• The iPod shuffle models have been physically redesigned, but still include VoiceOver navigation of their playlists and content. Buttons have been re-introduced. Pricing begins at $49 USD.
• The iPod nano lineup has been drastically redesigned with a 3X3 CM touch screen and iOS-like interface. It has dropped video and camera support, but still includes VoiceOver. The nanos are available in 8 and 16GB capacities for $149 or $179 USD, respectively.
• The iPod touch has been updated to a slimmer form factor, sports a retina display like its iPhone 4 cousin, includes front and rear cameras, will support FaceTime video calling, and will run iOS 4.1. Prices range from $229 for 8GB to $399 for 64GB capacities.
• iTunes version 10 will be released today, with support for Apple’s new music-based social networking platform, Ping. It will be available as a free download for both Mac and Windows users.
• iOS 4.1 will be released to users next week, and includes many bug fixes, including those for reported iPhone 4 proximity sensor issues, BlueTooth connectivity, and more. 4.1 includes GameCenter support for competing with friends on iOS games. The update will be available as a free update via iTunes.
• iOS 4.2, the next successive update after next week’s 4.1, will arrive in November. The update will bring parity across all iOS devices. Features such as multi-tasking, folders, etc, will finally be available on the iPad. The update will also provide wireless printing from iOS devices for the first time. iOS 4.2 will be a free update for all iOS 4 capable devices, including the iPad.
• The second generation AppleTV has been entirely redesigned from the ground up. It includes a much smaller form factor, support for Netflix streaming, and iTunes rentals. Episodes of television series will be offered for $.99 USD to rent on the device. Video, audio, and photographic content can be streamed directly to the AppleTV from other iOS devices, as well as from iTunes on your Mac or PC. Will the Apple TV include VOiceOver support? We don’t know for sure. When we asked Apple Accessibility, they said they could not comment on features for products that are not yet shipping. This deflection gives us hope. The AppleTV will be priced at $99 USD.

?Dallas, Texas August 19, 2010

Digital Miracles, L. L. C., announced today that washable audio labels are now available for sale on its website.  The labels are read by the Digit-Eyes app for the iPhone and enable people without vision to permanently label clothing and to record detailed information about the garment that is played back when they scan the label again with the app on their iPhone.

The company announced that it also now offers pre-printed audio labels as a convenience for customers who don‚t have access to a printer or who just prefer that someone else do the printing.

“Our customers let us know that identifying clothing is one of their most important labeling needs,” reports Nancy Miracle, President. “With the introduction of our soft, washable, bleachable and dryable labels, laundry becomes a snap and confusion in the closet a thing of the past.  A number of our customers also told us that they don‚t have access to a printer or simply prefer the convenience of buying pre-printed labels.  Now, we have both types of labels available for sale.”

The standard self-adhesive QR (Quick Response) Digit-Eyes barcode labels are perfect for temporary labels, or labeling items that will stay dry such as folders, CDs, and containers. The sturdy washable QR Digit-Eyes barcode labels were specifically created for garments and can be permanently attached to clothing.

“I‚ve been waiting for these, too,” says Davey Hulse, VP of Marketing.  „Ever since I heard about the Digit-Eyes concept and got my iPhone, I‚ve been chomping at the bit to get these labels figured out. I can‚t wait to grab my iPhone and my clothes and ask my wife to help me record audio notes about them. No more chasing around in the morning, asking: ŒDoes this shirt go with these pants?‚ From now on it‚s going to be really cool to be independent!‰

More information:  www.digit-eyes.com.

About Digit-Eyes:

Digit-Eyes is a project of Digital Miracles, L.L.C.  The project focuses on developing inexpensive solutions for the visually-impaired that employ mainstream products and mainstream platforms.  The Digit-Eyes software application for the iPhone is available at the Apple App Store.

About Digital Miracles, L.L.C.

Digital Miracles provides intellectual property design and analysis services, focusing on the design, development and deployment of custom software.

Contact:  Davey Hulse

(503) 559-3787

?marketing@digit-eyes.com

www.digit-eyes.com

Contact Person: Davey Hulse

Cell: (503) 559-3787

Email: PressRelations@digitalmiracles.com

Website: www.digit-eyes.com

Support: support@digitalmiracles.com

Digit-Eyes Lite Is Free

Digital Miracles, LLC, announced on July 13, 2010, that its Digit-Eyes Lite is now ready on the iTunes Store. Digit-Eyes Lite gives users the full power of the text-labeling portion of the revolutionary Digit-Eyes Audio Labeling System. And it’s FREE!

“The welcome we have received from the blind and visually impaired community has been incredible,” says Nancy Miracle, President, “and we wanted to give something back.”

Users can type up to 100 characters into a label field on our website, creating as many different ones as they wish, print them and put them on anything and everything they can think of to label.

“Later this summer when we make our blackberry jam,” says Davey Hulse, “I can make labels like crazy and be able to find the jam I want this winter.”

Since the iPhone app is free, other friends and family who don’t need the full power of the Audio Labeling System can download the Lite version and read the labels.

Hulse has other ideas for the Lite’s use: “Now my daughter can expect to get a mushy one-of-a-kind text label in a birthday card from me and read it with Digit-Eyes Lite on her iPhone.”

To read more about Digit-Eyes text labels, go to http://www.digit-eyes.com/textLabels.html.

While you’re at it, create your free account and become part of the Digit-Eyes community.

Locate the text you’d like to start selecting, using  Voiceover navigation, on the web page or in the email and then double tap and hold, anywhere on the screen. You’ll find, now, when you rotate the rotor, there is an edit option, and you can use the familiar pinch gestures and edit controls to select text. Once you have the text selected, the copy option will be available to you.

NOTE: if you try to select text which is positioned in or near a group of links, this may be difficult, or may not work at all, as the links themselves might be instead, activated by the double tap and hold gesture.

Another thing to note is that while selecting, if you switch the rotor to characters, words or lines, you can add or remove that type of text block from your selection. I.E. choosing lines in the rotor, adds or removes a line at a time from your current selection.

From here you can work with your copied text as you normally would.

Enjoy!

For all you shutterbugs, in the iPhone 4′s camera, you now have access to the zoom feature! Simply bring up the camera; double tap on the viewfinder and then flick to the right, three times. YOu’ll now see the zoom control.

Flicking up or down on this control with a single finger will increment or decrement the value by ten percent respectively. the highest value is 100 and the lowest value is 0.

NOTE: Each time you flick once your focus will be moved to the viewfinder again, so you’ll need to flick right three times to get to the zoom control.

Enjoy! and happy shooting!

Contact person: Davey Hulse
Cell: 503-559-3787
Email: PressRelations@digitalmiracles.com

DIGIT-EYES AUDIO LABELING SYSTEM ADVANCES INDEPENDENCE FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Digital Miracles, LLC, is pleased to announce a major advancement in assistive technology for people who are blind and visually impaired. The Digit-Eyes Audio Labeling System has been approved for sale on the Apple Apps Store. As of June 23rd, the millions of people worldwide with substantial vision loss can begin downloading the iPhone application to recognize and label the important items in their lives.

Reasonably priced at $29.99, the Digit-Eyes phone app is a powerful tool that fits into any budget and life- style, turning challenging tasks into easy, safe activities. The Digit-Eyes system gives users a simple way to make custom labels for everyday items and it identifies packaged goods-joining advanced software with the iPhone, the Internet, home computers, printers, and inexpensive off-the-shelf labels. People of almost any visual ability can now put groceries away and grab the right prescription bottle independently.

“This is the most exciting product I’ve worked on,” says Nancy Miracle, president of Digital Miracles and software engineer with 40 years experience. “The limited functions and high cost of existing assistive devices just seemed wrong, so our objective was to develop a product that performed better than any comparable technology and offer it at about 10% of the price. Combining the need for identification with a natural, powerful and robust tool like the iPhone made the project irresistible.”

With Digit-Eyes, users can print custom text labels or record audio labels that they make by scanning specially coded labels and speaking into their phones. They attach the labels to household items, and the messages are played back whenever the codes are rescanned with their iPhones. This Digit-Eyes app can also scan manufacturer codes (UPC, EAN, ISBN) and say what’s inside the package after checking the vast Digit-Eyes product database. Each iPhone stores over five hundred hours of information and can be used just about anywhere.

“This product is amazing! By labeling leftovers with their contents and date refrigerated, I can determine if my dinner will be edible or not. Next, I’ll be labeling my jungle of AC adapters so I’ll never again have to guess what they all go to. The ease of use and flexibility of the process make it an invaluable tool!”
Randy Builder, Seattle, Washington.

The first public display of Digit-Eyes is at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Dallas, Texas, July 4 – 7, booth B113. The exhibit then moves to the American Council of the Blind convention July 10 – 15 in Phoenix, Arizona, booth #41. Attendees can experience the use and capability of the system with hands-on demonstrations. Details, explanations, and examples will be available at both conventions, or immediately on-line at www.DIGIT-EYES.com.

Digital Miracles, LLC, the parent company of Digit-Eyes, is a Texas-based corporation that develops customized software solutions. The Digit-Eyes Audio Labeling System was created by a team of engineers, software designers and members of the visually impaired community.

Product Reviewers can get a review copy at: reviewcopy@digitalmiracles.com or by calling: (817) 571-3083.

Fortunately, a workaround has been posted which gives VoiceOver users the ability to install the latest version of the Flash plugin. Here are the steps:

• Download FlashPlayer version 10.1 from Adobe Systems
• Mount the disk image (.DMG) which was downloaded.
• Open the context menu on the installation application included on the disk image – "Install Adobe Flash Player.app" (VO-Shift-M)
• Select the option to "Show Package Contents".
• The contents of the app file will be displayed in a new Finder window. Navigate through the folders to Contents/Resources/
• At that location, you will find an installation package called "Adobe Flash Player.pkg". Open this package with Command-O

At this point, you can follow the normal installation steps, presented as a traditional Mac OS X installer, which is, of course, accessible.

Given the eighteen months to two years we can expect to wait for Flash accessibility, as well as the fact that, had Apple allowed Flash-based apps on the AppStore, VoiceOver users would have been subjected to far greater risks of inaccessibility when purchasing apps on their iOS devices, it is not surprising that users are taking Adobe’s assurances of a commitment to accessibility with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Thanks to John C. Welch and DaringFireball for bringing this workaround to our attention.

• resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive
• resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening
• address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers
• improve reliability of VPN connections
• resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing
• resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view
• improve compatibility with some braille displays

Release notes are seldom all inclusive, so we’ll keep you posted on any additional accessibility-related changes or fixes in Mac OS X 10.6.4 as details become available.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 is available via the "Software Update" mechanism on any Mac running Mac OS X 10.6.

The latest version of Apple’s popular web browser features the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction, a 30 percent performance increase over Safari 4, and the ability to choose between Google, Yahoo! or Bing as the search service powering Safari’s search field. Available for both Mac OS X and Windows, Safari 5 includes improved developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies that allow web developers to create rich, dynamic websites. With Safari 5, developers can now create secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience.

Safari 5 is available via Mac OS X’s "Software Update" mechanism.

In addition to the iPhone 4 hardware, more details have been released regarding the operating system that powers Apple’s mobile devices. The software has been renamed iOS, and will power the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Some details have now been announced where regards accessibility of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4.0. Here are the highlights:

• Support for 30+ Bluetooth wireless braille displays right out of the box. Just pair one and start using it to navigate your iPhone with VoiceOver — no additional software needed.
• Braille tables for 25+ international languages.
• Touch Typing is an optional new way for VOiceOver users to type on the onscreen keyboard. With Touch Typing, you can run your finger across the keyboard, listening to each letter as it’s spoken aloud. When you get to the letter you want, lift your finger to select it. (This was previously available on the iPad.)
• A new Typing Practice mode helps new users get accustomed to typing on the iPhone keyboard.
• Add rotor settings while web browsing, such as lists, tables, text fields, and buttons.
• The rotor is now visible to sighted users to make it easier for them to assist you or to use the rotor themselves.
• A new Large Font feature lets you further increase the font size of key elements in Mail, Contacts, Notes, and Messages.
• FaceTime allows video calling over WiFi, which can provide the ability for hearing impaired and deaf users to communicate using sign language via the iPhone 4 and its forward facing camera.
• A new language option for the rotor allows VOiceOver users to temporarily change to another of VoiceOver‘s 21 languages without impacting the system-wide language setting.

The iPhone 4 handset will be available in the US, UK, and some other European countries beginning on 24/June/2010 in 16GB ($199 USD) and 32GB ($299 USD)capacities, as well as black or white.

iOS 4.0 will be a free upgrade for users with compatible devices, including the iPhone 3GS and current generation iPod touch beginning 21/June/2010. iPad users will have to wait until later this summer to upgrade to version 4.0 of the operating system.

The iPhone 3GS 16GB will be offered for $99 USD beginning 24/June/2010.

More information, including our podcast discussion on today’s event, will be forthcoming.

We will be covering the event live via this live stream, and listeners may interact with one another and with the hosts of our stream on Twitter by using the hash tag #VOLive in their tweets.

Our coverage will begin streaming shortly before the keynote begins at 10:00 AM PDT, 1:00 PM EDT. We hope to see you there!

Note: We will not be providing audio from the event itself, only announcements and discussion as we collect information from the keynote.

We hope to see you tomorrow!

VoiceOver support enhancements include a significantly improved timeline display. Problems with reviewing tweets word-by-word with VoiceOver, the double reading of tweets, and more have been addressed. The timestamp for tweets, when enabled, is now announced by VoiceOver after the tweet text. A bug that caused VoiceOver to track the selected user in user lists incorrectly has been resolved.

Syrinx now supports Twitter lists, allows for editable retweets, and much more. For the complete list of new features and fixes, you can read the release notes.

In the past, Google has provided fairly good support for accessibility with screen readers, but that reputation has begun to slip in recent years, as the Internet giant has expanded its offerings and let its accessibility efforts slip.

The fact that the rendering engine Google is using offers native support for OS X accessibility, and Google either broke, disabled, or chose to remove that support, does not bode well for the future of accessibility in other Google products, where ensuring access will be inherently more difficult.

Join us to hear Apple discuss the latest universal access features on its iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and OS X VoiceOver!

Apple’s inclusion of assistive technology as an out-of-the-box feature in its latest products has made using the iPhone and other Apple products a truly viable option for blind and visually impaired users who wish to make calls, text, send emails and use various other Apple applications.

Braille OS X VoiceOver manuals can be pre-ordered from Adaptations, the LightHouse store, and picked up at the event. (Note: Orders must be received 10 or more days before the event.)

To RSVP, Email rsvp@lighthouse-sf.org or call 1-888-400-8933

Attend in-person or by calling in! (Conference call instructions will be provided with RSVP).

The LightHouse is wheelchair accessible. Accommodations are available upon request.

The LIghthouse San Francisco is located at:

The Lighthouse
214 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102

This book provides the latest information on the accessible iPods created by Apple – the fourth and fifth generation iPod Nanos and the third generation iPod Shuffle – and the latest version of iTunes. Anna Dresner walks you through getting started with iTunes and using all the accessible features on these iPods. You’ll learn to import music into iTunes; use the iTunes store; sync music, audiobooks, podcasts and video to your iPod; and much more. Appendices provide answers to frequently asked questions and resources for keeping up with new iPod developments.?

The title is available in hard copy braille, electronic braille, print, and dAISY, on disk or as a download from this link.

For more about Anna Dresner, visit her author page at NBP.

Last month, Adobe promised Flash and Flex accessibility for Mac OS X in the future, though by all accounts that is at least eighteen months away. Applications currently available for the iPhone that were developed using Adobe’s Flash to iPhone app technology are inaccessible with VoiceOver.