Hearts of Space

Category

Description of App

The Hearts of Space iPhone App opens up the sonic treasures of the Hearts of Space music service wherever you have an Internet connection.

Hearts of Space has defined its own format — a mix of ambient, electronic, world, new age, classical and experimental music from many eras and cultures.

Since 1973 the pioneering San Francisco radio show has offered "slow music for fast times" on nearly 1,000 much-loved programs. The show has been heard by millions — weekly on over 300 U.S. public radio stations since 1983, and daily on XM Satellite radio from 2001 to 2010.

Listeners describe the show as 'addictive' and 'essential' — an experience that goes far beyond simple relaxation with music that's refined, relevant, and emotionally satisfying.

Artists and record labels around the world recognize Hearts of Space as the original, most widely heard, premiere showcase for contemplative, space-creating music.

Version 1.1 (actually 1.01.19) of the Hearts of Space app offers free access to several hours of sample programming. For a limited time, iPhone users also get free on-demand access to our new weekly shows. Just download the app, sign in or create your free account, and explore the world of Hearts of Space.

Subscribers can play the HOS "All Archive Channel" — our 24 hour webcast of continuous Hearts of Space programs. See our web site for details at www.hos.com.

iPhone only feature: If you prefer to hear a different program on the All Archive Channel, you can skip forward to the next show with one tap. And like our full-featured web application, you can turn off the voiceovers on the program with one tap for completely uninterrupted music.

Version

1.1 (actually 1.01.

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

Accessibility Comments

Given that this application is less than 6 months old, its accessibility isn't too bad. It is starting off well, but could use some improvement. The biggest issue right now is that many of the buttons aren't identified as buttons, nor will they allow VoiceOver to activate them as buttons.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

Few buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver, but the interface makes the app very difficult to use.

Options

Comments

By allseed on Thursday, April 21, 2011 - 18:23

the app although listed as free costs $0.99 according to its page in itunes.

By Chris Foster on Thursday, April 21, 2011 - 18:23

In reply to by allseed

Thanks for that clarrification. The description mentions "free" programming but the user musth pay 0.99 to download the initial app. Poor wording on their part.

By Chris Foster on Thursday, April 21, 2011 - 18:23

This is Chris Foster, initial review of the Hearts of Space (HOS) app. Below, please find my email exchange with the company. I'd appreciate thoughts or ideas. Thanks, Chris Foster Dear Hearts of Space, My name is Chris foster. I grew up in rural northern California about 30 miles outside Sacramento in the 1980s. Every Sunday, I would look forward to tuning HOS on our local public radio station, KXPR. Back then, I just thought the music was really cool. Lately, I've been looking for something to add some calm to my day and I thought of HOS. I live in Colorado now and had no idea whether HOS even existed any more. Well, with a very simple Google search, I found your web site and all of music and listening options that are available there. I should tell you now that I am blind. The reason I mention this is that after I signed up for a 3-day pass just to look around and decide what kind of further access plans I wanted to pay for, I found some real navigation and accessibility problems with your website and my screen reading software. Let me say immediately that I am by no means an expert on all of this, I just know when something doesn’t work. Regarding your website, from what I can tell, you use a fair bit of flash content on the site. This makes many of the buttons which control playback, skipping, voice overs on/off, etc nearly impossible for me. As a starting place, I'd like to direct you to the following link: http://webaim.org/intro/#intro This should be a good starting place to learn more about how to make a web site more accessible. I know that this cite does push its own paid services a lot, but you may well find other free guides with a little more looking. The iPhone Ap Often times, iPhone aps are more accessible then standard web pages. Every Apple iPod, iTouch, iPad, and iPhone comes with a screen reading program called VoiceOver. When I downloaded the HOS ap, I found that some parts of it were accessible, while many others were not. For whatever reason, Voiceover would not activate many of the buttons in the ap to make it do different things. If you have an iPhone handy, go to Settings, general, accessibility, VoiceOver, and then turn it on. Learn a little about VoiceOver and then try it out on the ap. Apple have provided some information as to how VoiceOver works for the end user at www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html. Also, Apple have provided a guide for developers on how to make their applications accessible at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UserExperience/ Additional information for developing apps that are accessible to VoiceOver users can be found on the AppleVis website at http://www.applevis.com/information-app-developers If you are able to try and fix these problems, I would be delighted to help you in any way possible - testing any new versions for example. If you are able to resolve these problems, you can then advertise that you are VoiceOVER ready in your iPhone ap promotional materials. This will immediately catch the attention of iPhone users with disabilities. I'd also be glad to write a glowing review of the application and its accessibility for the Applevis.com cite as well as for other Internet communities related to accessibility of the web and I devices. Please feel free to contact me. I'd love to help however I can. Kind Regards, Chris Foster Dear Chris, Thanks for writing in. I'm glad you were excited to find us again, but I'm afraid we've already run up against this problem and found ourselves unable to do much about it. Another visually impaired person wrote in about a year ago. The estimate we got at that time for incorporating basic accessibility into the Flash player started at $15,000 and went up from there. We simply do not have the resources to do this. We operate at the level of public broadcasting budgets. Fees from stations airing our shows have never covered more than 20% (now down to 15%) of the cost to produce and deliver the shows. The other 80% has to be provided by another business. At present that's our online service. (We had an independent record label in the past, until the record industry self-destructed by MBA and died by file-sharing at the end of the 90s.) The person who wrote in then does use the site. He uses the RADIO CHANNEL and has figured out a way to play it using the controls in the HTML portion of the site, below the main menubar. We call that area below the player and menubar the "content pane." If you click the big html links for the 3 aspects of our service in the content pane -- THE ARCHIVE, THE RADIO CHANNEL, THIS WEEK'S SHOW -- you can navigate using only html. This other person seems to do that pretty well, especially with RADIO CHANNEL. He can start it going and just let it run. See if that works for you. Since we are doing a next version of the iPhone app fairly soon to incorporate more of our full web services (and to comply with Apple's fatwa that they share 30% of our subscription fees for use of the app), I will pass your suggestions to our app designer and developer. I've inquired of our app designer and he says what you ask requires quite a lot of reprogramming, entering of the text to be read by the Voiceover -- a "not trivial" assignment that will add significant costs. We'll do our best if we can.

By sockhopsinger on Friday, February 21, 2014 - 18:23

Well, Voiceover fans, cheer no longer! This newest update completely destroys any accessibility whatsoever. Voiceover gives no feedback, absolutely none, once the new version of this app is launched. I have spoken with the company, and they seem sympathetic. They suggested until a fix is found, Voiceover users should, if possible, revert to the prior version. Of note, the term "voiceovers" used below has nothing to do with Apple's Voiceover program. What's New in Version 2.5 :: New 5-button Player: skip from track to track within programs, skip from program to program within Channels and personal Playlists. :: iPad rotation support :: Auto-resume last playing stream: pick up where you left off, either at launch or at network reconnection :: Smart reconnection: automatic reconnection to the service after any interruption :: Smart buffering: better prevention of interruptions from connectivity or network issues :: Support for Albums and Album Tracks within your personal Playlists :: New Settings panel: includes Initial Screen choice, Automatic Sign in (on/off), Autoplay programs (on/off), Program Voiceovers (on/off), Reset to Defaults (all settings), Auto-resume last playing stream (on/off)

By Faerie on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 - 18:23

Apr 11, 2021Version 4.0
NEW APP CONTENTS AND FEATURES

• Direct access to all PROGRAMS and ALBUMS in the app
• Fast, comprehensive SEARCH and VIEW the entire collection of ~1,300 programs
and 150+ classic albums
• Make, edit, and play MY PLAYLISTS in the app
• Make, edit, and play FAVORITES (now a 3-star rating) in the app
• BLOCK shows you don’t want to hear (opposite of FAVORITES)
• REPEAT and SHUFFLE controls in the app
• New “PEEK” pop-up view into program details for iPads
• New EXPANDED PLAYER view for iPhones
• New SETTINGS and customization
• ACCOUNT management in the app
• SUBSCRIPTION management in the app
• HOS NEWS accessible in the app

NEW HARDWARE INTEGRATION

• All new native iOS PLAYER
• "Background" the app seamlessly while playing
• HIGHER QUALITY AUDIO — up to 256k AAC streams
• VOLUME and PLAY/PAUSE on lock screen integrated with device hardware
• AIRPLAY 2 compatible
• HOMEPOD and AIRPOD compatible
• ACCESSIBILITY for screen readers