• Guess what? @DHSHolly and @DhsDarcy just added 17 more apps to the accessible iphone apps list http://tinyurl.com/mxlzqf #iphoneaccess # 24 hours ago
• News: Apple Posts iPhone Manual for VoiceOver Users http://www.lioncourt.com/?p=443 # 2009/07/02
• News: The MacCast Podcast Spotlights iPhone Accessibility http://www.lioncourt.com/?p=441 # 2009/07/02
• @grtdane We have not received any info that MacSpeech is no longer accessible with VoiceOver, but do not have a copy to test, either. # 2009/07/01
• News: MacSpeech Dictate Legal Ships http://www.lioncourt.com/?p=439 # 2009/07/01

The Mac-cessibility Podcast has been reborn as a round table discussion show, dealing with all things related to accessibility of Apple products. The show is planned to have a new episode once a month, starting with this week’s episode entitled "Reboot".

Topics covered:

• Introduce this month’s panelists, including Holly Anderson, Darcy Burnard, Cara Quinn, Steve Sawczyn, and Josh de Lioncourt.
• iPod Shuffle 3G, its multi-lingual support, and the possibility of more TTS languages coming in VoiceOver.
• iTunes 8.1 accessibility changes.
• iPhone software 3.0. Is accessibility coming? Are we getting closer?
• The Author’s GUild’s objection to text-to-speech in Amazon’s Kindle 2. What does that mean for TTS in other portable devices like iPods or a possible future accessible iPhone?
• Safari 4.0 public beta accessibility changes.
• General discussion of the state of accessibility on the Mac platform. How is the Mac perceived by non-Mac users of the visually impaired community? Is the perception improving? What myths are still persisting? Has Apple’s participation at CSUN helped?

Other resources and show notes:

• You can contact the Author’s Guild regarding their stance on text-to-speech on Amazon’s Kindle 2 from this page.
• Holly’s pick – Checkbook Pro from Splasm.com
• Darcy’s pick – Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich.com
• Josh’s pick – www.GoodReads.com
• Cara’s pick – SyncMate from Eltima.com
• Steve’s pick – The Unarchiver

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 well. Users can even choose from the various templates included with the products, each of which is labelled with helpful descriptions.

We believe that there will be a learning curve for those used to creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in Windows with Microsoft Office, but at this time, it appears that iWork ‘09 is fully accessible.

Once again, we’d like to thank Apple for their commitment to accessibility.

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 iWork files over the Internet, and appears to be relatively accessible.

We will update further when we know more on the accessibility of these products.

We contacted Apple Accessibility about the access issues with IWork and ILife ‘08. The response was brief but encouraging. Apple points out the dramatic improvements in accessibility with the IWork ‘08 suite in particular, but is aware of the problems and is working to improve access in these products. Garage Band accessibility, according to them, is comparable to that in the previous version. We will report more when we have it.