The Access Technology Blog

One of the many things that one can do with a mobile phone is keep up with current news events. For users of iPhones who are blind and deaf-blind, this is no different. But are the most popular apps accessible? Below, the three most popular free news apps for the iOS platform are reviewed for their usability with VoiceOver and Braille displays.

The three apps evaluated are: NYTIMES (the New York Times Company), CNN (CNN Interactive Group Inc.), and Fox News (Fox News Digital). These were the top 3 apps in the news category in the App Store on January 25, 2012. All 3 apps were found to be updated to the latest version on the date specified above. These reviews were done utilizing an iPhone 4 (CDMA) running iOS 5.0.1 and a Refreshabraille 18. All apps were tested using their default settings. The below information does not endorse any news media outlet or any of the three apps listed below.

NYTIMES:

The biggest difference between this app and the other two reviewed is that once installed, NYTIMES is not found on the home screen, rather, it is found in the Newstand folder. Also unlike the other apps, this one appears just like the newspaper does.
Perhaps the biggest issue with this app has nothing to do with accessibility. Rather, it's one that anyone who does not pay the fee for premium content would most likely complain about. When the app is started, it will download all of the content of the paper to your iDevice. However, the amount of content one can access as a free user of the app is restricted mainly to the headlines. This both takes a great deal of time and also consumes bandwidth. If one is on a 200 MB data plan, this could become an issue, particularly since there are images with each story. Each time a user of the app refreshes the content in the app, it downloads approximately
 32MB of data. When accessing the settings within the app itself and through settings/NYTIMES on the iDevice, there is no option to choose which sections of the paper one would like to download. The only content related options available are whether to store content on the phone (known as offline mode), and to disable downloading of images.

From an accessibility standpoint, this app is well put together. All buttons are labeled, and both speech output and braille work nicely.
There are several different ways of browsing articles, all of which can be found on the Doc portion of the screen in the form of tabs. From left to right, the tabs are: Top News, Most Emailed, Favorites, and Sections. When one double taps one of these tabs, once the app has updated all content, the screen itself fills with the results of that selected tab. By default, when the app is launched, Top News is always selected. if you try to click on certain content within a portion of the app that has yet to be updated, it will launch another story from the previous time the app updated its list of stories.

At the top of the screen, you will find a settings button where you can log in as a premium user, and next to that will be the information related to when the app was last updated and whether an update is in progress. If you would like to refresh the content, if you close the appp out with the App Switcher, you can then reopen it and the content will refresh automatically. It is also possible to refresh the content by using the pull down VoiceOver gesture if you do not wish to restart the app.

Starting with the Top News tab, one can navigate from story title to story title by flicking left and right throughout the stories available. To read the article, simply double tap on the title and you will be taken to the screen containing that article. You will be presented with a few options before the article itself such as the Top Stories button previous,, next, etc, along with images that can be skipped across by flicking right. Once the story itself is encountered, it can be read using standard VoiceOver or braille display commands. There are also options at the bottom of each article to make the story a favorite, share it on Facebook, and to adjust the text size. One can then navigate through the Top Stories section of the app utilizing the next and previous buttons or by returning to the Top Stories section by activating the back button and continuing to browse article titles.

The other tabs behave much in the same manor with one exception. When selecting an article from the Most Emailed or from within any of the sections of the actual paper, one can only read the first few sentences of any given article. The user can double tap the article to view 20 articles each month for free, but must pay beyond that 20 article limit. The app then indicates that the user must pay to have access to the entire article. As the author was uninterested in paying for content that could be accessed freely through other news sources, the premium content was not investigated. However, given that the lay-out of the rest of the tabs and subsections is the same as the Top Stories tab, it is reasonable to assume that the premium content is accessible with braille and VoiceOver.

 

CNN

When launching this app, it will automatically grab the latest news headlines. At the top of the screen are the articles featured in the Headlines section. Each Story is displayed twice when flicking across this portion of the app. The first of these two is a link that allows the user to view the story in Safari, and the second actually launches the article from within the app. When an article is selected, one is presented with the back button and an action button before the article itself. Activating the Action button gives the user the ability to either share this story on Facebook or to save the story for later viewing. After all of the news headlines, there are a series of buttons which control the category of content being viewed. These buttons are: Top Stories, World, U.S., Politics, Justice, and Entertainment. VoiceOver indicates that these buttons are all dimmed, meaning that they are unavailable, but this is misleading. Activating any of the buttons will present the user with the content available in each section. Navigation is done with each section as outlined above with the Headlines button.

At the bottom of the app, there are a set of 4 tabs: Headlines, My CNN, Video, and TV. The Headlines tab is selected by default, which was the tab just discussed.

The My CNN tab gives you local information once you have it configured to any place you desire. The news articles from that area are displayed, and one can double tap on each article to view it. However, as most of these articles are from different sources, ease of access and whether to view the article requires you to have an account varies greatly. The weather portion of this app is only somewhat accessible. It will give the current conditions and temperature, but when looking at the provided 10 day forecast, each day is labeled as "today" and only the sky condition is read/displayed. So the only way to tell what day the app is referring to is by counting the number of days from the actual day you’re currently in, and even if you decide to do that, the only part of the forecast you’ll be getting is the sky conditions.

The video tab is very accessible and each video has a title and then the length of the video is displayed. Although the videos streamed with some difficulty on 3G, they worked well on a Wi-Fi connection. The Live TV tab only works if you have a cable or satellite TV subscription, which the author does not, so this feature was not able to be reviewed.

Finally, there is the iReport. This is a tab from CNN where viewers can submit their own content. There are a lot of different types of stories submitted, and accessing the content works well with Voiceover and braille. The buttons are all clearly labeled and easy to navigate.

 

Fox News:

Upon launching this app, the city you have set for your current location is displayed. To the right of this, the current local temperature is shown, and flicking further to the right will display a series of buttons which are dimmed. Just like the buttons found in the CNN app that are dimmed according to VoiceOver, these buttons are actually active. They are: Top Stories, U.S., World, Politics, and Entertainment. By default, the Top Stories button is selected. Whichever button you select, the titles of each article are not accessible. Flicking right from here, the Voiceover and Braille user will find nothing, although VoiceOver does click, alerting the user that they are moving over a different icon when flicking left and right. However, with Braille, there is no indication that you have moved from story to story, and the Braille display simply goes blank. Double tapping the article will bring that article up and it is easy to read, but you must double tap on each article to find out what it is. Below the unlabeled articles, one will find five tabs: Articles, Videos, Slide Shows, Shows, and More. When you launch the app, you will be put in the Articles tab.

Starting at the top left of the screen when the app is first launched, will be the city you are currently in. Once you double tap the city, you are presented with a “more, back” button, then an edit box to search for any city or state’s weather forecast. When continuing to flick right, the current conditions for this city are readable, including temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more. Beyond this is the ten day forecast. VoiceOver presents each day, but no information about that day. Double tapping the day does nothing. However, beyond the listing of days, there are high and low temperatures listed. While not extremely accessible, one can keep track of how many days’ worth of high and low temperatures have been encountered, and count them. For example, if I have encountered 3 days of high and low temperatures, and today is Wednesday, that means the fourth set of these must be for Saturday. However, this only gives the user the forecast high and low temperature. There is no way to find out what the sky conditions will be, whether there will be a chance of precipitation, or any hazardous weather expected.

Beyond the ten day forecast, and beyond any section of this app, there is an “info” button which will give you the option to share stories with friends through Facebook or Twitter if logged in, information about the app itself, along with a redeem button, after pressing the done button which is located in the upper left hand corner, you’re returned to the screen you were at previously. Beyond the info button, there is an option to refresh your GPS location, which will retrieve your local forecast if it’s different than your current one. A button to refresh your GPS status which will see if you’re in a different location or not. If you are, the new local forecast will be displayed in the same format.

The back button, as with all apps, is located at the upper left hand corner of the screen. In this case, the back button will not take you back to the previous screen, however, but instead takes you to the More tab. For the sake of following the structure of the app, however, we will continue by moving right from the Articles tab to the Videos Tab. As with the titles of articles not being accessible, VoiceOver shows the same behavior for all five tabs. You cannot get article titles, show video titles, show names, or any other information a sighted person can simply look at before deciding whether they would like to view specific content.

At last, we have the More tab. There is an edit button, followed by favorites, weather, and audio. Double tapping the Edit button gives you a list of tabs, but once you select a tab, there is nothing to configure according to VoiceOver. There was also nothing in my favorites, since I couldn’t even read any of the article titles to see if I was interested. The final item with the More tab is Weather, which has already been covered. Of the three apps, this one is clearly the least accessible.

 

Conclusion:

While it’s great that most people can simply install apps on their iOS devices and have access on the go, the gap in terms of accessibility creates issues for VoiceOver and braille users. Just like reviewing any type of application in a comparison, they all have their advantages and disadvantages. While the NYTIMES app is fully accessible, you must pay extra for premium content. The CNN app is accessible and is free. However, if CNN is not what the reader desires to choose as their favorite media outlet, they may have very little in the way of choices. Fox News, sadly, is quite inaccessible with VoiceOver and braille. Given the fact that Fox News is a popular media outlet, and the 3rd most popular free news app in the app store, it is a shame to see that they are denying equal access to VoiceOver and Braille users. Just like in any form of technology, blind and deaf-blind users are being forced to choose what media they access based on whether the actual delivery method is usable.

Scott Davert

The following are two recordings from the NFB's eBook Accessibility Symposium on December 6. These videos are also available on the DAISY Consortium YouTube Channel:

EPUB 3, A Foundation for Accessible Publishing
http://youtu.be/z2a7LNnEhfc

and

DAISY Pipeline 2
http://youtu.be/jnjo3kv6JMY

Apple’s iOS devices are being adopted in schools and educational institutions throughout the United States, and are being used by students and teachers to fill a number of educational roles.  In answer to this market trend, Apple has made changes to the iBooks application to improve its functionality as a textbook reader capable of providing rich content, such as slideshows, videos, audio, and other media on the iPad.  It has also created iBooks compatible content creation software.  In the past, iBooks has been one of the go to applications for showcasing how well Access Technology and eBook systems can integrate. Blind users have been fairly pleased with iBooks, and we hoped to see good things when Apple announced the inclusion of textbooks in iBooks 2.   Unfortunately, iBooks and the textbooks available for it at this time are likely to create some new and troubling accessibility barriers for VoiceOver users.  

iBooks 2 has several functions which allow students to annotate their books, but this process is not nearly as simple or as useful for blind users as it is for sighted users. It is possible, though often tricky, to select text with VoiceOver, which can then be highlighted, but after text is highlighted, there is no indication of this in the text itself.  It can be accessed via the notes button at the top of the screen, but then it is devoid of context.  Furthermore, it is possible to leave margin notes on virtual “sticky notes” next to highlighted material, but there is also no indication of their existence if a user is reading continuously, and if a user looks in the notes section, as they would to read their highlights, the text of the notes is onscreen, but not available to VoiceOver.  A user can flick to a “margin note” and open it, but they will not have the context that note is related to.  They will not see the highlighted text associated with the note delineated in any meaningful way. 

Navigation of textbook content is further hampered by a lack of proper heading markup in all of the sample textbooks which were tested.  It is unclear if it is possible to note whether text is a heading or not in Apple’s textbook format because none of the four textbooks tested included the ability to navigate by heading despite visually appearing as headings, and even in some cases being linked to in the book’s table of contents. 

The flicking gesture is inconsistent in textbooks on iBooks 2.  When a user “flicks” from the left to the right, or the right to the left, they will usually move from one bit of content to another in a predictable fashion, but not always.  Sometimes flicking from right to left will move to a different element on the page than it should if it is the reverse of the order in place for flicking from left to right.  At other times, it is possible, depending on where on the page a user starts, or the page’s orientation, (landscape or portrait) to skip over parts of the content entirely without even knowing it was there.  Another concern related to the navigation of the books themselves comes in the form of making a blind user aware of interactive content on a page.  For example, when a book is in portrait mode, and the user chooses to read continuously, the text will be read without any indication of illustrations, videos, charts, or other interactive content.  If a user “flicks” through the content, they will often run across elements that do not announce what they are, and which only become apparent after they are double tapped.  When flicking is being erratic, these elements can be overlooked entirely as well.  Beyond these concerns, there are several other troubling trends in the way the textbooks themselves are being rendered for publication.  Below, specific examples of text will be discussed with the problems that were found in each. 

Although this first is not a textbook, it showcases a number of interactive features, and the problems, as well as the positives of accessing this book, may be instructive.  The book we tested with is Twas the Night Before Christmas, and it is published by Once Upon an App.  It is a free title and is a minimally animated storybook of the poem in question.  On the left side of the page, there is a static picture, and on the right, the user will see the text of the book.  Overlaying all of this are animated snowflakes.  Because of the way the snowflakes are animated, they constantly cause page refreshes which confuse VoiceOver and cause it to break into what it is reading and state over and over, “page loaded”.  This does not make it impossible to read the book, but much of its flow, and the pleasure of reading, it is lost.  The other feature that makes this book unique, and which does actually work well with VoiceOver, is the inclusion of human narration and highlighting the text to match the narration.  Once this feature is turned on, the book will read aloud, and automatically turn the pages, and because it is controlled by a standard Apple control set embedded in iBooks, it works very well.  If a user were to temporarily disable the VoiceOver voice to avoid the constant reminder of the “page reloads” they would be able to enjoy the human-narrated version of the story.  This book is an example of where a simple fix could make all the difference, because if animation could be disabled, or if the snowflakes were created to be explicitly ignored by VoiceOver, the rest of the book works fine, interactive content and all.

Free samples of four textbooks were downloaded to get a feel for how academic books and interactive texts would behave in iBooks.    The books chosen were Chemistry (Chem) by Thandi Buthelezi, Laurel Dingrando, Nicholas Hainen and Chereyl Winstrom; E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth (LoE) by Gael McGill, Edward O. Wilson and Morgan Ryan;  Environmental Science (ES) by Jay Withgott, and Geometry  (Geo) by John A. Carter, Ph.D., Gilbert J. Cuevas, Ph.D., Roger Day, Ph.D., NBCT, Carol Malloy, Ph.D. and Jerry Cummins.  Geometry and Chemistry are published by McGraw Hill, Environmental Science is published by Pearson, and E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth is published by Wilson Digital.  These books all showcase the potential of interactive textbooks in the classroom, but they also each provide barriers to access for blind students.  Since many of the issues overlap, there will be notation of which books exhibit each issue with parenthetical notes.

• Mathematical Equations Represented as Images (Geo) - All of the mathematical equations in the book, and not just the images of the triangles in the sample chapter, were represented as images.  If the book is read continuously, the text skips over the images as if they are not there.  Furthermore, these images are unlabeled, so there is no useful information to be gained from the images.

• Slideshows and other “Interactive Features” that cannot be interacted with via VoiceOver (All)- interactive charts and maps, slide shows, virtual tours, and keynote presentations which cannot be interacted with via VoiceOver in any way, and make the “no content” sound.  Examples include a slideshow about cell crowding from LoE, the Comparison of Fresh and Salt Water in ES, and an animation of the creation of ozone (Chem).

• Videos without descriptive text (LoE) – A video showing cell-division without any sound or description of the process.

• Unlabeled graphics (ES) - Most pictures and other interactive maps and elements are simply tagged with a number, such as “image 27636.jpg”.

• Quiz Modules with image dependent questions (Chem) - Quiz modules are included in the books to allow students to review material they have learned in the textbook, and they are very impressively well-integrated with VoiceOver.  A student can flick through the questions, and the multiple choice answers, and double tap to choose the answer they wish.  At the bottom of the screen the student can double tap a “check answer button” which allows VoiceOver to announce if the answer is correct or incorrect.  If correct, the student can flick to the next button and go on.  It works almost flawlessly.  In fact, the only problem encountered during testing was that a blind student could not answer questions based on visual charts that had no textual representation, as was encountered in one of the quiz modules in the Chemistry book.

Not all news concerning the iBooks textbook scene is bad news.  Students do already have at least the same level of flexibility as they would have reading a scanned copy of a normal print book.  They are able to search the text of the book, and use the interactive features for the search. They can also pull up more information from the web or Wikipedia, directly from the search box at the top of the screen.  Furthermore, so long as the questions do not contain inaccessible content, the quiz modules are well-implemented and could be a great benefit to students.  Finally, video controls are, unsurprisingly, very accessible, and work as they should since they are the same control set implemented by Apple for watching all other video content through Apple created Apps, like YouTube and Safari.

Textbooks on iBooks are momentous because they represent one of the most impressive and well-designed electronic textbook implementations that educators will have seen to date, and they will likely be excited to adopt iBooks as the delivery model of choice.  Beyond this, they are already somewhat accessible, which is good news for print-disabled readers.    If Apple and its partners can come together with users of access technology to ensure that these books are accessible to all students, it could bring about an exciting increase in immediate access for all print-disabled learners. 

Amy Mason

Over the years, Skype has become a popular means of communication for people around the world. This is especially true for those who are blind, deaf, and deaf-blind. However, as time has gone on, the accessibility of the actual Skype program has started to drop. And while many portions of the Skype program are usable with scripts that can be installed for various screen readers, each version of the Skype released brought about changes that needed to be made to make the program more usable for those individuals using screen readers and/or braille displays to access the service as each new version of Skype itself has been released.

In late December 2011, GWMicro, makers of Window-Eyes, released a free program called GWSkype. This application was developed for use of the Skype service, and was designed with the screen reader and braille user in mind. Like Skype itself, the program is free for everyone to use. Anyone can use it with any screen reader on the Windows platform.

GWSkype was tested by the author, and found to work well with NVDA, Jaws for Windows, System Access, and, of course, Window-Eyes. The braille devices this program were tested with were a Focus 80 from Freedom Scientific, a Brailliant 32 (first generation) from Humanware, and a Braille Sense Onhand manufactured by HIMS. Speech and braille were equally a pleasure to use for all different combinations of braille and speech, with the exception of the Focus 80 and System Access combination, since these 2 are not compatible. Unlike the Skype program itself, this application has a very clean interface, and moving around in the chat history is very simple. While scripts allow for access to the actual Skype program, one must hit shortcut keys to access the various chat messages which only flash up in braille for a limited amount of time if at all. Also, while the Skype program itself requires specific configurations to work best with screen readers and often times scripts to enhance the user's experience, installing GWSkype with its default settings was all that was required to achieve the best results possible.

When making Skype to Skype calls along with making Skype-out calls, the audio was very clear. Skype-out is a service that allows a user to place phone calls to landlines at a very cheap rate. In addition to being inexpensive ($3 a month for unlimited calls to the US and Canada), those who are hard of hearing will be happy to know that the call quality is much clearer than any conventional phone. Since the user has the ability to turn their computer's volume up and down, this gives the user more control of the audio output.
Another advantage of GWSkype over the Skype program itself is that GWSkype uses significantly less memory. When running Skype version 5 on a Windows 7 computer, the program consumed about 45 MB of RAM at any given time. GWSkype used less than 1 MB. So for slower modern computers such as netbooks, or for older machines with less RAM, GWSkype will most likely run much more smoothly than the mainstream version of the program.

There is also the advantage of having keyboard shortcuts for most actions. Pressing enter on a contact will bring up a chat window allowing you to send that person a message. If you wish to call the person instead, you simply press control L to do so. GWSkype has integrated the keyboard shortcuts from Skype itself, so, for example, Alt + Page Down will hang up a call. Also, unlike the regular program, GWSkype allows you to enter touch tones as soon as your call goes through without having to move the screen reader to a different portion of the screen. With more recent versions of the regular Skype program, there is a limited amount of time before you can no longer enter touch tones in to your call. This does not seem to be the case with GWSkype.

Yet another advantage to using GWSkype is that the transferring of files over Skype is also done through a clear interface. If a user already knows how to send file attachments through email, using GWSkype to do so will not take much effort to learn.
With respect to calling someone, there is one draw-back to this program. Every once in a while, and also when you first start GWSkype, you will be presented with an advertisement from GWMicro encouraging you to download and install Window-Eyes. This can be quite disruptive when on a call if you use speech at all, as the advertisement can pop up when you are trying to hear what someone else is saying. It also pops up in braille, but moving the display through it quickly makes the ad go away. The only way to get the ad to not play is to run Window-Eyes.

The other draw-back to this program is that users can not yet access the video portion of the Skype service. This was not an oversight on the part of GW Micro, rather, something that Skype needs to develop to work with the platform that the GWSkype program was built on (an API interface). Skype indicates that they hope to have the video service available in the summer, and GW Micro indicated on the home page of this program that they plan to integrate this in to the GWSkype program shortly after this service becomes available.
In conclusion, for those who have stopped using Skype due to a lack of accessibility or who are looking for a much more convenient way of accessing Skype's services, this program is worth a look. It's free, accessible, and works independently from the Skype program itself. This means that one does not have to install the actual Skype program to utilize GWSkype. It's less resource intensive, and much more clean interface than Skype itself, and is quite a decent program for free. While the advertisement is an inconvenience, in my opinion, it by no means overshadows the conveniences that this program provides. I have little doubt that GW Micro will continue the development of this product once the video portion of the program is available. They have shown their responsiveness to user feedback by releasing an update to the GWSkype program just 24 hours after its initial release.

For more information about this program, or to download and install your own copy, visit its website at: http://www.gwmicro.com/apps/GWSkype

By Scott Davert

One of the reasons that the Access Technology team ensured we had a presence at the Consumer Electronic Show this year was to spread the message to other companies and organizations about the importance of access for everyone, and some of the simple steps they could take to ensure that their products could be enjoyed by the blind, as well as the sighted. We were pleasantly surprised by many organizations. Some had already seen the potential applications of their products for blind users, even if access features weren’t entirely in place yet, these organizations were excited by the place their technologies could have in the lives of blind consumers. Snapkeys intends to add features that would increase their usability by blind people, or just sighted folks who are in a position where they can’t look at their phones, and Vitallink already is working in a number of low vision enhancements, while exploring their options for adding text-to-speech functionality to their product.  Other organizations, like Savant (home automation iOS app developers), presently do not have any accessibility built into their products, but seem genuinely interested in working with us to rectify the situation.  Still others are on board with the message of access for the blind, and have been for a fairly long time.  We have long admired the work of organizations like Carnegie Mellon who have worked on ensuring access for everyone in many of their research projects and initiatives, and we hope to continue seeing exciting advancements from them and others like them.

Sadly, not everyone shared this enthusiasm for our message, and we believe that it is important to share the names of these organizations with you, our loyal readers, so that we can all help these companies to understand the importance of considering access for blind folks, and the additional benefits this access can mean for the rest of their users.  So, without further ado, we present you with the 2012 CES Access Technology Hall of Shame.

Dishonorable Mention: Nokia's Smartphones

We hesitate a little to put Nokia on the list, which is why it doesn’t receive a full inductee’s status, but instead, something of a “runner-up” or “dishonorable mention” award.  Here’s the setup:  Nokia has partnered with Code Factory to create a screen access package for their non-Windows Phone 7 based phones, or at least some of them.  Truly, this is an exciting development that we would all like to know more about, especially because Nokia is providing this screen access suite for free from their app store for compatible phones.  We were hoping to learn more about the exciting development of the Nokia Screen Reader, and which devices the application would be available for, as well as any other details we could get on the project, which is where the nomination for the Hall of Shame comes in.  Nokia was so wrapped up in the launch of their Windows Phone 7 devices (which are completely inaccessible, and do not yet even include hooks for access software to employ) that no one at the booth even knew what we were talking about.  We spoke with no fewer than three different booth workers, and to be honest, I’m not sure that they were even aware that Nokia is still selling non-Windows Mobile 7 devices, much less the state of access technology available for those devices.  The upshot of all of this is that it’s hard to trust the future of an organization’s involvement with a project if they are not even aware of its existence at a major event. This is a concern for the future of the otherwise laudable strides that Nokia has made to ensure that blind people can continue to enjoy their devices, and we hope that they can turn this around and remember the partnerships which helped to make them so invaluable to blind users as some of the first really accessible smart phones on the market. 

Universal Remote’s iOS App

Seeing exciting projects all over the CES floor, many of which contained access opportunities via iOS apps set our minds to spinning with possibilities, so we made it a point wherever possible to try the iOS apps for everything we could get our hands on at the show.  Where we found apparently accessible apps we made note, commended the creators, and hope to do some further testing so we can confidently share our discoveries with the blindness community at large.  Where we found flaws, we attempted to bring this to the attention of those manning the booths and get contact information for members of the organization who develop the apps, so that we could help them add in the accessibility components to make their products more usable and interesting to blind people.  Some organizations were interested in our feedback, and admittedly, we won’t know if they took it to heart until we see changes in their products, but at least they had the common courtesy to hear what we had to say.  Not so with our “friends” from Universal Remote.  The gentleman who condescended to speak with us, told us that we were not the first people to come to him during the show and discuss accessibility for blind users in their iOS remote app, but that it really couldn’t be a priority since they were on a deadline to get the app out the door, and perhaps, they could add it into a future release of the product.  Here’s the thing, the buttons were already navigable via VoiceOver, and they just weren’t labeled.  This is not a difficult fix to implement, and honestly, if he had chosen to talk with us as if we were equals, we could have even understood the concern of needing to get the first release out the door before enhancing the product even with such a simple fix.  However, the tone of voice and dismissive demeanor screamed louder than words ever could that this man was going to forget that we ever had visited his booth as soon as we turned away.  The apathetic contempt for our message, especially after we were not the first to express it, is painfully disheartening, and it makes for a needlessly contentious attitude from all parties in the future.  I would rather deal with a developer who is interested, but unsure of the possibilities any day over one who is so smugly certain that it just isn’t important to consider, even though they know it would be trivially easy to implement accessibility features in their products.

iHealth’s Glucose Meter

Making a glucose meter driven by an iOS app accessible is relatively painless and free,  and with that in mind we approached iHealth Labs’ booth with hope. Once we started a conversation it turned out that neither the simplicity of the fix nor the fact that a significant portion of their target demographic is losing vision made much of an impression on the iHealth Lab. Their representatives made it very clear that they were not interested in blind or low vision customers. The worst part? Their weight tracking app actually mostly works, and the iHealth glucose meter is mostly only lacking button labels. Some days it feels like the only appropriate response is to shake people. We didn’t – but we do encourage you to do what we did and speak up for access to a device that could so easily be made to work.

Invoxia’s Phone

Invoxia’s hardware really is an elegant solution – it turns any iPhone into a fully-fledged business phone with conferencing capabilities, and it lets the user group together regular phone service, Skype and any other VoIP. The phone can be docked or connected wirelessly, and the device has the option of adding other (wireless) handsets in addition to the corded phone that is included. It is a great device, and one that works well with VoiceOver…until you get to the dialing pad. There, the buttons are unlabeled. The French company which created this system (and won an Innovation Award for it) was glad to humor us and let us play with VoiceOver, but showed no interest at all in making the achingly small fix that would be needed to make this solution blind-friendly. Excuse us while we quietly boo them; and feel free to do the same.

We do understand that the Consumer Electronics Show is a big event that keeps booths very busy; but we also found that even some of the bigger companies, and most of the smaller ones, made the time and effort to at least dignify our few questions with a real response. Many found the time to identify the appropriate contacts, even at booths with waiting lines. We thank them; and wish their colleagues shared the same spirit.

Amy Mason
Clara Van Gerven

Well, friends, geeks, our attendance at CES has come to a close. As Amy and I wend our way home, we can't but spend a little of the plane time on a last report on the show. Here are some highlights from the last day:

- The iOnRoad app: This remarkable (and prize-winning) app peaked our interest. It uses a smartphone and its camera (currently Android; an iOS app is planned for April) to provide collision warnings, to detect whether the vehicle is staying within its lane, and to flag speeding. It is easy to see where this type of technology might fit into something like the Blind Driver Challenge, as it already provides audio feedback, even when the user leaves the app. The app will also read any incoming email and SMS messages, thus keeping the driver from having to check the phone. It will be interesting to see where development takes this fascinating use of a smartphone.

- Windoro: In the category of robots, an especially exciting find is the Windoro, a window-cleaning robot. For all of us who have windows that are hard to reach, or who just hate to do it, this magnetically attached (one half inside, one half outside) little guy can be remote controlled to do the job. Really, why do it yourself when you can have a robot do it? The product is not yet available in the U.S., but we heartily hope that it will be soon. If anyone wants to distribute it, let us know!

- Headphone earmuffs: Winter is just getting going, and who wouldn't want cute, fuzzy earmuffs that double as headphones? We have become infatuated with these, and were very disappointed to find that they are not for sale in the U.S. Again, if anyone would like to sell these, let us know. It would spread joy, happiness, and earmuffs.

With that little snapshot, we'll call it quits for CES 2012. We hope we've communicated some of our nerdy joy and discoveries.

Two weary geeks,
Amy Mason
Clara Van Gerven

If geek Valhalla can involve an inordinate amount of walking and some kosher hot dogs, then today took us there. The legs hurt now, but here is some of the loot:

Carnegie Mellon’s Quality of Life Technology Center: Part of CES’s Silver Summit, this Carnegie Mellon initiative is working on a number of exciting things, one of the more salient ones is Tiramisu, their system to crowdsource bus tracking. The system lets bus travellers record (and share with other travellers) whether a bus is on time, and how full it is. The pilot is running in Pittsburgh, and is showing some good results. The center is also doing some work on facial recognition and object tracking, and are well worth keeping an eye on.

Vitaline: Still part of the Silver Summit, this subscription service ($4.95 a month) provides a simple, high contrast, large font interface for Skype, Picasa, Google news and Email; it also works as a Facebook and Twitter reader. The concept clearly works well for seniors who want to stay in touch, but who are intimidated by the complexity of much of the technology. The company is also considering adding speech to the product, which would broaden its appeal to include seniors who have lost their vision.

Silent Call: Silent Call has been making the Vibracall device for years, letting deaf-blind users know through different vibration patterns that the phone is ringing, or the doorbell, and so forth. The prototype of the new version adds a carbon monoxide alarm, weather, and a sound alert.

Clara Van Gerven

Hello again from toyland.. er, I mean Las Vegas.  We've wrapped up day 2 of CES and its continued to be an exciting adventure which has provided us with many new and interesting projects to pursue, and wonderful gadgets to dream of.

First on the list of gadgety fun, is the Allure thermostat.  Bit of a mixed bag to be honest, the tablet which acts as the control center for the temperature controls and does some double duty as a media viewer is not likely to be accessible to a blind consumer, but, and here's the part that's really exciting, it works with an iPhone app which appears to be quite pleasantly usable with VoiceOver.  As I only spent 5 minutes with the app in a crowded exhibit, I hesitate to say that it is fully VoiceOver accessible but, I can say that the buttons I pressed and controls I used, as well as the information the app was providing via it's interface were all readable using the iPad on display.  As an added bonus, the device is built to save you money as it changes the temperature as it notices you coming home by using location services on your iDevice, so when you leave work, you can fire up the app, and it will watch, and change the temp in your house accordingly.  Great energy saver, and wonderful chance to really have control over your thermostat.

The Slingbox is another little mainstream product with some fascinating capabilities via an iPhone app.  Sling allows a user to watch their home tv, as well as control it from a mobile device, or internet connected PC.  This is fun for watching tv on the go, or in another room of your house, but the fun doesn't end there.  Sling also appears to provide television listings, and can act as a capable, and fairly accessible remote control for running a standard DVR.  The sling controls seem to require a user to double-tap and hold  to get to much of their functionality, but its all labeled, and with the included tv listings, it is possible to do  some basic controlling of a DVR device.  Because the sling is just passing a video feed underneath its overlay, it won't tell you what the DVR says, but, a user can enter channels manually via a number pad, and do some educated guessing to move to the proper show and begin recording it.  All in all, TV on the go, and a partially accessible interface to the set top box makes Sling a very interesting thing.

Finally, for folks on the go, Polk audio had some very exciting headphones.  If you are like me, you are likely to have an earbud popped in one ear, if not both, throughout much of your day.  So, its a bit of a problem to hold conversations with the people around you.  The  Ultra Focus line of headphones are perfect for that scenario.  They come with a small in-line microphone, which can be switched on with the push of a button, and suddenly you are listening to the world around you through the headphones, instead of listening to music or other audio from your device.  It's a great concept that I've certainly never seen before and I'm glad to have experienced it.  I think it will have a number of uses to those of us who always have something to listen to, but still need to interact with the outside world.  If you are the active type, the Ultra Fit line provided headphones that seem to stay in place no matter what.  Polk warmed my geeky heart by proving this point with acrobats on skis, on a trampoline, who despite flips and leaps of ridiculous magnitude never once dislodged their headsets. 

Along with the acrobats, I also incidentally saw a life-size Elivs cut-out in a delightfully ridiculous golden costume, and I got my monkeys.  Woot Services, the cheeky closeout kings had flying monkeys.  What can I say? I love CES, the pageantry, the technology, and the possibilities.  See you tomorrow!

Amy Mason

Ces Day 1

As a first time attendee of CES I was thrilled by a great deal. The new shiny toys, the enthusiasm for all things technology, and the dancing... everything.  In our first day on the floor, we ran across dancing cat dolls, a human sized dancing robot, and a trio of parrots strutting their stuff.  These are not the highlights of the event, but, they certainly warm a geeky heart.

In all seriousness, though, there is a lot to warm a geek's heart at CES, and there were several products today that left me rather giddy with the possibilities.  The first of these was the Snapkeys invisible  keyboard.  It is designed to answer the question shared by blind and sighted touchscreen users alike.  "How do I type with any speed on this dratted device?"  The Snapkeys answer is a four-button keyboard, which which contains the 26 letters of the alphabet, and as you type on these four buttons, the app will determine the word you want via  a system that is similar to T9 predictive text. The user can type on only a few "keys" to represent the whole alphabet, and have the system guess the desired word.  The prototype app we saw today was impressively speedy, and because this is meant to be a product that can be used "invisibly" (hidden even from their sighted users), or in situations where it would be inconvenient to look at the phone, a major planned feature is to provide feedback via text to speech.  It along with our old friends, copy and paste, could be a possible solution to the typing conundrum for a lot of folks, like me, who love their smart phones, but don't love trying to type on them.

Éton has also created a number of exciting toys for the geek in the wild, or the eco-friendly user.  They offer solar-powered home radios with nicely tactile buttons, and the ability to run for  up to eight hours from a five hour solar charge.   However, the products which were  most exciting to Clara and I, were the emergency radio/cell-phone chargers which could be charged via solar-power or  a hand crank.  These devices would allow a user in a pinch to charge up long enough to call for help, and keep up on any pertinent information via the radio until help arrives.  They would also make great accessories for a camping trip or other outdoor excursion, though the hand crank will not provide  an efficient way to power a cell phone for more than a minute or two.

Finally, the music lover in me was delighted to discover a fairly unique set of headphones.  Zagg, known for making screen protectors, cases and power solutions for iDevices and other tablets also does audio, and today, was showcasing a line of wooden over-the-ear style headphones.  These are not headphones for wandering around town, but if you want to really listen to your music from the comfort of home, they sounded very good, and were really rather appealing to the touch and in appearance.  Zagg claimed that wood is used because it makes for beautiful and rich musical reproduction, and they did really sound quite nice, but for me, the styling was equally exciting.  They are a lot of fun, and a very unique way to enjoy the music in your life.

All in all, I am exhausted, but thrilled by the chance to visit CES and tomorrow will join Clara once again in giving you snapshots from the show floor, where I hope to add to the list of fabulous toys, tools, and dancing creatures spotted on this tech safari.  Is it wrong to hope for monkeys?  

Amy Mason

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is always an adventure, and this year it looks like one which will involve a LOT of new phones and new tablets. Given that our focus is not necessarily the same as everybody else’s, here are some of the highlights of the first day of exploring:

Emporia: This Austrian company is bringing some much needed products to the U.S. market. They produce simple, rugged phones for first-time cell phone users, typically seniors and children. That in itself is not all that unusual – the Jitterbug and Snapfon phones already provide much of that functionality. Big buttons, simple use and large displays are becoming more common. Where Emporia is different is in their overall approach – they aim for the broadest possible access to their devices. In practice, this means that some of their phones have first and second level speech navigation, with plans for more comprehensive speech. The company also plans to add some more advanced functions, such as simple navigation, to their phones. With this implemented, the user could have some of the snazzier features of something like Siri on the iPhone, without having to navigate a complex interface – all that would be needed is saying “take me home.”

No carrier has been established for the phone, but the U.S. release is expected in May, and if full speech access happens anytime soon, these phones will be a very welcome addition to a market short on simple but fully accessible phones.

Makerbot: The Access Technology monkeys are always filled with joy by Makerbot. Their affordable 3D printers (about $1750 for the Replicator) are open source and produce remarkably detailed models for the money. For anybody looking to do great tactile models on a budget, and who can design in 3D, Makerbot is a real ally.

Techko Maid: Techko was showing their automated mop and their vacuum. Both had simple, easy to label tactile controls with sound feedback – and who wouldn’t want their vacuuming done by someone (or something) else?

Clara Van Gerven