News

Post Date:

Apple has announced the winners of this year's prestigious Apple Design Awards; and it's thrilling that two of these will be familiar to most in our community - Be My Eyes and Voice Dream Reader.

The awards honor excellence in innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement in app and game design. This year, Apple divided the finalists into six different categories: Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation.

Post Date:

The Be My Eyes app is set to gain a new feature called the Virtual Volunteer, powered by OpenAI's recently announced GPT-4 model. This new tool has the potential to be a game changer for people with visual impairments, providing a virtual sighted assistant that can generate context and understanding for images in the same way as a human volunteer can.

Post Date:

Ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) starting next week, Apple has today announced the 36 finalists for this year's Apple Design Awards; and it's great to see that in the running are three apps which will be familiar to most in our community - Be My Eyes, Blind Drive, and Voice Dream Reader.

Post Date:

We are pleased to announce that the winners of the twelfth annual AppleVis Golden Apple Awards are Be My Eyes, Timecrest, and Zanagrams.

Post Date:
Earlier this week I flew back from Melbourne to Sydney after attending the Vision 2014 International Low Vision Conference hosted by Vision Australia, where I was an Accessibility Ambassador on Apple’s iHouse interactive stand.
 
After getting to our seats, the person I was travelling with commented that the in-flight entertainment system was an iPad, and suggested that I try it out for accessibility.
 
Once the aircraft was up, up and away, I took the iPad out of the seat pocket in front of me and pressed the Home button 3 times wit
Post Date:

Over the past day there has been much coverage online of a Mashable article featuring Jordyn Castor, a blind member of Apple’s Accessibility Team.

In the article, Castor speaks passionately about Apple’s deep commitment to accessibility and her own personal journey.

Post Date:

The Braille Institute of America has launched a new iOS app that aims to make it easier for the vision-impaired to find useful apps.

Visually Impaired Apps (ViA) claims to fill the need for "a one-stop shop of useful apps that help visually impaired people stay connected and engaged with the world".

Post Date:

At the end of each month 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 we think is the most noteworthy.

Considering how much its release has been anticipated, it should come as no surprise that BrailleTouch is our choice for January.

Post Date:

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.

Post Date:
We are pleased and excited to announce that voting for the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards of 2013 is now open.
 
The shortlist for each Award has been compiled from the nominations that were submitted by members of our community.
 
Voting will close at midnight on 12 January 2014. You are not required to vote for each award. Only registered users of this site will be able to vote. So, if you are not registered and logged in, you will not see the voting form that follows the list of nominees below.
Post Date:

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.

Post Date:

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!

Post Date:

I am thrilled to share some potentially great news - with the upcoming release of macOS Sonoma 14.2, Apple may finally have fixed the longstanding “Safari not responding” bug that causes repeated temporary freezes for many when using VoiceOver on a Mac.

Post Date:

We are pleased to announce that Dave Nason and Tyler Stephen have joined the AppleVis Editorial Team.

Dave and Tyler are both long-term contributors to the AppleVis community, and they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table.

Post Date:

A new feature for VoiceOver users called "Accessibility Events" was introduced in iOS 12.2 and macOS 10.14.4 without any announcement or documentation. I cannot find any info about this feature on Apple's website. Even the installed Help files say nothing about it, so far. The only information given is a short description label in the Mac Preferences and IOS settings, shown below. To the best of my knowledge, which is quite limited at this time, leaving it turned on allows webmasters and anyone else who cares to know to discover if you have VoiceOver running.

Post Date:

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.

Post Date:

Intro

Apple has just concluded its annual September media event. This year's, which it titled "By Innovation Only", gave us new iPhones, the Series 5 Apple Watch, and more details on the company's new Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus subscription services. Innovation, though, wasn't exactly the word I first thought of when I considered how to sum up the announcements. Don't get me wrong: the new iPhones have some great new features, and it will be interesting to see where the new subscription services go.

Post Date:

With the public release of iOS 8 now just two days away, we wanted to let you all know that we have lots of information and resources ready to share with you as soon as Apple makes its new version of iOS available for download.

This will include a number of Blog posts and Guides with information on what you will find in iOS 8, along with podcast demonstrations of some new and changed features.

Post Date:
With the public release of iOS 7 now just a few days away, we wanted to let you all know that we have lots of information and resources ready to share on the AppleVis website as soon as Apple makes its new version of iOS available for download.
 
This includes a number of Blog posts and Guides which will provide information on what you will find in iOS 7, along with many podcast demonstrations of new and changed features.
 
Some of our Editorial Team have been involved in beta testing of iOS 7, so have been able to compile a list of existi
Post Date:
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.