Apple is reportedly set to start selling new accessibility-related peripherals and accessories for both Mac and iOS in its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores as well as online.
The accessories, which are reported to be going on sale in the first quarter of calendar year 2016, are designed to help users with disabilities to better engage with Apple products.
If you’ve called out, “Hey Siri” to your iPhone before, you know the joy of this Star Trek-style technology. You don’t even need to hold the Home button down. Sure, your iPhone needs to be plugged in, but it’s a pretty neat party trick.
Excitingly, you can do something similar on your Mac: activating dictation with a voice command. The next time you get a great idea and need to document it, you can just call to your Mac and dictate it right then. No pen, no paper, no walking all the way to your keyboard.
Here’s how.
Siri is a handy virtual assistant. It’ll fetch information for you, send texts, and even tell you a joke if you ask it repeatedly (Siri is a little shy at first). But did you know that it can also narrate e-books?
If you can’t get enough of that lovely robot voice, here’s how to make your favorite literature come to synthetic life.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple 52 patents today, including a notable patent for a new hearing aid technology that would make the iPhone an even better device for the hearing impaired.
The devil is in the details: Tim Cook said that Apple’s commitment to accessibility is so complete that the Cupertino company never looks at the return on investment but considers it “just and right.”
That’s a pretty different picture than the one venerable news org Reuters painted by giving a quick chop to his comments in a piece about blind app users seeking more accessibility from Apple.
As more and more smartphones are released with all new features, it’s not difficult for the average iPhone user to become slightly envious. In today’s how-to, learn how to use one of the iPhone’s coolest features that isn’t so commonly known. Click the home button, turn your volume up and down, and so much more by simply following these steps and moving your head.
Take a look at the video to see what you need to do.
Imagine slapping your nightstand to snooze your iPhone’s alarm. Or rapping on the kitchen countertop to flip recipe book pages so your flour-coated hands don’t mess up the iPad’s screen. These scenarios could soon be real: XTouch is a new technology that essentially turns any solid surface into an input device for an iPad or iPhone.
iOS 7 changed the visual palette on our favorite Apple mobile devices, and it may not be to everyone’s liking.
If you want to tone it down a bit, consider darkening the colors up, and reducing the white point on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to make things just a little bit less intense.
iOS 7 came with a new look and feel, including the font used across the system. It’s a little thinner than earlier versions of iOS, so it might be a bit tricky to read, especially on the small iPhone screen.
You can always increase the size of text dynamically, but if you just need a little boost to the readability, try enabling Bold Text.
Fact: I’m currently waiting for my lazy optician to supply my first pair of “old-man glasses” aka specs with progressive lenses. In young-folk terms that means I get glasses which let me read without holding the iPad at arms-length.
In the meantime, I have boosted the size of my iPad’s text, but on the Mac I might give Zoom It a spin. It’s a loupe app that magnifies whatever is under it’s little virtual glass eye, and it’s now compatible with Mavericks.
My ten year old son has gotten significantly into Civilization V lately, and we bought him his own copy on sale at Steam yesterday. So, he was at his mom’s house, and I was at my house, and he wanted me to invite him to a private match.
In order to do so, I had to enable Assistive Devices, just like Steam has always asked players to do to help enable the overlays and multiplayer invite system. So I headed to the System Preferences, to the Accessibility preference pane, like always. Alas, there is no place there to click the familiar “Enable access for assistive devices” button. I looked high, I looked low. No dice. No enabling access for assistive devices, either.
So then I turned to Google.
New accessibility options about in iOS 7 beta, helping folks of all abilities access and use their iOS devices more effectively and efficiently. The Physical & Motor section of the accessibility options now allow folks with motor and other physical disabilities to use a switch for visual and auditory scanning options, emulate various gestures with assistive touch (introduced in iOS 6), adjust the Home click speed, and, as the headline above notes, set where the incoming calls are sent.
Want to have your incoming calls go automatically to a headset or speaker? It’s relatively easy in iOS 7 beta.
While the style of iOS has been described as flatter, that’s typically more true of the icon design and some of the panel and font combinations than the entire operating system.
In fact, there’s a subtle parallax effect that can be seen pretty easily behind the home page icons. I use the space and stars wallpaper, and when I tilt or twist my iPhone 5 running iOS 7, I can definitely see things almost move, or change perspective.
It’s a slick visual feature, but if it drives you nuts, or you feel icky with it in the background there, here’s how to disable it.
Ever wish that you could change the font size in your iPad web browser? Well, with NaviDys you totally can. You can also switch up the font, and adjust letter spacing and line spacing. What is this browser? A type nerd’s dream? Well, maybe, but really it’s designed to make things easier for the visually impaired.
Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS hasn’t always been as accessible as Apple’s own iBooks, but that changed today with a new update that adds VoiceOver support, among other new accessibility features. Kindle will now read aloud over 1.8 million books, allowing those who are visually impaired to kick back and listen to their favorite titles.
Accessibility is a priority to the designers and engineers at Apple. They have built some amazing software right into each operating system, from OS X to iOS, all for no etra charge and no need to add extra programs on to be able to use the products if you have a visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive disability.
But if you don’t have a disability (yet–we’re all just a lucky step or two away), you can take advantage of these systems for yourself or other family members.
Here are five different ways to do just that.
Assisted Touch is an accessibility feature for iOS, usable on any iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, that recreates the hardware buttons and other gestures that someone with a motor disability might need to use. It also lets other folks use the Home, volume, screen lock, wake/sleep, and multitasking bar without using any of the hardware buttons themselves.
This can be pretty handy if you have the device in a case or holder of some type where accessing the buttons is tricky or impossible, like a home-made picture frame, for example.
Here’s how to activate this useful feature.
Another accessibility option like VoiceOver and Zoom, originally created for those with visual impairments, is Speak Selection. There are times when you may not want to turn the entire VoiceOver system on, having Siri read every button and icon on the screen, but would prefer to just have your iOS device speak text you’ve highlighted on the screen.
As an added bonus for those with print or learning disabilities, you can have your iPhone or iPad highlight the words as it speaks them for true bi-modal output (seeing and hearing the words at the same time).
Here’s how to make this happen.
Another accessibility option built right into iOS is Zoom. Like VoiceOver, it was originally created to help those with a visual impairment access their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Zoom is made for those who need things magnified on the screen, and it can be pretty darn helpful for those of us who may not have a specific visual disability. If your iPhone is zoomed in on lock screen and you’re unsure how to fix it, there are simple ways to adjust this setting.
Some apps zoom in within the app itself, like Maps, Safari, or Google Earth. That doesn’t help if you need the buttons and iOS controls magnified, or the text in apps like Mail, right?
Here’s how to set things up with Zoom.
If you’ve read these tips for any length of time, you’ll know that there are plenty of settings on your iPhone that were designed first and foremost for people with various disabilities, but that can be extremely useful for those of us who don’t have a specific disability, as well.
Flash-powered alerts are one of these features; for those with hearing impairments, using the iPhone’s flash to let them know when a notification alert has happened is critical, as they may not be able to hear an audible alert, nor the telltale buzz sound the iPhone makes when set on a flat surface.
If you want to use this same notification feature yourself, perhaps when having an audible alert, vibration or otherwise, isn’t viable, here’s what to do.
You ever do that thing where you have to move your mouse around, jiggling the little thing just to find the dang cursor? I do it all the time these days, with my smaller screen Macbook Air and the Mac Mini that’s connected to the HDTV across the room from me, since there’s so much going on onscreen that I often lose track of it.
There’s an easy way to fix this problem, and it involves the Accessibility options that come built right in to your Mac OS X system.
If you were used to inverting the colors on your Mac with a Control-Command-Option-8, you might have noticed that this has changed in OS X Mountain Lion. The older keyboard shortcut doesn’t work any more, and has been replaced with the less simple Command-Option-F5 shortcut to bring up an Accessibility Options dialog box. You have to then manually click the checkbox next to Invert Display Colors.
Here’s how to get the old shortcut back, for a quick invert.
Just because you’re blind and can’t see what you’re taking pictures of does not mean you can’t use Instagram. Thanks to the Accessibility features in iOS, Tommy Edison is able to use an iPhone and take pictures through Instagram to give his followers a view of his world, even though he can’t see.
The process is mind blowing and seems incredibly tedious, but it’s awesome that even blind people can connect with people through Instagram. And you know what, Tommy’s photos aren’t all that bad compared to some of my friends’.
Source: Tommy Edison
Via: Kottke
Ever wanted to check your email in your car, or while cooking? Running? Eating? Now you can with Talkler, a new app from Talkler Labs LLC. Talkler is out now in the App Store, ready to get you checking and sending email without using your hands or even your eyes.
All you need to do once you’ve installed the app is say, “Hey Talkler,” and you’ll be able to listen to your email, and reply using your voice. You can navigate through all your email with your voice, as well.
Good news, everyone! Barnes & Noble’s Nook app for iOS has just been updated with support for Apple’s fantastic VoiceOVer accessibility feature, as well as the zoom functionality. This brings the Nook iOS app up to parity with iBooks, the only other iOS e-reader app that can be used by folks with a visual impairment or learning disability to have books read out loud.
Zoom lets those with low vision see the screen at much higher magnification than just increasing the font size, allowing them to use the buttons, icons, and other visual interface systems that they can’t see at the standard size on the iPad or iPhone screen.