I just have two thoughts on this article. First, the iPhone had a lot 
more going for it over the Blackberry than just the fact that it used a 
touch screen. Second, this article focuses on the mobile platform. I 
don't see anything in this article that says keyboards for laptops and 
desktop computers are going away. There's obviously a lot of good 
reasons to go with a touch screen interface on a mobile platform and 
devices where you're primarily consuming content. I don't see 
programmers, authors, and other content generators giving up their 
keyboards any time soon. Also, even though mobile devices are lacking 
keyboards, there's quite a market in providing bluetooth keyboards for 
such devices.

On 08/20/2013 04:12 PM, David Hilbert Poehlman wrote:
> well, with sp[eech recognition and other interactivity improving, it certainly brings the price down to offer devices with few to no moving parts.  I don’t think anyone is asking for any opinions but it is the way it is going so best solve its issues before we have to.
>
> On Aug 20, 2013, at 5:06 PM, Bill Pasco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> And as usual, who is asking our opinions. I mean everyone's opinions not
> just blind folks. Blind people aren't the only group unhappy about the
> removal of anything resembling a button.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 1:47 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [VICUG-L] NPR.org Text-Only : The End Of Buttons: The New
> Gesture-Control Era
>
> Hi to all.
>
> While the story below is for a general audience, its implications for blind
> accessibility aren't hard to miss. In a nutshell, if you're like me and use
> a desktop system with a QWERTY keyboard, you're ancient history. If you use
> a Blackberry with lots of buttons, you're passé (I'm not sure how to do that
> accented e). But if you're an Apple user using hand gestures or if you use
> DragonSpeak with voice commands, welcome to the future!
>
> And yes, an audio version of this story is available at the link below.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> ----
> http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=213469564&rId=2&x=1
>
> By Elise Hu
>
> All Things Considered, August 19, 2013 · Last week, BlackBerry put up a
> for-sale sign after many years of decline. The once revolutionary BlackBerry
> was the first smartphone addiction for so many Americans — you were
> connected all the time! — and even when iPhone ushered in a slimmer,
> sleeker, faster era, a few holdouts (many on Capitol Hill) continued to
> stubbornly keep a BlackBerry in their pockets.
>
> But looking back, it's clear BlackBerry devices began to lose consumers more
> than half a decade ago. That's when the iPhone's touch screen became the
> user interface de rigueur and the Blackberry, with its keyboard and buttons,
> became almost instantly outdated. Hemispheres Magazine takes note:
>
>
>
>
> "Computers, which started as banks of switches, sprouted keyboards (banks of
> buttons with letters on them). We used buttons to select television shows to
> watch and pushed buttons to order soft drinks from vending machines. Then
> came the BlackBerry, which bristled with buttons.
>
> "And then, with the iPhone, everything changed. As a descendant of both the
> computer and the phone, Apple's superproduct had a big button at the bottom,
> plus a switch at the top and some tiny little controls. You could even argue
> that the entire screen is a button of sorts. The point, though, is that we
> didn't need to rely on just buttons anymore; we could tap, drag and pinch to
> operate the phone. The moment Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld 2007 and
> brandished his nifty little device, the button was on notice. Fingers, with
> touchscreens, became the new buttons."
>
>
>
> So it goes with technology. The switch gave way to the button, the button
> gave way to a touch screen, and soon, touching screens may seem old-school:
> Gesture and voice control are the "waves" of the future.
>
> The newest smartphones are abandoning both physical and on-screen buttons in
> favor of gestures. "[S]crolling, swiping, tapping, pinching, flicking — are
> becoming the dominant form of the smartphone user interface," writes Rani
> Molla for technology site GigaOM.
>
> As with so much behavior change ushered in by technology, the change happens
> before we take wider notice. But in cars, those physical buttons have been
> disappearing; gaming turned to wave commands with Xbox Kinect years ago; and
> button-cluttered remote controls are giving way to smartphone controls.
> Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 8, is flat and without button
> icons to click. Google Glass, the revolutionary spectacle-computer, is
> largely controlled with voice commands. And with each new phone, like the
> Moto X, the range of gesture commands to interface with it is increasing.
>
> This creates challenges for user interface designers, who still have a ways
> to go to understand which gesture commands are likely to be both precise and
> natural enough for wide user adoption. Reviews for Leap Motion, a new device
> that turns gestures into digital commands, have been mixed. But the
> technological shift is afoot. Already, buttons seem passé
>
>
>     VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
> Archived on the World Wide Web at
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>
>     VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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>
>      VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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>

-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail


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