News

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Every year at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC), Apple celebrates and acknowledges through its Apple Design Awards the mobile and desktop apps which raise the bar in design, technology and innovation.

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In a very interesting development for the blind and low vision community, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) has announced that Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, has been elected to the AFB's National Board.

In the AFB's press release, Kirk Adams, AFB President and CEO, is quoted as saying that “"Sarah Herrlinger is an outstanding addition to AFB's board”:

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The Sendero Group, developers of the Seeing Eye GPS app and other accessible GPS products has, in partnership with the Royal National Institute of Blind People, just launched a fully-featured turn-by-turn GPS app for users in the United Kingdom.

The app, called RNIB Navigator, was developed in partnership with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Sendero’s RNIB Navigator webpage lists the main features of RNIB Navigator as follows:

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Noises coming from Sendero suggest that the release of their long-anticipated  turn-by-turn GPS iOS app could be edging closer.

According to their website, the Seeing Eye GPS app will include all the normal navigation features that you would expect from a traditional GPS, plus features unique to blind users. These include:

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Sendero's long-anticipated turn-by-turn GPS iOS app made a brief appearance in the iTunes App Store overnight.
 
Unfortunately, by the time that this news started to spread around the Internet, the Seeing Eye GPS App had already disappeared once more.
 
Although it's still unclear why the app was removed so quickly, a number of people who were able to download it have reported that they were unable to process the in-app purchase.
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To encourage us to stay at home and get creating, several developers are giving away their music creation apps for free Since so many visually impaired people are musicians, it would make sense for these companies to incorporate accessibility into the design of their apps.

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Intro

This blog will cover all the cool new stuff Apple just announced during the Keynote presentation of the 2014 WWDC. I will avoid statistics and other "filler" information, and stick only to the things that, I feel, will be of interest and/or benefit to the AppleVis community of iOS and OS X users. If you missed the action and want to see things as they came in, check out our live blog of the event.

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Apple today kicked off its annual Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) with the traditional keynote presentation.

WWDC is when the world gets a preview of the software coming out of Cupertino in the Fall. We traditionally see the next iterations of Apple's operating systems for all of its main platforms and maybe a new service or cloud-based offering. This year was no exception: iOS 13, macOS Catalina, watchOS 6, and tvOS 13 were all showcased on stage.

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Apple today kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with the traditional keynote presentation.

As was the case last year, WWDC 2021 is an all-virtual event, with the keynote consisting of prerecorded video presentations that focused primarily on the next major revisions of Apple's operating systems for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. What we didn't get today, was any hardware news, so those waiting to place an order for the much-anticipated redesigned MacBook Pro will have to wait a little longer.

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Let's "Loop You In!"

With Apple, most of us are in for some big excitements when it comes to the company's gorgeous events. Of course over the past couple of years, the smorgasbord of leaks prior to the events have spoiled the anticipation phase a bit. However, regardless of what you might or might not have heard about Apple's event which was held this morning, let's focus on what the company debuted. Maybe what was put at our fingertips can form the basis of our next iDevice or Watch purchase.

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Today has seen a round of product announcements from Apple, including the launch of a new iPad; a special PRODUCT(RED) iPhone; changes to storage sizes; some new accessories; and a new iOS app.

iPad

The iPad Air 2 has been discontinued and replaced with a new 9.7-inch iPad equipped with an A9 chip and a brighter Retina display. This new model is simply called "iPad," and is Apple's new entry-level model at the 9.7-inch size.

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Intro

Today (October 16, 2014) was Apple's third major announcement of the year, after WWDC in June and the iPhone/Apple Watch event last month. This time, the focus was on the Mac and the iPad, with some exciting new products announced, not to mention the release for the long-awaited OS X 10.10 Yosemite, iWork updates for the Mac, and the scheduled release of iOS8.1 on Monday, October 20.

If you'd rather watch the video, you can now do so. Here's Apple's recording of today's announcements.

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Today, Apple held its first product launch event of the year: “Spring Loaded”. True to its title, the event was “loaded” with product news and announcements - there's new iPad Pro models, a much-needed update to the iMac, the arrival of Apple's long-rumored AirTag item tracker, an updated Apple TV 4K with a redesigned Siri remote, and much more.

Read on for the highlights of today's product launches and news.

iPad Pro

As widely anticipated, the iPad Pro was the main focus of today's event and received a significant upgrade.

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Welcome Back to WWDC

It doesn't feel like a whole year since I covered a WWDC keynote, but it really has been that long. Now we're back here again, reviewing what Apple announced at this year's keynote event. Did Apple reveal a Siri-based smart speaker? A new set of Macs? New iPads? What's in the upcoming macOS, iOS, and other software? Well, I'm here to give you all the highlights so you don't have to watch the full video (though you can if you want to.

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WWDC 2016

Welcome back to Applevis' yearly summary of Apple's yearly developer conference announcements. There's a lot this year, much of it exciting, some of it very much expected, and a few things long overdue. Instead of a long introduction, let's just start moving!

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Fleksy is getting better on an almost daily basis as its betas reach testers. It's pushed my bluetooth keyboard to the sidelines and while it would be better if we could bring it up in each and every application instantly instead of typing in a separate application (if Apple had allowed it), that might not be quite far-off. Syntellia has made Fleksy's SDK available to developers, meaning they can integrate it into their products. Also, the first few developers that apply for the SDK will get it free of charge.

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TapTapSee, an app which has been free since its release over a year ago, has now begun to role out a paid service. According to it’s Twitter feed and website, Users can choose from either a monthly subscription of $9.99 with no limit to the amount of images one can submit,, or they can pay $7.99 for 100 pictures. The 100 picture count does not have a time limit.
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Detailed in this post are possible accessibility-related bugs that members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have identified during their testing of iOS 10.

As is now our routine practice, the bugs have been grouped based upon what we believe to be there likely level of impact to the user experience to those affected by each bug. At the time of writing, we have only identified one bug which we believe to be serious—an issue which relates to using iOS 10’s Mail app with a braille display.

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Today brings the release of iOS 11. And, as is generally the case with major updates of iOS, it comes with some new bugs for blind and low vision users. So, to help you with making an informed decision as to whether to update your device, we bring you here, details of the bugs that members of the AppleVis Editorial Team have identified during their own testing of iOS 11.

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***Update 17 November 2014: More of these bugs have been fixed in iOS 8.1.1. See our post for more details: Apple Releases iOS 8.1.1 with Fixes for Blind and Low Vision Users***