Assistive Technology

Potential  Feature for App Store Would you buy a song that may or may not play, a car that may or may not fit in your garage, or a remote that could or could not work with your TV? Probably not, but a similar problem is facing VoiceOver users (and users of other built-in accessibility features) every time they look for a new app on the App Store. This user base is growing quickly due to high quality accessibility features that Apple builds into every iOS device. Currently, the App Store offers no way for users to know if the app will be accessible before hitting the buy button. For VoiceOver users, this means throwing away money if the app turns out to be inaccessible. While the issue of app accessibility has been getting a lot of buzz lately, hopefully Apple can implement some solutions to the problem before and until app accessibility is virtually ubiquitous. One way to help users know if an app is accessible before hitting the buy button is to add an accessibility report to the...

Launch Center Pro is an app for iPhone , iPad, and iPod Touch that allows users to launch apps and simple tasks directly from the app. Instead of launching Safari, navigating to the search site, and typing in your search, for instance, Launch Center Pro lets you directly search Google or Wikipedia; Launch Center Pro also can be configured  by users to set up group email, instead of having to type in the email address of each recipient. Launch Center Pro uses a simple interface to make it easy to simplify some of your common actions and launch them quickly. I frequently text my sister "where are you?" Instead of launching the Messages app, finding my sister's contact, and then typing the message, I created a Launch Center Pro action that sends a text to my sister saying, "where are you?" Now, when I want to text my sister, I just touch the icon for this action and a text saying "where are you?" is on its way to my sister. , Creating actions is easy wi...

PDF Expert 5 is a well designed PDF management app for the iPad . The app includes many useful features that allow you to read, edit, and annotate PDF documents easily. Unlike some other feature -rich apps, PDF Expert 5 does not feel cultured. The elegant design makes the app easy to use. PDF Expert is an assistive app because of its  text-to-speech integration with the added benefit of extra features. One caveat, while the app is good for non-disabled and dyslexic users, I would not recommend the app for VoiceOver users because of some VoiceOver problems I have found. Readdle , the maker of the app, should work on fixing these VoiceOver problems so blind and visually impaired can also benefit from the app.  PDF files can be imported from numerous cloud storage services including Google Drive, Drop Box and SkyDrive or using the "open-in" feature of many other iOS apps . You can also view other file types, but the built in text-to-speech reader is only available for PDF do...

Prizmo 2.0 for iOS was just released in the App Store. Prizmo now works on the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch. The update includes many exciting new features. The original version of Prizmo included optical character recognition ( OCR ) but did not include the ability to scan documents to a PDF or text file. The PDF files are not just images but include searchable text. Prizmo 2.0 also allows users to export the documents to other apps. To create a new document in Prizmo you can simply take a picture of multiple pages. Prizmo will automatically detect the edges of the page. In version 2.0 you no longer have to crop documents manually. Once you have captured all of the pages you can recognize the text of the document which is surprisingly fast and accurate. If the Prizmo does make a mistake you can edit the OCR zones or manually edit the text. After the text has been recognized you can email or export the document as a PDF or te...

NaviDys is a web browser for the iPad . The app allows full customization of a website's font, line spacing, letter spacing, and text size. Currently it is only available on the iPad not the iPhone or iPod Touch. While it feels very much like the built in Safari browser that comes with the iPad, NaviDys has features that make it easier to read the web. For people with low vision the ability to enlarge fonts and increase spacing is beneficial. Also, for dyslexics NaviDys includes the Dyslexie font. But using a third party browser does not come without trade offs. You cannot open links from other apps directly into NaviDys. Unlike Safari NaviDys does not include a reader  mode to remove distractions from web pages. NaviDys costs $2.99 from the App Store. Click read more below to view screenshots of NaviDys.

PDF Expert is an elegant PDF manager, viewer and annotator. The app is available for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch but the iPhone version and iPad version must be purchased separately. You can easily add PDF to the app by using the "open in" feature. Once you have PDFs in the app you can organize them into folders and sub-folders. The highlight of PDF Expert is its annotation features. PDF Expert allows you to quickly and easily add note, text, signatures, watermark stamps, images from the camera roll or audio notes to any PDF. You can search for a PDF by title or by the contents. PDF Expert also includes a passkey lock feature that allows you to protect your sensitive PDFs.  Unfortunately, PDF Expert does not include text-to-speech for PDFs. Even PDFs created on the computer cannot be read allowed. Also there is no optical character recognition feature for scanned PDFs. If these features are not important to you than PDF Expert is a great choi...

Ariadne GPS is an app for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch that allows people with visual impairments to navigate their surroundings. Ariadne GPS app is best suited for the iPad and cellular iPad because those devices have the most accurate location information. The app is fully compatible with VoiceOver allowing visually impaired users to use all features of the app. Ariadne GPS helps the user explore their surroundings by using the GPS of your iOS device to convey information about location, direction of travel and nearest favorite locations. The app can enable blind users to navigate streets, transit systems and even large buildings. When traveling on a train or a bus a blind user could set Ariadne GPS to alert them when they were getting close to their stop. A blind user could also program there classroom locations into the app in order to help navigate a large school building. As a user walks with the app can read street names and numbers. iAriadne GPS a...

Apple announced the iPhone 5 at an event today in California. The iPhone 5 includes and bigger screen, better camera, faster processor, thinner design and more. The iPhone 5 will run on iOS 6 Apple's mobile operating system which includes accessibility features such as VoiceOver , Guided Access and Speak Selection. Click here to learn more about  iOS 6 . The iPhone 5 will be available for pre-order on September 14th and for sale on September 21th starting at $199. Click read more below to view more images of the iPhone 5.

HumanWare recently released the HumanWare Communicator app for iOS devices . The app is designed to make communication between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person possible.When the conversation is started an introduction is displayed for the sighted user to read. The deaf-blind person uses a Bluetooth   braille display to type a message to a sighted person, this message appears on the screen of the iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch.  Then the sighted user can respond using the virtual keyboard and the message will appear on the refreshable braille display . The conversation can then go back and forth with the deaf-blind person typing on the braille display and the sighted user typing on the device's virtual keyboard. HumanWare describes the app as follows, " The HumanWare Communicator application is intended to establish a text conversation, through a chat window, between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person. All interaction appears both on the deaf-blind pers...

Google's enhanced voice search that debuted in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is coming to the iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch in the coming days. Google announced that the Google Search app for iOS will be updated in "the next couple of day" to include the new feature. You simply tap the microphone and ask a question and the result is spoken back to you. The enhanced voice search is similar to Apple's Siri . Stay tuned to learn more about Google voice search and how it compares to Siri . Google says the following about enhanced voice search, "Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud. So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it." Click here to download the current version of the app. Update: The app has...

Prizmo and TextDetective are optical charactor recognition ( OCR ) apps for the iPhone . These apps use the iPhone camera to take a picture of a document and then convert the text on the paper to digital text. Because the apps rely on the iPhone camera they work best on the iPhone 4S . The apps were compared using a complex image with multiple images and columns. Both apps were used in a room with good lighting. Watch the video above to learn more about each of the apps. Prizmo costs $9.99 in the App Store. Click here to download Prizmo. Prizmo is the fastest most accurate user friendly OCR app that I have ever tested. It is designed for sighted users. It allows you to crop and edit the picture before you start the OCR process. Once the text has been recognized you can read it using text-to-speech, email it or copy the text. It is important to note that users with visual impairments may have a hard time taking pictures of the documents they want to OCR . It also is impossible fo...

Learning Ally , the audio book service for people with disabilities, has reduced the cost of their iOS app to free. The app previously cost $19.99. In order to use the app you must be a Learning Ally member. Click here to download the app which is compatible with both the iPad and iPhone. The app is the easiest way to listen to Learning Ally books on your iOS device. Now that the app is free it is a no brainer for members. Unfortunately the app is still missing key features such as background audio play back, background downloads and the ability to browse the Learning Ally catalog directly from your iOS device. When listening to an audio book you cannot follow along with an ebook because the audio book will automatically pause. Also in order to download an audio book you first must add the book to your bookshelf via a web browser. These short comings weaken the user experience, but it is still great to listen to Learning Ally books on your iOS device.  Hopefully i...