Accessible Apple: iPad and iPhone for the visually impaired

Apple have proved that technology can successfully be accessible to people with low vision.  The new iPad and the iPhone (and iPod Touch) have accessibilty features that other manufacturers should take note of.  How many comparable products have a screen readers built in?  For no extra cost?  The iPod Nano includes spoken menus and even the iTunes Store and iTunes U are set up to be accessible to screen readers.

The iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch features:

• VoiceOver: Very effective voice over facilty which lets you know exactly what you are doing on the touch screen, including screen reading and helping you type.  Easy access to contacts, music in iPod mode etc and even web browing is ade easy.  Everything you touch is spoken to you and only selected when you double tap or keep your finger held on the item and tap and lift a second finger.  Very intuitive..
• Zoom mode: Although many applications let you zoon into certain items, in zoom mode you can use a pinch gesture to zoom in and out the entire screen.  Or you can simply tap three fingers for an instant zoom in and dragging the three fingers will adjust the magnification.  Once zoomed in you can scroll around the screen.
• White on black: If you prefer a high contrast view you can reverse the screen mode to display everything in white on black.
• Giant fonts: You can set the fonts for things like e-mail to larger sizes for easier readability.

And many second party developers are also creating voice commands in their applications, such as being able to search with voice commands in the Google search engine.

Links:

• A post on the American Federation for the Blind blog talks about the "first Impressions of the Apple iPad from a Blind User  
• and read "why the iPhone 3GS made this Visually Impaired girl happy" from the Action for Blind People site. 

• UPDATE:  Another blog entry from Forbes.com: Apple's iPad Brings Easy Reading to the Blind 
• Press release from the NFB: National Federation of the Blind Commends Apple for Including VoiceOver on iPad 28/01/10 
• A review from a totally blind reviewer from Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind  

Now, Apple, if you are reading I would be happy to review an iPad when it finally reaches the UK!