Apple Accessibility

Archive for the ‘iTouch’ Category

It’s always exciting to see what the Apple Software Engineers will come out with when it comes to accessibility. There are some great  features ALREADY installed in the iOS but there are always more that do not cease to amaze me. Check out what’s coming out at the link below!

http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#accessibility

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/07/apple-unveils-new-ipad-hd/

Here’s the latest release of another product that will go viral. What’s not discussed is the fact that all the Apple devices (iPads, iTouch, iPhone, Apple TV, iMac, MacBook) have the same ACCESSIBLE operating systems available to ALL users.

http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

VoiceOver for the iPad responds to a wide range of gestures, far more than listed on the VoiceOver settings page.  You can change how VoiceOver reads a page (e.g., continuously) and how it scrolls through text, raise or lower a screen curtain (turns the screen black), and change settings on the fly (e.g., turn speech on/off).  The gestures involve various taps and flicks with one, two, three, or four fingers, and a “rotor” as if you were turning a physical knob on the page.

Just as importantly, VoiceOver also changes how the iPad responds to standard gestures, which can get pretty frustrating if you don’t know why, for example, you can’t turn the pages in an iBook with the usual single-finger flick.

As I was compiling a list of these gestures from various sources, I thought, “Surely someone else has summarized these in one convenient place.”  Well, duh — Apple’s online iPad User Guide!  (Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier!)

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iPad_User_Guide.pdf

Go to Chapter 16: Accessibility, page 108 for a list of all the possible taps, flicks, and twists and what they do.  After experimenting with these, I have to say that I am a lot more impressed with VoiceOver on the iPad as a reading and accessibility tool.