Archive for March, 2009

Little by little, we find these individual steps toward accessibility of Apple’s iPhone for the blind and visually impaired. This time, it comes in the form of an iPhone application called Talking Email Keyboard for iPhone from G.P. Imports. The software announces each key you type on the iPhone in a clear and understandable voice, [...]

Yesterday, in a brief post on Amazon’s Kindle Blog, the Kindle development team notes that they’ve received a great deal of feedback from visually impaired readers, and that they are working to make the Kindle more accessible in the future. Specifically, the post mentions adding speech feedback to the navigation system of the device. While [...]

We’ve published a new editorial piece on the new third-generation iPod Shuffle, its VoiceOver implementation, and what all this could potentially mean for the future of other Apple products. You can read the editorial here.

We thought our readers would like to hear samples of the new iPod Shuffle speaking in the various supported languages. On this Apple.com iPod Shuffle with VoiceOver page you can do just that. We are extremely impressed with the quality of the voices and are hopeful that Apple will include multi-lingual text-to-speech features in the [...]

Apple announced an "advanced preview" event scheduled on 17/March/2009 that will focus on version 3.0 of the iPhone software. The invitations, sent to select members of the media, do not detail any specifics of what will be included in the next generation of the iPhone OS, but seems to indicate clearly that those features will [...]

Our initial look through iTunes 8.1 with VoiceOver has revealed a number of accessibility enhancements and fixes, in addition to a marked improvement in performance. Some things to note are: At the top of the main window there is now an "LCD" scroll area, which provides information and controls related to the currently playing song. [...]

Tonight, Apple has release version 8.1 of their popular iTunes music jukebox and media management application. Apple release notes specifically mention accessibility. iTunes 8.1 claims to be faster and more responsive. The release notes state that you’ll enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or [...]

We were able to confirm with APple that the new iPod Shuffle with the VoiceOver feature does not require third-party voices to make use of the fourteen different languages. The process used to generate the speech is different, though we do not have specifics on what the new process is. Apple confirms, however, that no [...]

Today, Apple Inc. introduced the all-new iPod shuffle, the world’s smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model. The new Shuffle includes text-to-speech capabilities, making it the first music player with speaking features aimed at the general public. The new VoiceOver feature enables iPod shuffle to speak your song titles, [...]

Today, M Cubed Software published a lengthy post on their company blog entitled "The Accessible Mac." In this piece, the man behind M Cubed, Martin Pilkington, discusses the challenges, difficulties, and practices involved in developing more accessible Mac software. As a challenge to his fellow developers, Mr. Pilkington pledges "By the end of 2009, all [...]

Digidesign, makers of the popular ProTools software package, has updated their progress where regards conforming to Mac OS X’s accessibility standards, and giving access to ProTools to VoiceOver users. The update was posted to the ProTools Petition web site. In essence, they’ve announced the completion of most of their UI and graphics rendering code rewrite, [...]

Today, Apple updated its entirely line of desktop Macs with significant changes, including the long anticipated overhaul of the company’s popular Mac Mini, its consumer iMac offerings, and its pro-level Mac Pro desktops. The Mac Mini has seen some of the most radical changes, given that that model had not been updated in nearly two [...]