Archive for January, 2009

Today, Icon Factory released version 3.2 of their tremendously popular Twitter client, Twitterific. The new version boasts improved accessibility, and our testing of the software show that it now appears to be entirely accessible with VoiceOver. The application displays tweets and even direct messages, designating the latter with a "D" before the user’s [...]

When Apple announced that their iTunes Store would be moving to DRM-free, 256KBPS tracks, they also began offering the option to upgrade your existing library. Unfortunately, you had to upgrade everything you’d ever bought, all at once. This could prove to be a very expensive proposition for those who had purchased large amounts [...]

The Washington University’s Accessibility Interaction and MObility Group (AIM Group) has demonstrated a technique for how the Apple iPhone could be made accessible to users who are blind or visually impaired. You can see a remarkable video demonstrating this technique by clicking the YouTube.com link.
This is a very exciting advancement that shows the possibilities. [...]

Apple Inc. announced today that iLife ‘09 will begin shipping tomorrow, 27/January/2009. The suite of multimedia applications such as the popular iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, and others was first announced at MacWOrld Expo earlier this month, and will come pre-installed on all new Macs. For those upgrading to the new iLife on your existing [...]

Continuing their welcome about-face where regards Apple and the accessibility of their products, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) have published an article in the January 2009 issue of AccessWorld, reviewing the iPod Nano 4G, iTunes 8 for both Mac and Windows, and the I-Tell device.
Once again, this review by Darren Burton provides a [...]

This week, Skype released a public beta of their popular VOIP/chat software for the Mac. Among other new features and fixes, VoiceOver users will find improved accessibility throughout the program, including more labelled controls.
While still not perfect, it is nice to see improvements being made. The software continues to be easily used by [...]

The new iWork ‘09, which Apple released today, sports a slew of new features, but the most impressive to VoiceOver users will be its accessibility.
Apple’s come through for visually impaired users once again. This powerful productivity suite has been beautifully set up to work well with VoiceOver. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all work [...]

The biggest news at this morning’s Apple keynote presentation at MacWorld Expo 2009 was easily surrounding iTunes, and is also the news that will be of the most interest to our visually impaired readers.
Starting today, a staggering eight million songs in the iTunes Music Store will be made available DRM-Free, with the remainder of the [...]

Apple announced the awaited update to it’s 17-inch MacBook Pro notebook computer. The new model includes the same unibody aluminum design as the rest of the MacBook line, the same glass trackpad, up to 8GB of memory, both hard drive and SSD drive options, and extended battery life. The new model is the [...]

Today, Apple announced updates to their iWork and iLife application suites. The new features are certainly impressive, and incremental, but we are uncertain at this time whether or not any accessibility enhancements are part of these updates.
Additionally, iWork.com became a public beta today. This suite of browser-based applications allows users to collaborate on [...]