[nabs-l] Question about IPhone through Verizon

[Bryan Jones]

Hello Justin and All,

I have been using my iPHone 4 extensively to help me succeed in college after a 20+ year absence from the classroom. While my iPHone 4, and my new iPHone 4S both run on the ATT network, most of the tools and techniques you'll use are not carrier-dependent. Here are some of the tools and resources I've used to learn and enhance my iPHone experience. Hope you can find something helpful here, and best of luck with your iPHone.

1. Here's a link to Apple's web page outlining the VI features of the iPhone. At the bottom of that page there is also a link to the accessible version of the iPHone User Guide.
http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html

2. The book titled "Getting Started with the iPHone: A guide for blind Users" was published last year and is available in several formats at the following link: http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/IPHONE.html

3. Make use of the VoiceOver practice area built into the iPhone. You can find this in Settings / General / Accessibility / VoiceOver / VoiceOver Practice.

4. The Applevis.com website is an active community of VI IOS Users where folks post reviews of various IOS Apps and their accessibility or lack thereof. While most of the built-in Apps that come with the iPhone are perfectly accessible using VO, not all third party developers follow Apple's IOS accessibility programming guidelines. Applevis is a good place to check before making an App purchase.

5. There are a number of active email lists dedicated to VI IOS  Users. A search using your favorite browser will turn up a number of hits including the "viphone" google group and the "aiphone" yahoo group. For a group with more international reach, try searching for mac-access. Note that the Google and Yahoo groups have archives you might be able to search without joining the group, if you're so inclined.

6. Here are a few of my favorite Apps that I've found helpful as a college student.

The "Flashcards++" IOS App. I posted a review of the app on applevis if you're interested, but I'll just add here that this app blows me away every time I use it. The simplicity of the interface hides a tremendous wealth of options. There are numerous ways to import cards you've created, such as via a simple CSV created in TextEdit, or via the major flashcard sites such as quizlet.com. You can also create the cards manually right on the device and can edit any of the cards you've imported or created. Once you've created your cards, you have access to a vast number of ways to display the cards, and the built-in logic really worked well to focus on the cards I was having difficulty learning. While the app is great for general purpose learning, it was actually developed by a student of languages and includes tools to handle many languages. You can select a different language for the front and back of each card and, if you don't want to rotor between VO voices to hear correct pronunciation, a button is provided to speak the words via a TTS engine hosted somewhere on the Internet.

The "Speak It" IOS App. Essentially, speak It will read a block of text pasted into the App, and, unlike VO, will continue to read it aloud even when the iPhone has been locked. I would often cut and paste chapters from an OCR'd textbook into Speak It, lock the iPhone screen, stick the phone in my pocket, and listen to the information over and over again as I went about other tasks.

The "ClearRecord" IOS App. I used this App on my iPhone to record every lecture this semester. It somehow manages to do a good job of blocking out some of the extraneous classroom noises while capturing the important stuff. One shortcoming of this App is it's weak playback controls and options. I worked around this issue by using iTunes on the Mac  to tag the recordings as audiobooks for playback via other Apps.
 
The "Sendero LookAround" App. While there are a bunch of accessible and semi-accessible GPS Apps for the iPHone, I often found my self using Sendero's App to pinpoint my current location, nearest cross street, and direction of travel. Note that this App does not provide turn-by-turn GPS functionality and it has a very limited POI database. There are plenty of good accessible GPS and POI Apps, many of which are reviewed on Applevis.com and blindcooltech.com.

The "LearningAlly" App. Enables you to listen to daisy books from the LearningAlly site.

Coursesmart.com e-textbooks. While Coursesmart's native IOS Apps do not expose thee book text to VO, it is possible with some patience to read hosted e-textbook rentals through IOS Safari as long as you have an active Internet connection.

I am also able to access most of my school's online resources using the built-in Apps, such as Mail for my school exchange email account and Safari for the D2L environment.

HTH,
Bryan

On Feb 4, 2012, at 3:56 PM, Justin Young wrote:
> Hope you are all doing well.  I recently just bought the Verizon
> Wireless Iphone 4.  I was wondering how many of you have a similar
> phone or this phone.  If you do could you please suggest ways to use
> it.