Comments for Blind Access Journal

Comment on Seeking Blind People Tossed Out of Their Jobs by Discrimination, Inaccessible Technology by Steven Spainhoer

Steven Spainhoer — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:12:59 +0000

I’d like to also note that my wife has had issues with Pearson Vue as well. They refise to use any adaptive technology such as Zoom Text, magic and a host of other tools that visualy impaired inviduals often use and access to see things on a compuer screen. We offered to by these tools and given them to peasron Vue, but they declined our offer. The State of Texas Division for Blind Services offered to provide these tools and training on how they work, FOR FREE, but Pearson Vue refused the offer.

Three time, my wife has failed a licensing test, critical for her to work in her chosen profession, but she can not see the screen on which the test is offered.

Pearson Vue offer a “reader”, but the first “reader” couldn’t pronounce or announce specific words. On yet another occassion, the ‘reader” had to be woke up and prompted to answer the questions on the screen for my wife. On another ocassion, a table top magnifyer was provided, but this necessitated a third person entering the data in the Pearson Vue computers, which means there is always the possibility for an error by that third person and not the person taking the test.

A normal hour and half long test took over eight hours to complete, six of it by the tester and then another two hours waiting for the answers to be fed into the Pearson Vue computer. In each case, my wife failed the test, even though she has been certified by a professional school as ready to pass the exam, has had the benfit ofg months of intense professional tutuoing by someone in the field who has passed the test, and even though she passed all on line practice exams with 100 per cent of the answers correct.

Now, after all of this, Pearson Vue doesn’t want to talk with us and the lnational licensing board that uses Pearson Vue has sought legal counsel to defend their use of Pearson Vue’s services.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Why get legal counsel if there’s no fire to put out?

Comment on CSUN: LookTel Recognizer for iOS by The Great Big List from the 2012 CSUN International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference | Curb Cut

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:59:54 +0000

[...] LookTel Recognizer for iOS [...]

Comment on CSUN: Milestone 312 Accessible MP3 Player from Bones, Inc. by The Great Big List from the 2012 CSUN International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference | Curb Cut

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:59:39 +0000

[...] Milestone 312 Accessible MP3 Player from Bones, Inc. [...]

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by John Barker

John Barker — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:36:29 +0000

I have an older freedom keyboard without the HID switch. Is it possible to pair it with my iphone4? When I set the iphone to search it does not discover the keyboard.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Comment on Sticking On Labels: Making the GetGlue iOS App Accessible by John Greer

John Greer — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:26:07 +0000

Concerning the question of whether custom labels are saved, I would think the answer is no. It does not seem to carry over from my iPhone to my iPod Touch.

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by linda Hunt

linda Hunt — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:51:22 +0000

I have an Iphone 4S. I recently paired a bluetooth keyboard with the phone and it allowed me to type but did not voice the text as I typed. It did read when I backspaced. Is this a problem with the Iphone?

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by Darrell Shandrow

Darrell Shandrow — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:55:59 +0000

The Freedom Pro does not support the function key commands introduced last year in iOS 4.2, whereas the iConnex does. Hope this helps.

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by Dick Feldman

Dick Feldman — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:46:04 +0000

I bought the Freedom Pro Keyboard for my iPhone 4. I hadn’t noticed that the iConnex keyboard is more adapted to the iPhone. Or is it? Should I return the Freedom Pro? is there a real advantage of the iConnex for the iPhone?

Comment on Sticking On Labels: Making the GetGlue iOS App Accessible by Tom Coburn

Tom Coburn — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:02:51 +0000

I have a suggestion for a blog post. If you haven’t done this before,
I am total. just purchased my first iphone last week, the iphone 4s.

Its been challenging trying to learn VoiceOver for the first time and how to use all the different gestures, but am slowly getting the hang of it. Took me a week to find an actual manual for VoiceOver and the iphone itself but anyways…

my suggestion is: a blog post recommending a listing of iphone / ipad apps that we know of that are compatible with VoiceOver and/or blind and VI friendly.

So far I haven’t found very many apps that are compatible. Netflix app is iffy at best, and the showtime movie app that lists movie theatres and showtimes in your area isn’t voiceover compatible at all, which annoys me especially since mom takes me to the movies about 3x a week. but anyway to be brief, a listing of recommended apps for us newbies to the iphone / ipad world to try would be very much helpful and appreciated to us newbies to the voiceover touchscreen world. thanks

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by Guy Robinette

Guy Robinette — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:05:10 +0000

Thanks a million I am able to use my freedom pro keyboard after only 4 minutes trying to pairing with my new iphone 4s. G_D bless you.

Comment on Pairing the iPhone 4 with the Freedom Pro Bluetooth Keyboard by John Gurd

John Gurd — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:45:22 +0000

Just got a new iPhone 4S for the speech accessibility. I found the on-screen keyboard a bit slow and frustrating. Thanks to your advice I got my old Freedom Pro working with it which sould help enormously. Pity there are no drivers like with the Nokia phones to make function keys emulate some of the gestures. Thanks again.

Comment on Watch Your Keys; JAWS Activation Issues Could be a Job Killer! by Jay Wakefield

Jay Wakefield — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:28:41 +0000

Well, if JAWS was not so expensive, people would not be encouraged to pirate it. Why should Blind people have to pay so much extra to use their computer? The answer is that they should not. I do not believe that pirating assistive technology software is wrong. It is only wrong when you try to make a profit off those copies.

Comment on Let’s Ask Twitter to Enable Us to Moderate Follow Requests by Poppy Schneider

Poppy Schneider — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:25:00 +0000

I’m not a huge twitter user but I believe that (at least if you have notifications turned on), you can report spammy followers through a link in the email that tells you there is a new follower on your account.

Comment on CSUN: Braille 2000 and Accidental Accessibility by The Blind Buzz on Braille « The Blind Buzz

The Blind Buzz on Braille « The Blind Buzz — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:43:11 +0000

[...] CSUN: Braille 2000 and Accidental Accessibility « Blind Access Journal – Darrell Shandrow finds that Braille2000 is accessible to blind people, but this was a mistake! Audio included. [...]

Comment on Fixing the Broken Table Index on iOS Using the Rotor by David Ward

David Ward — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:42:26 +0000

Fantastic post. Didn’t even know this feature existed. I’m primarly a low-vision user but I need to use VoiceOver now an again. Great.

Comment on Sendero LookAround GPS iPhone App Demonstration by Mr. Kasey C. Hopper M.A. COMS

Mr. Kasey C. Hopper M.A. COMS — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:18:10 +0000

Thank you for the demonstration. Seems more user frienddly than mobile geo and mobile speak.
KC

Comment on MSI Wind U100 Function Key Commands by ELENA

ELENA — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:09:51 +0000

Hi Thanks for all the above comments. My MSI was working great this morning until I had to unplug it for a few minutes to do some work on it briefly . After I plugged it back in and came back to it several hours later, I found a black screen and can’t figure out how to turn it back on. The netbook seem to be working and “humming” but wouldn’t have anything on the screen accept for a black screen. No errors, no messages, nothing at all – just black screen. I turned it off and on several times but it didn’t help. Is there a hot key that possibly could have turned off the screen?
Thank you in advance.

Comment on Exploring the iPod Touch and Learning Braille Using the Refreshabraille 18 Display by David Ward

David Ward — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:07:15 +0000

Nice Story… I’ll have to give it a listen.

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal « The BAT Channel

Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal « The BAT Channel — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:24:58 +0000

[...] Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal Darrell Shandrow Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:53:17 GMT [...]

Comment on iPhone App Maker Justifies Charging Blind Customers Extra for VoiceOver Accessibility by Leo

Leo — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:13:25 +0000

So I just bought it, and the additional VoiceOver support. I went looking for this because although I’m not much for the controversial / political business, I was genuinely curious about what this app does. By way of comparison, my wife got me one of those ‘Listen Up’ devices you slip into one ear for Christmas. You focus around by moving your head to pick up on sound.
This, on the other hand, lets me just move my iPod in a general direction, with stereo headphones in, just like a sighted person with a set of binoculars. Maybe not identical, but the ramifications are pretty profound. I noticed it’s pretty sensitive to the backgrounds and textures of the sounds, which is as important for us as the sounds themselves, just like a sighted person looking at an image set against a backdrop; whether you know it or not, the backdrop plays a major part. So now I’m going to end up conducting some pretty interesting experiments with this: what kind of distance info does it provide? What sort of data does it return via sound?
No, I have not rated this in the app store yet, but after I have used it for awhile, I will definitely add any info I get into the comments for the rating.
And guys, this was at the time an extra 4 bucks, not an extra 400. Now they have it so you can buy the VoiceOver as just one add-on. That is the only one I got now because the app itself has so much in it just by itself, I’ll be learning that first.
Because it comes through headphones, we get everything a headphones view has – and by simply focusing, moving the device around, we can sonically zoom into and out of various zones, or areas, if you will.
I went out on my front walk, turned on the application, and was able to zoom in on a building across the street because of the existing sound or wind or whatever that bounces off. If you can see and think this is out there, do it with your eyes shut and you’ll hear it. I then proceeded to home in on one of the neighborhood birds. I noticed it changed focus very quickly, you can hear yourself moving it if you’re not careful, but still I could home in on the bird in the tree chirping, normally almost out of earshot but well within range for this device.
So is it possible we can use it to establish patterns, as an extension of what we already do spatially with sound? Already we benefit by ourselves from a certain amount of sonic imagery, but we can’t do what bats do: emit high frequencies and get the feedback from nearby objects. But, radically, no matter what the app store says, I’m thinking this app could. Not by emitting the frequencies, but us learning just how to tune the sliders and such, and, more to the point, focus, the way a sighted person does with a set of field glasses.
Notice how the sound changes just in the air as you move the device. So is this an inkling of what could be for us the closest thing to very rudimentary distance vision? I think anyone who has messed with this app for awhile ought to add feedback as it relates to pattern recognition: can you tell with it where a wall starts and stops, etc. The mic on the iPod Touch 4th Gen sure does seem to be sensitive.
I’m not suggesting walking down the street holding your device in the air, not yet anyway till we know about drop-offs which I for one will test, but certainly to get a feel for the general layout of a large area that exceeds your ability to hear surroundings, like a park or something, or give you the right feedback to find your way back from someplace, the uses of this app seem to be pretty expansive.

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by Nimer Jaber

Nimer Jaber — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:33:12 +0000

Wow …

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by john

john — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:41:56 +0000

wow! hilarious! just imagine: what if FS did buy this blog? I don’t think I’d ever read it again!

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by Tina E

Tina E — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 15:20:23 +0000

Wow, this is a good one! Just be careful that they don’t use hard-earned money from those of us who pay for SMA’s, for a lawsuit over use of their name, as opposed to actually improving the product in meaningful ways. Or, you could disguise the post as a bug report for an issue that’s been going on since version 9, and then they probably wouldn’t look at it, either that, or they wouldn’t care.

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by Tina E

Tina E — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 09:21:15 +0000

Wow! That was a great one! LOL! Maybe a disclaimer’s in order, so they won’t come after the Journal with a lawsuit, spending their hard-earned money people pay on SMA’s that are supposedly for software development? Or, hey, perfect solution, we could disguise it in the form of a bug report that goes all the way back to version 9, and that way, they probably won’t care, LOL.

Comment on Freedom Scientific Acquires Blind Access Journal by reinhard stebner

reinhard stebner — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 01:51:07 +0000

Was this a April fools joke? It shure sounds like one.