[Electronics-talk] Re IOS and the N Y Times crossword puzzle

[Elizabeth Rene]

Hi Sandra and everyone else interested in this game,

I hate to say that this puzzle is not entirely blind friendly yet.  You do 
have to see at least a little bit.  AS I previously wrote, and must clarify 
now, I use a magnifying glass to make sure that VoiceOver is prompting me to 
the right material.  If you have never seen a crossword puzzle, you might 
need tactile cues to make sense of the fact that you are inputting words 
vertically and horizontally to a grid that has patterns of blank cells 
throughout that confine each word choice to a given number of letters. 
Scrabble comes closest to mind here, but with the puzzle, the whole grid, 
minus the blank cells, gets filled.

The obstacle to be faced with VoiceOver alone is that it won't tell you how 
many letters you need for a word, and it sometimes gives you the clue next 
to the one you need to pursue.  Also, when incorrect letters are crossed 
out, VoiceOver won't tell you.

Seems to me, though, that a Braille display might help with this, if you 
have one, or that contact with the game's technical support center by enough 
interested blind people might fix the bugs.

Why persist in this?

I have found crossword puzzles very helpful to me in thinking outside the 
box all around, in taking high pressure tests like the bar exam (Gee, this 
is just like a puzzle!), and in combating stress (if I concentrate for a 
time on a puzzle, my emotional engagement with a problem disengages and I 
can free my intellect to take it on.  These seem like good reasons to do 
puzzles, along with the fact that they make Sunday coffee taste even better!

Good luck to you.

Elizabeth