Apple’s iBooks page describes its accessibility thus:

Unlike a paper book — or e-books on other devices — you can change iBooks on iPad to suit the way you read. Turn iPad to portrait to view a single page. Or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape. Change the text size. Even change the font. Touch and hold any word to look it up in the built-in dictionary or Wikipedia, or to search for it throughout the book and on the web. iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page. Even with all these extras, reading is so natural on iPad, the technology seems to disappear.

Our readers will remember the controversy last year when the Authors’ Guild tried to block text-to-speech on Amazon’s Kindle book reader, claiming that text-to-speech was equivalent to audio book performances by human narrators.

The guild will find it much harder to argue that bizarre stance this time, as the access is being offered via VoiceOver rather than a generalized text-to-speech option. By taking this approach, Apple will be providing VOiceOver users with a streamlined experience, and putting the Authors’ Guild in a position of specifically having to oppose access for visually impaired users to their content. We do not believe the guild will want to try to take such a hostile stance.

The iBooks application will also work as a reader for free books in ePub format, whether that content was purchased from the iBooks store or not.

Once again, Apple is putting visually impaired users on equal footing with their sighted fellows.

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 a large iPhone or iPod touch, but with a 9.7-inch multi-touch display.

The device offers much of the power of both an iPhone and a tradition notebook computer, using the same multi-touch technology which has made the former such a runaway hit among sighted and visually impaired consumers alike. While it can be used for web browsing, email, music, video, and all the other functionality one has come to expect from an iPhone, Apple will also be offering a multi-touch version of its iWork suite via the iTunes AppStore, as well as a new store and application called iBooks, which allows users to purchase and read electronic books from leading and independent publishers.

At this time, aside from the VoiceOver, Zoom, closed-captioning, white-on-black, and mono-audio features also found on the iPhone and Mac product lines, we are not sure about specifics in terms of accessibility. iWork for the Mac is almost entirely accessible, and Apple has made it a point to have good access to its AppStore offerings. We expect iWork for the iPad to be accessible, but this is not confirmed.

To date, electronic book stores, such as Amazon’s Kindle store, have not provided books in an accessible format, owing to DRM restrictions. We hope Apple may be able to pave the way for the visually impaired and their access to content with the iBooks application and store. If VoiceOver does indeed have access to the content in these publications, it would be a tremendous step forward for access to printed media.

The iPad comes in 16, 32, and 64 GB configurations, priced at $499 USD, $599 USD, and $699 USD, respectively.

The device includes 802.11N Wi-Fi, BlueTooth 2.1, and a 30-pin iPod dock connector. Additionally, an optional hardware keyboard and dock is available if you would prefer a hardware keyboard for extensive typing.

Optional 3G connectivity is available for an additional $130, and, in the USA at least, will be available via AT&T without a contract. Prices are $14.99 USD for 250MB of data and $29.99 for unlimited data.

The iPad will be available in late March, with 3G capable units to follow a month later.

We will be continuing to cover this latest products in the Apple lineup as information becomes available, and in an upcoming episode of the Mac-cessibility Round Table Podcast.

Slau had a chance to visit Digidesign in San Francisco, and got to experience first hand the tremendous progress being made toward ProTools accessibility with VoiceOver. We discuss his experiences with Digidesign, the developer behind ProTools access, the progress being made, and what we can expect from ProTools in the future.

VoiceOver was shown in the survey to have a fifty percent increase in users reporting its usage, only lagging slightly behind the Window-Eyes screen reader from GW Micro. A large percentage of users also stated that VoiceOver and other low or no cost solutions were viable alternatives to pricier third-party screen readers. Fortunately, it appears that the misconceptions about the Mac platform and the VoiceOver screen reader are becoming a thing of the past as users become better aware of their viability.

Unfortunately, however, the survey downplays the problems with accessibility of Adobe Flash content. A note included on the survey reads:

It must be noted that Flash content, like most other items listed here, can be made accessible. In fact, Flash content can have other general accessibility issues listed (e.g., ambiguous links, difficult forms, missing alt text, etc.). While treated here as a distinct item, it’s important to note that Flash is not inaccessible merely because it is present in a page, but because the Flash author has not implemented accessibility.

The above excerpt is only true for Flash content being accessed via Windows. Other operating systems, including Mac OS X, do not have any accessibility for Flash content, and to date, Adobe Systems has been unwilling to change this situation. If you haven’t already, please sign our petition to Adobe System to implement accessibility in Flash for the Mac OS X platform.

We have contacted WebAIM about the ambiguity in the above paragraph in the hopes that they will make changes to clarify that information.

Update — WebAIM has responded very quickly to our note, and has modified the Flash information to note that it is only applicable to the Windows OS. We applaud their quick response.

Unlike its competition, VMWare Fusion has always been quite accessible with VoiceOver, providing visually impaired users with the most accessible installation process for the Windows OS.

Version 3 continues this tradition of accessibility, though the software works somewhat differently from previous versions from a VoiceOver user’s perspective. The most notable difference is when the user wishes to direct keyboard input to the virtual machine. The simplest method to accomplish this task seems to be to turn off VoiceOver with Command-F5, and then press Command-G. At that point, the user can reactivate VoiceOver and use the software as in previous versions.

For more information on VMWare Fusion 3’s fifty-plus new features, click here to read the "What’s New" document.

Rogers Communications Inc. has held the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in Canada since its release in that country, but its exclusivity runs out this November, when other Canadian wireless carriers will begin offering the popular device.

While certainly a problem, it would not be the first time that a representative of a large corporation gave a customer the incorrect information regarding a product. Hopefully, however, this incident and its coverage will make wireless carriers more cognizant of the iPhone 3GS’s accessibility features.

In the past, we have been critical of AFB’s attitudes toward Apple and the accessibility of its products. We are very happy that, in the past year or so, AFB seems to have altered its stance, and we commend them for their willingness to fairly evaluate the Mac and iPhone platforms.

While this is disappointing, it is not wholly unexpected, given that the MagicMouse device is still, at its core, a mouse, and does not appear to support the more complex multi-touch capabilities of Apple’s glass trackpads or iPhone family of products.

Steve Sawczyn of ATMaine.com and our very own Mac-cessibility Round Table Podcast wrote a rebuttal to the original article, which the NFB agreed to publish. You can read it here.

This is certainly a step in the right direction, although we still have concerns with the NFB’s unwillingness to admit its errors in the original article, but applaud the editor for accepting Steve’s piece and publishing it in the current edition of the Braille Monitor. We sincerely hope that, in future, the NFB will take more care to offer accurate information to its readers.

If Flash Professional CS5 apps for the iPhone do follow Apple’s accessibility guidelines, or provide developers with tools to implement the guidelines themselves, this could mean that iPhone and iPod touch users will have better access to software developed with the popular Flash technology than Mac users. As yet, Adobe has failed to provide any access to Flash, or indeed any of their products, on the Mac platform, which does raise concern that they may neglect accessibility in Flash Professional CS5 as well. We are currently running a petition for Flash accessibility on Mac OS X through the end of the year.

It is still too soon to know for certain if Flash applications will be accessible with VoiceOver on the iPhone and iPod touch. As more details are made available, we will pass them along.

At the end of August, I received an email message from David Gibbons, vice-president of product marketing at Digidesign, informing me that they were about to hire a software engineer who would specifically work on issues of accessibility in Pro Tools. This person would focus on VoiceOver compatibility for approximately six weeks before other duties would take priority. Although we had supplied Digidesign with a sort of "top 10" priority list, we agreed that it would be quite helpful if someone could give Pro Tools a test run once some of the work had been implemented.

The engineer, Xiang Cao, accomplished a great deal in his first week of working on the Pro Tools user interface. He and I exchanged a few email messages discussing specific questions about common practices both for VoiceOver and blind Pro Tools users. I planned a trip to Daly City, California, to visit with Xiang and to spend several hours trying out the newly accessible interface. Also, it was a good opportunity to plan a meeting with some other key people at Digidesign who either already supported this project or were interested in learning more about the issue of Pro Tools accessibility.

On Monday, September 28, I finally got a chance to meet Xiang in person at Digidesign’s headquarters. We sat down in his office and settled in for an in-depth evaluation of his work thus far. He launched VoiceOver and then launched Pro Tools and proceeded to navigate the application’s interface while VoiceOver provided feedback about selected tools, edit modes, counter positions, meter values, etc. It was truly an extraordinary and overwhelming experience to finally have access to items that were, in previous versions, completely inaccessible to blind users.

We spent over three hours going through a plethora of UI elements within numerous windows and dialogs, discussing priorities, evaluating the user experience and planning for future work. It was always clear that, given Pro Tools’ complexity, this was going to be a long-term project and that accessibility improvements would need to be rolled out over several software releases, but I hadn’t expected to see so much progress at this point. I was truly impressed with how much Xiang was able to accomplish over the past couple of weeks, especially having never dealt with accessibility features of VoiceOver before. He informed me that Apple’s documentation was extremely comprehensive and very straightforward.

That afternoon, we took a break for a scheduled meeting with other key people at Digidesign. I shared with them some background information about Rick Boggs’ successes with Pro Tools accessibility in the mid ’90s and how the move to OS X broke the accessibility that blind users had under OS 9 with the outSPOKEN screen reader.

After a few questions and answers, we gathered in Xiang’s office for a brief demonstration of the work done thus far. Xiang was able to effectively demonstrate how VoiceOver was able to identify controls and their various states, manipulate their functions, navigate the interface and interact with many areas of the application. It gave everybody a better understanding of how a blind user could access the very same controls that a sighted user would use without the need for an alternative interface or any extra software.

After our brief demonstration, Xiang and I continued to identify areas that still needed work and we made a new list of priorities for the completion of this phase of the project. I left Digidesign at the end of the day feeling both exhilarated and exhausted, as if I had been on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing rushes of excitement in between moments of concern over certain challenges. More than anything, I felt very optimistic about the achievements thus far and Digidesign’s commitment to future improvements to Pro Tools accessibility. Personally, as a longtime Pro Tools user, finally seeing tangible results after years of planning, meeting and discussing the issues was very encouraging.

That evening, I had dinner in San Francisco with Xiang and David Gibbons, who has taken a personal interest in this project. When we met for the first time several years ago, I could tell that David recognized the complexity of making Pro Tools accessible to blind users but I do believe that he also recognized its importance. Over dinner, we discussed our next steps and made plans for the coming weeks. I asked if I could share the news and update this website to reflect the latest developments. He encouraged me to share whatever information would be helpful and gave me permission to disclose any information I wanted.

In the near future, I’ll be a guest on the Maccessibility Podcast to speak in greater detail about some of the issues we encountered and the problems we’ve had to solve in the process. For now, I would say that it’s probable that an upcoming release of Pro Tools by the early part of next year will include a user interface accessible through VoiceOver with enhancements to be rolled out over several software versions in the future. More details will be available at this website as things develop.

Slau Halatyn

Click here to watch or if you’d like to read more about iPhone 3GS access features, Click here

Enjoy!

• Triple-click Home

  Now you can quickly toggle Universal Access features by triple-clicking the home button. Choices are to turn VoiceOver on or off, turn Zoom on or off, turn White on Black on or off, or to ask which setting you prefer.

  To set the Triple-click Home function: In Settings, choose General->Accessibility->Triple-click Home and choose the function you want.

• Gesture Practice

  You can now learn and practice VoiceOver gestures. In Settings, choose General->Accessibility->VoiceOver->Practice Gestures.

• Select / Cut / Copy text

  You can use VO to copy, cut and paste text. Use the rotor to choose Edit. Flick up or down to choose between the Select and Select All functions, then double tap. If you chose Select, the word closest to the insertion point is selected when you double-tap. If you chose Select All, the entire text is selected. When text is selected, Cut, Copy, and Paste options appear on the screen. (Paste appears only if you’ve previously copied text.)

  Use open and close pinch gestures to fine-tune the selection.

  To Cut, Copy, or Paste: With text selected, flick up or down to choose Cut, Copy, or Paste, then double-tap. Double-tap again to dismiss the editing options and place the insertion point at the end of the text area.

  To Undo: Shake iPhone, flick left or right to choose the action to undo, then double-tap.

• Additional rotor settings

  On web pages, you can now select and hear static text as well as zoom in or out.

• Pasting a phone number into the keypad

  You can paste phone numbers into the keypad instead of dialing them manually. If the phone number you copied contains letters, iPhone automatically converts them into the appropriate digits to dial.

• Setting Insertion Point in edit text fields

  To begin editing, you double tap to display the insertion point and bring up the onscreen keyboard. If the field already contains text, the insertion point is placed at the beginning or at the end of the
  text automatically.

• Navigating a List Index

  Some lists have an alphabetical index along the right side. The index cannot be selected by flicking between elements; you must touch the
  list index directly to select it. With the index selected, flick up or down to move through the index. Or, select the list index, then double-tap and slide your finger up or down to move through the index quickly.

• Opening Links in Mail Messages

  In mail, double-tap and hold down on a link. The address is displayed and you can choose to open the link in Safari or copy the link address to the clipboard.

• Editing Videos and Voice Memos

  You can use VoiceOver gestures to trim videos and Voice Memo recordings.

  To trim a video: While viewing a video, double-tap the screen to display the video controls. Select the beginning or end of the trim tool. Then flick up to drag to the right, flick down to drag to the left. VoiceOver announces the amount of time that will be trimmed from the recording. Select the Trim button and double tap to execute the trim.

  To trim a voice memo: In Voice Memos, select the button to the right of a recorded memo you want to trim, then double-tap. Select the Trim Memo button and double- tap. Select the beginning or end of the trim tool. Flick up to drag to
  the right and flick down to drag to the left. VoiceOver announces the amount of time that will be trimmed from the recording. Select the Trim Voice Memo button and double-tap to execute the trim.

• PDF file support

  VO can read PDF files attached to Mail messages.

• Voice Control using a Bluetooth headset

  You can enter spoken Voice Control commands through a bluetooth headset in addition to the earbuds and built-in microphone.

• Using Maps

  With VoiceOver, you can select pins that mark locations, and get information about locations.

  To select a pin: Touch a pin, or flick left and right to select a pin. To get information about a location, select a pin, then double-tap to display the information flag. Flick left or right to select the flag, then double-tap to display the information page.

• Saving a photo or video attachment to a Camera Roll album

  Touch and hold the image or video, then tap Save Image or Video.

• Creating a Genius Playlist

  To browse Genius Mixes: Tap Genius. The number of dots above the Dock shows the number of mixes you have synced from iTunes, and indicates which mix you’re viewing. Flick left or right to view additional mixes. You can sync up to twelve Genius Mixes from your iTunes library on your computer.

• Compass

  VoiceOver automatically announces the compass heading when there is a change in direction of 5-degrees or more.

• Rearranging the Home screen

  VoiceOver speaks the row and column position as you drag the icon. Release the icon when it’s in the location you want. You can drag additional icons. Drag an item to the left or right edge of the screen to move it to another page of the Home screen. When you’re finished rearranging the icons, press the Home button.

  When iPhone is connected to your computer, you can also rearrange the Home screen icons using iTunes 9. Select iPhone in the sidebar, then click the Applications tab.

The iPhone OS 3.1 details are scarce as yet, but the update includes pre-cut ring tones from the major record labels.

iTunes 9, the latest version of Apple’s popular media management software, comes with a plethora of new features, including application organization for iPhone/iPod Touch users, iTunes LP to provide extra content with album purchases, Genius Mixes, and iTunes Extras to provide additional content with movie titles.

The iPod Touch has been revamped, now with three models. An 8GB model is available for $199, a 32GB for $299, and a 64GB model for $399. The 32GB and 64GB models include a processor that is 50 percent faster than the previous generation, presumably making it possible to run VoiceOver, though we do not have confirmation of this yet.

The iPod Classic also received a minor boost. Still alive and kicking, Apple’s iPod in the Classic format is now available in a 160GB configuration for the same price of $249.

The iPod Shuffle line also received a minor update, with 2GB models now at $59, and 4GB models for $79. A special edition polished stainless steel model is available for $99. The Shuffles are now available in additional colors, and Apple is working with third-party manufacturers to make additional headsets with controls available.

The iPod Nano received a significant update. The popular media player now doubles as a video camera, capable of recording high quality video with audio and syncing it back to your computer. VoiceOver, presumably the variety available on the Shuffles, is now offered on the Nano, along with a voice recorder, FM radio tuner, and pedometer. The new Nanos are available in 8GB and 16GB models for $149 and $179 respectively.

As soon as we have additional information on accessibility of these new products, we’ll report it.

The application is exceptionally usable now, with only a couple of unlabeled controls which can be quickly memorized. Given the speed at which this update was delivered, we expect even these few controls to be addressed in the near future.

We commend FaceBook for their dedication and quick response, as well as Apple Inc. for giving developers the tools to quickly make such dramatic improvements in their applications where regards accessibility.

Some of Mr. Hewitt’s comments have included a note about learning VoiceOver on the iPhone, an apology that accessibility was overlooked in the update, and an update that accessibility support is coming in version 3.0.2.

This is a tremendously promising turn of events, and all of us at the Mac-cessibility Network would like to thank FaceBook and Mr. Hewitt for their quick response to this issue.

We are anticipating, but have no confirmation, that an updated iPod Touch will include VoiceOver support, as the iPhone 3GS first introduced earlier this summer.

Infovox iVox 1.3, the currently shipping version, is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. A complete rewrite of the core speech engine was necessary to make Infovox iVox 64-bit compatible and ready for Snow Leopard. Despite the major engineering efforts, Infovox iVox 2.0 is offered as a free update in order to facilitate the migration to Snow Leopard.

Because of the large number of languages available in Infovox iVox, not all languages will be available immediately as part of the public beta. The first languages to be released will be American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Canadian French, Spanish, American Spanish, Swedish, and Norwegian. More languages will follow in the coming weeks.

The full press release on InfoVox iVox v2.0 is available here.

It’s fantastic to see Universal Access issues receiving additional coverage in the mainstream press, and we thank Mr. Breen for his continuing attention to APple’s efforts.