It's been reported that Sendero is in the early stages of developing a full-featured GPS application for the iPhone.
Most of you are probably aware of the Sendero Group, and many of you will have used their location-based information and navigation systems for the blind. Considering how highly-regarded these GPS systems are, and the company's near 20 years of experience, it is easy to be excited by news of an iOS application. However, it also raises some questions.
iOS and iPadOS Apps
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We are pleased and excited to announce that voting for the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards of 2014 is now open.
This is our community’s opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous work by developers over the past 12 months in creating great and accessible iOS and OS X applications.
The shortlist for each Award has been compiled from the nominations that were submitted by members of our community.
Congratulations to NFB-NEWSLINE® Mobile; the Newest Inductee into the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame
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We are pleased to announce that our community has chosen NFB-NEWSLINE® Mobile to be the next inductee into our iOS App Hall of Fame.
After an extremely close vote, NFB-NEWSLINE edged out its 2 closest challengers by just 4 votes ... once again demonstrating how important each and every vote can be!
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When I’m not listening to punk rock, helping my dad set the thermostat, or reading audiobooks, I do occasionally make an attempt to contribute to society. I talk at local blind support groups about using technology.
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I'm not of sound mind. I do not own a decent microphone and I am not an audio engineer. I do not record music or podcasts. I simply have thousands of audio files, captured and collected over a lifetime, that sometimes need just a bit of attention.
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On May 8, Sprint released a new update to the Sprint IP Relay app. While the description only states that there are "Miscellaneous bug fixes", one of those bug fixes is very significant... it restores access for braille users. Until now, braille users have not had a reliable solution to access relay via their mobile devices.
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We are pleased to announce that the latest iOS app to be inducted into our App Hall of Fame is Digit-Eyes Audio Scanner and Labeler.
For some time it was looking like this would be an extremely close vote, with several apps appearing to be in contention. However, Digit-Eyes ultimately won out as the firm choice of AppleVis users, gaining more than double the number of votes of its nearest challenger.
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Interpreting peoples’ body language—particularly facial expressions—is one of those challenges that almost all blind people face. But soon, there will be an app for that.
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At the end of each month, members of the AppleVis Editorial Team review all of the apps that have been posted to the site during that month--either for the first time, or where there has been a significant update--and decide which of these they think is the most noteworthy.
The AppleVis Editorial Team app picks of the month for November 2014 are as follows:
1. Dropbox
Updated to version 3.5.2 (now at version 3.6); November, 2014.
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Within the last couple of years, many apps have entered the market specifically for iPhone users who are blind. They range from color identifiers, to VoiceOver-specific Facebook clients, to touch-typing apps…and everything in-between. Some people think a higher price tag for blindness-specific apps is reasonable, others do not. The answer, I think, lies somewhere in the middle.
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One of the many things that one can do with a mobile phone is keep up with current news events. For users of iPhones who are blind and deaf-blind, this is no different. But are the most popular apps accessible? Below, the three most popular free news apps for the iOS platform are reviewed for their usability with VoiceOver and Braille displays.
The three apps evaluated are: NYTIMES (the New York Times Company), CNN (CNN Interactive Group Inc.), and Fox News (Fox News Digital). These were the top 3 free apps in the news category in the App Store on January 25, 2012.
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The national Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) has submitted their app, called BARD Mobile, for approval to the Apple App Store. Neil Bernstein, who works for NLS, estimated that it could take 1 or 2 more weeks for the app to be approved which would get it in to the hands of NLS patrons. The app, as indicated previously, will support the reading of braille files through the Web Braille service when using braille displays. it will also support the playback of the encrypted audio files on iDevices.
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Update 19 May, 2016: Facebook has today announced that automatic alt text is now available globally in English.
*** Facebook has today officially launched it’s much anticipated tool for automatically generating descriptions of photos posted to its site.
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An incredible bit of news just hit the wire today--so huge that we wanted to let you know about it ASAP.
The incredible folks that created the biggest innovation to come to touch-typing for the visually impaired community--Fleksy - Happy Typing--released a statement today announcing that the app is now FREE.
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An interesting and surprising piece of news today is that Fleksy has been acquired by Pinterest. What’s perhaps most interesting for the vision impaired, is that this may have positive consequences for those of us who remember just how revolutionary Fleksy once promised to be.
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Fleksy - Happy Typing has broken all records to become the latest inductee into our iOS App Hall of Fame.
It's 50% share of the vote was more than double that of its closest challenger. This should perhaps be no surprise for an app that has been variously described as "revolutionary", "ground-breaking", "amazing", "awesome" and "a game changer".
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A few months ago, the community of blind and visually impaired iOS users was thrown into an uproar when Fleksy split their apps into a new, updated version that was not Voiceover friendly, and an older version that was. Hundreds of comments, tweets, emails, and boos were posted, with some saying Fleksy was abandoning the blind community that helped it get off the ground by purchasing its original app, and others urging patience as Fleksy went through a transition and promised to reunite the two apps into one within six months.
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Hi all,
Its great to see a specific accessibility app (keyboard word prediction app for use with VoiceOver) get recognised in this way. Raises the awareness of accessibility just that bit more.
If you want to find out more about Fleksy or download it, go to:
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/fleksy-happy-typing/id520337246?mt=8
David
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What does it mean to make a truly accessible app? How can you go beyond meeting minimum accessibility standards and make something that VoiceOver users will find intuitive and enjoy using? In this post, I want to try to answer those questions from a user's perspective. I will not be covering the code you should use; instead, I am trying to describe what makes an app easy to use for me, as a VoiceOver user, and I encourage members of the community to add their own views in the comments.
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This post is a follow up to my post from December, Braille Display Users Deserve Better From Blindfold Games. In this post, I acknowledged the efforts of Marty for speech users, but pointed out the lack of accessibility for braille display users. While the use of a display is a luxury for some, for the deaf-blind this is not the case, as a display must be relied upon for access to information on a mobile device.