
A new app allows blind people to listen to an audio readback of printed text - sethbannon
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/20/apple-blind-app-idINKBN0HF08S20140920
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jareds
As a totally blind user I won't buy this app. There isn't that much printed
material I need to deal with now and there are $5 apps that will generally let
me get good enough oCR to determine what junk mail I am getting. I would pay
the $99 if it were an in app purchase and the app was limited to say 5 scans a
month but with no trial type thing I will not be buying it.

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mcphilip
Watching the promotional video[1] of the iPhone app, the one question that
springs to mind is how the blind people know how to orient their phone to the
objects shown in the video. For instance, reading the hours a store is open:
there is no standard place to put that signage, so how likely is this use case
to be applied in real world scenarios?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao)

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adrianhoward
Many people who are classified as blind have some kind of vision perception —
just very, very degraded compared to "normal" vision. So while they might not
be able to read, they would be able to at least make educational guesses as to
where text might be.

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eugeneyev
Does anyone know of other similar apps - particularly ones supporting more
languages? Specifically - Russian

Would be an awesome gift for my grandfather whose vision has deteriorated
significantly due to age. He is 90+, so most of the documents he is actually
interested in reading are printed or even hand-written. We've been able to
teach him to use an iPad and the built-in voiceover functionality is great for
helping read the books/newspapers we pre-load on the device. However it
doesn't help much with printed documents - or even just reading the newspaper.

Something like this app really would be a game changer (assuming it's
intuitive to use), however it looks like their current language support is
only limited to the following: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian.

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Mithaldu
It's a fairly clever idea, it combines "Google Goggles" instant OCR with
instant text-to-speech, to make the phone read out what the camera is seeing.

The one worry i have is that, since modern phones have no tactile input
(nevermind feedback), it means a blind person will have a cellphone for the
single purpose of being a mobile OCR-reader. Can people with actual experience
maybe weigh in on this?

Also, holy damn, i wish it were illegal for journalists to lie in their
titles.

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ctoth
This may surprise you, but I am a totally blind iPhone user and have been for
about 4 years. Before this, I owned a series of Nokia devices, the 6682, N95,
etc. Previously, on the s60 devices, we had to purchase a $350 screen reader
to make the phone talk. Now, on any iPhone running iOS 4 or later, (so... all
of them) I can press the home button 3 times, or just ask Siri to turn on
VoiceOver, and I am instantly granted the same level of access to the device
that my sighted colleagues expect. Apple is seriously amazing in terms of
accessibility -- all of their built-in apps are 100% accessible, all controls
labeled, all custom interaction elements given clear accessible
descriptions/access tips. Search on YouTube for blind people using the
iPhone/iPad, I expect it will blow your mind. Even more awesome than the
iPhone's built-in accessibility is the fact that it's so easy for 3rd party
developers to make their own apps accessible. All native controls are
accessible by default, all you need do as a developer is add labels. For
custom controls, such as chess boards, Apple provides an incredibly powerful
accessibility API, allowing developers to enable access for anything. I
personally play Shredder Chess on the iPhone as the developer has explicitly
enabled accessibility for it. There are real blind people using these devices,
and I hope you consider this the next time you are thinking about how
accessibility fits/doesn't into your next project.

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eric_bullington
What's your number one recommendation for mobile app developers in terms of
enhancing (or not screwing up) accessibility?

If you're feeling extra ambitious, I'd love to hear the same advice with
respect to web apps. Has HTML5 made a big difference in terms of
accessibility? Are there any obvious big wins for accessibility that most of
us are missing?

Thanks for your awesome comment!

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silencio
I say this as a sighted dev, but I used to volunteer to teach computer basics
and programming to visually impaired folks and related things. Feel free to
sub in a lot of the visual impairment-specific stuff with other disabilities
too, deafness being another big one.

* Learn to use a screenreader and just play with your app/website. Voiceover has a screen curtain you can enable so you don't have the temptation to peek. * Read accessibility documentation for best practices (iOS: [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/iPhoneAccessibility/Accessibility_on_iPhone/Accessibility_on_iPhone.html) Android: [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/i...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/index.html) Web (a decent start, I forget the better ones right now cause it's been a while): [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility)) * A lot of times, making your app easier and simpler for new users to use (i.e. ux improvements) will have the side benefit of making it more accessible and vice versa ;) * Reach out to blind users if you have any, and ask them for tips and problems. * When you get someone reaching out to you about how inaccessible something is, work with them to fix it if you can (you'd be surprised....) * Check out your local groups/conferences/hackathons, I've seen some great projects needing help and lots of people sharing their knowledge on this front (one that comes to mind is Yahoo Accessibility down in LA in the past when I used to live there)

Sometimes even I fuck up on this front, and it's definitely a constant
checking-your-privileges and rethinking things battle. The one thing that
keeps me going is this: there will be times where all of us will benefit from
accessibility, even if it's not a permanent or big problem. I try to do what I
can on this front for my own work/hobbies, hoping it helps someone else. And I
thank the person that had the foresight to reserve the front buses on seats
for people with disabilities because I need it right now. :P

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eric_bullington
>* Learn to use a screenreader and just play with your app/website.

Excellent advice. I'll start testing my sites with a screenreader in addition
to IE8 and all other other usual suspects. I also just found a cool toolkit
for Bootstrap 3 (I use Bootstrap a lot):

[https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/01/28/bootstrap-
acce...](https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/01/28/bootstrap-
accessibility-plugin-making-the-popular-web-development-framework-better/)

