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.
iOS and iPadOS Apps
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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.
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Introduction
For many of us -- hard-core internet surfers, RSS is a familiar term. By the same token, the phrase "RSS reader" isn't esoteric at all. But let me talk a bit about RSS and RSS readers before moving on to the main focus of this post. According to the Pro Blogger website:
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I bet my spouse is starting to wonder why I'm sending her so many text messages. I'm testing my new shortcut, of course. No, I didn't create a shortcut to annoy my spouse. She likes to track our spending, and my new shortcut tells her what I've been purchasing.
This blog gets you started with a drop-dead simple shortcut, and then describes the shortcuts I created to help track my spending. But first—
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Every writer knows the feeling: you’ve just sat down at the keyboard, ready to write your next masterpiece. Suddenly, your mind goes blank. What seemed like the perfect idea late last night now seems impossible to put into words. Or perhaps you have no ideas at all and you wonder how you’ve ever managed to write anything.
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***Note: This post was written in 2012. Unfortunately American Heritage Dictionary 5th Edition became totally inaccessible in July 2016. So what you read below is no longer valid and only reflects history. To see what happened to this invaluable app and how it became inaccessible again, please visit this page. Thanks.
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It feels like losing an old friend. Or perhaps losing one's love of life. But American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language was my friend in the world of iOS apps and my love in the world of dictionaries. So going to bed one night with an awesome dictionary which ticks all check boxes in terms of accessibility and getting up the next morning, hearing about the app's takeover by a new developer, re-paying for and downloading it, and finding it an absolute mess in terms of accessibility is nothing but a huge blow to one's morale. And the story doesn't even end there...
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GoodReader, reportedly the world’s top-selling PDF file management, viewing, and annotation app for iPhone and iPad, has recently released an update which adds VoiceOver compatibility.
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At the end of each month, members of the AppleVis Editorial Team take a look at all 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 December 2014 are as follows:
1. Google Docs (Free)
New iOS App Directory entry (version 1.1.6); December, 2014.
From the App Store:
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Update: All of the promo codes have now been taken.
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Handelabra Studio has recently updated three of their apps to provide full VoiceOver support.
The apps are RE.minder, GAME.minder and Better Clock.
The first 2 of these are free, whilst Better Clock is 99 cents.
I've tested RE.minder, and was very impressed with it's accessibility.
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Google recently announced that it will shutdown its popular RSS aggregation service, Google Reader, on July 1. If the tech pundits are to be believed, the early frontrunner to be many people's replacement RSS service is Feedly.
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A lot of us Blind folks are interested in radio. Some of the lucky ones are probably doing an air shift in a commercial station as I write this. :) The rest of us, may be doing that one of these days, but for the time being, we get our thrill by broadcasting on the internet.
Today, when we think of hosting a show, we think of needing a desktop, or laptop computer.
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We are pleased to announce the launch of the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame, where we will be acknowledging and celebrating the apps that exemplify all that is great about owning an iDevice.
Our goal for the Hall of Fame is to showcase the passion and hard work that app developers put into creating great apps that are fully accessible to VoiceOver users. These apps place powerful tools into the palms of our hands, and give access to services, information, media and entertainment that the sighted world takes for granted.
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Intro
AppleVis already has posts on iOS9: we've seen an overview of the new accessibility features, a podcast covering all that iOS9 brings to the table, a list of bugs in iOS9.0, and more.
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Apple has received much praise since accessibility became an integral element of iOS. Much has certainly been said and written on how this has been a life-changer for so many people, and that it has opened up a world of possibilities.
These are sentiments that it's hard to disagree with.
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The number of iOS games which are playable by VoiceOver users seems to grow daily, with developers either releasing new titles that are accessible out of the box (such as The Inquisitor Audiogame Adventure and Clever Clues) or joining the VoiceOver party by making existing games accessible.
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The Kindle app for iOS devices is not usable with VoiceOver. We believe that it is time for Amazon to stop excluding blind iOS users from their Kindle Book Store, so hope that you will support our Campaign for fair and equal access by lobbying them to make the app accessible. Not only would this be a good commercial decision for Amazon, but it is simply the 'right' thing for them to do and arguably something they have a legal requirement to do. As consumers, it would also provide us with some much-needed competition and choice when shopping for eBooks.