While version 1.0 was ground-breaking in itself in its brilliance in accuracy and ease of use, version 2 takes this app to a whole new level.

Several new currencies are now supported, including the Euro, Canadian and Australian dollars, as well as the British Pound. This allows Money Reader to bring its stellar performance to so many more people than before to assist in making people’s lives easier and more enjoyable.

You can learn more at: http://www.looktel.com

Smarty-Ears was founded by Barbara Fernandes, a practicing Speech and Language Pathologist. Her vision of speech therapy, as described on the company’s About page, goes beyond the use of paper and pencil materials; she is an advocate for contextualized language. She believes that Speech Therapists can use modern technology tools to improve practice and services.

In addition to Expressive, an augmentative-alternative communications (AAC) application for iOS, Smarty-Ears also offers iTake Turns, Yes/No App, Match2Say, Articulate it!, Spanish Articulation Probes, and /r/intensive.

It is both fascinating and marvelous to see the wide range of uses Apple’s products are being put to for individuals with a vast array of disabilities. We hope to see this trend both continue and accelerate.

?Thanks to the diligence and willingness to share, on the part of some amazing VIPhoners, (you know who you are) we now have a complete list of Voiceover key commands for iOS 4.1

NOTE: The abbreviation VO below, refers to the Voiceover (or VO) keys. These are the control and option keys (held down together) on an Apple keyboard, and the control and alt keys (held down together) on a Windows style keyboard. The command key on an Apple keyboard corresponds to the Windows key on a Windows style keyboard.

VO-K : Turn on VoiceOver help (Announces keys and Voiceover key commands)

Escape : Return to the previous screen, or turn off VoiceOver help

VO-A : Read all, starting from the current position

VO-B : Read from the top

VO-M : Move to the status bar

VO-H : Press the Home button

VO-Right or Left Arrow : Select the next or previous item

VO-Space bar : Tap an item

VO-”-” : Double-tap with two fingers

VO-Up or Down Arrow : Choose the next or previous rotor item (as with a flick up or down)

VO-Command-Right or Left Arrow : Choose the next or previous speech rotor item

VO-Command- Up or Down Arrow : Adjust speech rotor item

VO-S : Mute or unmute VoiceOver

VO- Shift-S : Turn the screen curtain on or off

Left Arrow-Right Arrow (Pressed together) : Turn Quick Nav on or off

The following commands are enabled when Quick Nav is on

Right or Left Arrow : Select the next or previous item

Up or Down Arrow : Select the next or previous item specified by the rotor setting (as with a flick up or down)

Control-Up or Down Arrow : Select the first or last item

Up Arrow-Down Arrow (Pressed together) : “Tap” an item

Option-Up, Down, Left, or Right Arrow : Scroll up, down, left, or right

Up Arrow-Left Arrow or Up Arrow-Right Arrow : Change the rotor

AGain, we’ll update and provide apropos links etc. when they become available.

Please stay tuned and Enjoy!…

Today Apple released iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Among the improvements for Voiceover users, come not only a host of important bug fixes, such as proper editing of contact phone numbers, as well as the fact that Voiceover will now read tables in their proper order, but VO users now have very comprehensive keyboard navigation support.

Now a VO user can pair a bluetooth keyboard to their iDevice and not only use it to type and edit text, but also completely navigate and operate the device from the keyboard as well.

Thanks to users on the VIPhone list, and a bit of experimentation from us here at Maccessibility, we’ve compiled a preliminary list of keyboard commands for use with Voiceover.

• Arrow keys MOve Voiceover cursor to navigate the iPhone / iPod Touch screens

• VO-spacebar activates the current item

• VO-a reads page from current location/starting at current item

• VO-b reads page starting at the top

• VO-h activates home button

• VO-m goes to the status bar

• VO– (dash/hyphen) stops the current action such as stopping / starting media playback or hanging up a call.

• VO-s toggles speech on/off

• VO-shift-s toggles screen curtain on/off

• Left/right arrow at the same time activates/deactivates the QuickNav feature

• left-up arrow and right-up arrow cycle through the rotor settings

• Up and down arrows together activates the item like VO-spacebar

• VO-Command-left and right arrows cycle through Voiceover settings (Use VO-Command-up and down arrows to change settings)

Settings are: Use Phonetics, Use Pitch, Volume, Rate and Typing Echo

• VO-Space Bar on the Page label of a home screen advances the page. I.E. Pressing VO-Space on the ‘Page 1′ label will move to page 2

?Along with this very detailed enhancement, Safari users will note that sites now are accompanied by a sound to let the user know the progress while a site is loading. Additionally, In-page links are now announced by Voiceover, so a user can more easily understand and navigate a web page.

On the gaming side of things, Apples recently announced Game Center is also accessible to Voiceover users, opening up a whole world of possibilities and enhancements for visually impaired online gamers.

These are only a few of the updates in iOS 4.1 so please stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll find out a whole lot more very soon as well, so we’ll be sure and keep you up-to-date.

3 ways to speak: (1) 100′s of built-in phrases in over a dozen categories (2) Program several buttons to speak your CUSTOM messages such as your name, address, family, etc. (3) Type ANY message and have it spoken using TEXT-TO-SPEECH!

Empower yourself or people with Autism & Non-Verbal patients you care for! One price for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch! Elegant interface, quality recognizable images & customizations allow for quick & easy communication! Very affordable! Don’t pay hundreds out of pocket or worry about Medicare or rationing devices. Everyone can have AutoVerbal! – iPad, iPhone & iPod touch universal support! Pay one price! – Users/caregivers can customize the first row of buttons by touching HELP to enter CUSTOM MODE! – 100′s of buttons use Premium TTS voice, prerecorded, even when the Internet is not available! – Custom TTS phrases use Premium voices when Internet is available, Standard built-in voices otherwise.

The application is currently on sale at a special introductory price of $0.99 in the US iTunes store.

It’s wonderful to continue seeing affordable assistive solutions powered by Apple’s iOS and the devices which run it. Here’s hoping that the days of expensive, dedicated assistive devices are coming to a close.

Acapela TTS for iPhone SDK has been used in a wide array of talking apps available on the Apple AppStore, adding spoken feedback to rich content and inspiring new ways to transform content and tell stories.

AssistiveWare has already adopted Acapela TTS SDK for iPhone & iPad to extend its proloquo2Go (iPhone or iPad) AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) solution to iPad.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog published an in depth review of the app, which describes its usage quite succinctly. We highly recommend this review.

You can learn more about this application on Proloquo2Go.com.

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

Enjoy!

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.

If you rely on the older HD voices, you should not upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, as the change to support 64 bit technology made it impossible to retain the HD voices in Infovox iVox v2.0. For most languages, HQ voices are available. Several new voices are included in Infovox iVox v2.0. Only Icelandic has been completely dropped in v2.0 because there are no HQ voices for that language.

Apple quietly updated the VoiceOver Kit for the iPod Shuffle 3G to version 1.0.1 today. The download, which is currently oly available through the software update mechanism and not Apple’s web site, is 17MB and includes corrected pronunciation definitions for certain popular artists’ names and other unspecified bug fixes.

The iPod Shuffle 3G employs VoiceOver Kit to speak the menus on the popular music player in fourteen different languages, making it possible to easily navigate through the music, playlists, audio books, and podcasts on the device.

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

Little by little, we find these individual steps toward accessibility of Apple’s iPhone for the blind and visually impaired. This time, it comes in the form of an iPhone application called Talking Email Keyboard for iPhone from G.P. Imports. The software announces each key you type on the iPhone in a clear and understandable voice, preventing the user from needing to look at the screen while typing. The company claims it is ideal for composing a message while driving, but speech or no speech, that’s probably not a wise activity.

In MacWorld.com’s John Fuller’s article on the app, Mr. Fuller points out that a better use for the software is for visually impaired users, or for those who may have a hard time seeing the screen under some conditions.

While not a solution that will bring true accessibility to the iPhone, it is one more example of ways in which the iPhone platform can be leveraged for the visually impaired. Touch screen technology is the future of computing, and we will need to adapt and encourage development of accessible means to utilize it.

Yesterday, in a brief post on Amazon’s Kindle Blog, the Kindle development team notes that they’ve received a great deal of feedback from visually impaired readers, and that they are working to make the Kindle more accessible in the future. Specifically, the post mentions adding speech feedback to the navigation system of the device.

While hopeful news, it comes on the heels of continuing efforts by the Author’s Guild to eliminate text-to-speech capabilities in portable book readers, and by extension eliminate access to such devices for blind and low vision users.

Ultimately, improved access to the device will make little difference, if the guild and publishers succeed in their efforts to eliminate the use of access technology with their content. Such a victory for them could eventually have far-reaching and adverse consequences to mainstream devices with accessibility features, like those produced by Apple and other companies with a commitment to accessibility.

We encourage any and all who feel strongly about this to contact the Author’s Guild via email, or use the below contact information.

The Authors Guild
31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10016

Phone: (212) 563-5904
Fax: (212) 564-5363

The above contact information is publicly available on the Author’s Guild’s Contact page.

We’ve published a new editorial piece on the new third-generation iPod Shuffle, its VoiceOver implementation, and what all this could potentially mean for the future of other Apple products. You can read the editorial here.

We thought our readers would like to hear samples of the new iPod Shuffle speaking in the various supported languages. On this Apple.com iPod Shuffle with VoiceOver page you can do just that.

We are extremely impressed with the quality of the voices and are hopeful that Apple will include multi-lingual text-to-speech features in the Mac OS X version of VoiceOver in the near future.

We were able to confirm with APple that the new iPod Shuffle with the VoiceOver feature does not require third-party voices to make use of the fourteen different languages. The process used to generate the speech is different, though we do not have specifics on what the new process is. Apple confirms, however, that no additional purchases are required to make use of the different languages.