If staff at any given retail store lack the knowledge to help a
customer with any aspect of that customer's purchase experience, you
can bet the retailer would want to hear about it. The customer has
the right (and I would argue that they also have the obligation) to
make such an occurance known to the retailer. Does that suck? Yes.
But it sucks less often if you do something about it.
As for the iPhone, here is a little video entitled "Smartphones Become
Essential Accessories for the Blind"
http://bit.ly/bvXVma
If you have difficulties accessing YouTube, may I suggest:
http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/
Derek
On 6/24/10, David Chittenden <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Hello,
>
> Voice Over is on all iPhone 3GS and the latest 4G models. It is not on
> the 2G or 3G models.
>
> VO allows blind people to successfully work with all of the apps which
> come on the phone. Also, thousands of the aditional apps which you can
> get for the iPhone are at least partially accessible, and the majority
> of those are fully accessible; according to several users who regularly
> post on the various iPhone listservs.
>
> Ignore Harry as he does not appear to be speaking from a place of
> knowledge in this case.
>
> David Chittenden, MSc, CRC, MRCAA
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On 6/24/2010 3:45 AM, Jeff Kenyon wrote:
>>
>> Hi Harry, is this with all I-phones? I have a friend who will be
>> getting one soon, and she said it has Voice Over, for all of the aps
>> on it.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Harry Brown <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> *To:* [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 23, 2010 11:43 AM
>> *Subject:* Re: [VICUG-L] Smartphones Flunk for Blind Users
>>
>> HI all,
>> Well, here's the other side of the article!
>> there will be folks who do agree with this idea, and that is, how
>> can blind folks use a touch screen? Well, most of us, can't,
>> basically, 90% of the blind community.
>> I went to try out an iPhone 3gs, and all it was was a touch
>> screen, and no keys to touch. I could not use it, at all.
>> My fingers were all over that thing, and it was horrible.
>> So, I filed a complaint with the FCC against Apple, and it's
>> currently under review.
>> Apple needs to do any of the following:
>> 1. get rid of the touch screen, or
>> 2. put a built in feature on the iPhone that lets people run the
>> iPhone, entirely by voice command. Now they have some of that
>> available via an ap, but it only does email, and text messaging.
>> I'm talking about complete access to the iPhone, via command by voice.
>> Afterall, what about folks who cannot use their hands?
>> I will keep you all up to date on what happens.
>> Harry
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* David Poehlman
>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:06 AM
>> *Subject:* [VICUG-L] Smartphones Flunk for Blind Users
>>
>> Smartphones Flunk for Blind Users.
>>
>> Blind users see digital divide in new generation phones.
>>
>> By Jessica Portner on June 22.
>>
>> Smartphones can be pretty clueless when it comes to blind or
>> visually impaired
>> users.
>>
>> For millions of consumers with normal vision, smartphones
>> offer almost
>> effortless conference calling, e-mailing and Internet
>> browsing. They make it
>> easy to find a gas station, a rental car or a recipe. Vast
>> music libraries and
>> video games are expected features for a device with a $200 to
>> $600 price tag.
>>
>> But for many in the blind and visually impaired community, the
>> absence of
>> physical buttons on most smartphones makes interactions with
>> some devices
>> virtually impossible.
>>
>> Nowhere is the digital divide in the smartphone market more
>> pronounced than
>> between Apple and Google products.
>>
>> Blind and visually impaired smartphone users offer near
>> universal praise for
>> the iPhone, whose 3GS has a built-in VoiceOver screen reader
>> that enables all
>> functions with a few taps, swipes or other gestures on the
>> touch screen. On
>> Google's Android phone, blind users can't e-mail or navigate
>> the Internet.
>>
>> Many consumers with visual impairments say they are being held
>> back from equal
>> participation in the digital revolution, denied tools their
>> colleagues and
>> competitors enjoy. Smartphones, they argue, are public
>> accommodations, no
>> different from building ramps or Braille on elevators.
>>
>> "Our electronic, digital universe is changing so rapidly that
>> these phones are
>> as essential to our daily life as a curb cut would be," said
>> Brian Bashin, the
>> CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, an
>> advocacy organization
>> for the blind and visually impaired. "We shouldn't have to
>> play catch up with
>> expensive modifications when it all should have been there
>> right out of the box."
>>
>> The Blackberry's Oratio screen reader, for example, costs
>> blind users an extra
>> $450 on top of the price of the Research in Motion phone.
>>
>> This month, a House subcommittee held a hearing on the
>> Twenty-first Century
>> Communications and Video Accessibility Act to direct the
>> Federal Communications
>> Commission to make Internet-enabled communications devices
>> accessible to the
>> more than 25 million adults in the United States with vision
>> trouble.
>>
>> The FCC currently requires telecommunications manufacturers
>> and service
>> providers to make their products accessible to people with
>> disabilities. One FCC
>> official said Google would likely not be liable under the
>> current law because it
>> is not the phone's manufacturer.
>>
>> Jenifer Simpson, a former FCC official who is now the senior
>> director of
>> government affairs at the American Association of People with
>> Disabilities, is
>> frustrated that more companies are creating communications
>> products that the
>> FCC doesn't currently regulate.
>>
>> The question she wants companies to ask is, "Can Grandma give
>> you a phone call
>> on the smartphone you want to buy her for Christmas?"
>>
>> Joshua Miele, an associate scientist at the San
>> Francisco-based Smith-Kettlewell
>> Eye Research Institute who designs educational tools for blind
>> people like
>> himself, says the iPhone is a new paradigm for the more than
>> 1.3 million legally
>> blind people in the United States.
>>
>> "The most amazing thing about the iPhone is you go into the
>> settings and you
>> turn on the screen reader and you can use every part of your
>> phone, every
>> text-based application and you don't have to pay anything
>> extra,'' he said.
>>
>> VoiceOver, the iPhone's built-in screen reader, is controlled
>> though gestures
>> instead of arrow keys or keyboard commands. It can be
>> customized so that a
>> visually impaired person can easily magnify a web page or flip
>> to a
>> white-on-black background.
>>
>> The iPhone 4, unveiled this month, expands the roster of
>> accessibility tools,
>> including the ability to wirelessly connect to a device that
>> displays Braille.
>>
>> Youtube clip at URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQKtSR5Li1A
>>
>> In contrast, Google's TalkBack screen reader on its Android
>> mobile operating
>> system doesn't do enough talking, many advocates for the blind
>> say. Android
>> works impressively for calling, listening to music, using
>> global positioning
>> system data and applications like Facebook, but it won't help
>> blind users
>> dispatch an e-mail to their boss or scan a website while
>> waiting at the airport.
>>
>> When Android was released more than a year ago, the disability
>> community was
>> primed for more innovations. When a totally accessible
>> smartphone failed to
>> materialize this year, advocates for the blind castigated
>> Google as a peddler of
>> expectations. The Android 2.2, released a few weeks ago,
>> didn't substantially
>> enhance the phone's accessibility to blind and deaf users.
>>
>> Disability groups have been encouraged by some recent
>> victories. The National
>> Federation of the Blind last year reached a settlement with
>> Motorola after
>> pressuring the leading manufacturer of cell phones to comply
>> with Section 255 of
>> the federal Telecommunications Act. The act requires
>> telecommunications
>> equipment manufacturers and service providers to make their
>> products and
>> services accessible to people with disabilities. The agreement
>> commits the
>> company to make the phone-related functions on its BREW line
>> of phones useable
>> for non-visual customers.
>>
>> Advocates for the blind say Google has done extraordinary work
>> in other areas,
>> pointing to the Google Books Library Project.
>>
>> Steve Jacobs, president of the IDEAL Group, Inc., which
>> develops applications
>> for the blind, said his customers are hopeful that Google's
>> Project Eyes-Free ,
>> which invites software developers to create accessible
>> applications for the
>> Android, will serve up exciting inventions soon.
>>
>> "I believe Google will rise to that occasion," Jacobs said.
>>
>> T.V. Raman, a computer scientist and engineer at Google, agrees.
>>
>> Raman, who lost his eyesight at age 14 from glaucoma, is
>> revered by many people
>> with disabilities for his pioneering work on Google's search
>> service that helped
>> people with visual impairments navigate the web. But the
>> gifted innovator, who
>> solves Rubik's Cubes in Braille for fun, has also been faulted
>> by some for
>> developing products only he could figure out how to use.
>>
>> Raman defended Android in a recent interview as "still a young
>> platform" and
>> said that the accessibility problems in the browser and e-mail
>> will be fixed.
>>
>> "There are rough edges,'' he said. "The best way to silence
>> that criticism is to
>> go and build it. I wanted this yesterday as well."
>>
>> Source URL:
>>
>> http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/smartphones-fail-visually-impaired/
>>
>>
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