Project RAY smartphone for the visually impaired

Very good idea. Some of the features they develop may be useful for everyone else too....
 
This is not a first and while it might be a good thing, I think it would have been better for them just to pump their resorces in to further developing and bettering the current android screen reader. Yes for those of you who don't know, android already has a built in screen reader called talkback. iOS and mac OS also has one called voiceover.
I'm a blind person myself and use my phones and computers with the help of screen readers, I also do some testing and blogging if I'm able to get hold of phones www.nickusdevos.blogspot.com just hard to get hold of review devices.
I currently use a Nokia E7 and 701 with third party screen readers I had to buy for R2000 but Nokia released a free version of basically the same screen reader about a week ago for symbian phones.
Apple leads the way with their excelent intigrated voiceover screen reader on all their devices. If you have a Apple device, just tripple tap your home button and it should come on, if not go to settings/general/accessibility and switch voiceover on. To switch off again just tripple tap home or switch it off in settings. Apples screen reader esentially means that I'm able to take anybodies iOS device or sit in front of any mac and I'll be able to switch on voiceover and use it.
Android has talkback which is also intigrated but still behind Apples voiceover in terms of funktionality. In 2.3 gingerbread some funktions was just useable, it improved quite a lot in version 4 ICS and had massive updates in 4.1 JB. A android device running JB is now very useable but it's still behind apples voiceover though. you can also find it in settings/accessibility and switch on talkback.
For the reason of accessibility I want a iPhone and for audio production I want a mac but currently I'm stuck with Nokia symbian and windows pc.
 
Oh sorry forgot to say, where mac has the free intigrated screen reader, on windows a 3rd party screen reader costs around R10000 so it basically costs me R10000 more just to be able to use a pc.
 
I also have a buddy who's blind and he also uses an iPhone for the same reasons bigboy529 mentioned. I almost fell of my chair the first time he mentioned he wants to get an iPhone - but after he showed me the Voice Over features on my iPad I could understand it perfectly!

Made me think quite a bit on how I design software (i.e. tables in HTML for layout purposes becomes a total nightmare to a screen reader).

Shame his company forces him to use a Windows PC at work.

One thing about this Android - why give it a screen at all? Save the costs and implement a touch pad only!
 
Windows with the R10000 screen reader is actually better with productivity apps like MS office than the equivalents on mac using voiceover so it's probably better that he uses windows for work.
If you are considering screen reader users in your development, take a bow sir and pour yourself a stiff Bells. If only more developers did it, life would be so much easyer for us. Worse is, it's actually so easy, both apple and android gives developers outlines for screen reader development. Unfortunatly there's this myth that you can't design a beutiful visually appealing app which is also accessible to screen reader users. This is simply not true, accessibility is just about propper structures and propper labling of buttons etc.
 
What app do you use on Windows - Jaws?

I don't think he has ever worked on a Mac before (only the iPhone), so he might have made certain assumptions about it.

He's also the first person I've ever met who:
- codes C# without using the Visual Studio IDE
- can read Excel graphs without seeing them

Please continue updating your blog - it covers an interesting space in the gadget/tech world!
 
Yes I use the jaws screen reader and as said it's around R10000, there's also a very good free alternative called NVDA also for windows, it has about 90% the funtionality of jaws.
The Apple text editing etc apps not being properly accessible is actually very disappointing, it's apples own apps so they should just follow their own accessibility development guide lines to make it accessible.
Thank you, a lot of people find my blog very helpfull but my main problem at this stage apart from time is access to devices. It's very hard getting review devices from PR companies in SA if you're not working for a big website or paper, I got a device here and there from samsung in the past with a lot of begging, but wish I could get some Apple devices.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X