Skip to Content

Siri Virtual Assistant iPhone App Demo

October 14, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Shownotes

Kevin Chao demonstrates the Siri virtual assistant app for the iPhone. Simply open Siri, press the speech button, ask your phone for help with something and this app will get the requested information for you.

If you are not wearing earbuds, headphones or a Bluetooth headset while using Siri, follow these steps to make sure VoiceOver does not interfere:

  1. Flick to the “speech” button or touch it near the lower-righthand corner of the screen.
  2. Double tap with three fingers to mute the speech from VoiceOver.
  3. Double tap to hear the beep indicating you may start talking.
  4. Ask your question and wait for the beep indicating Siri has stopped listening.
  5. Double tap with three fingers to unmute and resume speech from VoiceOver.
  6. Flick around the screen to locate the information that answers your question.

Apple has owned this app for at least six months. While Siri is reasonably accessible now, it does contain poorly-labeled buttons, VoiceOver easily interferes with the user’s ability to dictate questions and there is a general lack of Apple’s typically thoughtful accessible design considerations in the user interface for this app. We hope that, as Apple updates and possibly integrates Siri’s technology into iOS, the company will add the finishing touches to its accessibility along the way.

Download and Listen – Siri Virtual Assistant iPhone App Demo

Categories: iPhone

Practicing Gestures on the iPhone with VoiceOver

October 14, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Shownotes

Kevin Chao demonstrates a special VoiceOver practice mode that helps new users learn the gestures needed to effectively access Apple’s touch-screen devices.

Audio from this recording will be used as part of a short VoiceOver promo that will go out to the mainstream technology industry demonstrating the capabilities of blind people using accessible touch screens thanks to the built-in accessibility support included in Apple products.

Download and Listen – Practicing Gestures on the iPhone Using VoiceOver

Categories: iPhone

Sendero LookAround GPS iPhone App Demonstration

October 12, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Shownotes

I demonstrated Sendero’s brand-new LookAround GPS application for the iPhone on Jeff Bishop’s Sept. 17 Desert Skies show. It was also heard on ACB Radio’s Main Menu program. I thought it would be nice to share this sound-seeing demo with those of you who may have missed the previous listening opportunities.

Since the recording of this demonstration, Sendero has submitted version 1.1 of LookAround to Apple for approval and posting on the iTunes Store. This update may have fixed some of the concerns that came up in this recording. Stay tuned to Sendero’s LookAround page for the latest information on this app as it becomes available.

Download and Listen – Sendero LookAround iPhone App Demo

Categories: iPhone, podcast, reviews, travel

Blio Developer Says Instability Caused Launch of E-reading Software Without Accessibility

September 29, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Tuesday’s highly-anticipated launch of new e-book reading software took off without accessibility for blind readers.

Developed by K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc., a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind, Blio was promoted as a cross-platform, accessible, visually appealing way to read books.

Instead of a new way to read books, blind users found a note buried in the website’s downloads page stating: “An accessible version of Blio will be available for download in October.”

James Gashel, vice president of business development with K-NFB Reading Technology, said Blio was launched without accessibility because adding it made the software too unstable for public release.

“Obviously, I want Blio to be accessible on the first day. There’s no question about that,” said Gashel, who serves on the board of the National Federation of the Blind. “We pressed toward having the same level of accessibility, but it doesn’t make sense to invest effort in making software that doesn’t run right accessible at the time of launch.”

Blind readers, who said they were looking forward to an additional way to get more books in an accessible format, immediately began expressing their disappointment by way of the Twitter social network.

Blind computer science student Kevin Chao said Blio crashed after ten minutes even without the accessibility features.

“I brought up the table of contents in the Getting Started book, tabbed around and Blio crashed,” Chao said.

“Blio has failed on a number of counts,” Chao said. “It’s not fully accessible, it’s too late and it seems not to have garnered any traction in the mainstream.”

Chao, who describes himself as a tech enthusiast who pushes the limits by testing products for accessibility, assessed Blio’s launch performance.

He said Blio is missing basic interface and navigation features found in software that has been made accessible to screen readers for the blind.

“There is no menu interface, just a lot of buttons and other controls,” Chao said. “Pressing the tab, shift-tab and arrow keys produce unreliable results. There also appear to be no hotkeys to activate any buttons or navigate to various fields or controls within the application.”

He said Blio’s book reading features are also not accessible.

“Using JAWS, I could read the first line of a book. I could listen to a book using ‘read aloud’, but there is no way of navigating,” Chao said. “I can read the Getting Started guide when hitting ENTER on the ‘read aloud’ option, but I can’t control voice features like rate and pitch.”

Gashel said accessibility is a Blio feature that will improve as the software evolves.

“I would look at Blio as rolling out, and so not all of the features of Blio that are supposed to work for everybody are working on the first day,” said Gashel. “What we’re focused on is whether or not Blio will be accessible. It will be. There’s no retreat or backing up.”

Another disappointed blind book enthusiast asked what would happen if key features for sighted readers were left out of the product.

“I wonder how this would go over?” asked Richard Wells, a blind Baptist pastor who also does quality-assurance testing for an assistive technology company that provides screen-reading software for the blind. “New book reader just released. The visual display should work some time next month.”

Categories: Uncategorized

Listen to the Desert Cafe Sunday Night

September 25, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

We will open the Desert Cafe doors once again on Sunday night, Sept. 26. So, if you are interested in listening to great internet radio before bed or while you are drinking your coffee getting ready for your day,then join us. You will have fun hanging out in the Cafe.

Tomorrow night September 26,
Come Join us and listen to our music mix.

We will play the usual tunes and have virtual  food and beverages in the cafe,
and  chat with  you all about your day.

Darrell  will discuss more about the iPhone; it has become a fun  techie segment,
and you all will see how quickly  the time went.
He  will be demonstrating oMoby,
not Adobe.
Several objects he will identify,
Even about money oMoby does not lie.
Perhaps, he will demo other Aps,
So come hangout with us,Ladies and Chaps.

Do you find this menu appetizing? If it has appeal, then point your browser to ACB Radio Interactive and listen on Sunday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Pacific time, 9:00 to 11:00 Mountain time, 10:00 to midnight Central time, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern time or 03:00 Universal time on Monday.

We look forward to hearing from all of you on e-mail, MSN / Windows Live Messenger and Twitter during the show.

Categories: Uncategorized

Letter to Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan About the Need for Accessibility

September 17, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Many of you will note that, recently, I have been posting comments on Twitter about my journalism school’s lack of accessibility. These comments were driven by my frustration with what I perceived to be the school’s lack of interest in improving the accessibility of its websites and other technology resources as evidenced by its ignoring and failing to take seriously previous correspondence I have undertaken with Dean Christopher Callahan.

In response to my tweets, I began receiving direct messages from Dean Callahan expressing concerns and disappointment with my approach to these issues. Haven’t I heard that before?

Stating he had previously invited me to meet with him to discuss solutions, he did so again. I never received that previous invitation. I’m not saying it was not sent, just that I did not, for whatever reason, receive the message.

Those of you who truly know how I approach these matters also know that I never take a fighting stance with anyone who is constructively engaging with me or others to improve accessibility. Doing so would be counterproductive and undeserved. The hammer approach is reserved strictly for those who outright ignore me or who show the bravery to actually make a statement justifying their ongoing discrimination against and exclusion of blind people from full participation through inaccessibility.

Trusting that Dean Callahan previously sent a constructive invitation to engage in discussions, I apologized for the character of my Twitter posts and agreed to an Oct. 5 meeting to discuss how the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication can successfully address accessibility in light of its stated diversity policies.

As part of that correspondence with Dean Callahan, I restated an earlier promise to send him an accessibility assessment of one of the school’s websites along with useful resources for making websites accessible. The following letter, sent to Dean Callahan Friday afternoon, fulfills that promise and serves as my ongoing effort to work with the Cronkite School to become more accessible to faculty, staff and students with disabilities and to educate future online media content creators and editors about the need to make sure their work is accessible to all audience members.

Hello Dean Callahan,

As you have requested, please find two examples of accessible media websites along with some resources that can be useful in making the Web more accessible to people with disabilities.

BBC

The BBC works to make its Web presence accessible. Although it is not perfect in all respects, their efforts are evolving in the right direction.

Here is a link to BBC’s accessibility help page.

The key point to be clearly understood is that BBC publicly states that it cares about accessibility and works to make positive changes in that area so as to include members of its audience who have disabilities.

National Public Radio

NPR also makes the bulk of its Web presence accessible, although it doesn’t state it as loudly as does BBC.

The organization offers a text-only site.

The use of text-only sites is controversial, and I personally disagree with the practice, as the tendency is to update the “graphical” site without providing exactly the same content on the often-forgotten text-only edition. When this oversight is noted, it represents a separate-but-unequal situation which was banned by the Supreme Court in the 1960s as it was being applied in the segregation of African-Americans.

Accessibility Assessment of CronkiteNewsOnline.com

There are a number of unfortunate elements on the Cronkite News website that currently make it difficult to use for blind readers. Further, it seems recent updates to the site are making it even less accessible.

Missing Alt Tags for Graphics

The most obvious accessibility concern with the site is the lack of descriptive alt text tags for images. These HTML tags can provide a text-based description for graphics and they should be used for all important images on a site.

The site’s navigation area sounds like this for a blind screen-reader user:

nav/home
nav/about
nav/stories
nav/newswatch
nav/news21
nav/cronkite
nav/contact

Although this is not a show stopper, the presentation could be easily improved by simply adding appropriate descriptive alt text tags to those graphics.

Other missing alt tags are more serious, as there is no way to determine the content to which they will link unless the user simply follows the link to find out. That’s not right unless a sighted user must play the same guessing game.

For example, a link near the text about downloading mobile apps just says “img/front_cn.” What’s that?

Even the link that says “img/front_azfactcheck” won’t be clear to most readers.

Navigating Stories

Navigating to and reading stories is possible by tabbing to and pressing enter on links, but it could be far better. Consider using headings on the titles for each story. When this is done, as is the case on many blogs and some other media websites, blind and sighted users alike can more easily and quickly move from story to story.

Video Links Next to Stories

A link that happens to be missing its alt text tag, “img/icon-video,” appears next to most stories on the site. Pressing enter on that link seems to do nothing, although it’s clearly meant to allow the viewer to watch a video. What is this link supposed to do once clicked?

Reading and Watching Stories

There are difficulties once a story has been opened for reading or viewing.

Let’s take the Sept. 16 story titled Ranked No. 1 in country for West Nile virus, Arizona is fighting back as an example.

A link at the top of the story is missing its alt text tag. It says “09/16-westnile-video img/tp24.” What does this mean exactly? Clicking the link seems to do nothing.

A text link labeled “watch now” also seems to go nowhere.

It is clear that some sort of video player is being used which doesn’t work on all systems.

What technology is being used to play videos on the site? Is it Flash or Silverlight?

There are some steps that can be taken to make multimedia sites more accessible.

Please see the resources coming right up.

Web Accessibility Resources

These resources are simply examples of sites that provide best practices and other information about making websites accessible.

Accessibility in the Cronkite School Curriculum

Finally, I am deeply concerned about the lack of attention to accessibility in the teaching of classes like JMC 305, JMC 460 and the Saturday online media academies.

Many resources exist for developers to make their sites accessible. Why not include some assignments and good information about accessibility in these courses? After all, creators of online media are going to find themselves confronting organizations and people who advocate staunchly for accessibility and are thus going to find themselves directed by corporate management types who wish to avoid lawsuits, public relations disasters and other similar risks to their bottom lines.

Best regards,

Darrell

After reading the letter, I invite all of you to comment. What did you like? What didn’t you like? What additional resources might help a journalism school make its technology accessible or educate others on accessibility? As always, the door hangs wide open and awaits your constructive feedback.

Catch the Desert Cafe Tonight on ACB Radio Interactive

September 12, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

The Desert Cafe now opens at a new time!

The  Cafe will  no longer open on Monday.  Instead,  we will open the doors on Sunday nights. So, if you are interested in listening to great internet radio  before bed or while you are drinking your  coffee getting ready for   your day,then  join us. You will have fun hanging out in the Cafe.

We will play  cool songs from A to Z and serve up our famous delicious virtual food and beverages.

In addition, Darrell will have  his usual technology segment.  This time, he will discuss the iPhones touch screen and explain how it works from a blindness perspective.

Do you find this menu appetizing? If it has appeal, then point your browser to ACB Radio Interactive and listen from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Pacific time, 9:00 to 11:00 Mountain time, 10:00 to midnight Central time, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern time or 03:00 Universal time.

We look forward to spending time with all of you tonight in the Desert Cafe.

Categories: Uncategorized

Listen Live to the Arizona Association of Blind Students Seminar Online

September 9, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

As part of the 64th annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Arizona, the Arizona Association of Blind Students is holding its annual Friday evening seminar and business meeting.

We’re doing something new this year.

If you are unable to attend the convention in person, you have an opportunity to listen to the seminar online.

Our agenda includes these exciting items:

  • Bob Kresmer will discuss the Arizona state affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind.
  • Ryan Thomas will talk about how the Arizona Association of Blind Students can help you succeed.
  • There will be an interactive discussion on how blind students use college support services.
  • Allison Hilliker will discuss the use of Bookshare and other accessible media sources to successfully complete reading and research work.
  • The Arizona Association of Blind Students will hold elections.

The seminar starts at 7 p.m. Pacific time Friday, Sept. 10.

Visit Blind Access Journal Radio and choose the link for your favorite media player to start listening. If your listening device or software is not listed, simply choose the Winamp option for the best experience.

If you wish to communicate with us during the seminar, simply post to Twitter by including #nfba10 anywhere in the message.

Kindle Accessibility Review: How Far Has Amazon Opened the Door to the Blind?

August 31, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

By guest writer Larry Wanger.

The Kindle is an electronic book reading device produced by Amazon that provides access to hundreds of thousands of in-copyright books and well over a million more that are either out of print or in the public domain. In other words, it’s pretty safe to say that if it’s not available on the Kindle it’s not available in e-book format.

The question we must ask is, “how effectively does the new Kindle 3 make the books in this vast library accessible to blind readers”?

While it is clear that Amazon has taken some steps in the right direction to make the new book reader accessible, this review will point out significant areas where there’s a great deal of work to be done in order for the company to claim it sells a truly accessible product.

The Pros:

  • A device with access to over 600,000 books and over a million more out of copyright.
  • Light weight, small and very portable.
  • Outstanding battery life.
  • Works for the casual reader who doesn’t expect more than simply being able to read a book.

The Cons:

  • Speech output that is less than stellar.
  • There may be over 600,000 books but text to speech doesn’t work on all of them.
  • The new Kindle just won’t fit the bill for students, researchers or serious readers who demand a lot in terms of navigation and accessibility.

Those who know me are aware that I tend to be an early adopter. If a new device or technology hits the market and if it promises accessibility I find myself wishing for it. So, in July when Amazon began taking orders for the new Kindle I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. The following paragraphs highlight the good, the bad and what needs work on the new Kindle. I’ve done all of the heavy lifting and spent hours finding the strengths and shortfalls of the new reader.

You’ll find nearly 650,000 copyrighted books in the store. Amazon says the mission of the Kindle team is to put every book in the world in your hands within 60 seconds. And, while they may be able to do that, they continue to fall short in terms of providing that level of accessibility to the blind community. 

Out of the box, the Kindle is not accessible. The shipment includes a print quick-start guide and the Kindle has printed instructions on the screen telling the owner how to begin using the device. No disk is included with a copy of the guide. You’ll need to go to the Kindle web site to find a downloadable PDF copy of the manual. 

Turning on the Kindle is fairly easy. A sliding switch is located on the bottom edge of the device. However, no speech is available just by firing up the Kindle. You will need assistance navigating the menus so that a feature called Voice Guide can be activated. Note: this is a one-time activation and the Voice Guide remains on for future use.

To improve your experience when turning on your Kindle the first time, make sure you set up an account on the Amazon store prior to purchase. By doing this, your Kindle will arrive registered with your account information and you’ll save yourself some headaches. More on the cause of the potential headaches later. 

Before elaborating on Voice Guide, it’s worth noting that there are two aspects to accessibility on the device. Voice Guide is a feature that gives you a level of accessibility to menus and non-book-reading functions on the Kindle. Meanwhile, Text to Speech or TTS is what enables you to read books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and other materials you download to the Kindle. It may be best to think of Kindle as having two screen readers even though they use the same voices and speech.

The Kindle makes use of a very simple menu structure. By using Voice Guide one can move around the menus and make selections and hear various options and settings. My experience thus far indicates that all menus are fully accessible by using the 5-way key located on the lower right corner of the Kindle keyboard. Unfortunately, accessibility with Voice Guide more or less ends with the menus. 

TTS is the feature used for reading books and other publications available on the Kindle store. The store features a wide variety of content beyond books. One can read many popular magazines, local, regional and national newspapers and blogs. The key to being able to access this wealth of information and entertainment is whether or not the publisher has allowed Amazon to enable the TTS option. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any hard numbers in terms of how many publications on the store restrict the TTS feature. Previously, publishers had indicated concerns over copyright and possible loss of audio book sales due to this feature of the Kindle. Clearly, this issue must be resolved before the Kindle is widely adopted by the blind community. Still, my initial experiences are that most books I encounter do allow for TTS usage. Each book listing on the store clearly indicates whether or not TTS is enabled for that title. Additionally, thanks to the free two-week trial offered with magazines and newspapers, I was able to test several successfully with TTS. Imagine waking up with your local paper already waiting for you on your Kindle thanks to the included wireless synching.

Activating TTS appears to be simple at first but quickly becomes a bit tedious. First, TTS must be turned on each time you launch a book. Say, for example, I am reading Time Magazine, which supports use of TTS, but then I decide to resume reading the book I purchased from the Kindle Store last week. I hit the Home button to leave Time Magazine and land at the main menu. I then use the arrow key to move through the selections and then choose the book I want to resume reading. Kindle opens to the page I last read; however, the TTS doesn’t just resume reading. Instead, I must hit a button to bring up options for that book. These include options to adjust typeface, font size and, if allowed, the TTS option. Choosing to turn on the TTS option results in Kindle resuming reading out loud from the place you previously left off. If you decide to go back to Time Magazine you will need to repeat this same process. Kindle does include use of a specific key combination to immediately begin use of TTS, though I have experienced some difficulties with this.

Whether you are a student conducting formal research for a term paper or a casual reader trying to move by paragraph or page within the publication you are reading, easy and quick navigation that is speech friendly is essential. Unfortunately, Kindle falls short in this area. While you can navigate by chapter or article, finer navigation by paragraph, sentence, line, word or character is not supported at this time. If you are looking for a product that can simply read books then the Kindle is probably a good choice; however, if you need detailed navigation, you would be better served by other reading formats.

The new Kindle offers a significant number of features beyond simply reading. For example, you can bookmark pages for later reference, make notes, highlight passages and share them on popular social media sites and look up words in the built-in dictionary. You can even search for selected words or phrases on Google and a number of other websites. Unfortunately, neither Voice Guide nor TTS work with these features and, therefore, they are not accessible. 

Remember those potential headaches I mentioned previously? One of the main selling points of the Kindle is the ability to shop for and buy books from the Kindle Store and have them appear almost immediately on your device. Sounds great right? Well, don’t expect Voice Guide or TTS to give you access to the Internets largest book store. The built in Web browser is currently not able to be accessed by low vision or blind users. You will need to shop for books on your computer or mobile phone.

Tip: the Kindle Store interface is very accessible on the iPhone through the otherwise useless Kindle app. (The Kindle app does not currently allow for Voice Over support on the iPhone or iPad platform but one can shop from within the app. Once purchased from one of these platforms, books appear on the Kindle. In short, you cannot utilize the built in web browser and therefore should expect to be unable to independently register your Kindle or to purchase books on the device itself.

Anyone who has an interest in the e-book and portable reader market knows that things have changed significantly over the past year. The Kindle is just one of many portable readers available today. The iPad and the accompanying iBooks store further disrupted the market earlier this year and more change is inevitable. Options for blind readers are also very diverse. Beyond the widely known BARD, digital NLS services and Book Share, we can choose iBooks as an option. Further changes took place just last week with increased accessibility to the KOBO service now available on Apple’s portable devices and then the introduction of the more accessible Kindle on the 27th.

Is the Kindle the best choice for you? You are the only person who can answer that question. If you do not need detailed navigation and can accept purchasing Kindle books on your mobile phone or computer then it will work well for you. However, if you need detailed navigation and want access to every feature on the device, then you should look elsewhere. My experience has been quite positive and I look forward to reading many books that I otherwise may have never found thanks to the expanded level of accessibility now available.

Larry Wanger is an experienced advocate, manager and leader in the disability field with expertise in audio production, journalism and marketing. He is employed as an operations manager at Arizona Bridge to Independent Living where he oversees the organization’s employment services programs for people with disabilities.

Additional Reading

These selected articles outline a brief history of the Kindle accessibility controversy:

Kindle 3 Reviews from around the technology industry:

Categories: accessibility, Kindle, reviews

Don’t Miss the Return of the Desert Cafe to ACB Radio Interactive

August 19, 2010 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

The Desert Cafe is open for business and back on ACB Radio Interactive once again.

So, after a long day at  work or school, come  in , sit  back and chill out.

We will  serve more than just your favorite beverages.  There will be other goodies to nosh on  while you kick  back and listen or  dance to the tunes.

Go ahead,step inside,get out of the heat and  sit down in   one of our comfy Chairs,recliners  or lounges. Sun goddesses can relax on the patio. We have misters to make it a more pleasant experience.

The doors will  open at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern on Monday Aug 23 or 01:00 UTC Tuesday Aug. 24.

You may tune into ACB Radio Interactive and listen with your favorite media player or portable device.

Coffee and other items will be served up along with music  from the 60’s through today.

Darrell and I will greet all of you at the door and little Joycie will be there with her licks and waggie tail. Hope to see you there.

Categories: broadcasting