iPhone

Shape Services committed Wednesday to make its flagship IM+ instant messaging application for the iPhone accessible to blind people by way of Apple’s built-in VoiceOver screen reader.

“We are sending IM+ Pro v.4.3 with VoiceOver support for App Store review today and expect its publishing in a week or so,” said Natalia Kasyanova, a representative from the company’s business development team in a Wednesday morning e-mail.

Kasyanova said VoiceOver accessibility will move to IM+ Lite in the coming weeks and to the rest of the company’s products over an unspecified time frame.

“Apple’s VoiceOver accessibility programming guide is really helpful, however, its implementation process requires some time and developers’ resources, considering the number of Shape’s apps in iTunes,” she said. “We realize the importance of disabled peoples’ support and would try to do our best in making our apps available and useful for them.”

Kasyanova said Shape Services invites feedback through the built-in forms found in its apps, the company’s Support Center website, the IM+ Forum and Twitter.

Kasyanova said the company announces beta testing opportunities from time to time and blind VoiceOver users are welcome to apply.

The promised Jibbigo English-Spanish Translator update was released Monday with restored VoiceOver accessibility for blind users.

The new version, numbered 1.11127, explicitly fixes the VoiceOver issues and represents a change to the company’s version numbering scheme.

The company has made a commitment to ensuring the ongoing accessibility of its apps, so blind users can look forward to new enhancements and features with greater confidence.

Andy Lane reported Thursday on the VIPhone e-mail discussion group that the latest update of the Jibbigo English-Spanish translator broke VoiceOver accessibility for blind users.

“When I start Jibbigo, VoiceOver is silent and won’t say anything again until I double click home and close the app,” Lane said. “Even pressing home and entering a new app doesn’t get VoiceOver going again. Breaks it on the entire phone until you can close the app. If you have no vision at all this will be very difficult to do I would imagine.”

Jibbigo consultant Miriam Sachs Martin responded to communications from members of the blind community in less than 24 hours.

“Our latest update had a slight incompatibility with Apple’s new OS4 software. Our engineers have already submitted the fix to Apple, and it should be re-released within about 3 days,” she said. “In the interim, we have taken the precaution of completely removing Spanish-English Jibbigo from the app store so that no other customers should be inconvenienced.”

Martin said Jibbigo is committed to accessibility.

“Jibbigo remains deeply committed to its blind and low-vision users, and we are proud to have a product that is of service to this community,” she said. “We have a high standard of excellent customer service. Anybody with questions or concerns may contact me at info (at) jibbigo.com. They can be assured of a quick reply.”

Lane said he appreciates Jibbigo’s affirmative response.

“You guys won’t believe how good this company have been and how much they clearly care about their users,” Lane said. “I now cannot recommend this company and their product highly enough.”

Mobile television provider MobiTV said it plans to incorporate VoiceOver accessibility in its iPhone app by September.

The company streams live and on-demand content from media companies including ABC, ESPN and Nickelodeon to smartphone users.

Blind sports fan Liam Erven said his interest in MobiTV’s iPhone app centers around their extensive coverage of sporting events such as the World Cup and pay-per-view UFC fights.

“Mainly for me there’s ESPN coverage. There’s a lot of stuff they do with sports,” Erven said. “I like to be able to get news and entertainment when I’m out and about and that’s the whole point with the iPhone is to have the world at your fingertips.”

Erven was surprised to find MobiTV’s iPhone app unusable with Apple’s built-in VoiceOver screen reader that enables Braille and speech accessibility for blind users of the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone.

“I was really disappointed when I found out I couldn’t use it (MobiTV’s iPhone app) because I didn’t understand why small accessibility concessions couldn’t be made,” he said. “I know a lot of companies don’t understand that, hey, there’s this whole interface you can use to make things accessible.”

Ray DeRenzo, chief marketing officer with MobiTV, Inc., said the company understands and will be taking action in the near future on requests to add VoiceOver support.

“We’ve had other inquiries in the past and we’re very sensitive to the fact that we’re not serving a valued segment of the consumer base,” he said. “We published the MobiTV application on the iPhone in April of this year and it was just a matter of trying to get a product to market in an aggressive time frame so we could be able to present content like the World Cup through ESPN.”

DeRenzo said accessibility was always on the company’s roadmap.

“It was always our intent to use the VoiceOver capability on iPhone and we’re going to do that in a subsequent release of the application,” DeRenzo said. “It’s not available presently. We’re going to be doing a release on July 15. It will not be available in that release. In the next release, which is probably within 60 days following the July time frame, we’re going to be enabling VoiceOver capability.”

DeRenzo said MobiTV would like to make its apps for other smartphone platforms, including Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, available to blind users as their operating systems become accessible.

“We’re going to try to make our products more accessible as device manufacturers enable VoiceOver-like capabilities in their operating systems,” DeRenzo said. “This is the way we’re hoping the industry evolves where each of the device manufacturers and their operating systems have a voice enablement capability that becomes part of the software development kit we can utilize. That’s certainly the case with devices like the iPhone on iOS.”

Erven said making apps like MobiTV accessible could start to bridge the gap between blind users and traditional cable or satellite providers that don’t accommodate customers with disabilities in the set top boxes they use to deliver content.

“The on-demand stuff is nice and that’s one thing you can’t get access to right now on a traditional cable system without a lot of sighted assistance,” Erven said. “More and more companies are going with this entertainment over IP platform. I thought it was really important that these companies know that, hey, look, we’re out here and we use this technology, too.”

Apple provides a free accessibility programming guide to all developers who are willing to make their applications accessible to blind customers.