Assistive Technology

How to Set Up an iPhone For a Blind Person

Thursday July 28, 2022 3:30 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

In an ideal world, there will be someone who is trusted, knowledgeable, and helpful to make setting up your device easier. Entering information correctly is important during the process, and this can be nerve-wracking for inexperienced users. Be assured that it is quite possible to complete the entire setup process while totally blind. There is an increasingly likely possibility that you will have to set up your iPhone from scratch by yourself. Provided that you remain calm and exercise patience, it is absolutely possible to set up your iPhone right out of the box all by yourself without the need for eyesight. While writing this section, I did this with my iPad to make certain I would walk you through the process correctly.

Make yourself comfortable. It is very helpful if you can be within range of a Wi-Fi network you are allowed to make use of. Presuming you have cellular data capability, a cellular network is another option, but Wi-Fi is strongly recommended in case you need to install operating system updates or any such thing. Sit somewhere close enough to a power outlet so that you can use your iPhone while it is charging. Before we begin, plug the iPhone into the power brick. For some devices, you will find the power brick has its prongs folded into itself. The prongs need to pivot into their open position, which you can accomplish easily with a finger. Next, attach the cable to the power brick. You’ll find a small port on the power brick opposite to where the extended prongs are. Plug the larger end of the cable that came with your device into this port. Next, plug the other end into the small port on your iPhone. It’s a small slot, typically located on the bottom edge at the very centre of its length. You’re now ready to plug the power brick into your electrical outlet as you would any other appliance.

You may have initial trouble distinguishing the two ends of more modern charging cables. Thanks to their increased charging speed, you’re likely to have a Lightning to USB C cable rather than the older USB A style. The USB C end of these newer cables is nearly as small as the Lightning end. However, it’s still possible to tell the difference by touch. Also, it’s impossible to put the wrong end into your device or the charging brick. The USB C end is noticeably thicker and you can feel a small gap between the long edges of the tip by running your finger over it. This plugs into the small slot in the charging brick. Meanwhile, the Lightning end, which goes into the port on your iPhone, has a smooth feel when you run your finger over the tip.

Once you’ve plugged it in, be patient, as it should now be turning on and booting up. Assuming you’re in a quiet place, you’ll hear a short “bing” sound. If your iPhone supports haptic feedback, you’ll also feel a small pulse of vibration at the same time you hear the sound. This means the device is on and knows that it’s charging. You may need to wait a short while longer, perhaps half a minute, before the device is ready. It may start saying “hello” in different languages. Either way, after this wait, it should be ready for you to begin the setup process.

Now that you’re physically ready, let’s prepare you mentally. You should be ready to spend at least half an hour, possibly as much as an hour, but certainly no more than that. Don’t do this when you’re in any kind of a hurry. Also, it’s important that you don’t panic if you make a mistake. You can always use the Back button at the top left of the screen to go back to the prior step. Additionally, there is a Delete key on the onscreen keyboard. Feel around the bottom right of the screen until you find it. Keep your finger on it, and then tap anywhere on the screen with another finger to remove a character you didn’t intend to enter. There are around fifteen steps, but some of them are just to read and then continue past screens containing essential information. You are allowed to skip steps, including those related to security measures. However, barring special circumstances, I strongly recommend that people go through all steps. You will then end up in the most secure and best possible starting position. There may be additional steps specific to the features and capabilities of your particular device that I haven’t covered. These will be explained by your device during the process. Are you ready? Then let’s get started.

Turn on VoiceOver. To achieve this, find the Action button located on its own along the edge opposite or above the two volume buttons. Quickly click this small sliver-like button three times. You should then hear something spoken, most likely the Back button or the currently active language.
You should now be at the point where you need to select the language, country, and region you wish to operate in. It will likely default to the most common language wherever you are. In my case, this is thankfully English, as I know only halting French. To select an option, tap it twice quickly, or hold a finger on the option while tapping once elsewhere on the screen with another finger. Do this for any further options as we proceed. Once the language is set, flick right, and you should either come to a place to select your country, or else find a Continue button that will take you to where that is. Once you’ve told your device where you are, proceed to the next step.
The next order of business is to join a Wi-Fi network. Flick right through the list of detectable networks and tap twice quickly on the one you want. You will then be asked for the password to join that network, presuming one is needed. Type this in.
You should then come to an information screen all about Apple’s stance on privacy. It explains what Apple uses your information for and allows you to access further information about this if you desire. Read this by flicking right to proceed through sections. When finished, find the Continue button.
Next, you will be asked to set up whatever biometric security option your device has. In the case of my iPad, this was Touch ID. Meanwhile, on my iPhone XR, it was Face ID. Go through the process and keep in mind that you can always do it again later once you’re finished setting up your device. If you feel nervous, you can always skip this step. Flick right, and you’ll find an option to do this.
You will now be asked to create a passcode to keep your device secure. This is typically a six-digit number. However, you can find options to change the requirements for this passcode by flicking right. You will need to enter in your chosen number twice, which makes certain that it is what you intend. Pick a number that you will remember, since you’ll need it to unlock your device, among other things. Think of it like the key to your house.
Next, it’s time to create your Apple ID. Simply fill in the form, providing all the information requested here. If you prefer, you need not use an email address specially created for you by Apple. You can use an email address you already have. Any information from Apple will be sent there. I use my Gmail address. When you select a password, pick one that you will remember, rather than one that’s impossible to guess. You need to be able to remember this and enter it whenever you’re asked. Keep it written down in a handy location if you need to.
Now that you’ve created your Apple ID, it’s time to select some preferred settings. These involve such things as using Siri. Don’t forget that you can always change your mind about any decision you make. After setup is complete, go into Settings, and you’ll be able to make different choices if you wish.
It will now be time to set up Apple Pay. If you wish, you can skip this step. However, setting up Apple Pay by adding a credit or bank card will then allow you to obtain apps from the app store, among many other things.
At this point, you’ll be asked whether to allow sharing of audio recording to improve Siri. This lets Apple employees hear your commands and teach Siri how to respond better.
The next step explains about screen time. You need not worry about this for the time being, so find the Continue button and proceed.
You will now be asked if you want to share information with app developers and Apple. This is not personal information, but is information gathered about how an app is used to improve its functionality.
You must now choose whether you want a light or dark appearance. Choosing “dark” may extend battery life, but will make no difference to a totally blind user beyond that.
At this point, you will go through a series of screens that each explain gestures required on devices without Home buttons. These gestures are vital, and you should pay close attention to the information here. Proceed through these screens until you reach the final step.
You may be asked to install a more recent version of the operating system than the one your device was shipped with. If this is the case, you should take the time to do this. Your initial experience of your device will be as current and secure as possible.
You have now reached a screen that welcomes you to your device. Double tap the Get Started button. You will be taken to the home screen. Congratulations! You have completed the setup process.

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Top 7 Apps to Help the Visually Impaired Identify Objects

Thursday July 28, 2022 3:42 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

Smartphones are very powerful computers that we often take for granted and simply use to check Twitter or Reddit and play some games or watch videos of puppies. But for the visually-impaired, smartphones can be very helpful tools that support them throughout the day and bring them a bigger sense of independence. One of the most popular and useful tasks that visually impaired people perform with a smartphone such as the iPhone, other than making phone calls of course, is identifying objects. The process involves taking a photo of a physical object, and the app provides information about the image. This is one useful technique which can help blind and visually impaired find out information about the subject clicked by their camera. In this article, I’ll discuss the seven best object recognition apps for the blind and visually impaired in 2021.

Best object recognition apps for the blind and visually impaired

1. TapTapSee

TapTapSee is an object recognition app for the visually impaired that let’s users to accurately identify objects they encounter in their daily lives without the need for sighted assistance. Using your iPhone camera, you can take a photo at any angle and hear the description of the object read back to you. The app also features an auto-focus notification and sharing options. In addition, you can have the last image identification repeated. Finally, you can upload photos from your camera roll for identification and even save them to your phone afterward with the provided definitions for easy reuse.

Download: TapTapSee for Android | iOS (Free)

2. Lookout by Google

If there’s a brand you can trust more than others to provide useful and reliable innovations, it’s Google. By using your smartphone’s rear-facing camera, Lookout identifies important items in your environment and reports the information it believes is relevant. This might include things like exit signs, the location of a bathroom, people or objects nearby, and even text in a book. Lookout’s spoken notifications are designed to be used with minimal interaction so that they don’t distract you or get in the way.

Download: Lookout by Google for Android (Free)

3. Seeing AI

Developed byMicrosoft, Seeing AI allows users to use the rear camera on the smartphone to identify and narrate the world around them, turning the daily unseen into an audible experience. The app helps the blind and visually impaired identify objects, text, and even people. You can use Seeing AI to complete multiple tasks you’re otherwise incapable of doing due to your visual impairment.

Simply navigate to the Scene Preview channel. Once you are ready, double tap the “Take Photo” button. The app will describe the surroundings. At the top of the screen is a “Close” button. Below the description are options to save and share the photo.

Download: Seeing AI for iOS (Free)

4. Supersense

Clearly, when it comes to accessibility, less is more. Supersense is one more example of great objects recognition app that can boost your confidence when out and about, despite very minor flaws.

The app’s Object Explorer mode uses streaming video from your smartphone camera. No need to take photos and wait for images to be uploaded and analyzed.

Likewise if you’re sitting in a room and you want to know what’s around, fire up the Supersense app and enable Object Explorer. Slowly pan the phone and the app will identify and speak the names of furnishings: sofas, chairs, lamps, picture frames and such. Again, the identification happens in real time—very handy for a quick look-around to orient yourself in an unfamiliar room or office setting.

Download: Supersense for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

5. Be My Eyes

Be My Eyes pairs blind people with sighted volunteers who help them identify objects using a smartphone app and camera.

One notable difference that does appear to exist between Be My Eyes and other apps, is that Be My Eyes uses live video chat to communicate with the volunteer at the other end, whilst other apps will require you to take a photo. The person who’s blind connects to people with sight, points the smartphone camera at things and gets help seeing what they are. The app rings — a monotonous, droning ring — until both sides are connected.

Download: Be My Eyes for iOS | Android (Free)

6. Bespecular

This is a pretty fantastic app to use when you need help. The app offers a very unique and simple process to get a remote volunteer to help you out on something you need. You will and can get multiple of responses to your questions. It gives you a variety of different answers to get that aquestion answered that you want and need.

What separates this app from the park is the ability to send a question along with the picture of the object you want identified to a community of volunteers.

A visually impaired person can ask a question, for instance taking a photo of an outfit they would like to wear and ask a question such as, does the outfit match my shoe and then that question is sent to a community of volunteers who can then provide a feedback”

Download: BeSpecular for Android | iOS (Free)

7. Cash Reader

Whether you need to hand out cash or count bills given to you, check out the Cash Reader app. This tool not only speaks the denomination but also vibrates and displays it in large contrasting numbers on the screen for those discreet situations. The app supports over 100 currency denominations and multiple languages. It doesn’t matter which way you use it, even if you show just a small portion of the banknote to the camera, it will work. So, make sure you get the correct change or assistance with counting your cash with Cash Reader.

Download: Cash Reader for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)

“What Is This?” These object recognition Apps Have the Answer!

Thanks to the advancements in image-recognition technology, unknown objects in the world around you no longer remain a mystery. With these object recognition apps for the visually impaired, you have the ability to identify just about everything, whether it’s a plant, a rock, some jewelry, or currency. If you find certain apps difficult to see, for instance, you can adjust accessibility for those titles without affecting everything else.

Tag: Assistive Technology

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The 4 Best OCR Apps for the Visually Impaired

Thursday July 28, 2022 3:42 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

One of the most powerful categories of productivity apps available for visually impaired users on both iOS and Android is Optical Character Recognition, or OCR: software that enables users to take a picture of text, and have the app read it back with the device’s screen reader. For example, you can take a picture of a magazine article or printed recipe and have it read aloud by the smartphone! There are dozens of OCR apps specifically designed to help people with visual impairments live their best lives. Here are 4 of the best OCR apps for the visually impaired in 2021.

What is OCR

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a form of technology that identifies the characters – like numbers and letters — included in an image.

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR application enables users to take a picture of text, and have the app read it back with the device’s screen reader such as VoiceOver. For example, you can take a picture of a magazine article or printed recipe and have it read aloud by the smartphone! This can be done using a computer and a scanner or a digital camera, but this is expensive and bulky when compared to using a smartphone.

OCR has been around for decades. Years ago, when Ray Kurzweil developed one of the first commercially available OCR devices, it originally cost tens of thousands of dollars and was the size of a filing cabinet—neither cheap nor portable.

Over time these devices have morphed into software applications that can run on a smartphone, and there are now apps available on both the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms and costs infinitely less—or free, which I will talk about below.

Each of these applications require processing data sets that consist of hundreds of thousands scanned documents or images in order to train and optimize the algorithms. Processing the training data set is typically done by humans in order to provide accurate data that can be used by the engine to learn and apply, making it "smarter" over time. Currency identifier apps such as Cash Reader employs the same concept.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the best OCR apps for the blind and visually impaired.

The best OCR apps for the blind and visually impaired

Voice Dream Scanner

This has to be one of the most useful OCR apps on the Apple Store and Google Play Store. It makes it easy to scan printed paper documents.

The app uses your phones in built camera to auto focus on text in view. A photo is taken, and the app will read back all the text. And of course, with the iPhone you can decrease or increase the speed of the read-back using your phones settings. Photos can then be deleted or saved dependant on whether you need to read something back later.

The app is able to detect when all edges of the document being scanned are visible, and it uses a tone which varies in volume to indicate when the phone is pointing at the text and is properly in focus. The app can be set up to automatically snap a picture when your phone is in the right position, about 12 inches above the text. The scanning is all done on the phone so none of your scans are uploaded on to the internet. This means that your documents are kept private, and the process of scanning the document and doing the OCR is all generally completed in less than 3 seconds. It’s enhanced scanning accuracy is brilliant and it supports various languages.

However, this stand-alone app only scans paper documents and photos stored on your device. If you want to import PDF files you should install the Voice Dream Reader, app created by the same developer. This is a great app for reading almost any kind of audio or text file and it now includes the OCR features of Voice Dream Scanner, and I would strongly recommend this app.

Voice Dream Scanner costs $5.99 and the Voice Dream Reader app costs $19.99.

Voice OCR

Voice OCR is an OCR app that will also allow the import of PDF files as well as recognising handwriting. It is simple to use, and it also gives you a report of how many edges of the document are visible to help with lining up the phone. Another great feature of the Voice OCR app is that it will allow you to speak commands to make the app take a photo then recognise the text. The spoken command Capture will take the photo and the spoken command Read will recognise the text and start reading any text it finds aloud. I have found Voice OCR to be very good at recognising handwriting, in fact you don’t need to tell the app whether you are reading handwriting or standard text – it is able to recognise both types of text.

The main downside of Voice OCR is that all the recognition is done online so the scanned image of the document is sent to a server and the resultant text is sent back to the phone. This helps with the task of processing the handwriting, but an internet connection is required, and some may have concerns around privacy.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI was surely going to pop up somewhere on this list, right?

The app has “short text” mode which is real time OCR, where you don’t need to snap a picture, it will simply read whatever is the view of the camera. All you have to do is point the camera to the item and once text is found, the app will read it. The app will continue to look for text, which can be useful if looking for a room number or address.

The app also features document mode where it can scan automatically or using a snapshot and shows you the OCR in text view. The easiest way to scan a document page with Seeing AI is to put the phone on the document with the camera in the middle. Gradually lift the phone up and the app will say which edges are not visible. Slowly lift the phone up until you hear "hold steady." This means that the document is going to be photographed in about two seconds. After the document is processed, it can be read using VoiceOver navigation or by activating the "Play" button at the bottom left of the screen. Additional options at the bottom of the screen are Stop, Increase Font Size, Decrease Font Size, and Share.

Lookout by Google

Like the name hints, the app was developed by Google. It uses your phone’s camera to process the image and turns it into text that a screen reader can read. It turns on the flashlight automatically when needed.

The app features “quick read” which is real time OCR, where you don’t need to take a picture, it will simply read whatever is the view of the camera.

It also has document mode where it can scan automatically or using a snapshot and shows you the OCR in text view. The document mode has voice guidance to tell you where to move the camera.

Conclusion

The technology for recognising text on mobile phones is improving all the time, and it is hard to predict which apps will be the best for scanning documents in the next few months. Thanks to iOS 15 Live Text feature, iPhone Camera can now seamlessly detect written text from the viewfinder and let you instantly copy and paste it anywhere in the iPhone.

There you have it – a comprehensive list of best OCR apps for the blind and visually impaired. If you have other recommendations, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Best iPhone Apps for the Blind & Visually Impaired in 2022

Thursday July 28, 2022 4:04 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

There are many iPhone apps for the blind and visually impaired available in the app store that can assist you while you are at home, school, work or on the go.

This article explains some of the most useful mobile apps which play a role in the visually impaired community. It’s rare to find someone that isn’t glued to their smartphone these days. But, with that dependence on technology, many have found independence for themselves.

Need to know how far you’ve walked in a day? There’s an app for that. Need to know how many calories you’ve eaten? There’s an app for that. Need to know where you’re spending your money? Yep, you’ve guessed it- there’s an app for that too. But what if you need exact directions because you can’t visually see the landmarks or map of the city you’re visiting? Or you can’t tell if you’re holding a can of beets or cranberry sauce until you open it? Well, for those with blindness, thankfully there’s an app for that too.

GeeksModo’s assistive Technology advisor has compiled a list of free/paid accessible essential iOS applications for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch that can assist you to improve your independence.

What is an iOS app?

An iOS app is an application designed to fulfill a particular purpose on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch that can be downloaded for free or paid from the app store.

There are various categories of accessible apps for iPhone; to list a few, there are productivity, utility, game, navigation, radio and news apps.

Best iPhone apps for the blind

The following are recommended accessible Apps for the blind to choose from that are not installed from the factory which may be useful. No one needs all of them. Note: always read the description in the app store for more information and to decide if an app is likely to be useful to you and to check the price.

Reading and Writing

Reading

BARD Mobile, free:

This app lets you search for and read Braille and audio books and magazines from the National Library Service. You can search the BARD website and save books to your wish list. By going to your Wish List, they can be downloaded to your device. Up to five devices can be used with one user account.

Please note, you’ll need a braille display to read braille material.

Voice Dream Reader, $14.99:

With advanced text-to-speech and a highly configurable screen layout, Voice Dream Reader can be tailored to suit every reading style from completely auditory to completely visual, plus synchronized combination of both.

Voice Dream Reader supports reading PDF and Word documents, DRM-free EPUB and DAISY eBooks, Web pages and more.

The app is directly integrated with Bookshare, Dropbox, G-Drive, Evernote, Pocket, Instapaper, and Gutenberg.

I highly recommend this app for reading Bookshare books. You can select your default voice, you get one Acapella voice free with the app. You also have access to all the languages of the built-in Apple voiceover voices. You can purchase other voices from Acapella, Neo Speech and Ivona.

Voice Dream Scanner by Voice Dream LLC., $5.99

Voice Dream Scanner lets you scan printed paper documents. It has the ability to detect when all edges of the document being scanned are visible, and it uses a tone which varies in volume to indicate when the phone is pointing at the text and is properly in focus. You can set up the app to automatically capture a picture when your phone is in the appropriate position, around 12 inches above the text. The scanning is all done on your device so none of your scans are uploaded on to the internet. As such, your documents are kept private, and the process of scanning the document and doing the OCR is all generally completed in less than 3 seconds.

However, this stand-alone app only scans paper documents and photos stored on your device. If you want to import PDF files you’ll be required to install the Voice Dream Reader app.

You can save documents as PDF or text, though the PDF is great because it retains the formatting, graphics, and is completely accessible with VoiceOver.

If you enable Edge Detection and auto Capture, and hold the iPhone steady, it will capture the image automatically. I have tested it free-hand and with the Fopydo scanning Stand. It is incredible. It blows KNFB Reader completely out of the water.

You can use a batch mode and process all the pages when you are finished, or save the first page and then continue adding pages to that scan.

The Scanner app uses the Voice Dream voices that you already have, or you can use any of the iOS voices. This is a fantastic app for reading almost any kind of audio or text file, and I highly recommend this app.

Audible, free

The app requires an Audible account, however, any books you purchase from audible can be down loaded directly to your iPhone. The app has great features including Chapter navigation, bookmarking, slleep mode, variable narration speed etc. You can also Switch between reading and listening with Whispersync for Voice (compatible Kindle app or device required)

Apple Books, Free

This app from Apple let’s you read most audio, ePub and PDF documents/books. It offers you access to free as well as books for purchase through the book store. These are books in text format that can be read either on the screen or by using VoiceOver. All the books provided through the book store are accessible with VoiceOver.

Learning Ally app (formerly, RFB&D Audio App), Free

This is the app from Learning Ally (previously known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.) It allows you to listen to their books on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. It is fully accessible with VoiceOver.

The app includes bookmarking, page and chapter navigation and the ability to change the playback rate. Learning Ally has created a new Download Manager that makes it pretty easy to download their books for DAISY players or the Apple devices. Please note: you need a Learning Ally membership account to use the app.

Kindle, Free

Amazon has a fully accessible version of their Kindle app for the Apple devices. These are eBooks that you read on the screen or with VoiceOver.

Nook, Free

The Nook app is completely accessible with VoiceOver. There is even an accessibility tutorial when you launch the app for the first time. You get access to the Nook eBooks from Barnes and Noble either visually on the screen, or using VoiceOver.

OverDrive Media Console, Free

You can read eBooks and listen to audiobooks from your library using OverDrive Media Console on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Over 22,000 libraries around the world offer titles via OverDrive, so grab the app and add your library today.

Please note, you’ll need a valid account with a participating library, school, or other institution to use the app.

Read2Go, $19.99

This is an official Bookshare app that allows you to search their library, download books directly from Bookshare on Your iOS device, and read them with Acapella Ryan or Heather, or with the built-in VoiceOver voices.

I highly recommend this app to braille display users. The app works better with a braille display than Voice Dream Reader, though Voice Dream Reader has gotten much better with a braille display.

Dolphin EasyReader, Free

EasyReader is a FREE accessible reading app for readers with dyslexia, low vision or blindness. The app allows you to browse & download from the World’s largest collection of talking book and newspaper libraries. You can also copy text from anywhere on your phone & hear EasyReader read it back to you. Experience perfectly synchronized text & audio. Or for text only titles, EasyReader can add a human sounding voice of your choice. Boost comfort or contrast – choose colours, text size and highlights to suit your visual needs.

BARD Mobile

The BARD Mobile app provides access to braille and talking books directly from the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD).

BARD has a huge catalogue of almost 50,000 books, magazines, and music scores in audio and braille formats, with new selections added on a regular basis.

Writing

VoiceDream Writer, $9.99

Voice Dream Writer helps everyone write better: Text-to-speech proofreading reduces mistakes, phonetic and meaning search help you use the right words, and an active outline helps you still organized and improves the structure of your writing.

Writer automatically creates an outline of headings, paragraphs and sentences. The Outline helps you structure your document better by giving you an always-on overview. You can also quickly navigate to a section in a long document without endless scrolling. You can also drag and drop elements in the Outline to organize your writing. No more selecting, cutting and pasting large blocks of text. If you also have Voice Dream Reader, any extra voices you purchased with Reader are available in Writer.

Meteor Notes, $2.99

Text writing app with the ability to create folders, sync with DropBox and is completely VoiceOver friendly. Uses .txt files. There is a lite version that is free so you can try before buying.

NoteMaster, $3.99

This is a plain text editor that syncs with DropBox or Google Docs. It has the usual options of e-mailing documents, printing to an air-print printer, etc. There is a free lite version you can try out that limits the number of documents you can have.

Pages, Free

Pages is the Apple word processor for iOS devices. The app allows you to create, edit, and view documents. Pages works with iCloud, so your documents are automatically synced across all your devices. This app works much better with a Bluetooth keyboard or wireless braille display.

Notes, included on your iDevice, free

The notes app allows you to turn a list into an interactive checklist with a single tap. The app gives you the ability to easily add a photo, map, or URL to a note. You can even draw a sketch with your finger on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. And thanks to iCloud, everything in your Notes are automatically synced across all your apple devices. As such, you can create a note on your Mac and check it on your iPhone when you’re on the go. To use the new Notes. You can also sync notes from Microsoft Outlook and access them on your iOS Device.

Microsoft Word

You can view and do basic editing of Word documents on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with a free Microsoft account. To use the full features of Word and other Microsoft Office products you will require an Office 365 subscription. But, the basic Word app and Microsoft accounts are free.

Camera Related

Note: Unless otherwise specified, these apps are best when used on the iPhone 4S (and higher,) iPad 3rd gen and higher and the iPod Touch 5th Generation.
and higher.

OCR, Optical Character Recognition

Voice Dream Scanner by Voice Dream LLC., $5.99

winston Chen, who developed Voice Dream Reader and Writer, has created an OCR Scanner that is better than any other OCR app out there.

The app allows you to save documents as PDF or text, though the PDF is fantastic because it retains the formatting, graphics, and is fully accessible with VoiceOver.

If you enable Edge Detection and auto Capture, and hold the iPhone steady, it will take the picture automatically. I have tested it free-hand and with the Fopydo scanning Stand. It is great. It beats KNFB Reader hands down.
The app allows you to use a batch mode and process all the pages when you are done, or save the first page and then continue adding pages to that scan.

Voice Dream Scanner app uses the Voice Dream voices that you already have, or you can use any of the iOS voices.

Seeing AI: Talking Camera for the Blind, Free, developed by Microsoft

Seeing AI has a lot of functionality which is available in other apps though often at a cost. The app is free and it works beautifully on the iPhone SE or the iPhone 6 or later.

Seeing AI has numerous functions, but in my opinion this app is particularly useful for recognising short pieces of text, scanning bar codes and recognizing faces.

When you launch the app there is a listing of channels which give access to the different parts of the app. The Short Text channel is the default when you first open the app and it reads text live as the camera sees it. This can be useful for reading labels, but I personally find it especially useful for reading laptop screens when there is no speech, for instance, during parts of a windows update process.

The Long Document channel is used when reading a document such as a letter or a book. An internet connection is required for this channel to function. You need to capture a picture of a document for this and some guidance is given to help the user find the correct distance away from the text to achieve the best results.

The Product channel allows you to recognise bar codes and have them read out to you. This is a great way of identifying products providing they are in the bar codes database. This works beautifully and it is arguably the best app for finding and reading bar codes on the market.

The Person channel allows you to recognise faces. For me this is more fun than anything but it does work quite reliably. You can scan your environment for faces and give faces names so they can be recognised in the future.

There is also a Scenery channel. This channel is designed to tell you what is around you.

Prizmo Go – Instant Text Capture, By Creaceed SPRL, Free with In App purchases

Prizmo Go allows you to Use your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to quickly grab print text and convert it to digital text. The digital text can then be read aloud by the app’s built-in text to speech software or VoiceOver. The developers of Prizmo Go have thoughtfully included accessibility features for both low vision and blind users. Prizmo Go includes automatic angle correction and feedback enabling users to easily capture the text.

You just need to aim at text. Shoot. It’s yours! Prizmo Go allows you to access printed text easily, so you don’t have to retype it. Before shooting, Prizmo Go shows lines of text directly in the camera preview to let you know what it sees, in a way similar to augmented reality but for text. After shooting, you get direct access to textual contents. It’s that simple.

Prizmo Go can read the text aloud, and it also offers a number of interactions with text contents. Or you can simply copy/paste the text to other apps or to your Mac.

Lastly, thanks to its support for VoiceOver, the app is very well suited to blind and visually impaired users.

Prizmo, $9.99

Prizmo app offers two modes, Quick Capture that is designed to quickly read a page that you do not intend to save. (make sure in the options, Detect Page is turned on for Quick Capture. Especially when using with a scanning stand.) The app also allows you to create New Document, where you can scan a couple of pages and then storfe them in one document. Prizmo does a commendable job of retaining basic formatting of documents.

TextGrabber, $4.99

TextGrabber + Translator allows you to easily and quickly scans, translates and save your chosen text from virtually any printed material. Generally, TextGrabber provides fairly quick and accurate results.

Boop Light Detector by ariel anders, free

Boop is an an app to detect levels of light and interpret this information with sound. It allows its blind and visually impaired users to detect whether lights are on or off. It covers a broad range of light levels which spans from sensing daylight through open windows to checking whether the indicator light is on for a wifi router.

How to use
– Open app and accept permissions to use camera (first time only) – Point phone towards a light source – Listen and feel as your phone changes tone and frequency of vibration while getting closer to the light – Only the light level at the center of the camera (directly perpendicular to the phone face) is measured. Pointing the phone directly at the light source will get the highest reading.

Volume control
– Volume control buttons on side of phone control Boop’s playback volume – Mute will completely turn off sound – Toggle vibrate on or off manually with the switch at the bottom of the app.
Voice over features
– 2 finger scrub to turn vibrate on or off – 2 finger double tap to close app – Tap center of app to read light level

Light Detector, $0.99

Light Detector transforms any natural or artificial light source it encounters into sound. Light Detector is easy to use! Just run the application and point your iPhone camera in any direction. You will hear a higher or lower sound depending on the intensity of the light. Tap on the screen to hear (if VoiceOver is enabled) the current luminosity value (from 0 to 100%). The result can be provided with a short delay (within three seconds). If you tap and hold, LightDetector stops playing. Useful to check lighting before attempting to perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition.)

Object Identification

Examine Clothes Color, free, by Masao MIYAKE, Doctor of Engineering

This app does a commendable job identifying the colors of clothing and does not need internet connection. It is not as good with patterns as TapTapSee, but is much faster. Launch the app, double tap on the Examine button at the bottom of the screen, double tap on the Take Picture button and then double tap on the Use picture button. The built-in voice will speak each section. it will call seams, or wrinkles, stripes.

TapTapSee – Blind & Visually Impaired Camera, free

TapTapSee is designed to help the blind and visually impaired identify objects they encounter in their daily lives. Simply double tap the screen to take a photo of anything and hear the app speak the identification back to you. (Note: Spoken identification requires VoiceOver to be turned on) Also has the ability to identify US paper currency and colors.

Digit-Eyes, $9.99

Bar code and QR Code Reader app. Also, you can use labels to record audio labels for things. The labels are available from their site.Digit-eyes is continually adding more bar codes from all over the world. With each update, it seems to get faster at identifying bar codes.

Color Inspector By Aaron L’Heureux, Free or can pay what you will to remove ads.

Description
Color Inspector is designed to help colorblind and other vision impaired people differentiate and identify challenging colors by evaluating live video to describe the color in view. With options like zoom, varying sample sizes, and torch settings*, it’s easy to make sure you’ve got the right name for the right color.

Color Inspector features full VoiceOver support for its live color processing. Please note that metallic and other shiny surfaces can easily take on the colors of the objects reflected in them and of the light around them. If you find colors that you believe were misidentified, please feel free to submit them as described in the app.

CamFind, free

CamFind is the very first mobile application that can photograph, identify, and provide information on virtually any object you desire to learn about. Just capture a picture of anything around you and receive relevant information about that object – including where you can buy it and web search results.

Be My Eyes Helping blind see, Free

Be the eyes for a visually impaired person in need of help remotely through a live video connection if you are sighted or be assisted by the network of sighted users if you are blind.

Recently, the creators of Be My Eyes have begun a section to request help from a specific company. Microsoft Accessibility is the first to join with Be my Eyes to provide help if your computer stops speaking and you need expert help figuring out what is going on. Blind users can request help from a sighted person and the sighted users will then be called for help. As soon as the first sighted user accepts the request for help a live audio-video connection will be set up between the two and the sighted user can tell the blind person what she sees when the blind user points his phone at something using the rear-facing camera.

As a sighted user you don’t need to worry about missing a call and ‘leave a blind person hanging’ – you are a part of the bigger Be My Eyes helper-network and we will find the next available sighted person in the network. The challenges that the blind person needs help with can be anything from knowing the expiry date on the milk to getting help crossing the street.

Please note: blind users should be patient when requesting help because the app relies on real people to help you. – Live audio-video connection between blind and sighted users

BeSpecular – Help The Blind By BeSpecular LTD, free

BeSpecular is the best way to do a good deed so that even when you have a busy schedule, you can help someone who is blind. As a blind or visually impaired person, you can ask text/voice questions and get quick responses that are friendly and helpful.

If you are blind or visually impaired and need that extra little bit of help:

you can Ask a question and get a response shortly
Use the app in various situations, for example, getting more detailed descriptions of items you would like to purchase online
Read the ad insert you found in the mail
Understand what is happening on your computer when your Screen Reader is not working
Re-live memories with beautiful descriptions of your photographs and much more

Aira, free with paid options

Aira is a free service that puts you in touch with real people instantly to simplify daily life. Enhanced efficiency Private and Secure Protecting your privacy and ensuring you feel secure using Aira are our top priorities. Anyone you connect with will have passed robust background checks, signed strict privacy clauses, and undergone weeks of rigorous training.

Getting started is easy

Download the free app
Create a free account. All you need is your mobile number to get started. No credit cards, no commitments, no problems.
Get in touch with a real person and get stuff done. A live, trained agent is just one tap away, ready to answer your call.

Money Identification

Cash Reader: Bill Identifier

Cash Reader is a money identifier app that helps the visually impaired, including those who are totally blind, to identify the value of money. The app recognizes the value of a note and reads it out to the user or vibrating the value if the phone is on silent mode.

Since Cash Reader supports the identification of over 90 currencies, it would seem updates would be vital. Due to the fact that so many types of money are recognized, it’s not practical to list them all. You can find a complete list in the app, or by visiting the App page in the iOS App Store.

Upon first launch, you will be taken to a Getting Started area that allows you to set up the app as you wish. This includes granting access to the camera and selecting what currency you would like to recognize. You can also set up shortcuts using the Getting Started section so that you can tell Siri from anywhere to use the app to recognize the currency of your choice. It is even possible to set up multiple shortcuts. If you have the need to recognize multiple types of cash, you can set up a shortcut for more than one type of currency. After either creating a shortcut or simply pressing the Continue button, you must agree to the terms and you can then start recognizing money.

When you next launch the app, you will read what currency is presently being identified. If you swipe right, you will find a Settings button that will give you many options that may be worth exploring. Most of these options aren’t part of the setup process, but one exception is the type of currency being recognized. If you want, for example, the app to recognize all the currencies it can, you must download another file from their server. The app will tell you that it is trying to recognize 1 of over 568 banknotes, so it’s important to be sure to get more of the bill in the camera’s focus.

The next setting allows you to decide whether you wish to also have haptic feedback from the app communicate the denomination of the banknote. Next to this setting, you will find the option to learn what each series of vibrations means when a bill is recognized. The next heading allows you to record a Siri shortcut for the recognition of each form of currency.

Below that are several low vision settings to adjust contrast. The next heading allows the user to automatically enable the flashlight when your device determines it’s in a dark environment. Following these settings, the user can configure the option to disable the beeps that will let you know the app is actively scanning. A muted phone, in this case, means a muted app. Next you have the option to speak either the denomination of the bill or both denomination and type of currency. You can also choose between the front and back facing cameras. Silent mode will simply send a vibration and not speak the denomination of currency. You can also set this to respect your mute switch. There are also options to send a link to a friend to download the app, the ability to view their various social media accounts, the option to add a button to the main screen that will allow you to your friend a picture of what you want to identify if something goes wrong, and the ability to re-run the tutorial, which is the first setup screen I discussed.

This app performed very well. It doesn’t matter which way you use it, even if you show just a small portion of the note to the camera, it will work. When a single type of currency is selected, recognition takes less than two seconds for each bill.

Cash Reader is available as a 14-day trial upon subscription, and then costs $0.99 a month, $5.99 annually, or $17.99 for a lifetime subscription.

Magnification

Magnifier, built-in since iOS 10

In the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad settings, head over to General/Accessibility, Magnifier, and toggling it to on. Then, the triple tap of the home button will activate the Magnifier.

Supervision+Magnifier, Free

From the app store description:
SuperVision+ is the only magnifying glass app on the market that offers a supreme live image stabilization capability. Highly magnified images are usually shaking. It is a problem especially for old people. No more image shaking with SuperVision+ magnifier (magnifying glass). Highlighted in Technology News for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired published by the American Foundation for the Blind. From reading small print at near distance to seeing signs at far distance, SuperVision+ magnifier (magnifying glass) is your go-to app for seeing better and clearer. Place your phone camera close to small objects, the app can also be used as a microscope. You can see something small that even normally sighted people can’t see.

Visor-Low Vision, $0.99

Turn your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into a hand held low vision aid. Enlarge difficult to read text by 4 magnification levels and display it in 3 different viewing modes. Optionally, turn on the LED flash of your device to help you see clearer in low-light conditions.

Features:

2x, 3x, 5x and 8x magnification
3 viewing modes:
standard full color or black on white with enhanced contrast
White on black with enhanced contrast
ability to enable the LED flash on iPhone & iPod touch
3 large, different colored buttons helps you to get quick access to all functions for easy handling
Tap and hold on the camera image to switch to autofocus, tap again to switch back to manual focus

Magnifying Glass with Light, Free

Turns any Apple iDevice with a camera into a hand-held magnifier. Not as good as a stand-alone magnifier, but useful for some.

Seeing Assistant Magnifier, $0.99

Seeing Assistant Magnifier allows you to use the phone as a magnifying glass. This allows people with sight problems to easily read small text or watch small items. Seeing Assistant Magnifier, beside magnifying image, also allows image adjustments such as contrast, brightness, and color of displayed image (Black and white and Invert). Application can use back and front camera.

GPS

Turn-By-Turn Navigation

Generally requires an iPhone or iPad with cellular data and GPS receiver

Google maps, Free

The Google Maps app for iPhone and iPad makes navigating your world faster and easier. Find the best spots in town and the information you need to get there. Comprehensive, accurate maps in 220 countries and territories. Voice-guided GPS navigation for driving, biking, and walking.

GoodMaps Explore, by APH, Free

(I received this information very recently. GoodMaps is proud to announce the release of GoodMaps Explore, an accessible wayfinding app designed primarily for people who are blind or visually impaired, which sets a new standard for indoor navigation across the globe. GoodMaps Explore uses audio instructions to communicate routing and critical spatial information as users move through a space, whether indoors or outdoors, drawing upon GoodMaps’ state-of-the-art digital maps. In doing so, GoodMaps has solved four problems that have frustrated the field for several decades by:

delivering superior positioning accuracy with minimal infrastructure
dramatically speeding the process to digitally map a building, which provides the foundation for the app
creating a way for building owners to securely control their mapping data
providing the public with a complete package of maps with an app to actually use them.

Mapquest4Mobile, Free

Turn-by-turn GPS app, only good on the iPhone or iPad with a data plan. The maps are stored on their servers, so you have to have a constant internet connection; therefore, it will not work on the iPod Touch even with a GPS receiver. Mapquest gives both a text list of directions that you can read with Voice Over but also provides its own voice to announce upcoming turns.

MoovIt: Train and bus times, free

From the description on the App Store, read all the details by following the app store link below.

Description: Live Directions. Get step-by-step bus directions and other transit directions with live guidance from A-to-B: Know how long you need to walk to your station, view the arrival time of your line, receive get-off alerts at your destination, and more. Users reports. Moovit’s users report issues found with stations, line service, and schedules so that we can inform all nearby riders about what’s going on in their area.

Favorite lines, stations, and places. Get easy access to lines, stations, and places you ride and visit all the time. Plus, get real-time updates if/when there are changes to your favorite lines in case your bus time or train time is impacted!

Bike routes. Get bike routes in addition to the bus, subway, train, or metro trip plans. If you ride bikes (yours or shared) we can plan a route that includes the train or bus. Moovit will help you plan a trip that meets your transit-needs. Bike docking stations are updated in real-time. Bike trip plans are only available in supported metro areas.

Maps view. Interested in seeing the whole picture? View all stations, routes, and lines on the subway or bus map. Additionally, maps are available in PDF for when you’re offline, or underground on the subway.

PDXBus, Free

This is a great app for those who are wanting real-time information about the bus, street car, or Max stops on the Tri-Met system IN Portland, Oregon. It is fully accessible with Voice Over. You can set favorite stops so you can quickly check when the next two scheduled arrivals are due. You can also just search for near-by stops. Or, if you have the stop ID you can enter it. You can also use Trip Planner within the app.

Transit Bus and Subway Times by Transit App, Inc., Free

Description:
Transit is your real-time urban travel companion. Navigate your city’s public transit system with accurate real-time predictions, simple trip planning, step-by-step navigation, service disruption notifications, and departure and stop reminders… all presented in a clear, bold interface. Public transport not cooperating? Easily request an Uber, reserve a car2go, or grab the closest bike share.

10 GREAT THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH TRANSIT:

See real-time arrivals for nearby buses and trains instantly upon launch.
Compare options with powerful A to B trip plans using real-time data.
Launch GO for step-by-step navigation when you’re on an unfamiliar route or want to nap/read/space out.
Watch your transit vehicle approaching on a map in real-time
Locate bike share stations, see the number of bikes available, pay for passes, and unlock bikes (in select cities).
View availability and book cars with car2go and other local car-share services. Cities covered are listed in the app description.
View transit schedules and route itineraries-even when you’re offline!
Receive departure alarms and stop notifications as well as prompts to pick up the pace in GO.
Get push notifications if service disruptions will affect your commute.
Check ETA (and surge) for nearby Ubers, and book in two taps.

Maps, by Apple, built-in

Maps gives you turn-by-turn spoken directions, interactive 3D views, and the stunning Flyover feature. All in a beautiful vector-based interface that scales and zooms with ease. And now Maps even gives you guidance to take public transportation and helps you explore your surroundings, so you always know what is around you.
Transit
Bringing you public transit information for subways, buses, trains, and ferries with lines and stations right on the map, the new Transit feature is customized for each city where it s available so signs on your screen will look the same as the ones on the street, and you will know exactly where the nearest subway station entrance is. When you plan a route, just one tap pulls up schedules and you will get step-by-step directions to keep you on track. You can also ask Siri to guide you.

Nearby Explorer Online, Free, by American Printing House for the Blind

Nearby Explorer Online is a free outdoor and indoor location app designed for use by people who are blind or visually impaired. It supports onboard maps from OpenStreetMap, and can optionally augment these maps with online data from Google Places or Foursquare. Nearby Explorer Online works with any device running iOS version 9 or later, but if the device does not contain its own GPS receiver, like most iPads and iPods, you must use an external GPS receiver outdoors. All iPhones contain GPS receivers.

The app works by letting you select from several different location related options about what to announce as you move. These include typical items like street name, address, and nearby places as well as the distance and direction to them. (All announcements are optional.) All of this information is shown on the Home screen and is available at any time, but typical use is to adjust the level of announcements, then lock the screen and put the device away. This keeps both hands free and lets your preferred voice speak the characteristics of the environment as you move. You may also use the devices position and orientation to obtain additional targeted details such as pointing the end of the device to scan for points of interest or tilting it vertically to function as a compass. You may even mark a point, then use the position of the device to get haptic feedback about that point’s location. You may also create favorites, name them, and share them on OpenStreetMap so others can benefit from the places you mark and identify.

A transit feature is included which provides detailed mass transit schedules for over 100 metropolitan areas in the U. S. and Canada. The app treats transit stops just like favorites and points of interest by announcing their name and relative position as you move, but in addition, transit stops add next vehicle stop time, direction of travel, and route name to the announcements. You can use the transit schedules to look up times or even follow a route. You may virtually move to any area and explore, search, or use the transit maps for that area.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

Nearby Explorer, $79.99

Nearby Explorer is a full featured GPS app designed for use by people who are blind or visually impaired. Instead of just providing directions, the app describes the environment in ways comparable to reading signage or observing road characteristics. It uses onboard maps, so internet connection is not required, but if you have one, Nearby Explorer supplements the on board map data with crowd collected locations from Foursquare or Google Places. It includes complete maps for the United States and Canada which contain tons of points of interest. The onboard maps are pretty huge, so be sure the phone you plan to use has enough available space before purchasing.

Nearby Explorer works with any device running iOS version 9 or higher, but if the device does not contain its own GPS receiver, like most iPads and iPods, you must use an external GPS receiver. All iPhones contain GPS receivers. Nearby Explorer works by letting you select from several different location related options about what to announce as you move. These include both typical items like street name and address and specialized options like approaching streets, intersection configurations, and nearby places and the distance and direction to them. (All announcements are optional.) All of this information is shown on the home screen and is available at any time, but typical use is to adjust the level of announcements, then lock the screen and put the device away. This keeps both hands free and let’s your preferred voice speak the characteristics of the environment as you move.

Seeing Eye GPS, and Seeing Eye GPS XT by Aira Tech Corp

The Seeing Eye, the pioneer in guide dogs, and Sendero Group, the pioneers of accessible GPS, have teamed up to create The Seeing Eye GPS . Almost 20 years of user feedback and feature requests are behind the design of all Sendero GPS products. The accessible features in The Seeing Eye GPS are only the beginning of what is yet to come as users help in evolving this first fully accessible GPS product for the iPhone. The Seeing Eye GPS is a fully accessible turn-by-turn GPS iPhone app with all the normal navigation features plus features unique to blind users. Unique to The Seeing Eye GPS Instead of multiple layers of menus, the three important navigation elements are on the lower portion of every screen: Route, POIs and Location. At intersections, the cross street and its orientation are announced Intersections are described (e.g. four-way) with the clock face orientation of the streets.

There are two choices for POI data (Google Places and Foursquare). Directions are configured appropriately for Pedestrian and Vehicle routes, including heads-up announcements for approaching turns, turn now, continue straight and upcoming turns. If one wanders off the route, it’s automatically recalculated and updated turn information is announced.

Point your phone in a particular direction to hear what is nearby with the LookAround Wand. Nearby Points of interest and intersections are automatically announced.

Orientation

Lazarillo – Accessible GPS for blind and low vision, Free by Rene Espinoza

Lazarillo is very similar to BlindSquare, only it is completely free. You can track a destination, launch Google Maps or Apple Maps to get turn-by-turn directions, etc. It does not have all the extra features, but if you want a simple app to assist you with orientation and directions, this will do the trick. The author is also very responsive to feedback.

BlindSquare, $39.99

When BlindSquare has determined your location using your device’s GPS capabilities, it will look up information about your surroundings on FourSquare and Open Street Map. Employing unique algorithms, it will then ascertain the information most useful to you and speak it to you. Use this app to find a nearby cafi, post office, store. Shake your device to hear your current address, as well as information about the location of the nearest street intersection and nearby venues. Also interacts with several GPS apps for turn-by-turn instructions. Google Maps is recommended.

Loadstone GPS by Shawn Kirkpatrick, $7.99

Note: Turn-by-Turn directions are now included.

Description from the App Store:

Loadstone GPS enables blind pedestrians to “go blindly where everyone sighted has gone before.” It is designed by the blind, for the blind with an emphasis on being powerful but still easy to use. Features * designed specifically with accessibility, especially for voiceover users, in mind.
no data plan required to use major functions.
access to a world-wide database of points from OpenStreetMap, public mapping sources, transit systems, and points shared by other Loadstone users.
available in multiple languages.
create, store, and share your own navigation waypoints with others.
see points in your neighbourhood or search for points.
check points you’re interested in and hear them announced as you approach or arrive.
highly customizable and configurable.
able to import text databases and checkpoints from previous Loadstone versions.
display astronomic information, sunrise and set, moonrise and set, etc.

Ariadne GPS, $5.99

This innovative accessible location app lets the user explore a map with their finger using VoiceOver. You can know your position at any time and monitor it while walking, you can decide to be informed about what changes along the way, street numbers, street names, etc. There is also the option to save your favorite points and to be alerted, when you approach one of them, for example when you are on a train, bus, etc.

Where To GPS, free, ad free version is available with an in-app purchase

Where To will show you businesses nearby in a wide variety of categories, much like Around Me. They added VoiceOver support so it now will tell you roughly how far away the business is from your location and in which direction.

Around Me, Free

This app will tell you about various businesses that are around you. It is broken up into categories. Examples are: banks, food, parking, gas, theaters, pubs, restaurants, etc.

Taxi Related

Lyft

Need a lift? Try Lyft for a friendly, affordable ride whenever you need one. Request a ride with the tap of a button, and get picked up by a nearby community driver who ll take you to your destination within minutes. Yep, it’s that easy. Split the cost of a ride with friends. It s easy, fast, and secure. All Lyft drivers pass comprehensive background and DMV checks. Drivers are rated by passengers and only the highest-rated drivers are allowed on the road. Lyft provides a first-of-its-kind $1M liability insurance for total peace of mind.

Uber

Get a reliable ride in minutes with the Uber app no reservations or waiting in taxi lines. From low-cost to premium, every ride option feels like an upgrade to the everyday. Create your account using a credit card or PayPal, and your fare will be charged automatically at the end of your ride. You can also pay with cash in select cities. After your trip, we’ll email you a receipt.

Curb, formerly Taxi Magic, Free

With Curb, the world’s number 1 taxi app, your ride is our command. Book a ride to your location in three taps of your iPhone. Use the app to track a nearby taxi as it arrives. Register a credit card and pay for the ride straight from your phone – we’ll email a receipt once the ride is over.

Personal Organization and Banking

Banking

Bank of America Mobile Banking, free

The Bank of America app allows you to manage your accounts, pay bills, check balances, deposit checks using the camera and more.

U.S. Bank App, free

The US Bank app allows you to pay bills, check balances, deposit checks using the camera, check credit card balances, etc.

Wells Fargo Mobile Banking, free

The Wells Fargo bank app allows you to check account activity, transfer money, deposit checks using the camera, pay bils, etc.

Organization

GoodBudget, free with in app purchases

Goodbudget is based on the envelope budgeting method. But with no physical envelopes … only virtual envelopes! Use envelope budgeting to plan your spending, not just track it! Share a budget and sync across multiple phones (and the web!) Goodbudget helps you make sense of your budgeting and spending with in-app reports. See Income vs spending reports to check what you have spent versus what is left. Ad-free, Free Forever version includes 10 regular envelopes & 10 annual envelopes.

Subscribers get more features including, unlimited annual envelopes, the ability to sync up to five devices and friendly customer support.

Calculator HD Pro Free by Cider Software LLC

The app developer was made aware of some changes that would make this app work better with VoiceOver and in three weeks he had made the changes so it now is fully accessible with VoiceOver. You can pay $2.99 to remove the ads which gives a little more display area. Here is some information from the app store description:

Dual-line display lets you keep track of the Input and Result at the same time.
Backspace to delete one number at a time, Clear to delete entire input.
3 layouts in portrait mode: Basic, Scientific, or History Tape.
3 layouts in landscape mode: Basic, Scientific or History Tape.
Memory content is displayed next to the Input to make it easy to keep track.
Automatically expanding multi-line Input for really long equations.
Automatic scientific formatting of extremely large or small numbers.
Automatic addition of thousands separators in Input.
Automatic formatting of the decimal point as a comma for international users.
Accurate and powerful calculator engine.
3D Touch enabled to launch in a specific layout.
VoiceOver Accessibility with support for Touch Typing.

ABC Contacts Free – Contact Manager, Edit Groups, Send Group Emails & Text Messages, Free, with inapp purchases

ABC Contacts is a great app for creating groups for sending text messages or Emails to up to 100 people at once.

Cooking

Paprika Recipe Manager 3, by Hindsight Labs LLC, $4.99

Organize your recipes. Create grocery lists. Plan your meals. Download recipes from your favorite websites. Seamlessly sync to all your devices.

Features:

Recipes – Download recipes from your favorite websites, or add your own.
Meal Planner – Plan your meals using our daily, weekly, or monthly calendars.
Menus – Save your favorite meal plans as reusable menus.
Grocery Lists – Create smart grocery lists that automatically combine ingredients and sort them by aisle.
Sync – Keep your recipes, grocery lists, and meal plans synced between all your devices.
Adjust – Scale ingredients to your desired serving size, and convert between measurements.
Search – Organize your recipes into categories and subcategories. Search by name, ingredient, and more.
Pantry – Use the pantry to keep track of which ingredients you have and when they expire.
Offline Access – All of your data is stored locally. No internet connection is required to view your recipes.
Import – Import from existing apps such as MacGourmet, YummySoup!, MasterCook & Living Cookbook.
Timers – Cook times are automatically detected in your directions. Simply tap on one to start a timer.
Cook – Keep the screen on while cooking, cross off ingredients, and highlight your current step.
Export – Export your meal plans to Calendar and your grocery lists to Reminders.
Share – Share recipes via AirDrop or email.
Bookmarklet – Download recipes from any browser straight into your Paprika Cloud Sync account.
Print – Print recipes, grocery lists, menus, and meal plans. Recipes support multiple print formats including index cards.
Extensions – Save recipes directly in Safari and view today’s scheduled meals.

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver. See the app description in the app store for additional details.

Big Oven

this used to be a completely free app, and the basic app is still free, but to enjoy everything this app has to offer, you have to subscribe for either $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year.

You can try the app out by visiting the app store page:

MEDICAL

Pill Reminder, by Sergio Licea

Description
. VoiceOver accessibility support
. Dark Mode (Available in iOS 13 and higher)
. Notifications are local. No internet connection required
. App doesn’t need to be open to receive notifications
. Universal App, full native support for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
. In the free version, you can add unlimited medications but only 2 reminders
. Full version with unlimited reminders is available as an In-App Purchase, $1.99

Pill Reminder is an easy-to-use and reliable app that helps you remember to take your medications at the right time. It allows you to create any type of recurring reminders (every X hours, specific times, daily, weekly, monthly, every X days, etc). It tracks the remaining quantity of each medication and shows a refill alert when running low.
The app has everything you need:
. Reschedule Medications
. Refill Reminders
. PRN (as needed) Medications
. Calendar
. Reminders for Medical Appointments
. Email Reports to your Doctor
. Multiple User Support
By remembering to take all of your medications at the right time, you are taking control of your own health.
RECURRING REMINDERS
. Repeat every X hours (e.g. From 8 AM to 8 PM, every 4 hours)
. Repeat at specific times (e.g. 9:15 AM, 1:30 PM, 8:50 PM)
. Repeat every half hour (e.g. From 10 AM to 2 PM, every 30 minutes)
. Repeat on selected days of the week (e.g. Every week only on Mondays and Fridays)
. Repeat every X days, weeks or months (e.g. Every 3 days, Every 2 weeks)
. Repeat daily for 21 days and then take 7 days off (Birth Control)
MAIN FEATURES
. User friendly interface
. If you took your medication early or late, you can reschedule the next doses in that day
. Get alerts to refill your prescriptions before they run out
. Can be used with any medication, supplement, vitamin, or birth control that follows a regular schedule
. Swipe from right to left to mark a medication as “Taken” directly from the lock screen or notification banner
. Ability to add PRN (as needed) medications
. Keep track of the medications you have to take throughout the day
. Pre-Alarms: Be notified prior to the actual time
. Auto-Snooze: Automatically repeat the alarm up to 5 times at regular intervals (e.g. 1 min, 10 mins, 30 mins) until you take action
. Add notes, time and dose taken for reference
. Mark medications as Taken or Not Taken
. Get alerts when medications are about to expire
. Email your medication list or administration history to your doctor
. Add reminders for medical appointments
. Add photos to each medication for easy identification
. Multiple user support. Add medications for yourself, family members, or others you care for
. Ability to search the FDA Drug Database for your medications (Available in the US only)
. Has a calendar to view all reminders by month
. Backup and restore all data on the same device or multiple devices
. 32 built-in alarm sounds

My Medical, $3.99:

Keep track of medical information including doctors’ contacts and insurance info. You can have different sets of info for each family member. Tie appointments to any calendar, not just the one in the app. Keep track of test results and xrays. Password protect your details. Generate a report from your medical record and email it.

Simply, Pill Alert, $1.99

From the app description: Pill Alert will show you whether you missed taking a dosage, and also show you how late you were taking it. Just say: Daily pills, and select Once a day, and tell the app that you have taken them. Make your schedule as complicated as you wish. Alerts you when your pills are due. You don’t need to have the app running.

Shows you how late are you taking your pills if you have missed an alert
There are no complicated settings or unnecessary features.

Diabetes App Lite, free:

Here are key features from the app description:

Put together your daily carb intake, glucose, water consumption, weight directly on the calendar.
Log and monitor your glucose levels.
Log your insulin injections.
Log your medications.
Use passcode to protect your data.
Built-in offline powerful food database that you can add food consumed for direct carb calculation.
Manage your activities and exercises.
Manage glasses of water you consumed for the day.
Track your weight and BMI changes.
Budget your daily carb allowance.
Backup and restore over WiFi

NEWS RELATED

NFBNewsline, Free

NFB-NEWSLINER is an information source designed to keep persons who are unable to read conventional newsprint who want to be informed about current events locally, nationally, and around the world.

It features the text of over three hundred newspapers, forty magazines, plus personalized television listings.

The app for NFBNewsline subscribers, works on all Apple iDevices. This app makes it very easy to access any of the newspapers or magazines offered by NFBNewsline. You must reside in a State that participates in the NFB newsline program.

Access World, Free

This is the official app of the American Foundation for the Blind’s online publication dedicated to technology and people with vision loss.

General News Apps, Free

Search in the App Store for your favorite newspaper, TV news channel, etc. You may find that they have an app.

Audio Related

Radio and Podcasts

Sero, Free

Radio stations, podcasts and reading services of special interest to blind and visually impaired persons; as well as their friends, family, caregivers and those wanting to know what life is like without eyesight.

TuneIn Radio, Free or TuneIn Radio Pro, $4.99

Allows streaming of radio stations from all over the world. Also allows recording.

ooTunes Radio – Recording and Alarm Clock: $4.99

Great for radio streaming for any stream from anywhere; audio recording and also alarm clock.

MLB at Bat, $19.99

Provides radio feeds for all the Major League Baseball teams from Spring Training through the World Series.

iTunesU, Free

Access to thousands of free podcasts, both audio and video, from Universities, Library of Congress, etc.

Recording

Dolby On: Record Audio & Video (iOS/iPadOS, Free)

This is an extremely easy to use app with great sound and fully accessible with VoiceOver. I encourage everyone to go to the app store and read the full description, but two recent fixes of note related to VoiceOver users:

Fixed issue where trimming would go out of range while using VoiceOver.
Improved VoiceOver support on Track Details and Sound Tools screens.

Just Press Record by Open Planet Software, $4.99

Description from the App Store:
Just Press Record is the ultimate mobile audio recorder bringing one tap recording, transcription and iCloud syncing to all your devices. Life is full of moments we would rather not forget – like your child’s first words, an important meeting or spontaneous idea. Capture these moments effortlessly on iPhone, iPad or for ultimate convenience, Apple Watch. RECORD

One tap to start, stop, pause and resume recording.
Unlimited recording time.
Record discretely in the background.
Choose to record from the built-in mic, AirPods or external microphones.
Start and stop recording from the Lock screen widget, with a 3D Touch Quick Action or via the URL scheme.
Record independently on Apple Watch and sync later. PLAY
Seek backwards and forwards during playback.
Adjustable playback speed.
Turn speech into searchable text.
Support for over 30 languages, independent of your device’s language setting.
Format as you record with punctuation command recognition.
Share audio and text to other apps on your iOS device.
Share to iTunes on Mac or PC via the Lightning Port.
View recent recordings or browse your library by date and time.
Search by filename or transcription content.
Dedicated tab for quick access to recordings made on Apple Watch.
Peek and Pop the contents of folders in the Browse tab.
Rename recordings.
Slide Over and Split View support on iPad.
Choose to store recordings either in iCloud Drive or locally on-device.
Recordings stored in iCloud Drive automatically sync across all your devices.
Transcriptions are stored within the audio file.
PRO-AUDIO
Support for high quality external microphones connected via the Lightning Port.
Customizable Audio Settings to enhance your recording experience.
File types include WAV, AIF or standard iTunes M4A (ACC).
High quality audio up to 96kHz / 24-bit. ACCESSIBILITY
Fully accessible with VoiceOver.
Magic Tap gesture to start / stop a recording.

APPLE WATCH Just Press Record includes an Apple Watch app that gives you the freedom to record anywhere, even when your iPhone is not around.

iRecorder Pro Audio Recorder by SIMPLETOUCH, Llc. Free with In-App purchase of $4.99

Description from the App Store:
iRecorder Pro is a quick and easy to use audio recorder for iPhone and iPad, with Wi-Fi transfer to any computer. Customers LOVE iRecorder, you will TOO! SIMPLY THE BEST: iRecorder is designed to be quick and easy use, and simple to understand. Great for on-the-go capture of your thoughts, ideas, notes-to-self, lectures, concerts, music, you name it! Record for hours, or just seconds. * HIGH-QUALITY RECORDINGS * FAST LOAD TIME * EASY TO USE * EVERYTHING ONE TAP AWAY * USERS LOVE THIS APP, YOU WILL TOO! MORE GREAT FEATURES: * Wi-Fi Sync to transfer recordings to any computer on the same Wi-Fi network * iTunes file sharing * Share recordings using iOS share extensions * SmartSplit to easily send large recordings in multiple parts * Record in the background * Adjust playback speed * pause and resume during recording * no limit to recording length * rename and re-arrange recordings quickly * rotates upside down for easy microphone use * Use microphones, headsets etc. * VoiceOver optimized, VoiceOver on during recording SIMPLE BY DESIGN: When it comes to mobile applications, sometimes less is more. We kept iRecorder simple and un-cumbersome, leaving a great user experience. PRO QUALITY: Our recording quality is second to none.

We deliver pro-quality recordings, and a high-quality? user interface you would expect on iPhone. GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE: Our customers praise us for great customer service. We take it to heart. If you have an issue we are here to help you. ACCESSIBILITY PROMISE: We are dedicated to making the best & most accessible recording app for iOS. iRecorder is optimized for VoiceOver users! iRecorder is a trademark of SimpleTouch software, all rights reserved.

The in-app purchase gives you an unlimited number of recordings you can store on your device. Without upgrading, you can only store 3 recordings at a time. If you off load/delete recordings, you can use it without purchasing the upgrade.

Audio Memos Pro $9.99

Audio Memos is a professionally made audio recorder. It has an amazingly intuitive interface, which is easy to use and full of powerful features. Use it in interviews, lectures, music session, briefings, … and simplify your recording tasks.

TOP FEATURES
Best quality – adjustable to fit your needs.
Amazingly loud – hear your recordings.
Position bookmarking – easy navigation.
Voice activated rec. – stop recording silence.
Background recording – multitask at will*.
Audio compression – email hours of recordings.
Insert audio – insert comments easily.
Cloud uploads – access your memos everywhere.
MORE FEATURES
Email your recordings.
USB file transfers.
Upload to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Evernote, FTP or WebDAV.
Adjustable reading speed.
Edit your recordings (trim, overwrite, merge).
Memo alert dates / reminders.
Search / Sort / Filter your recordings.
Variable speed scrubbing.
Add pictures to a memo.
Transfer recordings to a computer using WiFi.
Records when your device is in sleep mode.
Pauses automatically on incoming phone calls.
Timer activated recording.
Application lock code.
* recording will stop if another app uses the audio system.

MTSR, Free, or Pro $1.99

Multi-Track Song Recorder is a premier 4 track recording app. MTSR allows you to record up to 4 tracks with a simple and easy to use interface. Designed with a simple tape recording style and with many features for creative and more advanced music recording.

The app features a Metronome with options for creating Perfect Loops and duplicating your recordings to loop as many times as you d like. Features options for merging all of your tracks in the same recording session to allow for unlimited recording possibilities. You can also export your songs via Dropbox, Email, SMS, and iTunes File Sharing.

Multi Track Song Recorder is the perfect iOS app for musicians looking to write and record simple songs at home or on the move! Now includes Upgrade to Pro option! This In-App Purchase will remove all advertising and unlock the more advanced Metronome for only $1.99! For more information see Multi Track

Features:

Pause, seek, and scrub through recorded audio easily
Option of viewing your recordings as Waveforms or with Volume Meters
Option of merging all recorded tracks
Includes Metronome that allows you to tap your tempo for finding the perfect BPM to your song. Also includes the perfect looping feature which trims the audio of your recordings so that your track will loop to the beat!
Independent volume control on each track for simple mixing
Input gain control for each track
Input monitoring while headphones are plugged in
Simple saving and loading of your Songs
Allows you to import music from your device’s music library as well as from other apps with the Open in… feature
Dropbox support, you can export your current song or all saved songs directly to your Dropbox account

Ferrite Recording Studio, free with InApp purchases

Ferrite combines the ease-of-use of a voice memo audio recorder, with a versatile multi-track editing studio and powerful additional tools like effects & automation available when you need them. With time-saving features and a UI designed to get out of your way, this is the app you need for podcasting, radio journalism, or other professional voice production like lectures, speeches, and voiceovers.

Streamlined Recording
Open Ferrite and with just one tap you re recording. No fuss, and it won’t break a sweat even with hours-long sessions. Just make sure your device has enough free space!

Recording an interview and you want to highlight a few quotes? Have to take out some inappropriate language? Or just fluffed a sentence and need to fix it? Bookmark moments during your recording and they will be flagged up during edits, so you can jump right to them.

Monitor levels with live recording meters, or listen through headphones. Tag your audio to find it quickly later. And of course you can import audio from your Music Library, iCloud, and other services such as Dropbox.
* Please note: the free version has limited duration for recording & editing projects. Upgrade, and you can edit projects up to 24 hours long! Top In-App Purchases

Rev Voice Recorder: Audio Transcription and Dictation

Organize and edit recordings on your phone.

Share via email, Dropbox, Evernote, and GDrive.

Download with iTunes sync.

Health & Fitness

TravelEar: Listen to the World

Travelear promises to take your ears on an adventure like never before! You can finally go to a variety of destinations and environments with a pair of headphones and the click of a button. With Travelear you can hop across the pond and experience the hustle and bustle of London’s famous Flower Market or even take a trip down to New Orleans jazz-filled streets. If you’re not in the mood for a new city sound then you can always get up close and personal with forest wildlife or simply sit back and relax on your porch as a summer thunderstorm passes by. Let our sounds immerse you into an environmental narrative and make you feel like you are actually there.

Steps: Pedometer & Step Counter for Tracking Steps

Stepz is a convenient step counter app that leverages the clever Apple Motion Coprocessor which collects your motion data automatically in the background while saving battery life. This simple pedometer app has been specifically developed for the iPhone and Apple Watch.

GAMES

Chess-Wise 3, Free or Chess-Wise 3, $2.99

The first chess app on the iDevices that was made accessible with VoiceOver.

Shredder Lite, Free or Shredder Chess, $7.99

Shredder has a little more useful feedback and according to a member of the U.K. Chess Team, has a stronger chess engine than Chess-Wise.

King’s Corner, $0.99 byBitpress, LLC

Addictive card game with some features like Solitaire. It is possible to play against another opponent over the Game Center, or to play against the device. Fully VoiceOver accessible.

Huboodle

With SIX fun games, chat functionality, and 100% voiceover accessibility, Huboodle sets the standard for social gaming. Advance your level by playing any one of the five games and then share (or taunt) your results with friends using the in game chat!

Blindfold Bowling

In Blindfold Bowling, you can play by yourself, against a variety of computer opponents, or side-by-side with another person.

You throw the bowling ball by either flicking with one finger, or aiming with one finger and flicking, or setting the exact angle with your thumb and forefinger, and then flick.

The faster you flick, the faster you throw the ball.

Zany Touch

An Excellent Bop-It Style Game! Test your reflexes against faster and faster challenges. Listen for the instruction and do it as fast as you can – touch, swipe up, swipe down, swipe left, swipe right, shake, pinch, and two finger touch. A pulsing sound track keeps the game moving. How many challenges canyou make it past?

Note: there are many, many accessible games and these are just a few. Some games are designed for the blind or anyone who wants to play using only audio feedback; Papa Sangre and Papa Sangre II are two very popular adventure/puzzle games. Sixth Sense is a Zombee shooting game. Audio Archery, is a simple audio game? There isn’t room to list them all. AppleVis

Bonus

Smart Metronome, by Tomohiro Ihara, free, or $2.99 to remove ads

Smart Metronome turns your iPhone into a simple, stylish and very accurate metronome!
It contains three modes; Normal, Repeat and Program.

Fully accessible with VoiceOver
Creates perfect beats by working completely on hardware, without using CPU time
Sampling rate 44.1kHz sampling rate, resulting in high accuracy (?20?s)
Easily set the BPM by tapping
Programmable Tempo and measures
Loop multiple measures
Log can be taken
Tone generator from A=440 to 444
Save and load tempo program
Dropbox connection
Eight background color variations
Realistic pendulum animation
Four sounds sets to choose from

iPhone apps for the blind and visually impaired conclusion

As you can see, there are tons of apps specifically designed to help people with visual impairments live independently. In this article, we have discussed the best iPhone apps for the blind and visually impaired and we’d love to hear what apps you have found helpful in your life! Has there been a game-changing app that you’ve come across? How has your life changed because of technology? Do you have iPhone apps for blind users we need to add to the list? Or any that you love? feel free to email us at:
[email protected]

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Apple’s accessibility consistency

Thursday July 28, 2022 4:11 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

This article will explore Apple’s consistent attention to accessibility, and how other tech companies with commitments to accessibility, like Microsoft and Google, compare to Apple in their accessibility efforts. It also shows where these companies can improve their consistency, and that no company is perfect at being an Assistive Technology provider yet.

Introduction

Apple has shown a commitment to accessibility since the early days of the iPhone, and since mac OSX Tiger. Its VoiceOver screen reader was the first built-in screen reader of any usability on a personal computer and smart phone. Now, VoiceOver is on every Apple product, even the HomePod. It is so prevalent that people I know have begun calling any screen reader “VoiceOver.” This level of consistency should be congratulated in a company of Apple’s size and wealth. But is this a continual trend, and what does this mean for competitors? This will be an opinion piece. I will not stick only to the facts as we have them, and won’t give sources for everything which I show as fact. This article is a testament to how accessibility can be made a fundamental part of a brand’s experience for effected people, so feelings and opinions will be involved.

The trend of accessibility

The following sections of the article will explore companies trends of accessibility so far. The focus is on Apple, but I’ll also show some of what its competitors have done over the years as well. As Apple has a greater following of blind people, and Applevis has documented so much of Apple’s progress, I can show more of it than I can its competitors, whose information written by their followers are scattered, thus harder to search for.

Apple

Apple has a history of accessibility, shown by this article. Written just under a decade ago, it goes over the previous decade’s advancements. As that article has done, I will focus on little of a company’s talk of accessibility, but more so its software releases and services. Apple is, by numbers and satisfaction, the leader in accessibility for users of its mobile operating systems, but not in general purpose computer operating systems. Microsoft’s Windows is used far more than Apple’s MacOS. Besides that, and services, Apple has made its VoiceOver screen reader on iOS much more powerful, and even flexible, than its competitor, Google’s TalkBack.

iOS

As iPhones were released each year, so were newer versions of iOS. In iOS 6, accessibility settings began working together, VoiceOver’s Rotor gained a few new abilities, new braille displays worked with VoiceOver, and bugs were fixed. In iOS 7, we gained the ability to have more than one high quality voice, more Rotor options, and the ability to write text using handwriting. Next, iOS 8 was pretty special to me, personally, as it introduced the method of writing text that I almost always use now, Braille Screen Input. This lets me type on the screen of my phone in braille, making my typing exponentially faster. Along with typing, I can delete text, a word or character, and now, send messages from within the input mode. I can also change braille contraction levels, and lock orientation into one of two typing modes. Along with this, Apple added the Alex voice, its most natural yet, which was only before available on a Mac. For those who do not know braille or handwriting, a new “direct touch typing” method allows a user to type as quickly as a sighted person, if they can memorize exactly where the keys are, or have spell check and autocorrection enabled.

In iOS 9, VoiceOver users are able to choose Siri voices to speak using VoiceOver, as an extension of the list of Vocalizer voices, and Apple’s Alex voice. One can now control speech rate more easily, and the speed of speech can be greater than previously possible. One can control the time a double tap should take, a better method of selecting text, braille screen input improvements, and braille display fixes and new commands.

Then, iOS 10 arrived, with a new way to organize apps, a pronunciation dictionary, even more voices, reorganized settings, new sounds for actions, a way to navigate threaded email, and some braille improvements. One great thing about the pronunciation editor is that it does not only apply to the screen reader, as in many Windows screen readers, but to the entire system speech. So, if you use VoiceOver, but also Speak Screen, both will speak as you have set them to. This is a testament to Apple’s attention to detail, and control of the entire system.

With the release of iOS 11, we gained the ability to type to Siri, new Siri voices, verbosity settings, the ability to have subtitles read or brailled, and the ability to change the speaking pitch of the voice used by VoiceOver. VoiceOver can now describe some images, which will be greatly expanded later. We can now find misspelled words, which will also be expanded later. One can now add and change commands used by braille displays, which, yes, will be expanded upon later. A few things which haven’t been expanded upon yet are the ability to read formatting, however imprecise, with braille “status cells,” and the “reading” of Emoji. Word wrap and a few other braille features were also added.

Last year, in iOS 12, Apple added commands to jump to formatted text for braille display users, new Siri voices, verbosity options, confirmation of rotor actions and sent messages, expansion of the “misspelled” rotor option for correcting the misspelled word, and the ability to send VoiceOver to an HDMI output.

Finally, In iOS 13, Apple moved accessibility to the main settings list, out of the General section, provided even more natural Siri voices, haptics for VoiceOver, to aid alongside, or replace, the sounds already present, and the ability to modify or turn them off. A “vertical scroll bar” has also been added, as another method of scrolling content. VoiceOver can now give even greater suggestions for taking pictures, aligning the camera, and with the iPhone 11, what will be in the picture. One can also customize commands for the touch screen, braille display, and keyboard, expanding the ability braille users already had. One can even assign Siri shortcuts to a VoiceOver command, as Mac users have been able to do with Apple Script. One can now have VoiceOver interpret charts and graphs, either via explanations of data, or by an audible representation of them. This may prove extremely useful in education, and for visualizing data of any type. Speaking detected text has improved over the versions to include the detecting of text in unlabeled controls, and now can attempt to describe images as well. Braille users now have access to many new braille tables, like Esperanto and several other languages, although braille no longer switches languages along with speech.

MacOS

MacOS has not seen so much improvement in accessibility over the years. VoiceOver isn’t a bad screen reader, though. It can be controlled using a trackpad, which no other desktop screen reader can boast. It can be used to navigate and activate items with only the four arrow keys. It uses the considerable amount of voices available on the Mac and for download. It simply isn’t updated nearly as often as VoiceOver for iOS. OSX 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 have seen a few new features, like more VoiceOver voices, braille improvement, and other things. I couldn’t find much before Sierra, so we’ll start there.

In Sierra, Apple added VoiceOver commands for controlling volume, to offset the absence of the physical function keys in new MacBook models. VoiceOver can also now play a sound for row changes in apps like Mail, instead of interrupting itself to announce “one row added,” because Apple’s speech synthesis server on the Mac doesn’t innately support a speech queue. This means that neither does VoiceOver, so interruptions must be worked around. Some announcements were changed, HTML content became web areas, and interaction became “in” and “out of” items. There were also bug fixes in this release.

In High Sierra, one can now type to Siri, VoiceOver can now switch languages when reading multilingual text, as VoiceOver on the iPhone has been able to do since iOS 5 at least, improved braille editing and PDF reading support, image descriptions, and improved HTML 5 support.

In MacOS Mojave, Apple added the beginning of new iPad apps on Mac. These apps work poorly with VoiceOver, even still in Catalina. There were no new reported VoiceOver features in this release.

This year, In MacOS Catalina, Apple added more control of punctuation, and XCode 11’s text editor is now a little more accessible, even though the Playgrounds function isn’t, and the Books app can now, after years of being on the Mac, be used for basic reading of books. Braille tables from iOS 13 are also available in MacOS. For step-by-step information and explanation on how to initially use VoiceOver on your Mac, check out GeeksModo’s Learn to use voiceover on your Mac: a beginners guideThe future of Apple accessibility

All of these changes, however, were discovered by users. Apple doesn’t really talk about all of its accessibility improvements, just some of the highlights. While I see great potential in accessible diagrams and graphs, Apple didn’t mention this, and users had to find this. Subsequently, there may be fixes and features that we still haven’t found, three versions of iOS 13 later. Feedback between Apple and its customers has never been great, and this is only to Apple’s detriment. Since Apple rarely responds to little feedback, users feel that their feedback doesn’t mean anything, so they stop sending it. Also of note is that on VoiceOver’s Mac accessibility page, the “Improved PDF, web, and messages navigation” section is from macOS 10.13, two versions behind what is currently new in VoiceOver. Another point is that services haven’t been the most accessible. Chief among them is Apple Arcade, which has no accessible games, so far. Apple research, I’ve found, has some questions which have answers that are simply unlabeled buttons. While Apple TV Plus has audio description for all of their shows, this is a minor glimmer of light, shrouded by the inaccessibility of Apple Arcade, which features, now, over one hundred games, none of which I can play with any success. In all fairness, a blind person who is patient may be able to play a game like Dear Reader, which has some accessible items, but the main goal of that game is to find a word in a different color and correct it, which is completely at odds with complete blindness, but could be handled using speech parameter changes, audio cues, or other signals of font, color, or style changes.

Time will tell if this new direction, no responsibility for not only other developers’ work, but also the Mac and work done by other developers and flaunted by Apple, will become the norm. After all, Apple Arcade is an entire Tab of the App Store; inaccessibility is in plain view. As a counterpoint, the first iPhone software, and even the second version, was inaccessible to blind people, but now the iPhone is the most popular smart phone, in developed nations, for blind people.

Perhaps next year, Apple Arcade will have an accessible game or two. I can only hope that this outcome comes true, and not the steady stepping back of Apple from one of their founding blocks: accessibility. We cannot know, as no one at Apple tells us their plans. We aren’t the only ones, though, as mainstream technology media shows. We must grow accustom to waiting on Apple to show new things, and reacting accordingly, but also providing feedback, and pushing back against encroaching inaccessibility and decay of macOS.

Apple’s competitors

In this blog post, I compare operating systems. To me, an operating system is the root of all software, and thus, the root of all digital accessibility. With this in mind, the reader may see why it is imperative that the operating system be as accessible, easy and delightful to use, and promote productivity as much as possible. Microsoft and Google are the largest competitors of Apple in the closed source operating system space, so they are what I will compare Apple to in the following sections.

Google

Google is the main contributor to the Android and Chromium projects. While both are open source, both are simply a base to be worked from, not the end result. Not even Google’s phones run “pure” Android, but have Google services and probably other things on the phone as well. Both, though, have varying accessibility as well. While Apple pays great attention to its mobile operating system’s accessibility, Google does not seem to put many resources towards that. However, its Chrome OS, which is used much in education, is much more easily accessible, and even somewhat of an enjoyable experience for a lite operating system.

Android

Android was released one year after iOS. TalkBack was released as part of Android 1.6. Back then, it only supported navigation via a keyboard, trackpad, or scroll ball. It wasn’t until version 4 when touch screen access was implemented into TalkBack for phones, and up to this day, only supports commands done with one finger, two finger gestures being passed through to Android as one finger commands. TalkBack has worked around this issue by recently, in Android version 8, gaining the ability to use the finger print sensor, if available, as a gesture pad for setting options, and the ability the switch spoken language, if using Google TTS, when reading text in more than one language. TalkBack uses graphical menus for setting options otherwise, or performing actions, like deleting email. It can be used with a Bluetooth keyboard. By default, it uses Google TTS, a lower quality, offline version of speech used for things like Google Translate, Google Maps, and the Google Home. TalkBack cannot use the higher quality Google TTS voices. Instead, voices from other vendors are downloaded for more natural sound. BrailleBack, discussed on its Google Support page, is an accessibility service which, when used with TalkBack running, provides rudamentary braille support to Android. Commands are rugged, meaningless, and unfamiliar to users of other screen readers, and TalkBack’s speech cannot be turned off while using Brailleback, meaning that, as one person helpfully provided, that one must plug in a pair of headphones and not wear them, or turn down the phone’s volume, to gain silent usage of one’s phone using braille. Silent reading is one of braille’s main selling points, but accessibility, if not given the resources necessary, can become a host of workarounds. Furthermore, brailleback must be installed onto the phone, providing another barrier to entry for many deaf-blind users, so some simply buy iPods for braille if they wish to use an Android phone for customization or contrarian reasons, or simply stick with the iPhone as most blind people do.

Now, though, many have moved to a new screen reader created by a Chinese developer, called Commentary. This screen reader does, however, have the ability to decrypt your phone if you have encryption enabled. For braille users, BRLTTY is used for braille usage. This level of customization, offset by the level of access which apps have to do anything they wish to your phone, is an edge that some enjoy living on, and it does allow things like third-party, and perhaps better screen readers, text to speech engines, apps for blind people like The vOICe, which gives blind people artificial vision, and other gray area apps like emulators, which iOS will not accept on the App Store. Users who are technically inclined do tend to thrive on Android, finding workarounds a joy to find and use, whereas people who are not, or are but do not want to fiddle with apps to replace first-party apps which do not meet the needs of the user, and unoptimized settings, find themselves doing more configuring of the phone than using it.

Third party offerings, like launchers, mail apps, web browsers, file managers, all have variable accessibility, which can change from version to version. Therefore, one must navigate the shifting landscape of first party tools which may sort of be good enough, third party tools which are accessible enough but may not do everything you need, and tools which users have found workarounds for using them. Third party speech synthesizers are also hit or miss, with some not working at all, others, like Eloquence, being now unsupported, and more, like ESpeak, sounding unnatural. The only good braille keyboard which is free hasn’t been updated in years, and Google has not made one of their own.

Because of all this, it is safe to say that Android can be a powerful tool, but has not attained the focus needed to become a great accessibility tool as well. Google has begun locking down its operating system, taking away some things that apps could do before. This may come to inhibit third party tools which blind people now use to give Android better accessibility. I feel that it is better to have been on iOS, where things are locked down much, but you have, at least somewhat, a clear expectation of fairness on Apple’s part. Android is not a big income source for Google, so Google does not have to answer to app developers.

Chrome OS

Chrome OS is Google’s desktop operating system, running Chrome as the browser, with support for running Android apps. Its accessibility has improved plenty over the years, with ChromeVox gaining many features which make it a good screen reader. You can read more about chromeVox. One of the main successes to ChromeVox is its braille support. It is normal for most first-party screen readers to support braille nowadays. When one plugs in a braille display to a Chromebook with ChromeVox enabled, ChromeVox begins using that display automatically, if it is supported. The surprise here is that if one plugs it in when ChromeVox is off, ChromeVox will automatically turn on, and begin using the display. This is beyond what other screen readers can do. ChromeVox, and indeed TalkBack, do not yet support scripting, editing punctuation and pronounciation speech, and do not have “activities” as VoiceOver for iOS and Mac have, but ChromeVox feels much more polished and ready for use than TalkBack. You can read about: My Experience Using a Chromebook as a Blind Mac User for 30 days

The future of Google accessibility

Judging by the past, Google may add a few more features to TalkBack, but less than Apple adds to iOS. They have much to catch up on, however, as they have only two years ago added the ability for TalkBack to detect and switch languages, and use the finger print sensor like VoiceOver’s rotor. I have not seem much change over the two years since, except making a mode for tracking focus from a toggle to a mandatory feature. I suspect that, in time, they will remove the option to disable explore by touch, if they’ve not already. With Chrome OS, and Google Chrome in general, I hope that the future brings better things, now that Microsoft is involved in Chromium development. It could become even more tied to web standards. Perhaps ChromeVox will gain better sounding offline voices than Android’s lower quality Google TTS ones, or gain sounds performed using spacial audio for deeper immersion.

Microsoft

Microsoft makes only one overarching operating system, with changes for XBox, HoloLens, personal computers, and other types of hardware. Windows has always been the dominant operating system for general purpose computing for blind people. It hasn’t always been accessible, and it is only in recent years that Microsoft have actively turned their attention to accessibility on Windows and XBox. Now, Windows’ accessibility increases with each update, and Narrator becomes a more useful screen reader. I feel that, in a year or so, blind people may be trained to use Narrator instead of other screen readers on Windows.

Windows

In the early days of Windows, there were many different screen readers competing for dominance. JAWS, Job Access with Speech, was the most dominant, with Window-Eyes, now abandoned, as second. They gathered information from the graphics card to describe what was on the screen. There were no accessibility interfaces back then. Years later, when MSAA, Microsoft Active Accessibility, was created, Window-Eyes decided to lean on that, while JAWS continued to use video intercept technology to gather information. In Windows 2000, Microsoft shipped a basic screen reader, Narrator. It wasn’t meant to be a full, useful screen reader, but one made so that a user could set up a more powerful one.

Now, we have UI Automation, which is still not a very mature product, as screen readers are still not using it for everything, like Microsoft Office. GW Micro, makers of Window-eyes, bonded with AI Squared, producers of the ZoomText magnifier, which was bought by Freedom Scientific, whom promptly abandoned Window-eyes. These days, JAWS is being taken on by NVDA, Nonvisual Desktop Access, a free and open source screen reader, and Microsoft’s own Narrator screen reader.

In Windows 8, Microsoft began adding features to Narrator. Now, in Windows 10, four years later, Narrator has proven itself useful, and in some situations, helpful in ways that all other screen readers have not been. For example, one can install, setup, and begin using Windows 10 using Narrator. Narrator is the only self-described screen reader which can, with little configuration, show formatting not by describing it, but by changing its speech parameters to “show” formatting by sound. The only other access technology which does this automatically is Emacspeak, the “complete audio desktop.” Its braille support must be downloaded and installed, for now, but is still better than Android’s support. Narrator cannot, however, use a laptop’s trackpad for navigation. Instead, Microsoft decided to add such spacial navigation to touchscreens, meaning that a user must reach up and feel around a large screen, instead of using the level trackpad as a smaller, more manageable area.

Speaking of support, Microsoft’s support system is better in a few ways. First, unlike Apple, their feedback system allows more communication between the community and Microsoft developers. Users can comment on issues, and developers can ask questions, a bit like on Github. Windows Insider builds come with announcements by Microsoft with what is new, changed, fixed, and broken. If anything changes regarding accessibility, it is in the release notes. Microsoft is vocal about what is new in accessibility of Windows, in an era when many other companies seem almost ashamed to mention it in release notes. This is much better than Apple’s silence on many builds of their beta software, and no notice of accessibility improvements and features at all. Microsoft’s transparency is a breath of fresh air to me, as I am much more confident in their commitment to accessibility for it.

Their commitment, however, doesn’t seem to pervade the whole company. The Microsoft Rewards program is hard to use for me, and contains quizzes where answers must be dragged and dropped. This may be fun for sighted users, but I cannot do them with any level of success, so they aren’t fun for me at all. Another problem is the quality of speech. While Apple has superb speech options like Macintalk Alex, Vocalizer, or the Siri voices, Microsoft’s offline voices sound bored, pause for too long, and have a robotic buzzing sound as they speak. I think that a company of Microsoft’s size could invest in better speech technology, or make their online voices available for download for offline use. Feedback has been given about this issue, so perhaps the next version of Windows will have more pleasant speech.

Windows has a few downsides, though. It doesn’t support sound through its Linux subsystem, meaning I cannot use Emacs, with Emacspeak. Narrator does not yet report when a program opens, or when a new window appears, and other visual system events. Many newer Universal Windows apps can be tricky to navigate, and the Mail app still automatically expands threads as I arrow to them, which I do not want to happen, making the mail app annoying to use.

The future of Microsoft accessibility

I think that the future of Microsoft, regarding accessibility, is very bright. They seem dedicated to the cause, seeking feedback much more aggressively than Apple or Google, and many in the blind community love giving it to them. Windows will improve further, possibly with Narrator gaining the ability to play interface sounds in immersive audio using Windows Sonic for Headphones, braille becoming a deeper, and built in part of Narrator, and higher quality speech made available for download. Since Microsoft is also a gaming company, it could work on creating sound scapes for different activities: browsing the web, writing text, coding, reading, to aid in focus or creativity. Speech synthesis could be given even more parameters for speaking even more types of formatting or interface item types. really, with Microsoft’s attention to feedback, I feel that their potential is considerable for accessibility. Then again, it is equally possible that Apple will implement these features, but they aren’t as inviting as Microsoft when it comes to sharing what I’d love in an operating system as Microsoft has been, so I now just report bugs, not giving Apple new ideas.

Conclusion

It may be interesting to note the symmetry of accessibility: Apple’s phone is the dominant phone, but Microsoft’s Windows platform is the dominant laptop and desktop system among blind people. Apple’s iPhone is more accessible than Google’s Android, but Google’s Chrome OS is more polished and updated accessibility-wise than Apple’s MacOS. Personally, I use a Mac because of its integration with iOS Notes, Messages, Mail, and other services, the Mail app is a joy to breeze through email with, and open source tools like Emacs with Emacspeak do not work as well on Windows. Also, speech matters to me, and I’d probably fall asleep much more often hearing Microsoft’s buzzing voices than the somewhat energetic sound of Alex on the Mac, who speaks professionally, calmly, and never gets bored. I do, however, use Windows for heavy usage of the web, especially Google web apps and services, and gaming. Time will tell if companies continue in their paths, Apple forging ahead, Microsoft burning bright, and Google… being Google. I hope, nevertheless, that this article has been useful for the reader, and that my opinions have been as fair as possible towards the companies. It should be noted that the accessibility teams for each company are individuals, have their own ideas of what accessibility is, means, and should be, and should be treated with care. After all, this past decade has been a long journey of, probably, most effort spent convincing managers that the features we now have are worth spending time on, and answering user complaints of “my phone is talking to me and i want it turned off right now!”.

This does not excuse them for the decay of Android and Mac accessibility, and the lack of great speech options on Windows. It does not excuse them for Apple Arcade’s lack of accessible games, or Microsoft Rewards’ inaccessible quizzes. We must give honest, complete, and critical feedback to these people. After all, they do not know what we need, what will be useful, or, if we dare tell, what will be delightful for us to use, unless we give them this feedback. This applies to all software, whether it be Apple’s silent gathering of feedback, Microsoft’s open arms and inviting offers, or open source software’s issue trackers, Discord servers, mailing lists, and Github repositories. If we want improvement, we must ask for it. If we want a better future, we must make ourselves heard in the present. Let us all remember the past, so that we can influence the future.

Now, what do you think of all this? Do you believe Apple will continue to march ahead regarding accessibility, or do you think that Microsoft, or even Google, has something bigger planned? Do you think that Apple is justified in their silence, or do you hope that they begin speaking more openly about their progress, at least in release notes? Do you like how open Microsoft is about accessibility, or do they even talk about accessibility for blind users enough to you? I’d love to know your comments, corrections, and constructive criticism, either in the comments, on Twitter, or anywhere else you can find me. Thanks so much for reading!

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Apple’s Ecosystem and Accessibility

Thursday July 28, 2022 4:12 am EAT by GeeksModo Staff

Earlier this year, my Airpods Pro began making a clicking sound, when in Noise Cancellation or transparency mode. I didn’t think much of it, and just used them regularly, until sound began distorting after a while of listening. I’ve simply stopped using them, as I shudder to think how much a cab ride to the nearest Apple Store, potentially an hour away, would cost. This is only one problem with the Apple ecosystem: being locked into Apple’s wireless headphones, other Bluetooth headphones, or other workarounds, and Apple Stores being far away, which is what I’ll be focusing on in this article. I will show, in the following paragraphs, how Apple’s handling of its ecosystem effects the hardware and software regarding accessibility matters. These matters may effect some in the general population, but people with disabilities are effected much more acutely.

Hardware

Apple’s hardware has usually been very well built. Reviewers often talk about nothing else. From the iPhone’s camera, iPad’s screen, Mac’s CPU and RAM, to the Watch’s health sensors, and the Airpod’s H1 chip, hardware, for Apple, is a big part of their products, and reviewers focus on that. But how does that help or hinder accessibility?

The TouchBar on the Mac

In late 2016, Apple’s MacBook Pro gained the Touch Bar, a touch strip across the top of the keyboard, replacing the function keys. The reason was to add variable icons which could visibly change functions across the operating system. Many people may have liked this change, as they could use hand-eye coordination to perform functions they otherwise would have used the trackpad and menus for. These type of users would not have known about keyboard shortcuts, using the function keys, and other easy ways of getting the same functions done without needing yet another touch input.

Blind people, however, are a bit different. We usually know many keyboard shortcuts, use the function keys without a problem, and do not always need a touch screen. The Touch Bar can be used, but it is much slower, as we have no tactile way of finding just one distinct item on the touch bar, like the play/pause button, or the volume slider. Once we have found the function we want, we must tap it twice to activate, like a sighted person must left click twice, once to focus the item, the next to activate it. In fact, VoiceOver, the screen reader for the Mac, had to adopt a command to raise or lower the volume via keyboard, since it is slower to do so on the Touch Bar. On the other hand, most operating system and application features can be accessed via keyboard commands, so I only need to use the Touch Bar for system functions like volume, brightness of the screen, and media playback when I’m not in the media player.

If a blind person wants to use their Mac as a Windows machine also, through Bootcamp, they must attach an external keyboard, or simply not use the function keys, as Windows screen readers have no such notion of a Touch Bar function key row, thus will not read what a user is selecting, and will also not let a user explore the touch bar to find a function before activating them, so one touch activates an item, even if it isn’t the one a user wants. See this Applevis forum post for more information on this.

I feel that Apple should have made this change on the MacBook Air, for regular consumers, and left the Pro machines alone. Yes, they could have made the power button into the Touch ID button on the pro machines, and I hope that, just as they revived the scissor-switch keyboards, they revive the Function keys as well. It would help me greatly in doing even simple tasks easier, like pausing, skipping, and rewinding audio, and handling volume and brightness more quickly.

There is still hope, however. This year, Apple released the MacBook Air refresh with the new keyboard. It has an Escape key, at least. Now, they just need to add back the other twelve keys on that row, and things will be back to normal.

The headphone jack

In 2016’s iPhone 7 and 7+, Apple removed the headphone jack, replacing it with their own Airpods, other Bluetooth headphones, and Lightning audio. They did not add another Lightning port onto the phone so that one could listen to wired headphones and charge the phone at the same time, or, as they did with the TouchBar on the MacBook, but left people to choose between wireless options if one wanted to be able to listen and charge the phone.

For most people, this isn’t an issue. They don’t usually need headphones, only using them when listening to music or movies, or playing games. Even then, some people just listen on speakers built into their phone, or use external speakers, like the HomePod. They also do not have to worry about latency. Music is not effected by it, and videos are usually delayed, so that the picture synchronizes with the audio.

For blind people, however, headphones are important. In order to use an iPhone, most blind people use a screen reader, which speaks information out loud using a voice like the one Siri uses. Using a screen reader without headphones means that anyone nearby can hear what the user’s phone is saying, which can reveal sensitive information like the phone numbers of people who call or text the person, user passwords, and even the pass code to their phone. This means that headphones are quite necessary. Some blind people own Braille displays, which gets output from a screen reader and displays it in braille, but these devices are expensive, starting at $600, up to near $6000, so are out of most blind people’s price ranges.

Wireless headphones, using Bluetooth, often have large lags when being used. If you play a game using them, you’ll surely notice it. A blind person who uses Bluetooth headphones must deal with that for all interactions with the phone. Imagine having to deal with a phone with a screen that lags behind what you’re doing on the phone, even by 300 Milliseconds. Some Bluetooth headphones are better, but none can match wired ones. Apple’s Airpods 2 and Airpods Pro come closer, but have their own problems: they still must be charged, have lesser battery life, and cost much for the sound quality they come with.

To solve all of these problems, I have bought a $10 Lightning to 3.5 Millimeter Headphone adapter, and use that with the headphones that I already have. Sure, I have to take my iPhone with me in my pocket wherever I go, but I usually do that anyways now that my Apple Watch is broken also. Sure, I don’t have my Lightning connector free, but I have a charging mat that I use to charge the phone. There is no lag when using VoiceOver, the sound quality is very good, and I don’t have to charge my headphones.

Hope is not lost, however. There is a rumor that iPhones could be completely wireless. Of course, one still must plug the iPhone into a computer, so it could be like the older MacBook products with a magnetic spot to plug dongles into. In this case, a third-party dongle could add the Lightning and headphone jack back to the iPhone.

The Home button and TouchID

In 2017, Apple shipped the iPhone X, the first iPhone without a home button. This was meant to extend the iPhone’s screen completely across the bottom of the screen, even though they had to notch the screen at the top. Along with the removal of the home button, they added FaceID. This replaced TouchID as the authentication method for unlocking the device in general usage of the phone.

Most users do not have a problem with FaceID. They raise the phone to look at it, and as they look at the camera, the phone unlocks. They can then swipe the lock screen away from the bottom, revealing the home screen. For sighted users, this is a quick, easy, and intuitive motion.

For blind people, it isn’t so simple. We do not have to look at our phones in order to use them. In fact, users with braille displays or hardware, Bluetooth keyboards, do not have to touch their phone. These users can easily and quickly enter their pass codes, however, so they usually are not effected by this. Most users must pick up the phone, wait for the unlock sound from the screen reader, then put it back down on the surface they were using it on before. If FaceID doesn’t work, they must angle the phone away and back again for another try. if it fails a few more times, they must enter their pass code, with headphones in, if they seek to preserve their privacy around others.

Hope is not lost, however. There is a rumor that a new iPhone SE type device, the iPhone 9, could be released this year with a home button, TouchID, and still sport the A13 CPU. This would be something that I myself may purchase, as I doubt there will be much greater features in the iPhone 12, released later this year.

Software

Apple’s software usually comes last in reviews. Reviewers may talk about the smooth animations, camera machine learning effects, or updates to apps. For users of Apple’s accessibility services, however, software is the core experience of a device, and what sets MacOS apart from Windows and Linux, and iOS apart from Android. I have covered Apple’s accessibility options extensively elsewhere, so I will use this section to highlight parts of software which effect accessibility indirectly.

Gatekeeper on MacOS

For a pro machine, the Mac lately has become a mess of confirmation dialog boxes and hindrances to opening software not blessed by Apple or its notarization process. For most users, even most blind users, this won’t be much of an issue. If you use Apple’s apps, or apps from the App Store, you’ll be fine. But what happens when you want to use, say, Emacs for editing text, or Retroarch for playing video games?

Blind people sometimes use specialized software to complete tasks. We use apps on our phones for recognizing pictures, money, and images of text, since these are not usually accessible to us. On the Mac, I use Emacs for editing text, using the Emacspeak extension, because I find it much easier and more enjoyable than Text Edit, Pages, and other alternatives. In fact, I am using Emacs right now, to write, and publish, this blog post. However, this program is not notarized by Apple’s processes, so instead of just being able to open it, I must open it from the contextual menu, press “Cancel,” then open it again, and press “Open.” My laptop is a pro machine; I should be treated as a professional. These features, as with the Touch Bar, should be left to MacBook Air users, or left for iPad users, when, or if, the iPad becomes a general-purpose computer.

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve explored how some of Apple’s decisions across its ecosystem have effected accessibility. Hardware has changed much, with software mainly being usable besides accessibility bugs and overbearing security. More about direct accessibility in software and services can be found in other articles. Other, smaller issues include the lack of Apple Stores is smaller cities, turning on iPhone not producing a vibration, sound, or other way for a blind person to immediately know when it has turned on, and the Mac’s startup chime disabled by default.

Now, what do you think, readers? I’d love to have your feedback, and thank you for reading.

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Identify Banknotes Quickly and Accessibly with Cash Reader: Bill Identifier for iOS

Thursday July 28, 2022 4:17 am EAT by Tyler Stephen

Notice

For this review, I received a subscription to use Cash Reader: bill identifier, worth US $17.99 from the developer. The opinions expressed in the review however are my own. I received no other compensation related to this content.

Intro

Of the numerous ways the iPhone can improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, one of the most intriguing to me is currency identification. In the case of the US dollar, for example, all banknotes are the same size and feel exactly alike with no way to independently identify the denomination without seeing the print. However, with apps like Cash Reader and Microsoft Seeing AI, a user like myself can simply place a banknote under a smartphone camera and hear its denomination spoken.

For several years, I had used NantMobile Money Reader, formerly Looktel Money Reader for this purpose, but it has since been removed from the AppStore and is no-longer maintained. Due to the stagnation of this once promising product, I’ve Since transitioned to using Microsoft Seeing AI, and recently, Cash Reader: Bill Identifier. In this review, I will give an overview of this money reader app, as well as an objective comparison to Seeing AI.
Cash Reader app: bill identifier

Comparison between Cash Reader and Seeing AI

While both Cash Reader and Seeing AI are apps that aim to make the visual world more accessible to blind and low-vision users, there are several notable differences between the two.

To start, Cash Reader is a standalone currency identifier, meaning the only function it serves is to identify the denominations of banknotes. By contrast, Seeing AI is what many refer to as a, “Swiss Army knife,” of assistive apps, combining short text, document, product, and face recognition with light and color detection, as well as currency identification. Also, where all of the processing for Seeing AI is done remotely, Cash Reader downloads data for your currency of choice, meaning all processing is done on the device. If you are somewhere where your Internet connection is poor, currency identification with Cash Reader might come in handy, as no Internet connection is required to use it.

Another difference between the two money reader apps is that Seeing AI is completely free, whereas Cash Reader is subscription based. My theory for why one app is free and another requires a paid subscription is that Seeing AI is a research project by Microsoft, a very large corporation who most likely can comfortably afford the cost of developing and maintaining an app as well as the cloud servers that do the heavy lifting. By contrast, Cash Reader is developed by a team with a comparatively smaller budget to develop and maintain an app.

A potential advantage to Cash Reader is that as data is processed on device, readouts are significantly faster than with Seeing AI. Whether that is worth paying for a subscription to you is of course your call, but I’d definitely recommend checking out the 14-day free trial to get a sense of the benefit in speed and performance.

Before I conclude this section, I’d also like to give a brief mention to another free currency identifier app called EyeNote, which is intended exclusively for identifying US dollars. While this app is free and has the added advantage of determining whether a particular banknote is front or back side up, I have found its recognition speed to be lacking when compared to other money reader apps for iPhone.

Using Cash Reader

Once you download the app and select a subscription, you will be asked to select a default currency, in my case US dollars. From there, it will download the data for that currency and present the obligatory user agreement.

Once agreed to, the app’s main interface will be displayed, which is nothing but the name of the selected currency and a settings button. Don’t let that fool you, however, as this money reader app is very fast and powerful. In my experience, I could place a banknote under my
iPhone SE (2020)
camera, and hear the denomination spoken by
VoiceOver
in approximately one-second or less. This is much faster than Seeing AI, and even faster than the now discontinued NantMobile Money Reader.
Photo of hands with mobile and banknote

Using Cash Reader made me realize how much I missed the quick identification and simple interface of standalone currency identifiers like NantMobile Money Reader. While Seeing AI’s money reading abilities are quite capable, the speed of Cash Reader simply blows my mind.

When you select the settings button, a list of options, organized by heading, is displayed. In this review, I will cover a few notable customizations that, in my opinion, set Cash Reader apart from the competition. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of settings, as many of them are presumably intended for low-vision users. As I am totally blind, I am unable to test or comment on visual features.

Silent mode

In addition to identifying money by spoken feedback, Cash Reader can also convey denominations with a pattern of vibrations or haptics, depending on your preference.

One vibration or haptic will be given for the lowest denomination, two for the second lowest, and so on. You can configure this mode to always be enabled, always be disabled, or determined by the position of the hardware silent switch on the device; if the switch is toggled to silent mode, denominations will not be spoken, and if it isn’t, they will be spoken. This mode can be especially useful in public or loud environments, where you may not want to broadcast how much money you’re carrying around at the given time.

Siri Shortcuts

In addition to simply opening the app and placing a banknote of your default currency under the camera, you can also configure Siri shortcuts to open the app or identify alternative currencies using your voice. From this section of the settings, you can record a phrase that Siri will recognize to open the app or select an alternative currency for identification. For me, I recorded a shortcut to open the app and identify US dollars by engaging Siri and saying, “What’s the value of this bill?”

Of course, I can also tell Siri to open Cash Reader, so this feature holds little practical utility for me. However, I can see it being useful for people who, for example, need to identify multiple currencies and don’t want to dive into the app settings each time. Not having access to additional currency samples, however, I was not able to test how this works in practice.

Banknote announcement style

If you’re working with only one currency, it may not be necessary for VoiceOver to announce it for each bill. This area is where you can choose whether or not the name of the currency is spoken, or just the denomination, E.G., 20 American dollars versus simply 20.

Send photo for inspection

If you know Cash Reader is misidentifying money, you can send a photo of that particular banknote as well as the surrounding environment so that the developers can investigate the issue and improve recognition accuracy in the future. However, I have not yet, to my knowledge, encountered inaccurate bill identification, and thus haven’t used this feature.

Availability and Price

Cash Reader: Bill Identifier, is available on both iOS and Android. In US, however, the application costs US$17.99 for iPhone users and $16 for Android for lifetime usage. Users can alternatively subscribe to monthly or yearly packages, or use a 14-day free trial.
Download Cash Reader for iOS
Download Cash Reader for Android

Conclusion

The first time I remember using a currency identification app was in 2011, using the app then known as Looktel Money Reader on my new iPhone. Smartphone technology and accessibility has evolved by leaps and bounds since then, but the central principle of holding a banknote under a camera and hearing the denomination spoken by VoiceOver remains the same today.

However, this money reader app appears to be noticeably faster and more customizable than other apps I’ve tried. I’d also be interested to know the utility of the visual features, as that seems to be one unique differentiating factor of this money reader app for the blind. If you have any experience with this app or any currency identification apps, be they positive, negative or neutral, I’d like to know. Sound off in the comments.

Tag: Assistive Technology

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Cash Reader: Money reader for the blind: Review

Wednesday June 2, 2021 4:32 pm EAT by GeeksModo Staff

Several of my blind and visually impaired secondary students have been exploring money reader apps for the blind and visually impaired this semester. One of their favorite apps they have really been into with its accessibility features is the app
Cash Reader
a money reader app for the blind and visually impaired.

It’s not often that I find an honor of blogging about an application which is not only feature-rich and revolutionary in its feature set, but takes accessibility to an entirely new level.
As a result of numerous positive feedback from my students, I’m privileged to blog about Cash Reader, the number one money reader for the blind and visually impaired!
Cash Reader is a blazingly fast money reader app which does its job very efficiently. When it come to money identifier Apps for the blind, nothing can beat Cash Reader.

Designed With Blind And Visually Impaired In Mind

You’re dealing with a seriously accessible app here!
Cash Reader is a money reader oriented application, but along with the likes of the fantastic — though irrelevantVoice Dream Reader
it’s the archetypal example of what developers can do to implement accessibility. In short, you are dealing with a seriously accessible app here. The developers of Cash Reader have taken accessibility seriously and their efforts should be appreciated.
This money reader is 100% accessible with
Google TalkBack?,
and
Apple voiceover
with the appeal that It also supports any text size for partially sighted users.

My students like The fact that Cash Reader has a much simpler interface than any other money reader out there, which makes it easier for them to navigate with
Google TalkBack
and
Apple voiceover

Useful Cash Reader settings

The Settings window of Cash Reader can be accessed from the bottom part of its home screen.
Compared with other money reader apps for the blind, Cash Reader is the only money reader that provides the most comprehensive settings, categorized into properly labeled groups. But if I’m asked to name some of my favorite settings; I should point to the following:

#1. Use Cash Reader With Siri Shortcuts

One can take advantage of the Siri Shortcuts to recognize currency. You can record a personal phrase and swiftly identify all your favorite currencies just by saying it without having to search for the cash reader icon every time you want to identify currency.
Currency identifier

#2. Read Money With Cash Reader through Vibrations

To pay credit where credit is due, I must say that Cash Reader, is the only money reader for the Blind I’ve come across that can identify currency while your device is on silent mode.

The denominations value are transformed into a series of haptic or taptic vibrations. This feature helps blind and visually impaired to swiftly identify and count money even in noisy environments or when privacy is needed. . This is a great achievement worthy of a thousand accolades!
Money identifier

#3. Reliable Currency Identification

Cash Reader is a quick, reliable and fully accessible money identifier app.

To prove its efficiency, you can play with it showing all kinds of banknotes: folded, new, old, extremely used and under any lighting condition.

#4. Your app doesn’t require internet connection to succeed

Compared to other money reader for the blind, Cash Reader ap doesn’t require an Internet connection to identify currency and doesn’t identify counterfeit bills.

After downloading the currency database, you don’t require an internet connection to recognize currency, so you can now use the app at any time and anywhere.

To identify currency with Cash Reader, you just open the app and place the banknote in front of the
camera
and a speaker announces, “one dollar.” the same time, large contrasting characters appears on the screen for easy identification.

Another nice feature of this currency reader for the blind absent in other money reader, is its ability to make audible bippings to let you know its on, vibration of currency value, and an option to switch between black or white mode.

There’s a lot to like about this money reader app.

Its flexible and affordable subscription plans, as well as full time payment, is a boon to many of us and the fact that it identifies banknote denomination for the largest number of currencies along with its ability to speak multiple languages adds to its strengths.

How Much does this Money reader cost?

At the risk of repeating myself, I should talk about Cash Reader price a bit.

Cash Reader is free to download however, users have various options to choose from. There are subscriptions options available for one month or one year.
There is also a lifetime license which is also affordable. This means, you can easily adjust your Cash reader plans to fit your needs.

The full version costs $17.99 and once you pay for it upfront, everything will be unlocked and at your fingertips.

In addition, Cash Reader provides a 14 day free trial upon first downloading the app. After the trial ends, you will either be limited to only recognizing the lowest 2 bills for the set currency or purchase the full version for $17.99.

Alternatively, you can enroll into either monthly or yearly subscription which is also affordable and reasonable.

Note: The prices mentioned here may vary depending on your country or region.

If you’ve read this article up to this point, you’ve seen how great benefit this one-time payment might be.

Final thoughts

When it comes to accessibility, less is more. If a developer has created money identifier app that has asimple interface that reliably works with

Apple VoiceOver as well as Android TalkBack and Helps my students to quickly identify money or sort different currency banknotes, you have a solid, inclusive assistive light app for the teens and adults with visual impairments!

Hope you like Cash Reader as much as my students do!

So, Tomas, huge thanks and plaudits are in order!

In case you’re reading this, just let us know how you managed to make this banknote reader identify currency without internet connection!
In case you are wondering, how blind people identify paper money,currency identification for blind and visually impaired is now possible through this currency identifier.
If you are blind or visually impaired, Download Cash Reader app for Android or iOS and identify currency fast with this fully accessible money reader for the blind.

Cash Reader is available on App Store and Google Play:
Download Cash Reader on App Store
Get it on Google play
If you are looking for currency identifier, there you go!
If you know any other banknote reader application for the blind out there, let us know in the comments section below.

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My Experience Using a Chromebook as a Blind Mac User for 30 days

Monday May 24, 2021 7:24 am EAT by Tyler Stephen

Update: At the time of writing, as Google works to discontinue the use of third-party cookies, it is implementing a new ad personalization technology called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC.) For a description of the technology and some of its problematic aspects, check out this explainer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. What’s particularly troubling is that Google is using a random assortment of users as test subjects for FLoC without their knowledge, consent, or ability to opt out. Due to Google’s lack of transparency, I cannot currently recommend the Chrome browser or any Chrome OS products.

To check if you have been involuntarily opted into the FLoC trial, visit amifloced.org.

Original post is below

Intro

Over the past decade, along with the exploding popularity of iOS and Android, and the continued development of Windows and macOS, a new personal computer operating system, Chrome OS, has steadily come into its own. Chrome OS runs on an expanding market of laptops, known as Chromebooks, and desktops, known as Chromeboxes.

As the name implies, Chrome OS is an operating system largely based around the Google Chrome browser. As Google grew from a search giant to a vibrant ecosystem of solutions for desktop and mobile environments, they began to challenge more established competitors like Microsoft by leveraging their success developing robust web services that perform the functions of desktop apps.

As an alternative to Microsoft Office, for example, you could use Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. To use these services, all you’d need is a web browser and a Google account.

The versatility, ease of use, and lower cost of Google products has made them increasingly competitive. An example of this is in the education market, where at least in the United States, Apple has historically been the dominant player. With rising technology costs and tightening school budgets, however, Google products are starting to look attractive to some institutions.

With this success, Google has reasoned that if these services can run in a highly capable and widely used browser like Chrome, then the whole computing experience could be browser based.

As Chrome OS is designed primarily for web browsing, and especially using Google’s products, it does not necessarily require all the raw power that Windows and Mac computers need to function. With the expectation being that documents, other files and tasks are stored and processed remotely, a user can get away with a less powerful CPU, as well as less ram and onboard storage. For this reason, various computer manufacturers have appealed to this market with an array of low-cost computers that are not the most powerful, but run the light-wait Chrome OS quite well.

Of course, the increasing popularity of Chrome OS raises new questions, like how accessible is it for people with disabilities? Through school and beyond, as a totally blind student, I relied on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad with the VoiceOver screenreader. Google luckily has not forgotten about blind users like myself, and thus has included the ChromeVox screenreader. Curious about its accessibility, I recently purchased a cheap Samsung Chromebook to test it out.

Choosing a Chromebook

The first thing I realized when looking at the widevariety of Chromebooks, was that I would need to adjust my thinking. Normally, when I buy a computer, I try to find an adequately fast processor, like an Intel Core i5, with at least 8 gigabytes of ram and at least 256 gigabytes of internal storage. While my overall computing needs are fairly basic, I generally want a computer that can store my documents and media, handle my moderate workload, and keep up with software updates for a reasonable number of years.

In this case, with the primary function of the computer being to go to websites and manage browser tabs, with much of the processing and user data handled in the cloud, I found I could get away with a Samsung 11.6 Inch Chromebook with a 1.04 gigahertz Intel Atom processor, 4 gigabytes of ram, and 32 gigabytes of storage. Being totally blind, the 11.6 inch screen was no problem for me, as the full QWERTY keyboard does the trick just fine.

Normally priced at US$ 219, it can occasionally be bought for cheaper, as was my experience when buying it from Best Buy during a doorbuster that preceded Black Friday in the United States by a couple weeks. Don’t be surprised to find similar deals especially during the holidays, as Chromebooks now dominate the affordable laptop market.

Having said all this, everyone’s needs are different, and there are a variety of options, some even beginning to cater to the mid-range consumer market. A good resource I found that captures the vast diversity of Chromebooks is this buying guide from Arstechnica.

Setup

After ordering my Chromebook, I did some basic research on how to use ChromeVox, as I had no previous experience with it. Immediately, I came upon the ChromeVox website, which gave me a quick reference of central concepts and keyboard shortcuts. To prove that a Chromebook could be set up entirely without sighted assistance, I discovered an unboxing and setup tutorial from Mystic Access that narrated the initial setup process as well as some basic keyboard commands.

When my Chromebook came, it immediately made sense. For starters, the keyboard layout was different from Windows and Mac computers, with the Control and Alt keys being the only keys to the left of the Space Bar. Also, instead of a traditional caps lock key, the key above the left Shift key is referred to as the Search key. This happens to be the ChromeVox modifier, the key that when pressed, performs functions specific to the screenreader.

After I plugged in my Chromebook and heard a little chime, I pressed Control Alt Z to turn on ChromeVox. Once it started speaking several seconds later, I was able to use the Tab and Arrow keys to select my language, country, and Wi-Fi network, and sign into my Google account.

Using Chrome OS

Web browsing

Once initial setup was complete, I found that the browsing experience felt remarkably like Google Chrome on other platforms. Because of this, there wasn’t a huge learning curve involved.

Much of the keyboard shortcuts are quite similar to those on Chrome for Windows, such as Control T to open a new tab, Control N to open a new window, Control Shift N to open a new incognito window, and many others. Once I typed a web address, I could use ChromeVox commands to navigate by web element types like heading, link, form field, etc.

As web browsing is the most important function of Chrome OS, webpage navigation commands are front and center to the ChromeVox user experience; pressing the search key with H will navigate by heading, Search with L will navigate by link, and Search with F will navigate by form field, to name just a few. Navigating by paragraphs using Search and the left and right arrow keys reminded me of using the VoiceOver modifier with the arrow keys on MacOS to accomplish the same task. Needless to say, I quickly felt right at home browsing and working with webpages on Chrome OS.

Something to consider when learning ChromeVox commands is that much of the basic commands, E.G. the ones that involve simply pressing the ChromeVox modifier and a letter, are reserved for webpage navigation. While this can be quite useful when browsing webpages, other tasks, like announcing the time or battery status require pressing the ChromeVox modifier and several letters. For example, to hear the date and time, hold down the Search key and press A and D one at a time. To hear the battery status of your Chromebook, hold down the Search key and press O and B one at a time. Being accustomed to screenreaders on other platforms, this definitely requires some getting used to.

While ChromeVox lacks true single-key webpage navigation, where the letter of a web element type, like H for heading, can be pressed without needing to hold the screenreader’s modifier, pressing the Search key twice will enable, “Sticky mode,” which essentially locks down the ChromeVox modifier, eliminating the need to physically hold it down for each command.

Once I felt comfortable with basic browsing, I began testing some of Google’s services. With a combination of ChromeVox commands and Gmail keyboard shortcuts, composing, reading and replying to emails was a breeze. The same idea extends to Google Docs, which I am using to write this post. Once I focused the cursor on the document content area by pressing Search E, I was able to type and perform basic edits using the wide array of keyboard shortcuts. In my on and off use of Google Docs over the years, this is the most accessible it’s ever been. However, I should note that in this experiment, I only used basic word processing capabilities, as that’s what best reflects my use case for real productivity on other platforms. Therefore, your mileage may vary depending on your use case as well as any future changes Google may introduce to Chrome OS or their services, intentionally or otherwise.

Launcher and Status Tray

In 2014, in something of a concession to traditional PC users, Google introduced a launcher to Chrome OS, a shelf that lists a user’s favorite apps that can be opened with just a click. In addition, the status tray contains information such as Wi-Fi connection and battery information, as well as quick settings and notifications.

Disappointingly, these notifications do not seem to be accessible with ChromeVox, with ChromeVox only reading, “Press Search plus Space to activate,” providing no information as to the source or content of a notification. Pressing Control F 2 reveals the launcher, where I can select from the list of “Favorite,” apps or expand it to show all installed apps. On top of that, pressing Alt and the number the app is placed in the list will open that app, in an experience similar to keyboard commander, a feature of VoiceOver on macOS that allows a user to assign custom keyboard commands to open apps, execute scripts, and perform various other tasks.

On my Chromebook, Chrome, Gmail, and Docs are the first three apps in my launcher. Therefore, pressing Alt 1 will conveniently open Chrome, Alt 2 Gmail, Alt 3 Docs, etc. However, I can’t seem to modify or reorder this list with ChromeVox, which detracts from the convenience of the feature.

Finally, it should be clarified that when I refer to services like Gmail and Docs as, “Apps in the launcher,” I am simply referring to a shortcut icon that launches those service’s respective websites in Chrome.

Google Assistant

In addition to traditional keyboard and mouse interaction with Chrome OS, Google Assistant, the intelligent personal assistant made popular on Android and smart home devices, can be used to find various types of information and complete basic tasks.

When your Chromebook is connected to power, it will respond to voice queries when the wake word is spoken. While this setting can be configured to always respond, this can affect battery life.

At least on my Chromebook, there does not appear to be a keyboard command or dedicated key to engage Google Assistant; it apparently must be done from the Status Tray.

In my experience, the assistant works well to find local weather, news, stocks, and trivia facts. In addition, I was able to open apps and check my calendar using my voice. However, I am unable to connect any music services through Google Assistant settings, as the links for the respective services are not properly labeled for screenreader access.

If you’re looking for some quick entertainment, Google Assistant seems to have a vibrant personality when asked to tell a joke, story, or sing anything from a lullaby to holiday carols to, “Happy Birthday.” In my experience, Google’s AI blows Siri and other intelligent personal assistants out of the water, particularly when doing actually useful tasks, E.G. not enquiring about the meaning of life, woodchucks’ hypothetical chucking abilities, or other silly queries.

One thing to note when using Google Assistant is that it saves your activity and voice recordings to your Google account. To view and change these settings, go to myactivity.google.com. You can also go to myaccount.google.com and click, “Data and personalization,” to check on other privacy settings.

Even when browsing a streamlined view of settings with the Google Privacy Checkup, I found that needing to go to several different places to opt out of various personalization features seemed clunky. This is where I think Google could improve privacy management, by working to minimize the number of separate pages a user must go to opt out of web activity, voice recordings, ad personalization, and more. If Google expects people to use their productivity services, which involve the storage and management of private information on the company’s servers, it is imperative that privacy settings are presented in a clear and concise manner to give the user as much control over their data as possible.

Google Play Store

In addition to web apps, Chrome OS includes the Google Play Store, where Android apps can be installed and used as if your Chromebook was running the Android operating system. However, in my experience, the interface of the Play Store seemed difficult to navigate with ChromeVox, with elements randomly disappearing and the system occasionally becoming completely unresponsive. In some cases, the only way I could restore the system to a functional state was to toggle ChromeVox off with Control Alt Z, wait a few seconds, and then toggle it back on.

After I installed several free apps, I found I was able to navigate them with mixed success, but I couldn’t seem to get them to quit or switch focus to another app or website. What’s telling is that Android apps are theoretically accessible with ChromeVox, but it looks like Google needs to improve the underlying code base to make them actually useful to ChromeVox users.

While it is true that most of the computing tasks on Chrome OS are intended to be performed in the browser, it can be beneficial to run an Android app for a service that, for example, puts mobile first or whose mobile app is more feature-rich than its web equivalent.

Conclusion

Overall, I must say my Chrome OS experience has been largely positive, especially for a relatively new product. I hope that as more people use Chrome OS and ChromeVox, Google will continue to innovate and improve on it, fixing some of the issues I and others have encountered.

The simplicity and consistency of both the Chrome OS interface and the Google services I tested make a compelling case for a Chromebook in addition to, or in some cases, in place of, a Mac or Windows computer. Similar to Apple products, you can make the most of your Chromebook when you have other Google products, as Google has steadily built an ecosystem of desktop and mobile solutions.

If I was still a student and my school made the transition or required the use of Google apps, I would feel confident using it in its current state of accessibility. Of course, if you’re thinking about getting a Chromebook and have a disability, I would encourage you to read up on the various accessibility features of the platform, as a quick look through the accessibility settings seemed to reveal several potential options. Having not used any other accessibility features however, I cannot speak to their usefulness in a given context.

As stated in the title of this post, I used Chrome OS for 30 days to get a general feel for the platform. If you believe I missed anything, or if you have additional tips and tricks, I’d be interested to know. Likewise if you have any questions or experiences of your own, be they positive, negative or neutral, feel free to comment.

As I rap up this post, we are also rapping up the decade. While Chrome OS isn’t exactly, “Revolutionary,” it demonstrates the ever-growing power and potential of cloud computing. At around this time ten years ago, many people, myself included, were skeptical of the then newly presented idea of a computer based around a web browser. While the platform has its limitations and is thus not for everyone, it has certainly come a long way since then. Its comparatively low costs have the potential to bring technology access to even more people, and with ChromeVox, blind and visually impaired users might not be left out of that future.

Of course, that will only happen with continued improvement from Google and developers in the months and years to come. Here’s hoping the coming decade brings even more advancements in technology, accessibility, and inclusion.
While you are here, you may like to check out the following as well:
Running Linux as a Blind Mac User for 30 days; Yes, It is Possible

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Running Linux as a Blind Mac User for 30 days; Yes, It is Possible

Tuesday January 5, 2021 9:29 pm EAT by Tyler Stephen

Intro

For some time now, I have wanted to get some familiarity with the Linux world. Not for any particular reason, just from hearing people talk about it and its potential, and thinking, “That sounds fun.”

Having no idea where to start my little experiment, I perused the AppleVis forum and came upon a topic for someone trying to install Ubuntu as a virtual machine on their Mac and having trouble enabling Orca, the screenreader built-in to Ubuntu and other distributions. Intrigued, I did some basic research into Orca and came upon the Ubuntu Accessibility Wiki and the Orca user guide.

The information I found seemed straightforward enough, but when I mentioned it in a comment, the OP told me that they tried that with no luck.

One night, when I was bored and had some free time, I thought I’d try it myself. For this experiment, I am running the virtual machine in VMware Fusion, and am writing this post in Ubuntu with LibreOffice.

A brief introduction to screenreaders and accessibility

As mentioned in the title of this article, I am totally blind and thus rely on screenreading software to use computers and mobile devices.

Screenreaders speak the contents of a screen with synthetic speech, and allow for alternative means of navigating the user interface. For example, on a computer, a screenreader allows a user to navigate using a variety of keyboard commands instead of the mouse.

On macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS, the built-in screenreader is VoiceOver. Windows comes with a screenreader called narrator, but many Windows users prefer to use a third-party screenreader like Jaws or NVDA.

As the purpose of a screenreader is to speak and allow for the tailored navigation of operating systems and applications, they must be able to convey the complex aspects of modern user interfaces, which is sometimes easier said than done. Therefore, not everything is accessible, and for things that are, there is a broad spectrum of just how usable it is for a screenreader user.

As stated above, Orca is the screenreader built-in to many Linux distributions. While I have years of experience using macOS, iOS and Windows, I have never used Linux, and that’s where our story picks up.

A brief introduction to Linux

For those who have no idea just what Linux is, you’re not alone. If you’re a personal computer user, you’re probably familiar with one or both of the two dominant operating systems, Windows and macOS. However, there is one other operating system that commands a relatively smaller, but loyal following, Linux.

Linux is open-source software, meaning it is not owned like the other proprietary operating systems. For this reason, there is a vibrant community of coders who customize Linux to run on anything from personal computers to servers to embedded systems in consumer appliances. In fact, if you have an Android smartphone, you’re already using Linux, as the Android operating system is Linux based.

These unique flavors of Linux are known as, “Distributions,” or simply, “distros.” For the purposes of just testing the waters and getting my feet wet, I went with one of the most popular distros for computers, Ubuntu, which can be downloaded for free from Ubuntu.com.

Installation and getting started

As I don’t have a dedicated system to run Ubuntu on, I installed it on a virtual machine with VMware Fusion on my Mac. Once installed, I enabled the Orca screenreader by pressing Command Option S on my Mac keyboard.

In Linux terms, the Command key on Apple keyboards is equivalent to the Super key, and the Option key is equivalent to the Alt key. Therefore, if you are trying to use Linux and are instructed to press Super Alt S, press Command Option S.

As I had largely configured my settings through the VMware Easy Install tool, I just tabbed to my name, pressed return and entered my password, and I was on the desktop. As Orca required either the caps lock or insert key as a modifier, a key that when pressed, performs functions specific to the screenreader, I immediately mapped the caps lock key to the insert key with Karabiner Elements, chose to use Insert as the modifier, and made sure the keyboard layout was set to laptop. This way, I could use the caps lock key as an Insert key, as Fusion wouldn’t seem to let that key be passed to the virtual machine, but with the layout set to laptop, I could avoid the need to use numpad keys, which I do not have on my keyboard.

Using Ubuntu

This is where things get tricky. At first, it felt so painfully slow with the default settings configured by Fusion that I went into the virtual machine settings and increased the available ram from 2 to 4 gigabytes and added a second processor core. Yes, this brought macOS to a crawl, but at this point, I can’t imagine using the two OSs simultaneously, so that was okay.

Once that was done, Ubuntu started feeling snappier, but there are still aspects of Linux that either aren’t working correctly on my system or that I just don’t understand.

For example, according to the Ubuntu accessibility Wiki, both desktop environments, Unity and Gnome, are accessible and usable with Orca. However, in the login window after installing Gnome from the Ubuntu Software Center, I can’t seem to navigate the dialog beyond my name and a button labeled, “Not listed.” Clicking this button opened a window with a cancel button, a text element that Orca refused to read, and a next button. Not knowing what this was, I hit cancel.

Another thing that doesn’t seem to be working is the Unity Launcher, accessed by pressing Alt F1. In theory, this is supposed to show a list of apps, but Orca only reads this as, “Window,” which doesn’t seem to be at all navigable. If I press the Super key and type the name of an app, however, I can usually navigate and choose the search results with Orca.

Once in apps like Firefox or LibreOffice, everything seems to be working as expected. Similar to Windows, pressing Alt and the first letter of a menu, such as F for File, worked, and from there, I was able to use the arrow keys to navigate the available options. In Firefox, familiar browser commands like H for heading, K for link, L for list, etc worked reliably to navigate webpages.

From what I could tell, the Ubuntu Software Center seemed to be navigable and accessible, but I didn’t actually try using any apps from there.

Conclusion

As a start, I’d have to say my Linux Ubuntu experience was so-so. Once I adjusted my virtual machine settings and key mappings, things seemed to run more smoothly, but the apparent inaccessibility of some key areas of the desktop environment still puzzle me.

That said, it is entirely possible that I am missing some key Linux concept, that there are other distros that are more screenreader friendly, that I am just a Linux noob at this point, or all of the above. If any blind or visually impaired Linux users come upon this post, I’d be interested to hear your experiences, be they positive, negative or neutral. Sound off in the comments.

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