Listen as I chat with a visually impaired business man, meet an attorney, hang out with one of the Podcast Outlaws and chat with Joe from Yahoo about the need for a real solution to their inaccessible visual verification, all while traveling from Phoenix to Ontario, California to attend the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. Enjoy. Feedback is welcome as always.
Advocating full participation through equal accessibility.
Hi Darrell,
I heard you on TWiT today and couldn’t believe it when you said that iTunes wasn’t compatible with screen-reading software. I thought for sure Apple’s VoiceOver interface would be able to handle it, especially since iTunes is an Apple product and VoiceOver was a highly-touted feature of Tiger.
I thought that maybe you were using Windows and I could use this as a good reason to tell you to switch to Mac. I fired up VoiceOver, and it was able to get me around Safari surprisingly well, but as soon as I switched to iTunes, the only items identified were menus and scrollbars. It was absurdly limited.
I think that Apple will listen if more people alert them to this issue. Since iTunes doesn’t have a feedback page anymore (it’s simply a “request music” thing now), the next best thing is to use the OS X feedback page to report it as an accessibility issue. Of course this would keep it Mac-specific, but hopefully the necessary changes would be made to the Windows version as well since they keep the two platforms in sync.
Another option is to write to steve@apple.com, the address that is monitored by Apple’s Customer Relations. Or, you can skip the email and call them directly at (800) 767-2775. Just follow whatever menu options they have to get to customer relations.
Apple is loving the iPod right now, and loves to promote things that benefit it, such as podcasting. If you throw in that word when you talk to them, I’m sure they’ll give it attention. Of course, being Apple, they’ll pretend that they’re doing nothing until the day the update is released.
I was standing right by you during the expo and i think that you are one amazing person. I love listening to everything going on in your world. Keep up the great work.