Apple’s event today is expected to focus primarily on iPods, iTunes, and the AppleTV.

?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.

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.

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!

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

There have been two transformative moments in my professional career that I associate with gaining equal access to the printed word. The first was in the mid-’90s, when, as a university researcher, my department obtained a braille embosser and access to the fledgling Internet. One afternoon, a graduate assistant who worked with me casually dropped a braille copy of the cover article from that week’s Time magazine on my desk. For the first time, I could read the same text as my sighted colleagues at the same time they did.

The second transformative moment took place Monday evening, April 5, 2010. On that night, I purchased a book from a book store, exactly as my sighted neighbors and colleagues would. I then sat in my den and read that book on the same device as my sighted counterparts.

Be sure to click (or tap) here to read the full review.

A lot has changed since the introduction of VoiceOver. Here are some highlights:

• The creation of the Mac Visionaries community of visually impaired Mac users
• The birth of the Screenless Switchers podcast
• The introduction of Mac-cessibility
• The release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard with VoiceOver enhancements
• iTunes introduces Closed Captioning in movie downloads
• NFB publishes their first flawed review of VoiceOver in Leopard
• Apple presents at CSUN
• Apple’s access efforts gains mainstream attention on MacWorld
• Apple extends its educational discount to students of Hadley School for the Blind
• AFB erroneously claims users can’t sync music with iTunes and VoiceOver
• OpenOffice gains Mac accessibility
• Full VoiceOver support is announced for iTunes
• iPod nanos gain speaking menus for accessibility
• Apple teams up with GW Micro to improve accessibility of iTunes in Windows
• Apple launches official accessibility site
• Apple and NFB reach agreement on iTunes access
• AccessWorld publishes a more accurate review of VoiceOver
• iWork becomes accessible
• The Mac-cessibility Round Table podcast is launched
• Apple announces and releases the iPhone 3GS with VoiceOver
• The VIPhone community is born
• NFB publishes a highly inaccurate review of VoiceOver, prompting community responses
• The Mac-cessibility Network is launched
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is released with huge improvements to VOiceOver
• iPhone OS 3.1 is released with enhanced access
• Assistiveware releases Proloquo2Go for the iPhone
• Digidesign demonstrates upcoming access to ProTools
• The NFB publishes a more accurate look at VoiceOver
• Apple unveils the iPad, which includes the same access features as the iPhone
• iBooks to include VoiceOver accessibility
• iPad is released with spectacular accessibility

As mentioned previously on this blog, the Access Technology team will be hosting, among other things, a session on Apple products from 9 until 11.30 am on Saturday July 3rd at the NFB’s National Convention in Dallas. Because the number of devices we have available is limited, we will restrict access to this part of the program. There are only 30 spaces available, so please register as soon as you can. You can register by emailing us at access@nfb.org or by calling me at 410-659-9314, extension 2410. Registrations for the Apple session will be processed in the order in which they are received, and must be emailed or called in by June 15th. No registrations are required for any of the other sessions.

Clara Van Gerven

Earlier this week, Facebook announced it would be shutting down Facebook Lite without explanation or warning. Visiting Lite.Facebook.com now redirects users to the main Facebook site.

Facebook’s statement merely stated:

Thanks to everyone who tried out Facebook Lite. We’re no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site. If you used Lite, you’ll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site.

Visually impaired users looking for a better experience than the full site are limited to the mobile version of Facebook now, although it provides far fewer features than the Lite version did.

This is an unfortunate development for the growing number of visually impaired Facebook users.

We’d like to thank Shaun for taking hte time to address M.J.’s concerns, and hope that the Mac-cessibility Network can continue to encourage constructive discussions like this one.

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.

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.

We are pleased to see an access technology company embracing Apple’s philosophy of mainstream accessibility, and exploring new ways to service the blind and visually impaired community.

Given the exponentially growing community of blind and visually impaired Mac OS X users, this statement is clearly unfounded. In a constructive attempt to make our voices heard, the Mac-cessibility Network is running its first petition. The ultimate goal of this effort is to obtain a commitment to, and implementation of, accessibility in Adobe’s Flash platform on the Mac OS X operating system, including support for the VoiceOver screen reading solution provided therein.

If you believe mainstream companies like Adobe should be offering accessibility in their products, as we do, we hope you will take just a moment to read and sign our Adobe Petition for Commitment to Action.

We plan on running this petition through the end of December. In January, we will present the petition to Adobe Systems Inc.

We also would encourage you to help spread the word to others, and ask them to sign the petition. For easy reference, the link to the petition is http://maccessibility.net/petition

We thank you for your support in this effort.

Show notes:

• The Mac-cessibility Network
• MobileMe
• Steve’s pick – Mail2Web.com
• Josh’s picks – The Bean word processor for Mac OS X and MobileMe iDisk for iPhone
• Cara’s picks – I-Map-U for iPhone and Shazam
• Holly’s pick – Gmail
• Darcy’s pick – JoinTogether for Mac