#NFB2012 – Welcome!

If you have heard abut this site from this year’s NFB convention in Dallas, I strongly urge you to subscribe to this site, so you can receive updates on new products, reviews and general iOS news. I hope everyone enjoys the site, and their time at the convention. It only comes around once a year! I hope to see everyone again around the Anatole.

Netflix is back for the blind!

Netflix just updated their app yesterday with two neat things. First is pretty obvious. Netflix now works with the retina display on the new iPad, but the second thing is the best for those who are blind. Netflix adds on their change screen for their update that they have added better support for VoiceOver users. I am not sure what that means, but it sounds like they have made netflix work with VoiceOver again on iDevices. I would love to hear readers thoughts on this or if they have seen it work better now.

Push 4.0 for iOS.

Several weeks ago, Christina posted an article on the benefits of push notifications through the free app called Boxcar. As stated, Boxcar lets you push all messages from your twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, and even growl notifications. Push 4 is another app that is on the app store that states the same functionality, but does it work as well for the blind?

About Push 4

Push is another app that lets you push alerts to your phone through the use of push notifications, which is probably the app is called Push. Push supports the pushing of Twitter, Facebook, Email, and RSS Feeds. Push 4 also supports many different APIs for developers to make their apps compatible with Push. Push 4 also supports many different sounds just as Boxcar does. These sounds are different of course.

How does Push work?

When you start the app for the first time, you must first create an online account at the Push 4 website. This is at http://www.4push.com. Once you have created your account, you can use your selected email and password to log in to the app. Once you log in, you can select the services you wish to use. The login process uses standard controls that are compatible with VoiceOver.

Once you log in, you must add your desired services. To do this, tap the button in the lower left of the screen. This button is not VoiceOver compliant. VoiceOver will say, “P2″ instead of settings or whatever the developer intended it to say. On the main screen, you can also see the latest notifications you have received in a table, and you can select the any service by tapping the inboxes button. This screen also contains the compose button which allows the user to write their own notifications on the fly. I am not sure why a user would need this, but it is there.

To add a service, you must first tap the, “P2″ button then select the service you would like to add. Once you have done this, you must use the button at the top to sign in to the desired service. Once this is complete, you may finish filling in the desired settings, like the sound, the type of notification and so on. This all appears to be VoiceOver compliant. Push does also offer a help section here if you have trouble.

Conclusion

While this is a great app, it is still lacking when compared to its rival Boxcar. Boxcar has more services, a more polished interface, and even a better price! Boxcar is a free app, except for the fact that ads are shown on the screen at some points. There is an in-app purchase to remove this however. Push 4 costs $1.99, and then has a $9.99 in app purchase to unlock full notification bandwidth which I am not fully sure what this is. As a user who has tried both these apps, I strongly recommend Boxcar. Nice try Push, but not nice enough for the functionality and price. It is also hard to use Push with VoiceOver due to the settings button which is integral to this apps use.

The bug that should become a feature!

While using my phone yesterday I found an interesting bug. While switching between VoiceOver and Zoom with the home button I came across an error where Zoom turned on and VoiceOver’s gestures turned off, but the speech did not. I have never seen this problem and I have to say that it is kind of a nice bug. I would almost call it a feature.

The Pros.

So why is this a feature you ask? Well  that is a good question. The reason I feel this is a feature is because as a partially sighted individual, I kind of like the ability to have partial speech while also having zooming capability. I can zoom in and also hear what I am doing at times. I really like this in ZoomText for Windows at some points.

The Cons.

There are several issues however that occur when this error occurs. The first being that there will be very little memory for the rest of your applications. If the speech is running, and zoom is turned on, then the operating system will have to work double time to keep your apps running and to keep speech and magnification going. This slows down the phone or iPad by a lot. The other problem is that this only allows for partial speech feedback. You will hear some things be spoken through VoiceOver, but the VoiceOver gestures will not work. This means that if you tap on something, you will be brought to that item you tapped on. Double and tripple taps will not work the same in this mode. This means VoiceOver will not always read what you tap on, but it will read any actions that result from that tap.

Conclusion

Out of all the bugs I have found in software over the years, this has to be the best.. It allows for partially sighed users to get zoom and speech, but at a price. I would really love to see Apple create a VoiceOver and zoom environment where both can work together for the user, even if it just means partial speech. It would be really nice to have your phone numbers read aloud like this bug allows, but to still be able to zoom in on certain things on the screen. So what do you think, should this be a bug or a feature?

VoiceOver in the blogosphere

I am very glad to see that mainstream bloggers are taking notice of these kinds of things. Check out this article from The Unofficial Apple Webblog TUAW. Blind User Explains why he Loves the iPhone.

New! VoiceOver Shortcuts in iOS 4.1.

Hello everyone.

I am not going to re-state what has already been stated on the AppleVis web site, but I do want to get the word out about the new VoiceOver commands in iOS 4.1. These commands allow for more appropriate screen reader functionality for the operating system, and includes features like reading keys. We will also see these make an appearence on the iPad in November. Head on over to AppleVis, and read all about it.

If you have a jailbroken device, your jailbreak will be lost after the 4.1 update, so be aware of this when you update.

Prizmo – One more step towards Accessible iPhone OCR.

Lately, we have been seeing a few Assistive Technology applications reach the iPhone via the App Store, Some of these include Digit-Eyes, SayText, and etcetera. Now we have Prizmo.

Prizmo is a well established OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application for the Macintosh. Prizmo for the Mac was designed to take in images through a scanner, and return editable text to the user. This week, we now see the release of Prizmo for the iPhone

How does it work?

When launched, Prizmo asks what kind of text is to be scanned. This can be plain text, a business card, a bill, a whiteboard, or to bring up the text reader. You may also view your saved documents from this screen. Each choice allows for better scanning clarity for that particular item. When you select an item, a few more choices will be presented. Prizmo will then ask where the image should be gathered from. Your options here are camera, photo album, or pase the image from the clipboard. After inserting the picture, you will be given many changeable options to increase the quality of the image. Once scanned, the program will take a short time to convert your image to text, which can then be read by voiceover.

Below are the summeries of the main menu options.

1. Text – Text mode will let you scan a printed page and read it with VoiceOver, or with the Reader option.
2. Business Card - Scanning a business card will take all found text, and create a new contact in your phone based on what is on the business card.
3. Bill – Scanning a bill will add multiple text entries for easy review of billed items.
4. Whiteboard – This option will allow a user to scan a whiteboard in an office, or school. It then will convert all information to text.
5. Reader – The reader section will allow you to read saved text documents with one of the 35 voices that can be purchased through Prizmo. These are standard Vocalizer voices, and are not half bad.
6. Documents – The Documents section will allow you to view, and maintain your saved documents.

VoiceOver Compatibility

All sections of this software work with VoiceOver. All buttons have proper labels, and all areas are spoken clearly.

Possible Issues

The only possible problem may be that the app does not have any way to tell a visually impaired user how to center their camera for the clearest picture.

Price

Prizmo costs $9.99 in the App Store which is vastly more expensive then the competition of SayText.

Final observations and conclusions

Prizmo, already being an established OCR application, does not fall short of expectations. The scanning quality is excellent as far as I can tell, and the programs functionality comes very close to the kind of functionality found on other established phones for a lot less cost.

First up, IM+ for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch

This week, I thought I would start out with a good an interesting app. Well, it seems that I have found one good enough to report on.

SHAPE’s IM+ for iOS devices has been in the App Store for a long time providing instant message capabilities to iOS users. Since release, IM+ has used the same technique that all other im clients in the App Store have used. This technique is that when you send or receive a message, Voiceover will read the sender and the timestamp, but not the message. This issue has prevented blind and visually imapired users from using multi service clients on their devices.

Today, Apple approved the newest version of IM+. One of the new features added is the ability to use Voiceover with this application. SHAPE changed their software so any user can browse the name, time, and message separately from each other.  What this means is, blind users can now log in to all of their instant message services from just one program and get full functionality from it.

There is still one drawback however. IM+ is not a free download from the App Store. The price for IM+ is $10.00, which is kind of steep for an instant messaging client.

The most notable alternative however, is offered by Fring. Fring also offers an instant messenger client that supports many services, but Fring segregates blind and visually impaired users by requiring the download of a voiceover compatible version of their software. This version however does not have all of the functionality of the regular app. Fring’s biggest asset however, is that both versions of Fring are free apps in the App Store.

In conclusion, there are finally options out there in the App Store for the blind. Which app to use is left up to you, but let us know which im apps are your favorite by replying to this post.