‘VoiceOver’ Archives

After years of rumors, speculation, and legend, Apple has finally lifted the veil over its slate, (or tablet in you prefer), computing device. It’s called iPad, and it’s quite impressive.
The iPad runs an expanded version of the iPhone OS, and therefore includes the VoiceOver screen reader, according to its product page. It looks similar to [...]

In this special edition episode of the Mac-cessibility Podcast, we interview Slau Halatyn who spearheaded the ProTools Petition, which requested that Digidesign implement Apple’s accessibility standards into its ProTools product, an application for professional-level audio production.
Slau had a chance to visit Digidesign in San Francisco, and got to experience first hand the tremendous progress being [...]

Yesterday, the Web Accessibility in Mind organization, (WebAIM), a group focusing on improving accessibility of web content for persons with disabilities, published the results of their Screen Reader User Survey, a follow up to a similar survey conducted earlier this year.
VoiceOver was shown in the survey to have a fifty percent increase in users reporting [...]

Yesterday, VMWare Fusion version 3 was released for Mac OS X. This version of the popular desktop virtualization software, which allows Mac users to simultaneously run other operating systems alongside OS X, boasts a variety of new features, including Windows 7 support, and has been optimized for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Unlike its competition, [...]

Canadian Television (CTV) is reporting a story that a visually impaired customer was told by a Rogers Communications representative that he would need to pay an additional charge for the iPhone’s VoiceOver functionality, which in reality is included free on every iPhone 3GS.
Rogers Communications Inc. has held the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in [...]

The American Foundation of the Blind (AFB) recently offered a

We’ve received confirmation that the new MagicMouse, a multi-touch mouse released by Apple today as part of its desktop Mac revamp, most unfortunately does not support VoiceOver’s new gesture-based input technology. Users who need or want this functionality will find it only available on Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, and iPhone devices.
While this is [...]

Last June, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) published a highly flawed and controversial review of VoiceOver and the accessibility of the Mac OS X platform. Shortly thereafter, we published an editorial discussing the article and the NFB’s "response" to criticism of the review.
Steve Sawczyn of ATMaine.com and our very own Mac-cessibility Round [...]

This week, Adobe Systems Inc. announced a feature of Flash Professional CS5 which compiles Flash applications into native iPhone ones. According to their FAQ, applications developed in this way are "native" iPhone executables, which would suggest a high likelihood of accessibility in apps which do not rely heavily on graphical interaction. Video games, for instance, [...]

An update has been posted at ProToolsPetition.org regarding Digidesign’s continuing efforts to provide accessibility in its ProTools professional recording software to VOiceOver users. Slau Halatyn was invited to see their progress first-hand, and below is a copy of his report on the experience.

At the end of August, I received an email message from David [...]

Apple has posted a video showcasing the VoiceOver screen reader on the iPhone 3GS.
Click here to watch or if you’d like to read more about iPhone 3GS access features, Click here
Enjoy!

In this special joint episode of the Screenless Switchers and Mac-cessibility Round Table podcasts, our knights discuss the Apple media event on 9/9/09, just after it ended, including VoiceOver on the new iPod Touch, the new iPod models, and iPhone OS 3.1. (We’ll discuss the accessibility changes in the new iPhone OS in depth on [...]