Until 3 or 4 years ago, I did most of my financial dealings over the phone or using my bankās website. Although more recently I have used the app for 99 percent of my dealings involving finances (in fact, I prefer the app more than the website), the app has some problems. Due to the world population going more mobile than ever before, financial institutions as well as other industries are forced to embrace the digital age or get left behind. But what is the result for blind iOS users, and how can things change for the better?
In this post I would like to open-up the discussion on conducting research, VoiceOver and general accessibility of researching platforms. I will focus on SurveyMonkey as the research platform in this post, but that is only because it is the platform which I have the most experience of using.
I've used an iPhone 13 Mini almost since it came out. I got it in November of 2021, and have been very happy with its small size and light weight. The battery was great for a few months, but new iOS features and time took their toll. Now, despite a battery replacement, I'm lucky to get through a day of light to moderate use without having to recharge before bed. Going out in the evening is stressful, because I always wonder if my phone will have the juice. Plus, I'm optimistic about Apple Intelligence and want a phone that fully supports it.
Nine months after its launch in the United States, Apple Pay has today finally arrived in the UK. So, geek and early-adopter that I am, I found an excuse first thing this morning to visit my local convenience store to find out if they are among the reported 250,000 UK locations which will support Apple Pay from launch.
The good news is that they are. Even better news is that setting up and using Apple Pay on my Apple Watch really couldnāt have been any easier.
If you have read any of my previous posts on the Apple Watch, you might be excused for wondering at this point what else I have left to say on the topic ā¦ or, at least anything left to say thatās based upon personal experience. Before its release, I gave my reasons for not buying one.
When I first saw mention of the Apple Watch having a āSpeak On Wrist Raiseā option for VoiceOver users, my immediate reaction was that this would be one of those āset it and forget itā settings. However, this is not turning out to be the case.
When I made it to the twelfth grade, I had already taken a couple different music classes (piano and choir), and was looking for something new to try my hand in. I ended up in a class that taught audio production and music technology. It was quite a small class, and there was only one other person in it besides myself.
Since 2005, I have used a variety of Macs, and have regularly used every version of macOS from Tiger to Monterey since then. Over that time, Iāve witnessed the various changes to VoiceOver, both major and minor, as well as how VoiceOver on macOS helped usher in a whole new world of mobile accessibility on iOS and iPadOS.
Itās that time of year. With WWDC just one week away, Apple is getting ready to announce new versions of iOS and OS X, as well as possible tvOS and watchOS updates. While concrete information about these future releases is scarce, speculation and feature wish lists have begun popping up on mainstream tech websites.
Here are my top wishes for VoiceOver improvements in the next iteration of the Mac operating system, presumably OS X 10.12.
In case there was any doubt I'm a nerd, I recently set up WordPress v4.9.5 on my web server. WordPress is a free open source Content Management System (CMS) commonly used for blogging.
The sun was warm and bright that Friday morning in Southern California. From our fourth grade classroom, my friends and I were already anticipating lunch and recess. An adult walked in, whispered to our teacher, and we immediately lined up and were on our way out the door. As we walked, we saw children pouring out of every classroom, all heading in the same direction. Something was odd. Everyone squeezed into the school auditorium and quickly found seats. I took my place on the right side, in one of the first rows. Up front, on a heavy institutional wooden chair, sat an old Philco radio.
Some folks regard me as a tad eccentric. Although I have been retired for many years, I still wake up every morning, put on a nice pair of slacks, a long sleeved dress shirt, and hard soled leather shoes. Basically, I dress for work, but I don't leave for the office and no one writes me a check. Other fellow retirees around my neighborhood would likely sport tennis shoes or slippers, shorts or blue jeans, and they would almost certainly don a comfy shirt without a pocket.
Today is the sixth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD); when people are encouraged to talk, think and learn about digital access and inclusion. Our own message today for everybody involved in designing and developing software for Apple platforms, is a simple one: Make accessible design a core part of your development philosophy and practice - not just because it is the right thing to do, but because accessible design is synonymous with good design.
When I tell Siri to set my alarm just before I go to bed, I appreciate the convenience of being able to simply tell my phone something and it get done. Iām the type of person who might possibly sleep through my first alarm, so I set several as an extra precaution. When I wake up and am sure Iām out of bed, I tell Siri, āTurn off all of my alarms,ā and go on with my day. The same goes for setting my monthly hair cut appointments; almost always, it just works.
I was a late adopter of the iPhone technology. I thought I didn't need ANOTHER gadget to keep track of. It wasn't until I heard some friends discussing their iPhones that I realized that an iPhone could replace many of the gadgets I used. Not only did the iPhone cut down on the number of gadgets I needed to carry, but it saved me money too!
Life is grand. I am content, happy with my home and neighborhood and live a relaxing and rewarding life. I'm just your average blind, retired and elderly fellow who wears hearing aids. The blindness is here to stay, as is my retirement status and I suspect I will continue to age. The only thing I really aspire to change is how well I hear and how well my hearing aids work with my iPhone.
In her latest song, "Shake it Off," the country/pop artist Taylor Swift wrote, "...the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate." While I am sure that Ms. Swift was not referring to some peoplesā recent comments about Apple's commitment to accessibility when she wrote the song, the basic idea behind that particular phrase still applies.
I've had my Apple Watch for about ten months as of the time of this writing. I got it for a few reasons, but a major one was fitness. I wanted my movements and exercise to be tracked, I wanted calorie burn estimates, I wanted heart tracking, and I wanted to be reminded to move every so often. Plus, I wanted a simple way to log and track my workouts so I would have the data and so I could look back at trends.
For a while now, rumors have been piling up that suggest the venerable, reliable, universal 3.5mm headphone jack could vanish from future Apple products as soon as the iPhone 7. While we don't know whether this will definitely happen, there is mounting evidence that it might;
a prominent Android phone maker released a phone sans headphone jack, and Apple's audio supplier just released tools for developing Lightning-based audio accessories.