I recently took a trip to my local apple store and asked to see the 3GS with Voiceover on it. The store staff were well-informed and brought me over to a phone. Unfortunatley, the phone on display was running a demo version of the iPhone OS X software. This meant Voiceover started and I could run my finger over the display, but it did not let us switch applications so I could try Mail or Safari.

The Lead Creative at the store, a nice woman named Kristy, was very apologetic and offered to have a fully functional phone brought into the store so I could try it. She then proposed that once the phone was brought in, that we sit down for 30 minutes so I could learn how the phone worked. (Although, I think they wanted to see how Voiceover functioned for themselves alongside a blind user.) I will gladly report my experiences here and on my radio show.

I fully nominate Josh and Cara as the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of the accessibility features of the iPhone 3GS.

I’m so pleased to see Apple’s inginuity and creativity continue with the iPhone in addition to the other Apple products that are changing lives. I am anxiously awaiting my Mac Book Pro in two days and will have a homecoming ceremony for myself as I am finally repatriating myself back to mac after 12 years of swimming in shark-infested waters on the PC side. (wink, wink)

Again, great job and thank you for blazing the trail.

You don’t have to hold both the home and lock key down. Just hold the lock key down for a few seconds. Then there is a slider toward the top to power down the phone. You may need to practice until you can orient yourselves without VO in case of a crash like was mentioned. You know, practice with VO to get the muscle memory down.

You have to double tap the characters/edit text to enable cut copy paste. So if there is a pass through feature, you may be able to use that to access cut/copy and paste. Basically, get focus in the edit field then hit the pass through function, then double tap in the edit field. The cut/copy and paste appear sort of like bubbles with the text selected for operation. If you use more fingers you get more text.

Likewise, extending VoiceOver in Mac OS X 10.6 to the multi-touch pad should be very helpful. The Apple announcement also mentions VoiceOver Quick Nav for use on the keyboard for those without a multi-touch pad.

So far, no resolution independence in Mac OS X. For many with poor vision, the smaller icons on higher-resolution screens can be quite a recognition problem. But Apple has made a start in that direction as well, and I am hopeful resolution independence will be eventually be implemented.

Finally, I am of the view that the new accessibility technologies spill over to provide new programming functions usable for a wider audience than the visually-impaired. For example, AppleScript GUI scripting is based on VoiceOver technology.
Consider the VoiceOver Kit for the iPod Shuffle.

Progress is being made. Cheers!

The intention is good and of course go in the right direction, but I’d imagine that initially, the accessibility features on the IPhone will be more gimmicky for the average sighted person and incredibly frustrating for a visually impaired one.

I think I’m going to stick with my boring old Windows Mobiel based PDA and MSP for now. I love my qwerty keyboard and the flexibility that MSP offers. Not to mention all the blue tooth and not being locked into a crazy sim card or contract either. I’m not ready to sacrifice functionality for flashiness just so I can brag about my brand new IPhone that may not be as accessible than my trusty PDA.

All that said, It’s encouraging to hear that Apple is taking a greater interest in making it’s various products more accessible. Regardless of what the initial steps towards accessibility they make, they’re at the very least steps in the right direction.

Now, if only they’d fix that terrible iTunes 8.2 update that they just put out and makes iTunes pretty much impossible for Jaws user to navigate things would be really encouraging.

First of all, as a blind, originally 100% MS-DOS / Windows user who never imagined that the Mac could ever become accessible one day, I’d like to thank all of those who regularly contribute to your site and keep on expanding people’s potential in using VoiceOver! Even more so as you in America and other English-speaking countries seem to be miles ahead of what we are currently in France. At my local Apple store, for example, they just didn’t know anything about Mac OS X’s built-in Universal Access features, so I had to demonstrate them how to turn on VoiceOver and the system zoom in order to show them that it might not be such a silly idea for a blind guy to become an Apple customer…!

However, in order for me to make the switch almost perfect and say good bye to my PC once for all, perhaps with VMware, Windows and/or Jaws for a transitional phase, I still got 3 questions for the moment, and I would be very grateful if you could help me get the best out of my Mac & the few Windows programs I still need from time to time as a professional translator.

To be more specific, I’m currently working both on a rapidly aging Dell notebook on Windows XP SP3 and Jaws 9 – “desperately” waiting for Jaws 10 to be released in my country, which may still take several months- and a 24-inch iMac on a French version of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.6) with VoiceOver and the system zoom turned on, using Alex for English contents and Assistiveware’s Infovox iVox voices for French, German and Spanish texts, since Alex is only available in American English for now. Two months ago, I also bought Nippon Telesoft’s Seika 40 Braille display, which actually works greater on the Mac than on the Dell notebook. Though I’m quite happy with VoiceOver to read texts and accessible, well-structured pages like this one, record / work on audio files, start working on Garage Band after I read the great tutorial on this site, manage a fast-growing, multi-format media library much better than in Winamp, etc., I still can’t give up my PC once for all, since VoiceOver is still unable to read Flash contents, to render complex web sites quickly enough or to handle language recognition on web sites, while Assistiveware’s voices seem to need so many resources that VoiceOver would regularly lose track with the keyboard focus and get me to waste some time returning where I originally intended to go. Which makes it a bit hard and tricky to use in a multinational professional environment like mine, where time is money.

Therefore, I’m planning to run Windows XP or Vista on my iMac, depending on which system is supposed to be more reliable and compatible with AT used in combination with Firefox / Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and some CD-ROM dictionaries…
So, here are my questions.

1. What’s the basic difference between VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop and maybe some other virtualisation software?
2. Since I will definitely need a screen reader to get access to Windows contents, do I absolutely have to install Jaws or does VoiceOver fully support the Windows interface generated through VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop, allowing me, for instance, to use Microsoft Word for Windows with usual VO commands as I would in Nisus Writer Pro?
3. Should I need to have Jaws installed on my Mac, could you tell me if you have ever had any specific experience with an iMac? Otherwise, should I rather sell both PC and iMac and buy a brand-new MacPro, MacBook or MacBook Pro instead, as so many people use to say that Windows runs better on these machines, which may also be true for the kind of graphic card support that is so critical to AT in general, and Jaws in particular, or even consider installing a Linux distribution like Fedora, since Linux is also said to come with some screen-reading features and Braille display drivers?

Anyway, just in case these details were of any importance, the basic / graphic card specs of my iMac are as follows:

Model ID: iMac 6.1;
Processor / memory: Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.16 GHz, with 2.5 GB of RAM;
SMC version: 1.10f3;
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT;
Built-in 24-inch LCD monitor with Core Image hardware acceleration;
Screen resolution: 1920 x 1200;
Mirror: off.

Thanks in advance for your answers, sorry for leaving such a long comment (but I thought it might be important to be as specific as possible), and good luck for the future of the Mac-cessibility site!
Best regards.
Knackslash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqONSAe81sE

There is a hearing aid (I have a hearing loss as well) with an optional Bluetooth receiver to wear around your neck. The receiver converts Bluetooth signals into another signal format for re-transmission directly to the right and left hearing aids. But this option for wirelessly connecting to an iPhone or your computer via Bluetooth is expensive, so I declined this option. Maybe later.

I wonder about the “Kit” part of the phrase “VoiceOver Kit”. Is it just an installed package of functions, or does it imply more? When searching for “VoiceOver Kit” on the Apple Developer Connection, the search result does not show anything new.