Accessible Apple: part two -My Experience Using the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad

Hats off to Apple. They have set the bar for accessiblre computing dwith their range of products that have features for the bind and visually impaired as standard, with no extras or add-ons needed.

I am writing this post on my new iPad 2 using the built in VoiceOver feature, which is so easy to use and intuitive, you wonder why all computing can't be this easy.

After graduating from an iPod Touch (bought as a present to myself when I was no longer able to drive and had to sell my car) to the iPhone (thanks to some fine people at t-mobile and Orange) I eventually got myself an iPad 2 (with help from a grant from the amazing charity, the Elizebeth Finn Trust). All three devices work in a very similar way, so if you can use one you can use the others.

There is a lot of crossover between what each device can do. All have a iPod feature for playing music. Essentially the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the mobile phone/gps. It's a bit simplified to say so but the iPad uses much of the same fuctionality of the Touch but in a bigger format and a few more bells and whistles.


There is much sceptisism about how blind people can possibly use a touchscrren device with minimal physical buttons. All three devices only have on/off/sleep, volime/mute and home buttons; everything else is controlled by the touchscreen. But using them with VoiceOver is a breeze. By holding your finger over an item the device reads out in a clear voice what is below your finger. Using a few simple gestures.you can interact with whatever is on screen: selecting, typing, navigating around etc.

My experience of using the iDevices.
(i will refer to the iPad but these apply to the iPhone and Touch too, unless otherwiae stated)

Like most screen readers, VoiceOver can sometimes throw up some strange pronunciations of words, especially names or words that are spelt the same but said differently depending on context (such as read or live). Generally the voice is very impressive. All Apple apps are compatible with VoiceOver but the biggest problem is third party apps not always being accessible due to being visual and not set up to use with VoiceOver. Still, there are so many apps available to download that you won't fail to find something useful or accessible.

Navigation on the iPad is so much easier and quicker, thanks to the touchscreen. Whilst using a screenreader on a stadard computer you have to skip through each item in sequesnce, like a list, until you find what you need. On the iPad you can quickly find what you're after by touching the screen or scrolling to the right page. Once you've found it and it's been read out to you, with a quick sideways swipe on the screen you can skip to the next (or previous) item. Reading emails or messages, surfing the net or through e-books and apps is simplified and instinctive. Apple really have nailed user friendky interfaces that can be used with minimum fuss and staight out of the box (although accessible settings do need to be turned on).


Entering and editting text

I found the default settings for typing a little tricky. To type you need to hold a finger over the virtual keyboard until VoiceOver reads the letter you want. Then double tapping anywhere on the screen will input the last letter read out. Editting was even more difficult, having to double tap and hold a finger on the screen until a warning sound and then move the finger around until you find what you want to change or the pop up menu item you want to select. This is difficult enough on the smaller screens of the iPhone and Touch for sighted people, let alone soneone who can't see the screen.

However changing the typing and editting method really helped. Placing two fingers on screen and rotating them like a dial a number of options are available. Setting the typing mode to "touch typig" means that rather than the double tap, just holding your fingers over the letter and lifting off the screen will type in what you want (which is essentially how it works with VoiceOver off). Also the two finger rotation also accessees the edit mode, meaning you can select or jump between characters, words or line. This is also handy for checking spelling if VoiceOver reads back something you've typed strangly.


For a detailed list of VoiceOver features visit Apple's official guide by clicking here.



Accessible Apps

The third part for "accessible Apple" on this blog will have to be about useful and accessible apps I have discovered as I become more experienced using the iPad. If you know of any or even some you think need improvement on the accessible front, please add a comment below.

Just to get you started I'll mention a few here:

- Dragon Dictation: a speak to text app where you talk into your device and the app will type the text for you, which you can then copy and paste into messages, emails etc. This program speech recognition is excellent (i'm not sure how it handles regional
accents).
One issues I initially had with Dictation was that it would also type in the VoiceOver spoken commands until I found you can turn off VoiceOver quickly by double tapping the screen with three fingers, turning it back on by repeating the double tap when you're done). Triple tapping three fingrrs turns off the screen completely, saving battery power for totally blind people.

Google Voice Search/Dragon Search: these apps allow you to search the internet by speaking you request and the voice recodnition software deciphering what you want and displaying a list of results.

NOTE: for apps using voice recognition, on the iPod Touch you are recrequired to use the microphone on the headphones supplied, as the Touch doesn't have an internal microphone.

- Image To Speech: this app uses the camera to capture a picture and read back any text in the image. Though a bit hit and miss this app has amazing potential. Obviosly having some useful sight helps, so you know where you're pointing the camera. It stuggles if the font used isn't quite simple or the text isn't on a flat surface but results on large clear signs (for example) are quite impressive.


this blog post is a follow up to. accessible Apple - iPad and the iPhone for the visually impaired -click here to read

More to come.