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CNet's iPhone 3G S Review Discusses Accessibility

17 June, 2009 @ 12:09 pm by Lioncourt

In CNet’s iPhone 3G S review, they devote a section to accessibility, including VoiceOver, Zoom, and Black on White features.

Though they acknowledge that they are not visually impaired users, they tried and found VoiceOver‘s capabilities to be "impressive", and give a little more insight on how this revolutionary new screen reader will work. We highly recommend this review.

This continues to show what a striking job Apple is doing in making the mainstream aware of accessibility, something which can only benefit VoiceOver users in the long run.

Posted in Apple Inc., VoiceOver, iPhone | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “CNet's iPhone 3G S Review Discusses Accessibility”

  1. bertp001 asserted:

    I read this CNET review. It was very helpful. Not everyone uses VoiceOver, but instead use Zoom in combination with White-On-Black. Wow! The new iPhone 3GS has Zoom and White-On-Black support as well. Plus, I like the landscape keyboard being extended to other applications. So, I might wait awhile for a cheaper price, but I know it is doable for me. Cheers! I’m pleased about what I read about VoiceOver as well. Cheers again!

    June 17th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
  2. bertp001 commented:

    Some additional comments. First, the capabilities of the processor and the random access memory (not flash memory for photos and songs) in the iPhone 3G S provides support for VoiceOver, Zoom, White-On-Black, and Voice Control. The less capable iPhone 3G and iPod Touch devices do not support these software features. Second, both the iPhone and iPod Touch have iPhone 3.0 software, an adaptation of Mac OS X Cocoa frameworks software. Third, it seems reasonable to expect that future models of the iPhone and iPod Touch with more capable processors and more random access memory will support the accessibility features now available in the iPhone 3G S. Fourth, the iPhone 3.0 software development kit (SDK) supports accessibility user interface elements (objects) in a manner similar to the Mac OS X Cocoa frameworks, keeping in mind the adaptation needed for handheld devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. Fifth, third-party developers of applications for the iPhone (and maybe the iPod Touch in the future) will have accessibility support available for their use built-in to the iPhone 3.0 SDK. This means that the third-party applications can have accessibility support automatically. These developers may need do some additional work to support unique aspects of their applications, especially like hardware attachments to the IPhone 3G S. Sixth, multi-touch trackpad support on recent Apple laptops are using an adaptation of multi-touch technologies that originated with the iPhone. Seventh, from an architectural point of view, some of Apple’s accessibility technologies, in my opinion, are now cross-platform. The list now includes at minimum VoiceOver, Zoom, White-On-Black, multi-touch trackpad, and maybe Voice Control (meaning a speech recognition technology). In the future, this list could be extended because the Macintosh line of computers and the iPhone and iPod Touch handheld computers have an underlying common software base, although with adaptations and limitations. Disclaimer: I do not have special access to Apple software. I can and do look at the Apple Developer Connection manuals at the base level, which is free to everyone.

    June 18th, 2009 at 9:16 am
  3. bertp001 replied:

    I read an Apple support article that links Voice Control and VoiceOver with the words “through the accessibility feature of VoiceOver”. Then it lists the supported languages in Voice Control, and in a second list, the supported languages in VoiceOver. I recall that VoiceOver Kit for the iPod Shuffle provides multi-language support in iTunes, presumably using some of the same accessibility technologies. Here is the link to the article:

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3562

    June 19th, 2009 at 8:26 am

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