[Nfbf-l] FW: Fw: [leadership] Article: Apple seeks to 'take disability out of the equation'

[Patricia A. Lipovsky]

Sharing FYI 

 

Apple seeks to 'take disability out of the equation'
Article Link: 
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-apple-devices-help-take-disability-out-of-the-equation-iphone/

Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the tech giant discusses its work 
helping people with disabilities.
Austin Pruitt, a two-time US Paralympian, walked me over to a racing 
wheelchair that he set up for a stationary workout routine.
Pruitt 
has cerebral palsy from the knees down, which forces him to walk slowly, but 
he's able to compete on the world stage by racing in a wheelchair. He said he 
used to set up a bunch of trackers on his chair to log his workouts, but now 
uses just an Apple Watch instead.
"This has everything," he told me. "This has my wheelchair and my walking, all 
in one."
Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day this Thursday 
, which focuses on making technology more usable for people with disabilities, 
Apple sought to highlight the work its been doing in recent years to benefit 
people like Pruitt by building more capabilities into its devices.
These kinds of new features have the potential to change lives for the better, 
helping those with disabilities do more for themselves independently or save 
much more time comp leting tasks able-bodied folks might take for granted. 
Although many of these innovations focus on a smaller segment of people, some 
of these features can give the broader population benefit, too, thanks to added 
convenience or easier controls. For example, Apple's creation of inverted 
colors on its iPhone screen for the visually impaired also proved useful for 
low-light reading before bedtime.
"Every year we try to add in new things. We do look at how can we make it 
slightly better year over year," Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's director of global 
accessibility policy and initiatives, said about the company's work on its iOS 
and MacOS operating systems.
Other tech companies have been working to build up their accessibility 
options, too. Googleadded a variety of features to Android 
, including voice commands and display settings to make the screen easier to 
read. Samsung created severalsimilar controls 
. And Amazon provides ahandful of ways for people to use its Alexa voice 
assistant 

Herrlinger discussed a handful of Apple's efforts around accessibility, 
starting with the iPhone, where the tech giant has added a long list of 
specialized controls, including text-to-speech that can read your emails or a 
grocery list, and Bluetooth pairing with hearing aids and cochlear implants.
In the kitchen, a visually impaired person can use their iPhone to find 
specific spices by using a camera app to read their barcodes. They can also use 
a HomePod smart speaker to turn on small appliances via voice.
In the living room, Herrlinger said the company worke d with makers of portable 
Braille readers and paddle switches (essentially large buttons that can pair 
with your electronics) to help people operate an iPad or turn on closed 
captioning or audio descriptions on an Apple TV.
"This becomes like a lifeline," said Andrea Dalzell, a nurse, advocate for 
people with disabilities andMs. Wheelchair New York 
2015. "I have the ability to take disability out of the equation." 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 332 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbf-l_nfbnet.org/attachments/20180515/8b74f490/attachment.jpg>