android there is no such speech feedback.
>>
>> BUMMER! No controlled or advanced text editing is possible with TalkBack.
>>
>> Apps
>>
>> If you|d like to read up on some of the stock apps and their TalkBack
support, or lack thereof, I would like to point you to Kiran Kaja|s
excellent Nexus 7 reviews part 1 and part 2. Here, I would like to add a few
impressions of apps I use regularly.
>>
>> But before I do that, I would like to point out one big common
denominator: Unlabeled graphical buttons. They are everywhere! This includes
Android apps stock on the device, but more so many apps from the app store.
This is the more bewildering considering that the Android app compilers even
warn developers of missing contentDescription attributes, which are used to
give accessibility labels to image buttons or image views. One developer who
I contacted with a request to add those, said in his reply e-mail,
paraphrased: ?Oh I got those warnings, but always ignored them because I
didn?t know what they meant. Oh yeah I know TalkBack, but always thought it
useless. Now I know what this is all for, and you?ll get the buttons labeled
in the next update.? So there is a warning, but the compiler does not
indicate what this is used for, and that ignoring this warning basically
means excluding a potential group of customers from using one?s app!
>>
>> Twitter: There were several Twitter clients mentioned in the comments to
Kiran?s posts above, and even Plume, the one considered most accessible, has
several unlabeled buttons in the New Tweet screen, leading me to try three
different ones before I found the one that sent my tweet. I guess
?accessible? means a much lower bar in much of the Android community
compared to others, or?
>>
>> App.net: Another social network I use frequently.There are two clients
out there that are quite popular: Dash and Robin. Both added accessibility
contentDescriptions upon my request and are fully accessible.
>>
>> WordPress: I found several unlabeled buttons in the UI of that app. Since
it is open source, I decided to go in and fix them myself. I found that the
current trunk version has a much revamped UI, using a component that adds
accessibility by default, so the next version will actually be much nicer
for free. I had to add only a few contentDescription strings to buttons that
don?t take part in this new mechanism.
>>
>> WhatsApp: Works except for some buttons that aren?t labeled. Because the
layout is very similar to the iOS version, I figured out quickly that the
right one of the text field sends the message, the left one adds media.
>>
>> Amazon: With a few exceptions, works as well as the iOS version.
>>
>> Push notifications on the lock screen: One thing I dearly missed when I
started using Android was the fact that new notifications were not pushed to
my lock screen immediately, and didn?t wake up the device. i am so used to
the workflow of tapping a push notification to act on it from the lock
screen that this really felt like a serious drawback. Fortunately, there is
an app for that called Notification Lock Screen Widget. The instalation has
to be done by a sighted person, since it requires adding a widget to the
lock screen, but after that, it works quite well with TalkBack. One
double-taps the notification one wants to act on, then finds the slide area
and unlocks the phone. App is opened, one can reply or do whatever is
necessary.
>>
>> The camera
>>
>> Yes, this blind guy talks about the camera! I use it quite frequently on
iOS to take shots of stuff around me, sometimes even to send them to social
networks to ask what something is, or if the milk has reached its due date
yet. Since iOS 6 and on the iPhone 4S, I even use panorama shots frequently.
VoiceOver gives me instructions if I hold the camera too high or too low, if
I?m turning too fast or too slowly. If I want to take a picture of a person,
face recognition tells me if a face has moved into the camera view and where
the face is located. Once it?s centered, I can take a shot, and these are
usually pretty good I?m told!
>>
>> BUMMER! None of the above is possible with the Camera app on Android. I
can take pictures, but panorama or facial recognition is not possible.
>>
>> Once I?ve taken photos, I may want to re-use them later. In iOS, this has
been a no-brainer for ages. VoiceOver tells me what orientation the photo is
in when I?m in the gallery, if it?s a photo or a video, and when it was
shot.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Gallery in Android is totally inaccessible. There is onlya
Cancel button and a blank screen, nothing more.
>>
>> I also use ABBYY TextGrabber to do optical character recognition on
letters or other written stuff. On iOS, I can easily take a snapshot and
have it recognized. The result is usually also pretty good.
>>
>> BUMMER! TextGrabber on Android, although usable with TalkBack, suffers
from the above mentioned inaccessibility of the camera and gives bad results
in 50% of the time, and no result in the oter 50%. A sighted user can
achieve similarly good results on both iOS and Android, so this is clearly a
shortcoming in the way the camera cannot be accessed.
>>
>> I also use LookTel Money Reader on every travel to the U.S. or Canada to
recognize different bank notes.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Ideal Accessibility currency recognizer only works with U.S.
money, not with Canadian, Euros or British pounds.
>>
>> Scrolling in lists
>>
>> In iOS, when I have a list of a hundred tweets in Twitterrific or
TweetList, I can simply swipe through and read them continuously. This is
not possible on Android. Swiping in TalkBack only gives me the elements
currently visible on the screen. In order to continue reading, I have to
stop my flow, do the gesture to advance a screen, then touch at the top most
list item, and continue reading by swiping right. The alternative screen
reader Spiel offers continuous swiping in some lists, but I found that this
does not work reliably everywhere. For me, this is a huge productivity
killer. It interrupts my flow every 6 or 7 items, breaks concentration and
is a distraction. it requires me to think about where to put my finger next
i norder to not miss anything.
>>
>> BUMMER! No continuous reading of long lists is possible in a reliable
fashion. TalkBack doesn?t offer it at all, Spiel only in some limited lists.
>>
>> Navigation and travel
>>
>> I travel quite a bit, and also like to find out about my surroundings.
The Maps application in iOS 6 is a magnificent piece of software in
accessibility terms. I?ve never had such accessible maps at my finger tips.
When walking, I get announcements spoken to me of upcoming cross roads etc.
Previously, one would have to purchase expensive extra devices like the
Trekker Breeze to get some of this functionality. Alternatively, one can
also use Ariadne GPS to get some more features tailored towards the needs of
the visually impaired.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Maps app on Android only offers limited navigation
capabilities. Maps themselves aren?t accessible at all.
>>
>> And if I want to go somewhere in Germany, I most often will use the
German railway company Deutsche Bahn. They offer apps for both iOS and
Android, one for looking up travel routes, one to purchase and store
electronic train tickets to later show to the on-board service personnel to
have them scan it. Information about seating and when and where to change
trains is all accessible on iOS. Of course, finding routes, too. Standard
date and time pickers are being used, and everything works just nicely.
>>
>> BUMMER! While the Tickets app looks like it could be equally accessible
on Android, the app for finding one?s travel route doesn?t allow a TalkBack
user to specify a departure or arrival date and time. Because Android does
not offer a standard date and time picker, or at least I?ve never seen one
anywhere, the company decided to use an animated spinning wheel to adjust
the values for date and time. This custom view is totally inaccessible, and
there is no alternative method of input. I contacted the railway company
with this problem, and they said they?d look into it, but the only way I see
that this can be solved is by using an alternative UI if TalkBack or another
screen reader is being detected. Until then, there is no way I can find my
travel routes using just the Nexus 4.
>>
>> eBooks
>>
>> On iOS, ever since the first iPad was announced in February of 2010, the
iBooks application has been a fully accessible eBook reader. Along with
Apple?s iBooks, it supports ePub and PDF. In iOS 6, PDF support even got
raised to a level almost comparable to that of ePub and iBooks. One can
review text, read it on a refreshable braille display, even in grade 2 if
one so desires, find individual words and review them, etc.
>>
>> More recently, Adobe Reader on iOS also became accessible by supporting
the relevant protocols within the UIKit framework.
>>
>> Kiran already hints at it in his post, and even the Bookshare GoRead
application does not improve the situation. The only way one can consume
eBooks on Android is by letting them be dumped into one?s ears through the
speech synthesizer in chunks. No way to rewind, no way to review words or
phrases. No way to read on a braille display. It?s basically like listening
to an audio book on a cassette player with broken rewind and fast-forward
keys.
>>
>> The screen where the eBook content is being displayed is a total black
hole for TalkBack. Nothing there.
>>
>> BUMMER! eBooks are close to inaccessible! And there are no APIs to
support developers to improve the situation. While other platforms offer
rich content display/editing, Android doesn?t.
>>
>> Braille
>>
>> Braille support needs to be installed separately via an application from
the Play Store called BrailleBack. It is new, as new as Jelly Bean itself
is. My braille display isn?t supported yet. However I?ve opened an issue
against BrailleBack and even provided some info about my display, so in
hopes that BRLTTY will support it soon, Brailleback also will.
>>
>> On iOS, the display is fully supported right out of the box.
>>
>> In conclusion
>>
>> If I replaced my iPhone with the Nexus 4 full-time at this point, I would
be missing out on all ?BUMMER!? items above. It would be like stepping back
a few years in accessibility, but taking the knowledge with me that there is
something out there that offers me all these things.
>>
>> Despite my desire to use Firefox for Android on a daily basis, meaning
whenever I open a web page on a mobile device, I am not prepared to do that
for this big a sacrifice. I am also not prepared to constantly carry two
phones around with me except when I know I?ll be working professionally with
them at my destination.
>>
>> In short: The experiment, tailored towards my usage patterns at this
point in time, has failed.
>>
>> However, I will keep the Nexus 4 and use it for testing, because it is so
nice and fast. And I will use it to keep close tabs on future Android
development. Android 5.0 is around the corner, and I will definitely check
against the above points when it is released to see if any of these items
have improved.
>>
>> This experiment has also led to some conclusions regarding Firefox OS
accessibility which you all will hopefully see the results of in a few
months! So stay tuned!
>>
>> (via Instapaper)
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltai
>> n
>> %40gmail.com
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbrew48%
> 40verizon.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40b
> arcore.com
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbrew48%40veri
zon.net
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 10:56:04 -0700
From: Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com>
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Electronics-talk] Chrome os (was Re: Good article on android
versus iOS accessibility.)
Message-ID: <0A54E083-2F75-436F-893B-5E8D599E12CC at barcore.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Chrome is supposed to have its own screen reader built-in. However, I don't
know anything about how good it is, nor how good the chrome OS is.
Another option for you might be look at the Microsoft surface Pro. It to is
expensive, but is a lot more like windows.
Jim
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 6, 2013, at 10:14 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net> wrote:
> Ok thanks. I want to use it mostly for GPS but there are a whole lot of
other aps that I like on both that I would like. I'm sure I would use it
for all sorts of other things to. I originally started looking to replace
my netbook but well they seem to be disappearing. As far as I know chrome
seems to be the thing with smaller computers that are mobile but has chrome
gotten accessible? The last I knew it was not compatible with Jaws or any
other screen reader. Is that still the case?
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jim Barbour
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:26 AM
> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
>
> I don't think Marco is saying that android is not usable by a blind
person, I think he is saying that iOS is more usable by a blind person. I
would agree with this.
>
> I have used an iPad, and a Nexus seven, And I believe the accessibility
outcomes would be about the same as a comparison he did between iPhone and
Nexis for. However, the hardware does not compare equally.
>
> Bottom line, if you bought a Nexus seven, You would be able to use it. If
you spend extra money for an iPad, you would notice the improvement for
sure.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
wrote:
>
>> I've been investigating both an I pad mini and a nexus 7 does this
article speak the same to nexus 4 as to nexus 7? I listened to a pod cast
on That Android show on the Nexus 7 and it sounded much more accessible. It
also sounds like many of the things he talks about in this article could be
done with an external keyboard or on a full computer more easily. The price
difference between the two is significant too Nexus 7 $249.99 I pad $450 for
a 32 gb tablet, but if its not very usable to a blind user then what good is
it? So how inaccessible is it really? I want to get one or the other and
I'm only going to buy it once and not both, like a lot of you tech guys do!
I'm pretty good with figuring things out on the computer but I don't want to
be frustrated to the point of giving up on it either. Just a lot of
conflicting information out there. I also wonder if he was taking advantage
of all the aps available for blind android users?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
>> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:51 AM
>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
>>
>> Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
isn't up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility
issues though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to
every smart phone user.
>>
>> He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
at Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria in
comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think it's
pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no reason
to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from someone who has
a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible they find the
platform.
>>
>> I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
and it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some of
the situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
>>
>> On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>> This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
curious how others felt.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s
>>> accessibility blog
>>> http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-
>>> e
>>> xperiment/
>>>
>>> A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to switch
to full-time, away from an iPhone.
>>>
>>> Background
>>>
>>> I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back then
was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and services to
people with vision impairments without the need to purchase extra assistive
technologies at prices that were again the amount of the phone they were
supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS,
was bundled with the operating system for free.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility for
Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a command
shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
>>>
>>> Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android apps
in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited compared to
Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
>>>
>>> In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step forward in
terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB review spells out,
it offered touch screen access for the first time, more than two years after
Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a model that still left a lot to be
desired.
>>>
>>> The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced
Android 4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch screen
access, called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the model Apple, and
now also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures allow for easy
transition between platforms.
>>>
>>> We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we did,
and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low vision
community has been humbling and inspirational!
>>>
>>> So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that it
was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my regular
smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast episode,
where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android
device, not from an accessibility, but from a general usability point of
view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take
advantage of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
>>>
>>> First steps
>>>
>>> So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go for
a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android fastest.
Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing home-grown like the
HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my partner?s HTC One, for
example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the dial pad to enter a phone
number.
>>>
>>> The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on
the front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone quality
is a bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving end. My best
friend who has a slight hearing problem had trouble understanding me. The
speaker on the back also leaves a bit to be desired, esp since the speaker
in the iPhone 4S that I am used to is quite good. I also found out during
the course of my testing that I have occasional problems with Wifi
connections becoming very slow, download rates plunging or downloads
breaking up alltogether. Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems
to have, at least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed
lively in the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my
device alone.
>>>
>>> I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide for
both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would not start
at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We could then
turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable
the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is
running regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
with me.
>>>
>>> Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my
calendars and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud
installation at my web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the
Google Contacts route because of recent announcements that left me uncertain
whether this would be supported across platforms in the future. For
OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV and CardDAV provider software from the Play
Store that works like a charm with the Nexus 4.
>>>
>>> However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
Calendar in iOS.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
>>>
>>> Multi-lingual input
>>>
>>> Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem with
one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will often try
to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice versa.
Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In Languages and
Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one needs to disable the
System Language checkbox and then enable the languages one wants to have
supported. Next to the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles
through available languages.
>>>
>>> BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack
doesn?t.
>>>
>>> This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
languages frequently.
>>>
>>> The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap the
a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the ?
character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither TalkBack
nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be long-tapped. On
iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter in question and
leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second finger, and can then
double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose
the relevant special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with
dedicated umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
character has a dedicated key.
>>>
>>> On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative keyboards
from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German keyboard with
Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears that accessibility is
tightly integrated with the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the
community did also not yield any positive result on this matter.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
>>>
>>> Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the cursor, do
text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and paste. On
Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or paragraph, but
there is no way to select text or bring up the editing functions of a text
field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to have to always use an
external keyboard!
>>>
>>> Moreover, if
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 10:57:35 -0700
From: "Chun Chao" <zerone1683 at gmail.com>
To: "'Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances'"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
Message-ID: <000901ce32f0$3946bc80$abd43580$@com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Some members of the Computer Science division [NFBCS] applied to be
volunteers as beta testers for Chromebook and its screen reading software
ChromeVOX.
The project just started recently (around the end of March 2013), so it will
be some time before the Computer Science division start having discussions
of how the tests are going.
As of now, the accessibility of Chromebook and ChromeVOX is as primitive as
was Android and Talkback prior to version 4.0.
However, by having members of the blind community be beta testers for
Chromebook and ChromeVOX, Google is attempting to make the system as
accessible as possible for blind users.
C.C. Alan
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Julie Phillipson
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 10:15 AM
To: 'Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances'
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
Ok thanks. I want to use it mostly for GPS but there are a whole lot of
other aps that I like on both that I would like. I'm sure I would use it
for all sorts of other things to. I originally started looking to replace
my netbook but well they seem to be disappearing. As far as I know chrome
seems to be the thing with smaller computers that are mobile but has chrome
gotten accessible? The last I knew it was not compatible with Jaws or any
other screen reader. Is that still the case?
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jim Barbour
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:26 AM
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
I don't think Marco is saying that android is not usable by a blind person,
I think he is saying that iOS is more usable by a blind person. I would
agree with this.
I have used an iPad, and a Nexus seven, And I believe the accessibility
outcomes would be about the same as a comparison he did between iPhone and
Nexis for. However, the hardware does not compare equally.
Bottom line, if you bought a Nexus seven, You would be able to use it. If
you spend extra money for an iPad, you would notice the improvement for
sure.
Thanks,
Jim
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net> wrote:
> I've been investigating both an I pad mini and a nexus 7 does this article
speak the same to nexus 4 as to nexus 7? I listened to a pod cast on That
Android show on the Nexus 7 and it sounded much more accessible. It also
sounds like many of the things he talks about in this article could be done
with an external keyboard or on a full computer more easily. The price
difference between the two is significant too Nexus 7 $249.99 I pad $450 for
a 32 gb tablet, but if its not very usable to a blind user then what good is
it? So how inaccessible is it really? I want to get one or the other and
I'm only going to buy it once and not both, like a lot of you tech guys do!
I'm pretty good with figuring things out on the computer but I don't want to
be frustrated to the point of giving up on it either. Just a lot of
conflicting information out there. I also wonder if he was taking advantage
of all the aps available for blind android users?
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:51 AM
> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
>
> Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
isn't up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility
issues though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to
every smart phone user.
>
> He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
at Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria in
comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think it's
pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no reason
to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from someone who has
a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible they find the
platform.
>
> I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
and it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some of
the situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
>
> On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
curious how others felt.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s
>> accessibility blog
>> http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-
>> e
>> xperiment/
>>
>> A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to switch
to full-time, away from an iPhone.
>>
>> Background
>>
>> I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back then
was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and services to
people with vision impairments without the need to purchase extra assistive
technologies at prices that were again the amount of the phone they were
supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS,
was bundled with the operating system for free.
>>
>> At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility for
Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a command
shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
>>
>> Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android apps
in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited compared to
Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
>>
>> In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step forward in
terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB review spells out,
it offered touch screen access for the first time, more than two years after
Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a model that still left a lot to be
desired.
>>
>> The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced Android
4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch screen access,
called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the model Apple, and now
also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures allow for easy transition
between platforms.
>>
>> We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we did,
and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low vision
community has been humbling and inspirational!
>>
>> So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that it
was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my regular
smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast episode,
where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android
device, not from an accessibility, but from a general usability point of
view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take
advantage of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
>>
>> First steps
>>
>> So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go for
a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android fastest.
Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing home-grown like the
HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my partner?s HTC One, for
example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the dial pad to enter a phone
number.
>>
>> The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on the
front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone quality is a
bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving end. My best friend
who has a slight hearing problem had trouble understanding me. The speaker
on the back also leaves a bit to be desired, esp since the speaker in the
iPhone 4S that I am used to is quite good. I also found out during the
course of my testing that I have occasional problems with Wifi connections
becoming very slow, download rates plunging or downloads breaking up
alltogether. Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems to have, at
least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed lively in
the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my device
alone.
>>
>> I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide for
both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would not start
at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We could then
turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable
the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is
running regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
with me.
>>
>> Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my calendars
and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud installation at my
web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the Google Contacts route
because of recent announcements that left me uncertain whether this would be
supported across platforms in the future. For OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV
and CardDAV provider software from the Play Store that works like a charm
with the Nexus 4.
>>
>> However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
Calendar in iOS.
>>
>> BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
>>
>> Multi-lingual input
>>
>> Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem with
one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will often try
to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice versa.
Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In Languages and
Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one needs to disable the
System Language checkbox and then enable the languages one wants to have
supported. Next to the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles
through available languages.
>>
>> BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack doesn?t.
>>
>> This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
languages frequently.
>>
>> The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap the
a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the ?
character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither TalkBack
nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be long-tapped. On
iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter in question and
leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second finger, and can then
double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose
the relevant special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with
dedicated umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
character has a dedicated key.
>>
>> On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative keyboards
from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German keyboard with
Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears that accessibility is
tightly integrated with the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the
community did also not yield any positive result on this matter.
>>
>> BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
>>
>> Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the cursor, do
text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and paste. On
Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or paragraph, but
there is no way to select text or bring up the editing functions of a text
field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to have to always use an
external keyboard!
>>
>> Moreover, if you do not swipe, but use the one-finger exploration method,
it depends on where on a text field your finger lands, where the cursor goes
once you double-tap. Unlike on iOS, where it always goes to the beginning or
end first, or indicates where the cursor goes once you touch a text field?s
contents, on Android there is no such speech feedback.
>>
>> BUMMER! No controlled or advanced text editing is possible with TalkBack.
>>
>> Apps
>>
>> If you|d like to read up on some of the stock apps and their TalkBack
support, or lack thereof, I would like to point you to Kiran Kaja|s
excellent Nexus 7 reviews part 1 and part 2. Here, I would like to add a few
impressions of apps I use regularly.
>>
>> But before I do that, I would like to point out one big common
denominator: Unlabeled graphical buttons. They are everywhere! This includes
Android apps stock on the device, but more so many apps from the app store.
This is the more bewildering considering that the Android app compilers even
warn developers of missing contentDescription attributes, which are used to
give accessibility labels to image buttons or image views. One developer who
I contacted with a request to add those, said in his reply e-mail,
paraphrased: ?Oh I got those warnings, but always ignored them because I
didn?t know what they meant. Oh yeah I know TalkBack, but always thought it
useless. Now I know what this is all for, and you?ll get the buttons labeled
in the next update.? So there is a warning, but the compiler does not
indicate what this is used for, and that ignoring this warning basically
means excluding a potential group of customers from using one?s app!
>>
>> Twitter: There were several Twitter clients mentioned in the comments to
Kiran?s posts above, and even Plume, the one considered most accessible, has
several unlabeled buttons in the New Tweet screen, leading me to try three
different ones before I found the one that sent my tweet. I guess
?accessible? means a much lower bar in much of the Android community
compared to others, or?
>>
>> App.net: Another social network I use frequently.There are two clients
out there that are quite popular: Dash and Robin. Both added accessibility
contentDescriptions upon my request and are fully accessible.
>>
>> WordPress: I found several unlabeled buttons in the UI of that app. Since
it is open source, I decided to go in and fix them myself. I found that the
current trunk version has a much revamped UI, using a component that adds
accessibility by default, so the next version will actually be much nicer
for free. I had to add only a few contentDescription strings to buttons that
don?t take part in this new mechanism.
>>
>> WhatsApp: Works except for some buttons that aren?t labeled. Because the
layout is very similar to the iOS version, I figured out quickly that the
right one of the text field sends the message, the left one adds media.
>>
>> Amazon: With a few exceptions, works as well as the iOS version.
>>
>> Push notifications on the lock screen: One thing I dearly missed when I
started using Android was the fact that new notifications were not pushed to
my lock screen immediately, and didn?t wake up the device. i am so used to
the workflow of tapping a push notification to act on it from the lock
screen that this really felt like a serious drawback. Fortunately, there is
an app for that called Notification Lock Screen Widget. The instalation has
to be done by a sighted person, since it requires adding a widget to the
lock screen, but after that, it works quite well with TalkBack. One
double-taps the notification one wants to act on, then finds the slide area
and unlocks the phone. App is opened, one can reply or do whatever is
necessary.
>>
>> The camera
>>
>> Yes, this blind guy talks about the camera! I use it quite frequently on
iOS to take shots of stuff around me, sometimes even to send them to social
networks to ask what something is, or if the milk has reached its due date
yet. Since iOS 6 and on the iPhone 4S, I even use panorama shots frequently.
VoiceOver gives me instructions if I hold the camera too high or too low, if
I?m turning too fast or too slowly. If I want to take a picture of a person,
face recognition tells me if a face has moved into the camera view and where
the face is located. Once it?s centered, I can take a shot, and these are
usually pretty good I?m told!
>>
>> BUMMER! None of the above is possible with the Camera app on Android. I
can take pictures, but panorama or facial recognition is not possible.
>>
>> Once I?ve taken photos, I may want to re-use them later. In iOS, this has
been a no-brainer for ages. VoiceOver tells me what orientation the photo is
in when I?m in the gallery, if it?s a photo or a video, and when it was
shot.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Gallery in Android is totally inaccessible. There is onlya
Cancel button and a blank screen, nothing more.
>>
>> I also use ABBYY TextGrabber to do optical character recognition on
letters or other written stuff. On iOS, I can easily take a snapshot and
have it recognized. The result is usually also pretty good.
>>
>> BUMMER! TextGrabber on Android, although usable with TalkBack, suffers
from the above mentioned inaccessibility of the camera and gives bad results
in 50% of the time, and no result in the oter 50%. A sighted user can
achieve similarly good results on both iOS and Android, so this is clearly a
shortcoming in the way the camera cannot be accessed.
>>
>> I also use LookTel Money Reader on every travel to the U.S. or Canada to
recognize different bank notes.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Ideal Accessibility currency recognizer only works with U.S.
money, not with Canadian, Euros or British pounds.
>>
>> Scrolling in lists
>>
>> In iOS, when I have a list of a hundred tweets in Twitterrific or
TweetList, I can simply swipe through and read them continuously. This is
not possible on Android. Swiping in TalkBack only gives me the elements
currently visible on the screen. In order to continue reading, I have to
stop my flow, do the gesture to advance a screen, then touch at the top most
list item, and continue reading by swiping right. The alternative screen
reader Spiel offers continuous swiping in some lists, but I found that this
does not work reliably everywhere. For me, this is a huge productivity
killer. It interrupts my flow every 6 or 7 items, breaks concentration and
is a distraction. it requires me to think about where to put my finger next
i norder to not miss anything.
>>
>> BUMMER! No continuous reading of long lists is possible in a reliable
fashion. TalkBack doesn?t offer it at all, Spiel only in some limited lists.
>>
>> Navigation and travel
>>
>> I travel quite a bit, and also like to find out about my surroundings.
The Maps application in iOS 6 is a magnificent piece of software in
accessibility terms. I?ve never had such accessible maps at my finger tips.
When walking, I get announcements spoken to me of upcoming cross roads etc.
Previously, one would have to purchase expensive extra devices like the
Trekker Breeze to get some of this functionality. Alternatively, one can
also use Ariadne GPS to get some more features tailored towards the needs of
the visually impaired.
>>
>> BUMMER! The Maps app on Android only offers limited navigation
capabilities. Maps themselves aren?t accessible at all.
>>
>> And if I want to go somewhere in Germany, I most often will use the
German railway company Deutsche Bahn. They offer apps for both iOS and
Android, one for looking up travel routes, one to purchase and store
electronic train tickets to later show to the on-board service personnel to
have them scan it. Information about seating and when and where to change
trains is all accessible on iOS. Of course, finding routes, too. Standard
date and time pickers are being used, and everything works just nicely.
>>
>> BUMMER! While the Tickets app looks like it could be equally accessible
on Android, the app for finding one?s travel route doesn?t allow a TalkBack
user to specify a departure or arrival date and time. Because Android does
not offer a standard date and time picker, or at least I?ve never seen one
anywhere, the company decided to use an animated spinning wheel to adjust
the values for date and time. This custom view is totally inaccessible, and
there is no alternative method of input. I contacted the railway company
with this problem, and they said they?d look into it, but the only way I see
that this can be solved is by using an alternative UI if TalkBack or another
screen reader is being detected. Until then, there is no way I can find my
travel routes using just the Nexus 4.
>>
>> eBooks
>>
>> On iOS, ever since the first iPad was announced in February of 2010, the
iBooks application has been a fully accessible eBook reader. Along with
Apple?s iBooks, it supports ePub and PDF. In iOS 6, PDF support even got
raised to a level almost comparable to that of ePub and iBooks. One can
review text, read it on a refreshable braille display, even in grade 2 if
one so desires, find individual words and review them, etc.
>>
>> More recently, Adobe Reader on iOS also became accessible by supporting
the relevant protocols within the UIKit framework.
>>
>> Kiran already hints at it in his post, and even the Bookshare GoRead
application does not improve the situation. The only way one can consume
eBooks on Android is by letting them be dumped into one?s ears through the
speech synthesizer in chunks. No way to rewind, no way to review words or
phrases. No way to read on a braille display. It?s basically like listening
to an audio book on a cassette player with broken rewind and fast-forward
keys.
>>
>> The screen where the eBook content is being displayed is a total black
hole for TalkBack. Nothing there.
>>
>> BUMMER! eBooks are close to inaccessible! And there are no APIs to
support developers to improve the situation. While other platforms offer
rich content display/editing, Android doesn?t.
>>
>> Braille
>>
>> Braille support needs to be installed separately via an application from
the Play Store called BrailleBack. It is new, as new as Jelly Bean itself
is. My braille display isn?t supported yet. However I?ve opened an issue
against BrailleBack and even provided some info about my display, so in
hopes that BRLTTY will support it soon, Brailleback also will.
>>
>> On iOS, the display is fully supported right out of the box.
>>
>> In conclusion
>>
>> If I replaced my iPhone with the Nexus 4 full-time at this point, I would
be missing out on all ?BUMMER!? items above. It would be like stepping back
a few years in accessibility, but taking the knowledge with me that there is
something out there that offers me all these things.
>>
>> Despite my desire to use Firefox for Android on a daily basis, meaning
whenever I open a web page on a mobile device, I am not prepared to do that
for this big a sacrifice. I am also not prepared to constantly carry two
phones around with me except when I know I?ll be working professionally with
them at my destination.
>>
>> In short: The experiment, tailored towards my usage patterns at this
point in time, has failed.
>>
>> However, I will keep the Nexus 4 and use it for testing, because it is so
nice and fast. And I will use it to keep close tabs on future Android
development. Android 5.0 is around the corner, and I will definitely check
against the above points when it is released to see if any of these items
have improved.
>>
>> This experiment has also led to some conclusions regarding Firefox OS
accessibility which you all will hopefully see the results of in a few
months! So stay tuned!
>>
>> (via Instapaper)
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltai
>> n
>> %40gmail.com
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbrew48%
> 40verizon.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40b
> arcore.com
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbrew48%40veri
zon.net
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/zerone1683%40g
mail.com
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 19:35:21 -0400
From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Message-ID: <D53235F28CDE43A981ECF7E770CAB4CE at OwnerPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
is the best way to go through itunes to look at the ap store with a pc?
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Chaltain
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 6:09 PM
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
I haven't done it myself, but yes you can access the App Store with
iTunes from your PC. You can also purchase/download apps to your PC and
then sync them with your iPhone using iTunes. Like I said, I haven't
done this myself, and I can't speak to it's accessibility.
On 04/01/2013 02:56 PM, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
> true prices change.
> can I access the ap store on a pc. I have itunes if that helps.
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:32 AM
> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>
> Plus prices can change and apps can go on sale, so it's always good to
> check the App Store itself for current price information.
>
> On 03/31/2013 11:56 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> Yes, but one can easily find out if an app is free by consulting the
>> app store from your iPhone. The app store will also give you an
>> indication of what the app does and how the sighted public feels about
>> it.
>>
>> The applevis site http://www.applevis.com/ may give you information
>> about the app's voiceover friendliness, depending on if any voiceover
>> users have reviewed the app there.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Drew Hunthausen wrote:
>>> I believe the info about an app being free or not helps to know if it's
>>> something even to look into.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>>> Behalf Of cheez
>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 8:19 PM
>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>
>>> Don't take this the wrong way, but, I see a lot of questions asking
>>> if apps
>>> are free or not. Doesn't it tell you before you confirm the download?
>>> Vince
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>>> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
>>> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:54 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>
>>>
>>>> Jude,
>>>> What is the name of the free color ID ap?
>>>> What does A1GPS do that navagan doesn't?
>>>> Are both accessible? How much is navigan?
>>>> Do they only let you make points of interest, or plan routes too?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Jude DaShiell
>>>> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:18 PM
>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>
>>>> Navigan isn't free, though a1gps is. Maps get downloaded into g.p.s.
>>>> apps like these and users can locate themselves on maps and add their
>>>> own points of interest to them and then get navigation help to navigate
>>>> from their current location to their selected points of interest. If
>>>> you find the right color id app, it came from England and is free or
>>>> was
>>>> last time I downloaded it. The camera gets used to scan objects for
>>>> color identification and reporting. Actually blio is a book reading
>>>> app.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> Can you explain more?
>>>>> What does navagan do? How does it differ from the other gps ap called
>>>>> ariad?
>>>>> I thought blio was a book software for pcs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is the color ap called Color ID? Is that free?
>>>>> What is digit eyes?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:53 PM
>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes to all, I have redlaser for bar code and qr code scanning
>>>>> Navigan for
>>>>> gps, blio for scanning and I will test digit-eyes for bar codes though
>>>>> that's a paid app. I have color id on my phone for color
>>>>> identification
>>>>> and it can come up with some color announcements some people find a
>>>>> bit
>>>>> too creative, but then again I'm not some people. Good luck on that
>>>>> Section 508 work, every so often I help the Navy out a little with
>>>>> their
>>>>> efforts along that line of work.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For those of you using an I device, which free aps do you find
>>>>>> helpful?
>>>>>> Are there aps for scanning, bar code recognition, and color
>>>>>> identification?
>>>>>> How about GPS aps?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I?m asking because I intern in a section 508 office and they want
>>>>>> to do
>>>
>>>>>> an
>>>>>> outreach session on accessible aps for disabled people. This includes
>>>>>> blindness and two other disabilities.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>
>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>> readers?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>
>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>
>>> llworld.net
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>> readers?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>
>>> earthlink.net
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.ne
>>>
>>> t
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/dhunthausen%40
>>>
>>> gmail.com
>>> -----
>>> No virus found in this message.
>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>>> Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5717 - Release Date: 03/31/13
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>
>>
>
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
earthlink.net
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 18:20:22 -0700
From: Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com>
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Message-ID: <79650A9F-7DC5-46BE-A9CB-A6EF09F74E57 at barcore.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Yes.
Jim
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
wrote:
> is the best way to go through itunes to look at the ap store with a pc?
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 6:09 PM
> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>
> I haven't done it myself, but yes you can access the App Store with
> iTunes from your PC. You can also purchase/download apps to your PC and
> then sync them with your iPhone using iTunes. Like I said, I haven't
> done this myself, and I can't speak to it's accessibility.
>
> On 04/01/2013 02:56 PM, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>> true prices change.
>> can I access the ap store on a pc. I have itunes if that helps.
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:32 AM
>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>
>> Plus prices can change and apps can go on sale, so it's always good to
>> check the App Store itself for current price information.
>>
>> On 03/31/2013 11:56 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>> Yes, but one can easily find out if an app is free by consulting the
>>> app store from your iPhone. The app store will also give you an
>>> indication of what the app does and how the sighted public feels about
>>> it.
>>>
>>> The applevis site http://www.applevis.com/ may give you information
>>> about the app's voiceover friendliness, depending on if any voiceover
>>> users have reviewed the app there.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Drew Hunthausen wrote:
>>>> I believe the info about an app being free or not helps to know if it's
>>>> something even to look into.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>>>> Behalf Of cheez
>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 8:19 PM
>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>
>>>> Don't take this the wrong way, but, I see a lot of questions asking
>>>> if apps
>>>> are free or not. Doesn't it tell you before you confirm the download?
>>>> Vince
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>>>> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
>>>> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:54 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Jude,
>>>>> What is the name of the free color ID ap?
>>>>> What does A1GPS do that navagan doesn't?
>>>>> Are both accessible? How much is navigan?
>>>>> Do they only let you make points of interest, or plan routes too?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:18 PM
>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>
>>>>> Navigan isn't free, though a1gps is. Maps get downloaded into g.p.s.
>>>>> apps like these and users can locate themselves on maps and add their
>>>>> own points of interest to them and then get navigation help to
navigate
>>>>> from their current location to their selected points of interest. If
>>>>> you find the right color id app, it came from England and is free or
>>>>> was
>>>>> last time I downloaded it. The camera gets used to scan objects for
>>>>> color identification and reporting. Actually blio is a book reading
>>>>> app.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>> Can you explain more?
>>>>>> What does navagan do? How does it differ from the other gps ap called
>>>>>> ariad?
>>>>>> I thought blio was a book software for pcs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is the color ap called Color ID? Is that free?
>>>>>> What is digit eyes?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:53 PM
>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes to all, I have redlaser for bar code and qr code scanning
>>>>>> Navigan for
>>>>>> gps, blio for scanning and I will test digit-eyes for bar codes
though
>>>>>> that's a paid app. I have color id on my phone for color
>>>>>> identification
>>>>>> and it can come up with some color announcements some people find a
>>>>>> bit
>>>>>> too creative, but then again I'm not some people. Good luck on that
>>>>>> Section 508 work, every so often I help the Navy out a little with
>>>>>> their
>>>>>> efforts along that line of work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For those of you using an I device, which free aps do you find
>>>>>>> helpful?
>>>>>>> Are there aps for scanning, bar code recognition, and color
>>>>>>> identification?
>>>>>>> How about GPS aps?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I?m asking because I intern in a section 508 office and they want
>>>>>>> to do
>>>>
>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>> outreach session on accessible aps for disabled people. This
includes
>>>>>>> blindness and two other disabilities.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>
>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>
>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>
>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>> readers?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>
>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.ne
>>>>
>>>> t
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/dhunthausen%40
>>>>
>>>> gmail.com
>>>> -----
>>>> No virus found in this message.
>>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>>>> Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5717 - Release Date: 03/31/13
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
earthlink.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:37:16 -0500
From: Christopher Chaltain <chaltain at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Message-ID: <5160F7FC.3070107 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
To be honest, I avoid using iTunes on the PC, and I find using the App
Store on the iPhone to be a piece of cake. I guess I can't say which is
best, but I'd be surprised if accessing the App Store on the PC with
iTunes is easier or better than just using the App Store directly from
the iPhone.
On 04/06/2013 08:20 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
> Yes.
>
> Jim
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
wrote:
>
>> is the best way to go through itunes to look at the ap store with a pc?
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 6:09 PM
>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>
>> I haven't done it myself, but yes you can access the App Store with
>> iTunes from your PC. You can also purchase/download apps to your PC and
>> then sync them with your iPhone using iTunes. Like I said, I haven't
>> done this myself, and I can't speak to it's accessibility.
>>
>> On 04/01/2013 02:56 PM, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>> true prices change.
>>> can I access the ap store on a pc. I have itunes if that helps.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:32 AM
>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>
>>> Plus prices can change and apps can go on sale, so it's always good to
>>> check the App Store itself for current price information.
>>>
>>> On 03/31/2013 11:56 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>>> Yes, but one can easily find out if an app is free by consulting the
>>>> app store from your iPhone. The app store will also give you an
>>>> indication of what the app does and how the sighted public feels about
>>>> it.
>>>>
>>>> The applevis site http://www.applevis.com/ may give you information
>>>> about the app's voiceover friendliness, depending on if any voiceover
>>>> users have reviewed the app there.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Drew Hunthausen wrote:
>>>>> I believe the info about an app being free or not helps to know if
it's
>>>>> something even to look into.
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>>>>> Behalf Of cheez
>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 8:19 PM
>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>
>>>>> Don't take this the wrong way, but, I see a lot of questions asking
>>>>> if apps
>>>>> are free or not. Doesn't it tell you before you confirm the download?
>>>>> Vince
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>>>>> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
>>>>> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:54 PM
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Jude,
>>>>>> What is the name of the free color ID ap?
>>>>>> What does A1GPS do that navagan doesn't?
>>>>>> Are both accessible? How much is navigan?
>>>>>> Do they only let you make points of interest, or plan routes too?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:18 PM
>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Navigan isn't free, though a1gps is. Maps get downloaded into g.p.s.
>>>>>> apps like these and users can locate themselves on maps and add their
>>>>>> own points of interest to them and then get navigation help to
navigate
>>>>>> from their current location to their selected points of interest. If
>>>>>> you find the right color id app, it came from England and is free or
>>>>>> was
>>>>>> last time I downloaded it. The camera gets used to scan objects for
>>>>>> color identification and reporting. Actually blio is a book reading
>>>>>> app.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>> Can you explain more?
>>>>>>> What does navagan do? How does it differ from the other gps ap
called
>>>>>>> ariad?
>>>>>>> I thought blio was a book software for pcs.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Is the color ap called Color ID? Is that free?
>>>>>>> What is digit eyes?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:53 PM
>>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes to all, I have redlaser for bar code and qr code scanning
>>>>>>> Navigan for
>>>>>>> gps, blio for scanning and I will test digit-eyes for bar codes
though
>>>>>>> that's a paid app. I have color id on my phone for color
>>>>>>> identification
>>>>>>> and it can come up with some color announcements some people find a
>>>>>>> bit
>>>>>>> too creative, but then again I'm not some people. Good luck on that
>>>>>>> Section 508 work, every so often I help the Navy out a little with
>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>> efforts along that line of work.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> For those of you using an I device, which free aps do you find
>>>>>>>> helpful?
>>>>>>>> Are there aps for scanning, bar code recognition, and color
>>>>>>>> identification?
>>>>>>>> How about GPS aps?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I?m asking because I intern in a section 508 office and they want
>>>>>>>> to do
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>> outreach session on accessible aps for disabled people. This
includes
>>>>>>>> blindness and two other disabilities.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
for
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>
>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>
>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>
>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>
>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.ne
>>>>>
>>>>> t
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/dhunthausen%40
>>>>>
>>>>> gmail.com
>>>>> -----
>>>>> No virus found in this message.
>>>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>>>>> Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5717 - Release Date:
03/31/13
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Christopher (CJ)
>> chaltain at Gmail
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
earthlink.net
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 22:28:58 -0700
From: Tom Lange <lange85 at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Message-ID: <4C1852FB291844BAAEC59D5EE260852F at DBPFFH91>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
Hi,
The app store is very easy for me to use on the phone, so it's my preferred
way of buying apps. I see no reason whatsoever to use iTunes to buy apps for
my phone. Despite what others might say about how well they get along with
iTunes, I think its interface is cumbersome and unwieldy at best, a
monumental pain in the butt to use. With the exception of rare occasions
when I add new music to my phone, I avoid it like the plague. My discussions
with people about iTunes almost always degenerate into obscenity-laden
rants, so I'd best get out of here before that happens.
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Chaltain" <chaltain at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
> To be honest, I avoid using iTunes on the PC, and I find using the App
> Store on the iPhone to be a piece of cake. I guess I can't say which is
> best, but I'd be surprised if accessing the App Store on the PC with
> iTunes is easier or better than just using the App Store directly from the
> iPhone.
>
> On 04/06/2013 08:20 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> Yes.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Apr 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> is the best way to go through itunes to look at the ap store with a pc?
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 6:09 PM
>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>
>>> I haven't done it myself, but yes you can access the App Store with
>>> iTunes from your PC. You can also purchase/download apps to your PC and
>>> then sync them with your iPhone using iTunes. Like I said, I haven't
>>> done this myself, and I can't speak to it's accessibility.
>>>
>>> On 04/01/2013 02:56 PM, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>> true prices change.
>>>> can I access the ap store on a pc. I have itunes if that helps.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>>>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:32 AM
>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>
>>>> Plus prices can change and apps can go on sale, so it's always good to
>>>> check the App Store itself for current price information.
>>>>
>>>> On 03/31/2013 11:56 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>>>> Yes, but one can easily find out if an app is free by consulting the
>>>>> app store from your iPhone. The app store will also give you an
>>>>> indication of what the app does and how the sighted public feels about
>>>>> it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The applevis site http://www.applevis.com/ may give you information
>>>>> about the app's voiceover friendliness, depending on if any voiceover
>>>>> users have reviewed the app there.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jim
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Drew Hunthausen wrote:
>>>>>> I believe the info about an app being free or not helps to know if
>>>>>> it's
>>>>>> something even to look into.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
>>>>>> On
>>>>>> Behalf Of cheez
>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 8:19 PM
>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Don't take this the wrong way, but, I see a lot of questions asking
>>>>>> if apps
>>>>>> are free or not. Doesn't it tell you before you confirm the
>>>>>> download?
>>>>>> Vince
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>>>>>> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
>>>>>> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:54 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jude,
>>>>>>> What is the name of the free color ID ap?
>>>>>>> What does A1GPS do that navagan doesn't?
>>>>>>> Are both accessible? How much is navigan?
>>>>>>> Do they only let you make points of interest, or plan routes too?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>>> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:18 PM
>>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Navigan isn't free, though a1gps is. Maps get downloaded into
>>>>>>> g.p.s.
>>>>>>> apps like these and users can locate themselves on maps and add
>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>> own points of interest to them and then get navigation help to
>>>>>>> navigate
>>>>>>> from their current location to their selected points of interest.
>>>>>>> If
>>>>>>> you find the right color id app, it came from England and is free or
>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>> last time I downloaded it. The camera gets used to scan objects for
>>>>>>> color identification and reporting. Actually blio is a book reading
>>>>>>> app.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>> Can you explain more?
>>>>>>>> What does navagan do? How does it differ from the other gps ap
>>>>>>>> called
>>>>>>>> ariad?
>>>>>>>> I thought blio was a book software for pcs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Is the color ap called Color ID? Is that free?
>>>>>>>> What is digit eyes?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:53 PM
>>>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yes to all, I have redlaser for bar code and qr code scanning
>>>>>>>> Navigan for
>>>>>>>> gps, blio for scanning and I will test digit-eyes for bar codes
>>>>>>>> though
>>>>>>>> that's a paid app. I have color id on my phone for color
>>>>>>>> identification
>>>>>>>> and it can come up with some color announcements some people find a
>>>>>>>> bit
>>>>>>>> too creative, but then again I'm not some people. Good luck on
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> Section 508 work, every so often I help the Navy out a little with
>>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>>> efforts along that line of work.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> For those of you using an I device, which free aps do you find
>>>>>>>>> helpful?
>>>>>>>>> Are there aps for scanning, bar code recognition, and color
>>>>>>>>> identification?
>>>>>>>>> How about GPS aps?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I?m asking because I intern in a section 508 office and they want
>>>>>>>>> to do
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>>> outreach session on accessible aps for disabled people. This
>>>>>>>>> includes
>>>>>>>>> blindness and two other disabilities.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>>
>>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>>
>>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.ne
>>>>>>
>>>>>> t
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/dhunthausen%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> gmail.com
>>>>>> -----
>>>>>> No virus found in this message.
>>>>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>>>>>> Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5717 - Release Date:
>>>>>> 03/31/13
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christopher (CJ)
>>> chaltain at Gmail
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
earthlink.net
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/lange85%40gmai
l.com
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:06:30 -0500
From: Christopher Chaltain <chaltain at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
Message-ID: <51611AF6.4090608 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Well, I think statements like "paled in comparison" and "left a lot to
be desired", although they are historically accurate, indicate a bias
since they could have been reworded or just not mentioned altogether
because the article is a current comparison and not a historical
comparison. Like I said, it seemed like a fair assessment to me, and I
agree, he's very clear he's a happy iPhone user, so he isn't hiding
anything. I don't have a problem with this bias, and maybe I shouldn't
even call it a bias, but the article is written by someone who clearly
sees Android as the challenger.
Some shortcomings I see with the iPhone with respect to accessibility
include:
* The problem with Voice Over and call volumes. (I see quite a few
iPhone users recommending that people use their headphones when making a
call where they'll need to also access something on their iPhone, like
the dial pad.)
* The inability to accurately label objects. (I know this used to work,
but it's pretty obvious something was broken in IOS 6, and this still
hasn't' been fixed.)
* VoiceOver doesn't announce the state of calendars in the built in
calendar app, so you can't tell which calendars you've selected to be
displayed. (Again, this used to work but still hasn't been addressed in
multiple updates to IOS 6.)
* The lack of a user definable pronunciation dictionary for Voice Over.
* The inability to use other speech synthesizers or even have apps share
common speech synthesizers.
Other short comings I see in the iPhone that aren't related to
accessibility include:
* The fact that I can't access the file system on my iPhone or access it
as a removable volume from my PC. This forces me to use iTunes and other
cumbersome work arounds to get data on and off my phone.
* The lack of SD card support.
* The limited number of form factors, no keyboard option for example.
* The inability to change defaults, such as making Chrome my default
browser instead of Safari. In fact, this is why Mozilla isn't interested
in porting Firefox to IOS.
Note that I don't expect the iPhone or it's accessibility to be perfect,
and I'm not saying the issues with the iPhone's accessibility are on the
same par with the accessibility issues that still exist on Android, but
I just want to point out that the iPhone and it's accessibility isn't
perfect, at least in my opinion.
I also don't think that Android's accessibility will ever be on par with
Apple's, let alone surpass it. It's chasing, and as long as it's chasing
it'll never catch Apple. The reason the progress in Android's
accessibility has been so dramatic over the last few years is that it's
coming from such a low point. Apple's accessibility is a more integral
part of the operating system, and they aren't sitting still. The only
way Android will catch up and pass IOS with respect to accessibility is
if there's a paradigm change or Google comes up with something that is
as innovative as what Apple came up with when they came out with
VoiceOver for the touch screen.
On 04/06/2013 09:53 AM, Jim Barbour wrote:
> Hey Christopher,
>
> I'm also a long time iPhone user who tries out Android from
> time to time because I like knowing what's out there. As I mentioned
> already, Marco's article aligns pretty well with my own experiences.
>
> I'd really be curious to know other people's thoughts on shortcomings
> in the iPhone. The ones I can think of are speed, price, lack of physical
> keyboard, lack of ability to install my own keyboards, and some
> features i would only get by jailbreaking the iPhone. Do you find
> other shortcomings in the iPhone?
>
> I'm not sure how you find bias in his article. It does seem clear.
> that he likes the iPhone better than Android. However, it
> would be pretty hard to find someone who "likes them both equally." I
> think the history he points out is pretty valid, and doesn't
> necessarily indicate bias. I suspect Marco and I would agree that the
> iPhone is still ahead of android on accessibility, but that android is
> making accessibility progress much faster than the iPhone is. If
> Google can keep it up, then android will soon equal or surpass the
> iPhone. My big question is can Google keep it up?
>
> Jim
>
> On Sat, Apr 06, 2013 at 01:50:31AM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
>> Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
isn't
>> up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility issues
>> though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to every
>> smart phone user.
>>
>> He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
at
>> Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
>> accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
>> although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria
in
>> comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think
it's
>> pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no
reason
>> to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from someone who
has
>> a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible they find the
>> platform.
>>
>> I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
and
>> it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some of
the
>> situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
>>
>> On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>> This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
curious how others felt.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s accessibility
blog
>>>
http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-experim
ent/
>>>
>>> A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to switch
to full-time, away from an iPhone.
>>>
>>> Background
>>>
>>> I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back then
was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and services to
people with vision impairments without the need to purchase extra assistive
technologies at prices that were again the amount of the phone they were
supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS,
was bundled with the operating system for free.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility for
Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a command
shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
>>>
>>> Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android apps
in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited compared to
Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
>>>
>>> In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step forward in
terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB review spells out,
it offered touch screen access for the first time, more than two years after
Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a model that still left a lot to be
desired.
>>>
>>> The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced
Android 4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch screen
access, called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the model Apple, and
now also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures allow for easy
transition between platforms.
>>>
>>> We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we did,
and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low vision
community has been humbling and inspirational!
>>>
>>> So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that it
was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my regular
smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast episode,
where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android
device, not from an accessibility, but from a general usability point of
view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take
advantage of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
>>>
>>> First steps
>>>
>>> So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go for
a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android fastest.
Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing home-grown like the
HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my partner?s HTC One, for
example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the dial pad to enter a phone
number.
>>>
>>> The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on
the front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone quality
is a bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving end. My best
friend who has a slight hearing problem had trouble understanding me. The
speaker on the back also leaves a bit to be desired, esp since the speaker
in the iPhone 4S that I am used to is quite good. I also found out during
the course of my testing that I have occasional problems with Wifi
connections becoming very slow, download rates plunging or downloads
breaking up alltogether. Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems
to have, at least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed
lively in the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my
device alone.
>>>
>>> I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide for
both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would not start
at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We could then
turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable
the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is
running regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
with me.
>>>
>>> Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my
calendars and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud
installation at my web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the
Google Contacts route because of recent announcements that left me uncertain
whether this would be supported across platforms in the future. For
OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV and CardDAV provider software from the Play
Store that works like a charm with the Nexus 4.
>>>
>>> However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
Calendar in iOS.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
>>>
>>> Multi-lingual input
>>>
>>> Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem with
one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will often try
to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice versa.
Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In Languages and
Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one needs to disable the
System Language checkbox and then enable the languages one wants to have
supported. Next to the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles
through available languages.
>>>
>>> BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack
doesn?t.
>>>
>>> This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
languages frequently.
>>>
>>> The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap the
a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the ?
character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither TalkBack
nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be long-tapped. On
iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter in question and
leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second finger, and can then
double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose
the relevant special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with
dedicated umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
character has a dedicated key.
>>>
>>> On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative keyboards
from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German keyboard with
Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears that accessibility is
tightly integrated with the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the
community did also not yield any positive result on this matter.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
>>>
>>> Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the cursor, do
text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and paste. On
Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or paragraph, but
there is no way to select text or bring up the editing functions of a text
field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to have to always use an
external keyboard!
>>>
>>> Moreover, if you do not swipe, but use the one-finger exploration
method, it depends on where on a text field your finger lands, where the
cursor goes once you double-tap. Unlike on iOS, where it always goes to the
beginning or end first, or indicates where the cursor goes once you touch a
text field?s contents, on Android there is no such speech feedback.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! No controlled or advanced text editing is possible with
TalkBack.
>>>
>>> Apps
>>>
>>> If you|d like to read up on some of the stock apps and their TalkBack
support, or lack thereof, I would like to point you to Kiran Kaja|s
excellent Nexus 7 reviews part 1 and part 2. Here, I would like to add a few
impressions of apps I use regularly.
>>>
>>> But before I do that, I would like to point out one big common
denominator: Unlabeled graphical buttons. They are everywhere! This includes
Android apps stock on the device, but more so many apps from the app store.
This is the more bewildering considering that the Android app compilers even
warn developers of missing contentDescription attributes, which are used to
give accessibility labels to image buttons or image views. One developer who
I contacted with a request to add those, said in his reply e-mail,
paraphrased: ?Oh I got those warnings, but always ignored them because I
didn?t know what they meant. Oh yeah I know TalkBack, but always thought it
useless. Now I know what this is all for, and you?ll get the buttons labeled
in the next update.? So there is a warning, but the compiler does not
indicate what this is used for, and that ignoring this warning basically
means excluding a potential group of customers from using one?s app!
>>>
>>> Twitter: There were several Twitter clients mentioned in the comments to
Kiran?s posts above, and even Plume, the one considered most accessible, has
several unlabeled buttons in the New Tweet screen, leading me to try three
different ones before I found the one that sent my tweet. I guess
?accessible? means a much lower bar in much of the Android community
compared to others, or?
>>>
>>> App.net: Another social network I use frequently.There are two clients
out there that are quite popular: Dash and Robin. Both added accessibility
contentDescriptions upon my request and are fully accessible.
>>>
>>> WordPress: I found several unlabeled buttons in the UI of that app.
Since it is open source, I decided to go in and fix them myself. I found
that the current trunk version has a much revamped UI, using a component
that adds accessibility by default, so the next version will actually be
much nicer for free. I had to add only a few contentDescription strings to
buttons that don?t take part in this new mechanism.
>>>
>>> WhatsApp: Works except for some buttons that aren?t labeled. Because the
layout is very similar to the iOS version, I figured out quickly that the
right one of the text field sends the message, the left one adds media.
>>>
>>> Amazon: With a few exceptions, works as well as the iOS version.
>>>
>>> Push notifications on the lock screen: One thing I dearly missed when I
started using Android was the fact that new notifications were not pushed to
my lock screen immediately, and didn?t wake up the device. i am so used to
the workflow of tapping a push notification to act on it from the lock
screen that this really felt like a serious drawback. Fortunately, there is
an app for that called Notification Lock Screen Widget. The instalation has
to be done by a sighted person, since it requires adding a widget to the
lock screen, but after that, it works quite well with TalkBack. One
double-taps the notification one wants to act on, then finds the slide area
and unlocks the phone. App is opened, one can reply or do whatever is
necessary.
>>>
>>> The camera
>>>
>>> Yes, this blind guy talks about the camera! I use it quite frequently on
iOS to take shots of stuff around me, sometimes even to send them to social
networks to ask what something is, or if the milk has reached its due date
yet. Since iOS 6 and on the iPhone 4S, I even use panorama shots frequently.
VoiceOver gives me instructions if I hold the camera too high or too low, if
I?m turning too fast or too slowly. If I want to take a picture of a person,
face recognition tells me if a face has moved into the camera view and where
the face is located. Once it?s centered, I can take a shot, and these are
usually pretty good I?m told!
>>>
>>> BUMMER! None of the above is possible with the Camera app on Android. I
can take pictures, but panorama or facial recognition is not possible.
>>>
>>> Once I?ve taken photos, I may want to re-use them later. In iOS, this
has been a no-brainer for ages. VoiceOver tells me what orientation the
photo is in when I?m in the gallery, if it?s a photo or a video, and when it
was shot.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! The Gallery in Android is totally inaccessible. There is onlya
Cancel button and a blank screen, nothing more.
>>>
>>> I also use ABBYY TextGrabber to do optical character recognition on
letters or other written stuff. On iOS, I can easily take a snapshot and
have it recognized. The result is usually also pretty good.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! TextGrabber on Android, although usable with TalkBack, suffers
from the above mentioned inaccessibility of the camera and gives bad results
in 50% of the time, and no result in the oter 50%. A sighted user can
achieve similarly good results on both iOS and Android, so this is clearly a
shortcoming in the way the camera cannot be accessed.
>>>
>>> I also use LookTel Money Reader on every travel to the U.S. or Canada to
recognize different bank notes.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! The Ideal Accessibility currency recognizer only works with U.S.
money, not with Canadian, Euros or British pounds.
>>>
>>> Scrolling in lists
>>>
>>> In iOS, when I have a list of a hundred tweets in Twitterrific or
TweetList, I can simply swipe through and read them continuously. This is
not possible on Android. Swiping in TalkBack only gives me the elements
currently visible on the screen. In order to continue reading, I have to
stop my flow, do the gesture to advance a screen, then touch at the top most
list item, and continue reading by swiping right. The alternative screen
reader Spiel offers continuous swiping in some lists, but I found that this
does not work reliably everywhere. For me, this is a huge productivity
killer. It interrupts my flow every 6 or 7 items, breaks concentration and
is a distraction. it requires me to think about where to put my finger next
i norder to not miss anything.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! No continuous reading of long lists is possible in a reliable
fashion. TalkBack doesn?t offer it at all, Spiel only in some limited lists.
>>>
>>> Navigation and travel
>>>
>>> I travel quite a bit, and also like to find out about my surroundings.
The Maps application in iOS 6 is a magnificent piece of software in
accessibility terms. I?ve never had such accessible maps at my finger tips.
When walking, I get announcements spoken to me of upcoming cross roads etc.
Previously, one would have to purchase expensive extra devices like the
Trekker Breeze to get some of this functionality. Alternatively, one can
also use Ariadne GPS to get some more features tailored towards the needs of
the visually impaired.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! The Maps app on Android only offers limited navigation
capabilities. Maps themselves aren?t accessible at all.
>>>
>>> And if I want to go somewhere in Germany, I most often will use the
German railway company Deutsche Bahn. They offer apps for both iOS and
Android, one for looking up travel routes, one to purchase and store
electronic train tickets to later show to the on-board service personnel to
have them scan it. Information about seating and when and where to change
trains is all accessible on iOS. Of course, finding routes, too. Standard
date and time pickers are being used, and everything works just nicely.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! While the Tickets app looks like it could be equally accessible
on Android, the app for finding one?s travel route doesn?t allow a TalkBack
user to specify a departure or arrival date and time. Because Android does
not offer a standard date and time picker, or at least I?ve never seen one
anywhere, the company decided to use an animated spinning wheel to adjust
the values for date and time. This custom view is totally inaccessible, and
there is no alternative method of input. I contacted the railway company
with this problem, and they said they?d look into it, but the only way I see
that this can be solved is by using an alternative UI if TalkBack or another
screen reader is being detected. Until then, there is no way I can find my
travel routes using just the Nexus 4.
>>>
>>> eBooks
>>>
>>> On iOS, ever since the first iPad was announced in February of 2010, the
iBooks application has been a fully accessible eBook reader. Along with
Apple?s iBooks, it supports ePub and PDF. In iOS 6, PDF support even got
raised to a level almost comparable to that of ePub and iBooks. One can
review text, read it on a refreshable braille display, even in grade 2 if
one so desires, find individual words and review them, etc.
>>>
>>> More recently, Adobe Reader on iOS also became accessible by supporting
the relevant protocols within the UIKit framework.
>>>
>>> Kiran already hints at it in his post, and even the Bookshare GoRead
application does not improve the situation. The only way one can consume
eBooks on Android is by letting them be dumped into one?s ears through the
speech synthesizer in chunks. No way to rewind, no way to review words or
phrases. No way to read on a braille display. It?s basically like listening
to an audio book on a cassette player with broken rewind and fast-forward
keys.
>>>
>>> The screen where the eBook content is being displayed is a total black
hole for TalkBack. Nothing there.
>>>
>>> BUMMER! eBooks are close to inaccessible! And there are no APIs to
support developers to improve the situation. While other platforms offer
rich content display/editing, Android doesn?t.
>>>
>>> Braille
>>>
>>> Braille support needs to be installed separately via an application from
the Play Store called BrailleBack. It is new, as new as Jelly Bean itself
is. My braille display isn?t supported yet. However I?ve opened an issue
against BrailleBack and even provided some info about my display, so in
hopes that BRLTTY will support it soon, Brailleback also will.
>>>
>>> On iOS, the display is fully supported right out of the box.
>>>
>>> In conclusion
>>>
>>> If I replaced my iPhone with the Nexus 4 full-time at this point, I
would be missing out on all ?BUMMER!? items above. It would be like stepping
back a few years in accessibility, but taking the knowledge with me that
there is something out there that offers me all these things.
>>>
>>> Despite my desire to use Firefox for Android on a daily basis, meaning
whenever I open a web page on a mobile device, I am not prepared to do that
for this big a sacrifice. I am also not prepared to constantly carry two
phones around with me except when I know I?ll be working professionally with
them at my destination.
>>>
>>> In short: The experiment, tailored towards my usage patterns at this
point in time, has failed.
>>>
>>> However, I will keep the Nexus 4 and use it for testing, because it is
so nice and fast. And I will use it to keep close tabs on future Android
development. Android 5.0 is around the corner, and I will definitely check
against the above points when it is released to see if any of these items
have improved.
>>>
>>> This experiment has also led to some conclusions regarding Firefox OS
accessibility which you all will hopefully see the results of in a few
months! So stay tuned!
>>>
>>> (via Instapaper)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Christopher (CJ)
>> chaltain at Gmail
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2013 06:49:29 -0400
From: "Annette Carr" <amcarr1 at verizon.net>
To: "'Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances'"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Message-ID: <001a01ce337d$9499d080$bdcd7180$@verizon.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
I view iTunes as a necessary evil. I deal with the app Store from my
iPhone. I only deal with iTunes on the PC when I absolutely have to.
Annette
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Tom Lange
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 1:29 AM
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
Hi,
The app store is very easy for me to use on the phone, so it's my preferred
way of buying apps. I see no reason whatsoever to use iTunes to buy apps for
my phone. Despite what others might say about how well they get along with
iTunes, I think its interface is cumbersome and unwieldy at best, a
monumental pain in the butt to use. With the exception of rare occasions
when I add new music to my phone, I avoid it like the plague. My discussions
with people about iTunes almost always degenerate into obscenity-laden
rants, so I'd best get out of here before that happens.
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Chaltain" <chaltain at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
> To be honest, I avoid using iTunes on the PC, and I find using the App
> Store on the iPhone to be a piece of cake. I guess I can't say which is
> best, but I'd be surprised if accessing the App Store on the PC with
> iTunes is easier or better than just using the App Store directly from the
> iPhone.
>
> On 04/06/2013 08:20 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> Yes.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Apr 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> is the best way to go through itunes to look at the ap store with a pc?
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 6:09 PM
>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>
>>> I haven't done it myself, but yes you can access the App Store with
>>> iTunes from your PC. You can also purchase/download apps to your PC and
>>> then sync them with your iPhone using iTunes. Like I said, I haven't
>>> done this myself, and I can't speak to it's accessibility.
>>>
>>> On 04/01/2013 02:56 PM, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>> true prices change.
>>>> can I access the ap store on a pc. I have itunes if that helps.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Chaltain
>>>> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 1:32 AM
>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>
>>>> Plus prices can change and apps can go on sale, so it's always good to
>>>> check the App Store itself for current price information.
>>>>
>>>> On 03/31/2013 11:56 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>>>> Yes, but one can easily find out if an app is free by consulting the
>>>>> app store from your iPhone. The app store will also give you an
>>>>> indication of what the app does and how the sighted public feels about
>>>>> it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The applevis site http://www.applevis.com/ may give you information
>>>>> about the app's voiceover friendliness, depending on if any voiceover
>>>>> users have reviewed the app there.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jim
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Drew Hunthausen wrote:
>>>>>> I believe the info about an app being free or not helps to know if
>>>>>> it's
>>>>>> something even to look into.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
>>>>>> On
>>>>>> Behalf Of cheez
>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 8:19 PM
>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Don't take this the wrong way, but, I see a lot of questions asking
>>>>>> if apps
>>>>>> are free or not. Doesn't it tell you before you confirm the
>>>>>> download?
>>>>>> Vince
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
>>>>>> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
>>>>>> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:54 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jude,
>>>>>>> What is the name of the free color ID ap?
>>>>>>> What does A1GPS do that navagan doesn't?
>>>>>>> Are both accessible? How much is navigan?
>>>>>>> Do they only let you make points of interest, or plan routes too?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>>> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:18 PM
>>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Navigan isn't free, though a1gps is. Maps get downloaded into
>>>>>>> g.p.s.
>>>>>>> apps like these and users can locate themselves on maps and add
>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>> own points of interest to them and then get navigation help to
>>>>>>> navigate
>>>>>>> from their current location to their selected points of interest.
>>>>>>> If
>>>>>>> you find the right color id app, it came from England and is free or
>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>> last time I downloaded it. The camera gets used to scan objects for
>>>>>>> color identification and reporting. Actually blio is a book reading
>>>>>>> app.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>> Can you explain more?
>>>>>>>> What does navagan do? How does it differ from the other gps ap
>>>>>>>> called
>>>>>>>> ariad?
>>>>>>>> I thought blio was a book software for pcs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Is the color ap called Color ID? Is that free?
>>>>>>>> What is digit eyes?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -----Original Message----- From: Jude DaShiell
>>>>>>>> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:53 PM
>>>>>>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] aps for IOS device
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yes to all, I have redlaser for bar code and qr code scanning
>>>>>>>> Navigan for
>>>>>>>> gps, blio for scanning and I will test digit-eyes for bar codes
>>>>>>>> though
>>>>>>>> that's a paid app. I have color id on my phone for color
>>>>>>>> identification
>>>>>>>> and it can come up with some color announcements some people find a
>>>>>>>> bit
>>>>>>>> too creative, but then again I'm not some people. Good luck on
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> Section 508 work, every so often I help the Navy out a little with
>>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>>> efforts along that line of work.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013, Ashley Bramlett wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> For those of you using an I device, which free aps do you find
>>>>>>>>> helpful?
>>>>>>>>> Are there aps for scanning, bar code recognition, and color
>>>>>>>>> identification?
>>>>>>>>> How about GPS aps?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I?m asking because I intern in a section 508 office and they want
>>>>>>>>> to do
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>>> outreach session on accessible aps for disabled people. This
>>>>>>>>> includes
>>>>>>>>> blindness and two other disabilities.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>>> Ashley
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>>
>>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40she
>>>>>>
>>>>>> llworld.net
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
>>>>>>> Microsoft, windows is accessible. why do blind people need screen
>>>>>>> readers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> earthlink.net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.ne
>>>>>>
>>>>>> t
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/dhunthausen%40
>>>>>>
>>>>>> gmail.com
>>>>>> -----
>>>>>> No virus found in this message.
>>>>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>>>>>> Version: 10.0.1430 / Virus Database: 2641/5717 - Release Date:
>>>>>> 03/31/13
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christopher (CJ)
>>> chaltain at Gmail
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40
earthlink.net
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> Electronics-talk:
>>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> Electronics-talk:
>>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gma
il.com
>>
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/lange85%40gmai
l.com
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/amcarr1%40veri
zon.net
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 09:13:30 -0400
From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Electronics-talk] Microsoft Surface
Message-ID: <FEBA61C57E6A44D0B518F2391C54BB53 at tracy>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8";
reply-type=original
It seems, from a recent post on the NFBCS list, that there is no
accessibility built into Windows phones yet.
Tracy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Barbour" <jbar at barcore.com>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 1:56 PM
Subject: [Electronics-talk] Chrome os (was Re: Good article on androidversus
iOS accessibility.)
> Chrome is supposed to have its own screen reader built-in. However, I
> don't know anything about how good it is, nor how good the chrome OS is.
>
> Another option for you might be look at the Microsoft surface Pro. It to
> is expensive, but is a lot more like windows.
>
> Jim
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 6, 2013, at 10:14 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Ok thanks. I want to use it mostly for GPS but there are a whole lot of
>> other aps that I like on both that I would like. I'm sure I would use it
>> for all sorts of other things to. I originally started looking to
>> replace my netbook but well they seem to be disappearing. As far as I
>> know chrome seems to be the thing with smaller computers that are mobile
>> but has chrome gotten accessible? The last I knew it was not compatible
>> with Jaws or any other screen reader. Is that still the case?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of Jim Barbour
>> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:26 AM
>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>> Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
>> accessibility.
>>
>> I don't think Marco is saying that android is not usable by a blind
>> person, I think he is saying that iOS is more usable by a blind person.
>> I would agree with this.
>>
>> I have used an iPad, and a Nexus seven, And I believe the accessibility
>> outcomes would be about the same as a comparison he did between iPhone
>> and Nexis for. However, the hardware does not compare equally.
>>
>> Bottom line, if you bought a Nexus seven, You would be able to use it. If
>> you spend extra money for an iPad, you would notice the improvement for
>> sure.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I've been investigating both an I pad mini and a nexus 7 does this
>>> article speak the same to nexus 4 as to nexus 7? I listened to a pod
>>> cast on That Android show on the Nexus 7 and it sounded much more
>>> accessible. It also sounds like many of the things he talks about in
>>> this article could be done with an external keyboard or on a full
>>> computer more easily. The price difference between the two is
>>> significant too Nexus 7 $249.99 I pad $450 for a 32 gb tablet, but if
>>> its not very usable to a blind user then what good is it? So how
>>> inaccessible is it really? I want to get one or the other and I'm only
>>> going to buy it once and not both, like a lot of you tech guys do! I'm
>>> pretty good with figuring things out on the computer but I don't want to
>>> be frustrated to the point of giving up on it either. Just a lot of
>>> conflicting information out there. I also wonder if he was taking
>>> advantage of all the aps available for blind android users?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
>>> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:51 AM
>>> To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
>>> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
>>> accessibility.
>>>
>>> Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
>>> isn't up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility
>>> issues though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to
>>> every smart phone user.
>>>
>>> He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
>>> at Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
>>> accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
>>> although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria
>>> in comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think
>>> it's pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no
>>> reason to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from
>>> someone who has a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible
>>> they find the platform.
>>>
>>> I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
>>> and it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some
>>> of the situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
>>>
>>> On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>>> This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
>>>> curious how others felt.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>>
>>>> Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s
>>>> accessibility blog
>>>> http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-
>>>> e
>>>> xperiment/
>>>>
>>>> A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
>>>> determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to
>>>> switch to full-time, away from an iPhone.
>>>>
>>>> Background
>>>>
>>>> I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
>>>> 3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back
>>>> then was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and
>>>> services to people with vision impairments without the need to purchase
>>>> extra assistive technologies at prices that were again the amount of
>>>> the phone they were supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver,
>>>> the screen reader for iOS, was bundled with the operating system for
>>>> free.
>>>>
>>>> At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility
>>>> for Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a
>>>> command shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
>>>>
>>>> Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android
>>>> apps in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited
>>>> compared to Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
>>>>
>>>> In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
>>>> compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step
>>>> forward in terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB
>>>> review spells out, it offered touch screen access for the first time,
>>>> more than two years after Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a
>>>> model that still left a lot to be desired.
>>>>
>>>> The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced
>>>> Android 4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch
>>>> screen access, called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the
>>>> model Apple, and now also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures
>>>> allow for easy transition between platforms.
>>>>
>>>> We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
>>>> Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we
>>>> did, and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low
>>>> vision community has been humbling and inspirational!
>>>>
>>>> So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
>>>> recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that
>>>> it was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my
>>>> regular smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast
>>>> episode, where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to
>>>> an Android device, not from an accessibility, but from a general
>>>> usability point of view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit,
>>>> and I wanted to take advantage of that and finally use Firefox for
>>>> Android full-time!
>>>>
>>>> First steps
>>>>
>>>> So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go
>>>> for a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android
>>>> fastest. Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing
>>>> home-grown like the HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my
>>>> partner?s HTC One, for example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the
>>>> dial pad to enter a phone number.
>>>>
>>>> The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on
>>>> the front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone
>>>> quality is a bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving
>>>> end. My best friend who has a slight hearing problem had trouble
>>>> understanding me. The speaker on the back also leaves a bit to be
>>>> desired, esp since the speaker in the iPhone 4S that I am used to is
>>>> quite good. I also found out during the course of my testing that I
>>>> have occasional problems with Wifi connections becoming very slow,
>>>> download rates plunging or downloads breaking up alltogether. Deleting
>>>> and re-adding the access point entry seems to have, at least
>>>> temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed lively in
>>>> the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my device
>>>> alone.
>>>>
>>>> I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
>>>> the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide
>>>> for both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would
>>>> not start at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We
>>>> could then turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we
>>>> could also enable the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on
>>>> TalkBack while the phone is running regularly. This experience did not
>>>> leave that good of an impression with me.
>>>>
>>>> Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my
>>>> calendars and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud
>>>> installation at my web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the
>>>> Google Contacts route because of recent announcements that left me
>>>> uncertain whether this would be supported across platforms in the
>>>> future. For OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV and CardDAV provider
>>>> software from the Play Store that works like a charm with the Nexus 4.
>>>>
>>>> However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
>>>> TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
>>>> Calendar in iOS.
>>>>
>>>> BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
>>>> Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
>>>>
>>>> Multi-lingual input
>>>>
>>>> Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
>>>> way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem
>>>> with one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will
>>>> often try to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice
>>>> versa. Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In
>>>> Languages and Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one
>>>> needs to disable the System Language checkbox and then enable the
>>>> languages one wants to have supported. Next to the space bar, there is
>>>> now a new button that cycles through available languages.
>>>>
>>>> BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack
doesn?t.
>>>>
>>>> This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
>>>> languages frequently.
>>>>
>>>> The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap
>>>> the a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the
>>>> ? character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither
>>>> TalkBack nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be
>>>> long-tapped. On iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter
>>>> in question and leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second
>>>> finger, and can then double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the
>>>> letter, and finally choose the relevant special character. Since iOS 6,
>>>> a German keyboard with dedicated umlaut characters is also available,
>>>> and on the iPad, even the ? character has a dedicated key.
>>>>
>>>> On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
>>>> accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative
>>>> keyboards from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German
>>>> keyboard with Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears
>>>> that accessibility is tightly integrated with the Android keyboard
>>>> alone. Asking around in the community did also not yield any positive
>>>> result on this matter.
>>>>
>>>> BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
>>>> accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
>>>>
>>>> Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
>>>> you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the
>>>> cursor, do text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and
>>>> paste. On Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or
>>>> paragraph, but there is no way to select text or bring up the editing
>>>> functions of a text field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to
>>>> have to always use an external keyboard!
>>>>
>>>> Moreover, if
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/carcione%40acc
ess.net
>
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 07:33:02 -0700
From: "Frida Aizenman" <aizenman at earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Electronics-talk] Fw: Windows Phone Accessibility Update
Message-ID: <77F25DFDE6EE43E588CC498E5B236E1D at DDTM62C1>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
>From my pack rat files:
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: <david.andrews at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 10:22 AM
Subject: [Electronics-talk] Windows Phone Accessibility Update
>DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed;
>d=nfbnet.org; s=default;
>
>h=Sender:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-Type:List-Subscribe:List-Help:Li
st-Post:List-Archive:List-Unsubscribe:List-Id:Reply-To:Subject:MIME-Version:
Message-ID:Date:To:From;
>bh=lPTaRIhczdAvujAtl0RGOvoo3oIpy9CufNyZGktULig=;
>
>b=pCZEg3THtNfwdV4R+66u5uPE2eW4vT9Z1Q+0eZsQlCLd8yyTmicS9T1Yq6vXjZai3koqzXZw/
K+3COLA18a7nuFsBTYrqiudLA6XUk+wwQbYCbDdeHyWhl8jveq1cKL6;
>From: "Curtis Chong" <curtischong at earthlink.net>
>To: <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 12:10:59 -0500
>Thread-Index: Ac4yIIlpGdhx1wkkToqylgM/wGcpiw==
>Subject: [nfbcs] Windows Phone Accessibility Update
>
>Greetings:
>
>
>
>Under date of January 24, 2013, a letter signed by a number of
>organizations
>around the world (including the National Federation of the Blind) was sent
>to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer. This letter (which
>I
>am including at the end of this message) expressed "great dissatisfaction"
>with the accessibility of Windows Phone 8 and demanded a concrete
>commitment
>from Microsoft "to make Windows Phone accessible to blind people in 2013 by
>incorporating fully featured screen reader and magnification solutions into
>the next release of Microsoft Windows Phone at no additional cost to the
>consumer."
>
>
>
>During the CSUN conference held in late February, representatives from
>these
>organizations met with Microsoft to further discuss this issue. Under date
>of March 28, 2013, Scott Charney, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of
>Trustworthy Computing, declared that, "Microsoft will deliver a screen
>reader in our next major release of Windows Phone." According to the
>letter
>(which I am also including at the end of this message), Microsoft will be
>beta testing this screen reader later this summer.
>
>
>
>This is good news. It has been a long time in coming, and given the good
>work of Apple in this area, it is very disappointing that Microsoft has
>taken so long to make Windows Phone accessible. Given Microsoft's track
>record in other areas, I am not prepared to say that an unqualified victory
>has been achieved. What I can say is that Microsoft has made a concrete
>commitment to deliver a screen reader in the next major release of Windows
>Phone. However, we will not know how well this screen reader will work for
>the blind, how it will compare to other accessibility solutions that the
>blind are already using, nor when the next major release of Windows Phone
>will be released.
>
>
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>
>
>Curtis Chong, President
>
>National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>
>
>
> World Blind Union
>
> Union Mondiale Des Aveugles
>
> Uni?n Mundial de Ciegos
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Mr Steve Ballmer
>
>CEO
>
>Microsoft
>
>Microsoft Corporation
>
>One Microsoft Way
>
>Redmond, WA 98052-7329
>
>USA
>
>
>
>
>
>24 January 2013
>
>
>
>Dear Mr Ballmer
>
>
>
>Accessibility in Windows Phone 8
>
>
>
>The undersigned organizations, acting for themselves and on behalf of the
>285 million people with visual impairment in 190 member countries of the
>World Blind Union (WBU), are writing to express our great dissatisfaction
>with the accessibility of Windows Phone 8 and to set forth our expectations
>with regard to accessibility of Microsoft products.
>
>
>
>When Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7 in late 2010, the company brought
>representatives of consumers who are blind or visually impaired together
>and
>acknowledged that "we are not yet where we want to be with accessibility
>features in Windows Phone 7". This community was dismayed when Windows
>Phone
>7 came to market without any accessibility for blind users, meaning that
>mobile phones powered by Microsoft technology were unusable for persons
>with
>a visual impairment, at a time when all of your competitors were investing
>in accessibility and Apple had already achieved tremendous success with
>built-in accessibility in the iPhone .
>
>
>
>In November 2010 and again in November 2011, Microsoft hosted a Windows
>Phone Accessibility round table in Redmond, hearing from leading national
>blindness organisations from around the world. From the outset, the views
>of
>this group were unanimous calling for built in access for Windows Phone. In
>spite of promises to address accessibility in succeeding versions of
>Windows
>Phone, Microsoft has now released Windows Phone 8 with no built-in
>screen-reader or other means to provide full access to its features and
>functions for people who are blind.
>
>
>
>You have consulted our community for more than two years, and we have
>responded constructively and in good faith. However this issue now demands
>a
>concrete commitment from Microsoft to make Windows Phone accessible to
>blind
>people in 2013 by incorporating fully featured screen reader and
>magnification solutions into the next release of Microsoft Windows Phone at
>no additional cost to the consumer.
>
>
>
>We look forward to hearing from you
>
>
>
>Yours sincerely
>
>
>
>Kevin Carey, Chair, WBU Technology Working Group
>
>
>
>Arnt Holte, President, WBU
>
>
>
>and counter signatories from national blindness organisations
>
>
>
>Brian Charlson
>
>Chair of the American Council of the Blind Information Access Committee
>
>brian.charlson at carroll.org
>
>American Council of the Blind, USA
>
>
>
>Carl R. Augusto
>
>President & CEO
>
>cawbu at afb.net
>
>American Foundation for the Blind, USA
>
>
>
>Dr. Marc Maurer
>
>President
>
>officeofthepresident at nfb.org
>
>National Federation of the Blind, USA
>
>
>
>Dr Kevin Murfitt
>
>Chair of Board of Directors
>
>kevin.murfitt at visionaustralia.org
>
>Vision Australia, Australia
>
>
>
>John M. Rafferty
>
>President & CEO
>
>john.rafferty at cnib.ca
>
>CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind), Canada
>
>
>
>Jukka Tahvanainen
>
>Managing Director
>
>jukka.tahvanainen at nkl.fi
>
>Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired, Finland
>
>
>
>Arnt Holte
>
>Vice Executive Director
>
>Arnt.holte at blindeforbundet.no
>
>NABP (Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted), Norway
>
>
>
>Teresa Palah?
>
>Vice-President for Social Affairs and New Technologies
>
>tpaj at once.es
>
>Organizaci?n Nacional de Ciegos Espa?oles (ONCE), Spain
>
>
>
>Kevin Carey
>
>Chair
>
>kevin.carey at rnib.org.uk
>
>Royal National Institute of Blind People, United Kingdom
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>____________________________________________________________
>
>
>
><Microsoft Letterhead>
>
>
>
>Mr. Kevin Carey
>
>Chair, WBU Technology Working Group
>
>1929 Bayview Avenue
>
>Toronto, ON Canada M4G 3E8
>
>March 28, 2013
>
>
>
>Dear Mr. Carey and WBU Colleagues,
>
>
>
>Thank you for your letter, dated January 24, 2013, regarding Accessibility
>in the Windows Phone platform. Steve Ballmer has asked me to respond on
>his behalf.
>
>
>
>I am aware that many of the individuals and organizations within the WBU
>have longstanding relationships with Rob Sinclair, our Chief Accessibility
>Officer, and they have made valuable contributions to the company's
>accessibility efforts over the years by providing feedback on our products.
>I also recognize there is frustration and concern regarding the rate at
>which Accessibility features are being added to our new phone platform. I
>have discussed your letter with my team and with the President of the
>Windows Phone Division, Terry Myerson, and we would like to provide further
>information on our future plans.
>
>
>
>Microsoft will deliver a screen reader in our next major release of Windows
>Phone. As part of this commitment, I would like to invite individuals from
>your member organizations to evaluate demonstration phones and a beta
>version of our screen reader in late summer. Additionally, I would ask
>that
>any feedback be prompt so that our engineering teams have time to
>incorporate your feedback before our coding is complete.
>
>
>
>I hope that we can count on your continued engagement and I look forward to
>receiving your feedback on these new investments.
>
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>
>
>Scott Charney
>
>Corporate Vice President
>
>Trustworthy Computing
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>nfbcs mailing list
>nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>nfbcs:
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/dandrews%40visi.com
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/aizenman%40ear
thlink.net
------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 09:00:15 -0700
From: Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com>
To: Tracy Carcione <carcione at access.net>, Discussion of accessible
electronics and appliances <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Microsoft Surface
Message-ID: <20130407160014.GV4321 at barcore.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Hey Tracy and Everyone,
It is true that windows phones don't yet have a screen reader. .
However, the surface pro is a full windows tablet and does have
narrator on it.
To be clear, I'm not at all sure this is a good option though. It's
expensive, the accessibility is new, and it's narrator.
Hope this clarifies,
Jim
On Sun, Apr 07, 2013 at 09:13:30AM -0400, Tracy Carcione wrote:
> It seems, from a recent post on the NFBCS list, that there is no
> accessibility built into Windows phones yet.
> Tracy
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Barbour" <jbar at barcore.com>
> To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
> <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 1:56 PM
> Subject: [Electronics-talk] Chrome os (was Re: Good article on
androidversus
> iOS accessibility.)
>
>
> >Chrome is supposed to have its own screen reader built-in. However, I
> >don't know anything about how good it is, nor how good the chrome OS is.
> >
> >Another option for you might be look at the Microsoft surface Pro. It to
> >is expensive, but is a lot more like windows.
> >
> >Jim
> >
> >Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >On Apr 6, 2013, at 10:14 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>Ok thanks. I want to use it mostly for GPS but there are a whole lot of
> >>other aps that I like on both that I would like. I'm sure I would use
> >>it for all sorts of other things to. I originally started looking to
> >>replace my netbook but well they seem to be disappearing. As far as I
> >>know chrome seems to be the thing with smaller computers that are mobile
> >>but has chrome gotten accessible? The last I knew it was not compatible
> >>with Jaws or any other screen reader. Is that still the case?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> >>Behalf Of Jim Barbour
> >>Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:26 AM
> >>To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> >>Cc: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> >>Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
> >>accessibility.
> >>
> >>I don't think Marco is saying that android is not usable by a blind
> >>person, I think he is saying that iOS is more usable by a blind person.
> >>I would agree with this.
> >>
> >>I have used an iPad, and a Nexus seven, And I believe the accessibility
> >>outcomes would be about the same as a comparison he did between iPhone
> >>and Nexis for. However, the hardware does not compare equally.
> >>
> >>Bottom line, if you bought a Nexus seven, You would be able to use it.
> >>If you spend extra money for an iPad, you would notice the improvement
> >>for sure.
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>
> >>Jim
> >>
> >>Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:02 AM, "Julie Phillipson" <jbrew48 at verizon.net>
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>>I've been investigating both an I pad mini and a nexus 7 does this
> >>>article speak the same to nexus 4 as to nexus 7? I listened to a pod
> >>>cast on That Android show on the Nexus 7 and it sounded much more
> >>>accessible. It also sounds like many of the things he talks about in
> >>>this article could be done with an external keyboard or on a full
> >>>computer more easily. The price difference between the two is
> >>>significant too Nexus 7 $249.99 I pad $450 for a 32 gb tablet, but if
> >>>its not very usable to a blind user then what good is it? So how
> >>>inaccessible is it really? I want to get one or the other and I'm
> >>>only going to buy it once and not both, like a lot of you tech guys
> >>>do! I'm pretty good with figuring things out on the computer but I
> >>>don't want to be frustrated to the point of giving up on it either.
> >>>Just a lot of conflicting information out there. I also wonder if he
> >>>was taking advantage of all the aps available for blind android users?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>-----Original Message-----
> >>>From: Electronics-talk [mailto:electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> >>>Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
> >>>Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:51 AM
> >>>To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
> >>>Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
> >>>accessibility.
> >>>
> >>>Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
> >>>isn't up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some
> >>>accessibility issues though, and some of the issues he brings up won't
> >>>be important to every smart phone user.
> >>>
> >>>He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even
> >>>looking at Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's
> >>>lack of accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against
> >>>Android, although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your
> >>>only criteria in comparing the two platforms is going to be
> >>>accessibility then I think it's pretty well understood that Apple has
> >>>the lead here, and there's no reason to switch. I think it would be
> >>>more interesting to hear from someone who has a compelling reason to
> >>>use Android and how accessible they find the platform.
> >>>
> >>>I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the
> >>>iPhone and it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android
> >>>handles some of the situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
> >>>
> >>>On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
> >>>>This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
> >>>>curious how others felt.
> >>>>
> >>>>Jim
> >>>>
> >>>>Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s
> >>>>accessibility blog
> >>>>http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-
> >>>>e
> >>>>xperiment/
> >>>>
> >>>>A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
> >>>>determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to
> >>>>switch to full-time, away from an iPhone.
> >>>>
> >>>>Background
> >>>>
> >>>>I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original
> >>>>iPhone 3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple
> >>>>did back then was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of
> >>>>apps and services to people with vision impairments without the need
> >>>>to purchase extra assistive technologies at prices that were again
> >>>>the amount of the phone they were supposed to make accessible.
> >>>>Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS, was bundled with the
> >>>>operating system for free.
> >>>>
> >>>>At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility
> >>>>for Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than
> >>>>a command shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
> >>>>
> >>>>Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android
> >>>>apps in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited
> >>>>compared to Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
> >>>>
> >>>>In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
> >>>>compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step
> >>>>forward in terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB
> >>>>review spells out, it offered touch screen access for the first
> >>>>time, more than two years after Apple came out with VoiceOver, and
> >>>>with a model that still left a lot to be desired.
> >>>>
> >>>>The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced
> >>>>Android 4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch
> >>>>screen access, called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the
> >>>>model Apple, and now also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures
> >>>>allow for easy transition between platforms.
> >>>>
> >>>>We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and
> >>>>Jelly Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it
> >>>>work. But we did, and the warm reception and good feedback from the
> >>>>blind and low vision community has been humbling and inspirational!
> >>>>
> >>>>So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the
> >>>>gesture recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I
> >>>>decided that it was time to give Android a serious chance to replace
> >>>>my iPhone as my regular smartphone device. I was also inspired by
> >>>>this MACWORLD podcast episode, where Andy Ihnatko talks about his
> >>>>switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android device, not from an
> >>>>accessibility, but from a general usability point of view. After
> >>>>all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take advantage
> >>>>of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
> >>>>
> >>>>First steps
> >>>>
> >>>>So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go
> >>>>for a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android
> >>>>fastest. Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing
> >>>>home-grown like the HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my
> >>>>partner?s HTC One, for example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the
> >>>>dial pad to enter a phone number.
> >>>>
> >>>>The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface
> >>>>on the front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The
> >>>>phone quality is a bit muffled both on the sending as well as the
> >>>>receiving end. My best friend who has a slight hearing problem had
> >>>>trouble understanding me. The speaker on the back also leaves a bit
> >>>>to be desired, esp since the speaker in the iPhone 4S that I am used
> >>>>to is quite good. I also found out during the course of my testing
> >>>>that I have occasional problems with Wifi connections becoming very
> >>>>slow, download rates plunging or downloads breaking up alltogether.
> >>>>Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems to have, at
> >>>>least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed
> >>>>lively in the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific
> >>>>to my device alone.
> >>>>
> >>>>I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I
> >>>>tried, the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean
> >>>>accessibility guide for both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t
> >>>>work. TalkBack would not start at all. So my sighted partner had to
> >>>>do that setup for me. We could then turn on TalkBack. After an
> >>>>update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable the quick button
> >>>>and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is running
> >>>>regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
> >>>>with me.
> >>>>
> >>>>Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my
> >>>>calendars and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud
> >>>>installation at my web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go
> >>>>the Google Contacts route because of recent announcements that left
> >>>>me uncertain whether this would be supported across platforms in the
> >>>>future. For OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV and CardDAV provider
> >>>>software from the Play Store that works like a charm with the Nexus
> >>>>4.
> >>>>
> >>>>However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well
> >>>>with TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent
> >>>>support of Calendar in iOS.
> >>>>
> >>>>BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than
> >>>>the Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
> >>>>
> >>>>Multi-lingual input
> >>>>
> >>>>Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted
> >>>>a way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The
> >>>>problem with one is that, if I write the other language, the
> >>>>auto-correct will often try to deduce German words out of English
> >>>>vocabulary, or vice versa. Fortunately, this is as convenient as on
> >>>>iOS once set up. In Languages and Input Settings, with the stock
> >>>>Android keyboard, one needs to disable the System Language checkbox
> >>>>and then enable the languages one wants to have supported. Next to
> >>>>the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles through
> >>>>available languages.
> >>>>
> >>>>BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack
doesn?t.
> >>>>
> >>>>This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
> >>>>languages frequently.
> >>>>
> >>>>The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap
> >>>>the a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for
> >>>>the ? character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since
> >>>>neither TalkBack nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for
> >>>>keys to be long-tapped. On iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one
> >>>>touches the letter in question and leaves the finger there, taps the
> >>>>screen with a second finger, and can then double-tap and hold to
> >>>>simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose the relevant
> >>>>special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with dedicated
> >>>>umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
> >>>>character has a dedicated key.
> >>>>
> >>>>On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys,
> >>>>and accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts.
> >>>>Alternative keyboards from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or
> >>>>the ?German keyboard with Umlauts? app offer no accessible
> >>>>keyboards. It appears that accessibility is tightly integrated with
> >>>>the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the community did also
> >>>>not yield any positive result on this matter.
> >>>>
> >>>>BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
> >>>>accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
> >>>>
> >>>>Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android
> >>>>if you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the
> >>>>cursor, do text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy
> >>>>and paste. On Android, there are gestures to move by character,
> >>>>word, or paragraph, but there is no way to select text or bring up
> >>>>the editing functions of a text field in a controlled fashion. I do
> >>>>not want to have to always use an external keyboard!
> >>>>
> >>>>Moreover, if
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Electronics-talk mailing list
> >Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> >http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> >To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> >Electronics-talk:
>
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/carcione%40ac
cess.net
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
------------------------------
Message: 13
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 09:13:23 -0700
From: Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com>
To: Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Good article on android versus iOS
accessibility.
Message-ID: <20130407161323.GW4321 at barcore.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Hey Christopher,
I'm not sure how much to beat this into the ground, but who doesn't
think that Android is the challenger? If someone wrote an article
entitled "Android Continues to Kick iPhone's rear end in
Accessibility: Here's what we're up to now", I'd have to dismiss it as
a rather uninformed or poorly written piece.
I must say though that I agree with all your other points. The
shortcomings you point out in the iPhone do indeed exist, though I'll
point out for the audience that no one meets all the shortcomings
Christopher has mentioned.
I also think you're right that Google won't catch up. They, or an app
writer, may do something entirely different however.
For example, the American Printing House has just released a GPS app
called "Nearby Explorer" exclusively for Android. I've only seen it
demoed at CSUN, but it looks like it could compete really well with
what's available on the iPhone today - and that would include what
I saw at CSUN from the Seeing Eye App from Sendero.
If blind folks can buy a Nexus 7 (tablet) with a data plan for
$300.00, the Nearby Explorer software for $100.00, and then pay the
per month data plan, they'd have a very good GPS solution. These
blind folks might then start using the tablet for other things, which
might be one way android starts seeing growth in their blindness market.
Take Care,
Jim
On Sun, Apr 07, 2013 at 02:06:30AM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> Well, I think statements like "paled in comparison" and "left a lot to be
> desired", although they are historically accurate, indicate a bias since
> they could have been reworded or just not mentioned altogether because the
> article is a current comparison and not a historical comparison. Like I
> said, it seemed like a fair assessment to me, and I agree, he's very clear
> he's a happy iPhone user, so he isn't hiding anything. I don't have a
> problem with this bias, and maybe I shouldn't even call it a bias, but the
> article is written by someone who clearly sees Android as the challenger.
>
> Some shortcomings I see with the iPhone with respect to accessibility
> include:
>
> * The problem with Voice Over and call volumes. (I see quite a few iPhone
> users recommending that people use their headphones when making a call
where
> they'll need to also access something on their iPhone, like the dial pad.)
> * The inability to accurately label objects. (I know this used to work,
but
> it's pretty obvious something was broken in IOS 6, and this still hasn't'
> been fixed.)
> * VoiceOver doesn't announce the state of calendars in the built in
calendar
> app, so you can't tell which calendars you've selected to be displayed.
> (Again, this used to work but still hasn't been addressed in multiple
> updates to IOS 6.)
> * The lack of a user definable pronunciation dictionary for Voice Over.
> * The inability to use other speech synthesizers or even have apps share
> common speech synthesizers.
>
> Other short comings I see in the iPhone that aren't related to
accessibility
> include:
>
> * The fact that I can't access the file system on my iPhone or access it
as
> a removable volume from my PC. This forces me to use iTunes and other
> cumbersome work arounds to get data on and off my phone.
> * The lack of SD card support.
> * The limited number of form factors, no keyboard option for example.
> * The inability to change defaults, such as making Chrome my default
browser
> instead of Safari. In fact, this is why Mozilla isn't interested in
porting
> Firefox to IOS.
>
> Note that I don't expect the iPhone or it's accessibility to be perfect,
and
> I'm not saying the issues with the iPhone's accessibility are on the same
> par with the accessibility issues that still exist on Android, but I just
> want to point out that the iPhone and it's accessibility isn't perfect, at
> least in my opinion.
>
> I also don't think that Android's accessibility will ever be on par with
> Apple's, let alone surpass it. It's chasing, and as long as it's chasing
> it'll never catch Apple. The reason the progress in Android's
accessibility
> has been so dramatic over the last few years is that it's coming from such
a
> low point. Apple's accessibility is a more integral part of the operating
> system, and they aren't sitting still. The only way Android will catch up
> and pass IOS with respect to accessibility is if there's a paradigm change
> or Google comes up with something that is as innovative as what Apple came
> up with when they came out with VoiceOver for the touch screen.
>
> On 04/06/2013 09:53 AM, Jim Barbour wrote:
> >Hey Christopher,
> >
> >I'm also a long time iPhone user who tries out Android from
> >time to time because I like knowing what's out there. As I mentioned
> >already, Marco's article aligns pretty well with my own experiences.
> >
> >I'd really be curious to know other people's thoughts on shortcomings
> >in the iPhone. The ones I can think of are speed, price, lack of
physical
> >keyboard, lack of ability to install my own keyboards, and some
> >features i would only get by jailbreaking the iPhone. Do you find
> >other shortcomings in the iPhone?
> >
> >I'm not sure how you find bias in his article. It does seem clear.
> >that he likes the iPhone better than Android. However, it
> >would be pretty hard to find someone who "likes them both equally." I
> >think the history he points out is pretty valid, and doesn't
> >necessarily indicate bias. I suspect Marco and I would agree that the
> >iPhone is still ahead of android on accessibility, but that android is
> >making accessibility progress much faster than the iPhone is. If
> >Google can keep it up, then android will soon equal or surpass the
> >iPhone. My big question is can Google keep it up?
> >
> >Jim
> >
> >On Sat, Apr 06, 2013 at 01:50:31AM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> >>Looks like a good summary of some points where Android's accessibility
isn't
> >>up to par with Apple's. He's going beyond just some accessibility issues
> >>though, and some of the issues he brings up won't be important to every
> >>smart phone user.
> >>
> >>He seems pretty happy with his iPhone, so I wonder why he's even looking
at
> >>Android. The historical points he brings up about Android's lack of
> >>accessibility reads like there might be a bias here against Android,
> >>although I suspect his evaluation was pretty fair. If your only criteria
in
> >>comparing the two platforms is going to be accessibility then I think
it's
> >>pretty well understood that Apple has the lead here, and there's no
reason
> >>to switch. I think it would be more interesting to hear from someone who
has
> >>a compelling reason to use Android and how accessible they find the
> >>platform.
> >>
> >>I also note that he didn't point out a single short coming of the iPhone
and
> >>it's accessibility. I'd be curious to know how Android handles some of
the
> >>situations where I find the iPhone lacking.
> >>
> >>On 04/05/2013 10:05 PM, Jim Barbour wrote:
> >>>This article tracked pretty well with my results on android. I'd be
curious how others felt.
> >>>
> >>>Jim
> >>>
> >>>Switching to Android full-time ? an experiment | Marco?s accessibility
blog
>
>>>http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/05/switching-to-android-full-time-an-expe
riment/
> >>>
> >>>A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to
determine if Android 4.2.2 ?Jelly Bean? was finally ready for me to switch
to full-time, away from an iPhone.
> >>>
> >>>Background
> >>>
> >>>I?ve been an iPhone user for four years, ever since the original iPhone
3G S came out with VoiceOver support in June 2009. What Apple did back then
was revolutionary, completely opening up a wealth of apps and services to
people with vision impairments without the need to purchase extra assistive
technologies at prices that were again the amount of the phone they were
supposed to make accessible. Instead, VoiceOver, the screen reader for iOS,
was bundled with the operating system for free.
> >>>
> >>>At the same time, Google also announced first steps in accessibility
for Android. But this paled by comparison, offering little more than a
command shell for the Android platform with some speech output.
> >>>
> >>>Later, TalkBack came about and gave at least some access to Android
apps in Android 2.x. However, this access was still very limited compared to
Apple?s model, as Jamie Teh points out in a blog post.
> >>>
> >>>In October 2011, Android 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and
compared to what was offered in previous versions, was a big step forward in
terms of accessibility. Not quite there yet, as this AFB review spells out,
it offered touch screen access for the first time, more than two years after
Apple came out with VoiceOver, and with a model that still left a lot to be
desired.
> >>>
> >>>The biggest step forward came in June 2012, when Google announced
Android 4.1 AKA Jelly Bean. With it came a revised model of touch screen
access, called Explore By Touch, that closely resembles the model Apple, and
now also Microsoft, have employed. Similar gestures allow for easy
transition between platforms.
> >>>
> >>>We had just started work on accessible Firefox for Android, and Jelly
Bean meant that we had to add quite some magic to make it work. But we did,
and the warm reception and good feedback from the blind and low vision
community has been humbling and inspirational!
> >>>
> >>>So when with Android 4.2, and especially the 4.2.2 updates, the gesture
recognition seemed to solidify and become more reliable, I decided that it
was time to give Android a serious chance to replace my iPhone as my regular
smartphone device. I was also inspired by this MACWORLD podcast episode,
where Andy Ihnatko talks about his switch from an iPhone 4S to an Android
device, not from an accessibility, but from a general usability point of
view. After all, Android has matured quite a bit, and I wanted to take
advantage of that and finally use Firefox for Android full-time!
> >>>
> >>>First steps
> >>>
> >>>So on the 23rd of March, I got my shiny new Nexus 4. I decided to go
for a Google phone because those get the latest updates of Android fastest.
Moreover, they come with a stock user interface, nothing home-grown like the
HTC Sense or Samsung Galaxy devices have. On my partner?s HTC One, for
example, a TalkBack user cannot even use the dial pad to enter a phone
number.
> >>>
> >>>The hardware is quite OK. The phone feels solid, the glass surface on
the front and back feel smooth and pleasant to the touch. The phone quality
is a bit muffled both on the sending as well as the receiving end. My best
friend who has a slight hearing problem had trouble understanding me. The
speaker on the back also leaves a bit to be desired, esp since the speaker
in the iPhone 4S that I am used to is quite good. I also found out during
the course of my testing that I have occasional problems with Wifi
connections becoming very slow, download rates plunging or downloads
breaking up alltogether. Deleting and re-adding the access point entry seems
to have, at least temporarily, fixed the issue. This is also being discussed
lively in the Android project issue tracker, so is nothing specific to my
device alone.
> >>>
> >>>I was betrayed of the initial setup experience. No matter what I tried,
the gesture that was described in the Jelly Bean accessibility guide for
both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, didn?t work. TalkBack would not start
at all. So my sighted partner had to do that setup for me. We could then
turn on TalkBack. After an update to Jelly Bean 4.2.2, we could also enable
the quick button and gesture sequence to turn on TalkBack while the phone is
running regularly. This experience did not leave that good of an impression
with me.
> >>>
> >>>Setting up accounts was a breeze. To be more flexible, I got my
calendars and contacts off of iCloud and store them in an OwnCloud
installation at my web space provider?s server. I didn?t want to go the
Google Contacts route because of recent announcements that left me uncertain
whether this would be supported across platforms in the future. For
OwnCloud, I installed a CalDAV and CardDAV provider software from the Play
Store that works like a charm with the Nexus 4.
> >>>
> >>>However, some of the stock apps like Calendar don?t work that well with
TalkBack, or at least not if one is used to the excellent support of
Calendar in iOS.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! Calendar works signifficantly less good with TalkBack than the
Calendar app on iOS does with VoiceOver.
> >>>
> >>>Multi-lingual input
> >>>
> >>>Because I am writing in both English and German frequently, I wanted a
way to quickly switch between these two input languages. The problem with
one is that, if I write the other language, the auto-correct will often try
to deduce German words out of English vocabulary, or vice versa.
Fortunately, this is as convenient as on iOS once set up. In Languages and
Input Settings, with the stock Android keyboard, one needs to disable the
System Language checkbox and then enable the languages one wants to have
supported. Next to the space bar, there is now a new button that cycles
through available languages.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER: iOS does announce the new language switched to, TalkBack
doesn?t.
> >>>
> >>>This can be a real productivity killer if one uses more than two
languages frequently.
> >>>
> >>>The next problem arises with German umlauts. Sighted people long-tap
the a, o and u characters for the ?, ? and ? characters, and s for the ?
character. TalkBack users have a big problem here, since neither TalkBack
nor the alternate screen reader Spiel allow for keys to be long-tapped. On
iOS, when in touch-typing mode, one touches the letter in question and
leaves the finger there, taps the screen with a second finger, and can then
double-tap and hold to simulate a long-tap on the letter, and finally choose
the relevant special character. Since iOS 6, a German keyboard with
dedicated umlaut characters is also available, and on the iPad, even the ?
character has a dedicated key.
> >>>
> >>>On Android, the stock keyboard does not come with such extra keys, and
accessibility does not allow to bring up the umlauts. Alternative keyboards
from the Play Store such as the SwiftKey or the ?German keyboard with
Umlauts? app offer no accessible keyboards. It appears that accessibility is
tightly integrated with the Android keyboard alone. Asking around in the
community did also not yield any positive result on this matter.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! No umlauts for blind users on Android! This also is true for
accented characters in French, Spanish or other languages.
> >>>
> >>>Text editing is another problem that lags behind terribly in Android if
you do not use an external keyboard. On iOS, one can control the cursor, do
text selection, do editing functions such as cut, copy and paste. On
Android, there are gestures to move by character, word, or paragraph, but
there is no way to select text or bring up the editing functions of a text
field in a controlled fashion. I do not want to have to always use an
external keyboard!
> >>>
> >>>Moreover, if you do not swipe, but use the one-finger exploration
method, it depends on where on a text field your finger lands, where the
cursor goes once you double-tap. Unlike on iOS, where it always goes to the
beginning or end first, or indicates where the cursor goes once you touch a
text field?s contents, on Android there is no such speech feedback.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! No controlled or advanced text editing is possible with
TalkBack.
> >>>
> >>>Apps
> >>>
> >>>If you|d like to read up on some of the stock apps and their TalkBack
support, or lack thereof, I would like to point you to Kiran Kaja|s
excellent Nexus 7 reviews part 1 and part 2. Here, I would like to add a few
impressions of apps I use regularly.
> >>>
> >>>But before I do that, I would like to point out one big common
denominator: Unlabeled graphical buttons. They are everywhere! This includes
Android apps stock on the device, but more so many apps from the app store.
This is the more bewildering considering that the Android app compilers even
warn developers of missing contentDescription attributes, which are used to
give accessibility labels to image buttons or image views. One developer who
I contacted with a request to add those, said in his reply e-mail,
paraphrased: ?Oh I got those warnings, but always ignored them because I
didn?t know what they meant. Oh yeah I know TalkBack, but always thought it
useless. Now I know what this is all for, and you?ll get the buttons labeled
in the next update.? So there is a warning, but the compiler does not
indicate what this is used for, and that ignoring this warning basically
means excluding a potential group of customers from using one?s app!
> >>>
> >>>Twitter: There were several Twitter clients mentioned in the comments
to Kiran?s posts above, and even Plume, the one considered most accessible,
has several unlabeled buttons in the New Tweet screen, leading me to try
three different ones before I found the one that sent my tweet. I guess
?accessible? means a much lower bar in much of the Android community
compared to others, or?
> >>>
> >>>App.net: Another social network I use frequently.There are two clients
out there that are quite popular: Dash and Robin. Both added accessibility
contentDescriptions upon my request and are fully accessible.
> >>>
> >>>WordPress: I found several unlabeled buttons in the UI of that app.
Since it is open source, I decided to go in and fix them myself. I found
that the current trunk version has a much revamped UI, using a component
that adds accessibility by default, so the next version will actually be
much nicer for free. I had to add only a few contentDescription strings to
buttons that don?t take part in this new mechanism.
> >>>
> >>>WhatsApp: Works except for some buttons that aren?t labeled. Because
the layout is very similar to the iOS version, I figured out quickly that
the right one of the text field sends the message, the left one adds media.
> >>>
> >>>Amazon: With a few exceptions, works as well as the iOS version.
> >>>
> >>>Push notifications on the lock screen: One thing I dearly missed when I
started using Android was the fact that new notifications were not pushed to
my lock screen immediately, and didn?t wake up the device. i am so used to
the workflow of tapping a push notification to act on it from the lock
screen that this really felt like a serious drawback. Fortunately, there is
an app for that called Notification Lock Screen Widget. The instalation has
to be done by a sighted person, since it requires adding a widget to the
lock screen, but after that, it works quite well with TalkBack. One
double-taps the notification one wants to act on, then finds the slide area
and unlocks the phone. App is opened, one can reply or do whatever is
necessary.
> >>>
> >>>The camera
> >>>
> >>>Yes, this blind guy talks about the camera! I use it quite frequently
on iOS to take shots of stuff around me, sometimes even to send them to
social networks to ask what something is, or if the milk has reached its due
date yet. Since iOS 6 and on the iPhone 4S, I even use panorama shots
frequently. VoiceOver gives me instructions if I hold the camera too high or
too low, if I?m turning too fast or too slowly. If I want to take a picture
of a person, face recognition tells me if a face has moved into the camera
view and where the face is located. Once it?s centered, I can take a shot,
and these are usually pretty good I?m told!
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! None of the above is possible with the Camera app on Android. I
can take pictures, but panorama or facial recognition is not possible.
> >>>
> >>>Once I?ve taken photos, I may want to re-use them later. In iOS, this
has been a no-brainer for ages. VoiceOver tells me what orientation the
photo is in when I?m in the gallery, if it?s a photo or a video, and when it
was shot.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! The Gallery in Android is totally inaccessible. There is onlya
Cancel button and a blank screen, nothing more.
> >>>
> >>>I also use ABBYY TextGrabber to do optical character recognition on
letters or other written stuff. On iOS, I can easily take a snapshot and
have it recognized. The result is usually also pretty good.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! TextGrabber on Android, although usable with TalkBack, suffers
from the above mentioned inaccessibility of the camera and gives bad results
in 50% of the time, and no result in the oter 50%. A sighted user can
achieve similarly good results on both iOS and Android, so this is clearly a
shortcoming in the way the camera cannot be accessed.
> >>>
> >>>I also use LookTel Money Reader on every travel to the U.S. or Canada
to recognize different bank notes.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! The Ideal Accessibility currency recognizer only works with
U.S. money, not with Canadian, Euros or British pounds.
> >>>
> >>>Scrolling in lists
> >>>
> >>>In iOS, when I have a list of a hundred tweets in Twitterrific or
TweetList, I can simply swipe through and read them continuously. This is
not possible on Android. Swiping in TalkBack only gives me the elements
currently visible on the screen. In order to continue reading, I have to
stop my flow, do the gesture to advance a screen, then touch at the top most
list item, and continue reading by swiping right. The alternative screen
reader Spiel offers continuous swiping in some lists, but I found that this
does not work reliably everywhere. For me, this is a huge productivity
killer. It interrupts my flow every 6 or 7 items, breaks concentration and
is a distraction. it requires me to think about where to put my finger next
i norder to not miss anything.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! No continuous reading of long lists is possible in a reliable
fashion. TalkBack doesn?t offer it at all, Spiel only in some limited lists.
> >>>
> >>>Navigation and travel
> >>>
> >>>I travel quite a bit, and also like to find out about my surroundings.
The Maps application in iOS 6 is a magnificent piece of software in
accessibility terms. I?ve never had such accessible maps at my finger tips.
When walking, I get announcements spoken to me of upcoming cross roads etc.
Previously, one would have to purchase expensive extra devices like the
Trekker Breeze to get some of this functionality. Alternatively, one can
also use Ariadne GPS to get some more features tailored towards the needs of
the visually impaired.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! The Maps app on Android only offers limited navigation
capabilities. Maps themselves aren?t accessible at all.
> >>>
> >>>And if I want to go somewhere in Germany, I most often will use the
German railway company Deutsche Bahn. They offer apps for both iOS and
Android, one for looking up travel routes, one to purchase and store
electronic train tickets to later show to the on-board service personnel to
have them scan it. Information about seating and when and where to change
trains is all accessible on iOS. Of course, finding routes, too. Standard
date and time pickers are being used, and everything works just nicely.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! While the Tickets app looks like it could be equally accessible
on Android, the app for finding one?s travel route doesn?t allow a TalkBack
user to specify a departure or arrival date and time. Because Android does
not offer a standard date and time picker, or at least I?ve never seen one
anywhere, the company decided to use an animated spinning wheel to adjust
the values for date and time. This custom view is totally inaccessible, and
there is no alternative method of input. I contacted the railway company
with this problem, and they said they?d look into it, but the only way I see
that this can be solved is by using an alternative UI if TalkBack or another
screen reader is being detected. Until then, there is no way I can find my
travel routes using just the Nexus 4.
> >>>
> >>>eBooks
> >>>
> >>>On iOS, ever since the first iPad was announced in February of 2010,
the iBooks application has been a fully accessible eBook reader. Along with
Apple?s iBooks, it supports ePub and PDF. In iOS 6, PDF support even got
raised to a level almost comparable to that of ePub and iBooks. One can
review text, read it on a refreshable braille display, even in grade 2 if
one so desires, find individual words and review them, etc.
> >>>
> >>>More recently, Adobe Reader on iOS also became accessible by supporting
the relevant protocols within the UIKit framework.
> >>>
> >>>Kiran already hints at it in his post, and even the Bookshare GoRead
application does not improve the situation. The only way one can consume
eBooks on Android is by letting them be dumped into one?s ears through the
speech synthesizer in chunks. No way to rewind, no way to review words or
phrases. No way to read on a braille display. It?s basically like listening
to an audio book on a cassette player with broken rewind and fast-forward
keys.
> >>>
> >>>The screen where the eBook content is being displayed is a total black
hole for TalkBack. Nothing there.
> >>>
> >>>BUMMER! eBooks are close to inaccessible! And there are no APIs to
support developers to improve the situation. While other platforms offer
rich content display/editing, Android doesn?t.
> >>>
> >>>Braille
> >>>
> >>>Braille support needs to be installed separately via an application
from the Play Store called BrailleBack. It is new, as new as Jelly Bean
itself is. My braille display isn?t supported yet. However I?ve opened an
issue against BrailleBack and even provided some info about my display, so
in hopes that BRLTTY will support it soon, Brailleback also will.
> >>>
> >>>On iOS, the display is fully supported right out of the box.
> >>>
> >>>In conclusion
> >>>
> >>>If I replaced my iPhone with the Nexus 4 full-time at this point, I
would be missing out on all ?BUMMER!? items above. It would be like stepping
back a few years in accessibility, but taking the knowledge with me that
there is something out there that offers me all these things.
> >>>
> >>>Despite my desire to use Firefox for Android on a daily basis, meaning
whenever I open a web page on a mobile device, I am not prepared to do that
for this big a sacrifice. I am also not prepared to constantly carry two
phones around with me except when I know I?ll be working professionally with
them at my destination.
> >>>
> >>>In short: The experiment, tailored towards my usage patterns at this
point in time, has failed.
> >>>
> >>>However, I will keep the Nexus 4 and use it for testing, because it is
so nice and fast. And I will use it to keep close tabs on future Android
development. Android 5.0 is around the corner, and I will definitely check
against the above points when it is released to see if any of these items
have improved.
> >>>
> >>>This experiment has also led to some conclusions regarding Firefox OS
accessibility which you all will hopefully see the results of in a few
months! So stay tuned!
> >>>
> >>>(via Instapaper)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Sent from my iPhone
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>Electronics-talk mailing list
> >>>Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> >>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> >>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40
gmail.com
> >>>
> >>
> >>--
> >>Christopher (CJ)
> >>chaltain at Gmail
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Electronics-talk mailing list
> >>Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> >>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> >>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barco
re.com
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Electronics-talk mailing list
> >Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> >http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> >To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/chaltain%40gm
ail.com
> >
>
> --
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Electronics-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/jbar%40barcore
.com
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
Electronics-talk mailing list
Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
------------------------------
End of Electronics-talk Digest, Vol 84, Issue 8
***********************************************
More information about the Electronics-Talk
mailing list