I bet my spouse is starting to wonder why I'm sending her so many text messages. I'm testing my new shortcut, of course. No, I didn't create a shortcut to annoy my spouse. She likes to track our spending, and my new shortcut tells her what I've been purchasing.
This blog gets you started with a drop-dead simple shortcut, and then describes the shortcuts I created to help track my spending. But first—
Every writer knows the feeling: you’ve just sat down at the keyboard, ready to write your next masterpiece. Suddenly, your mind goes blank. What seemed like the perfect idea late last night now seems impossible to put into words. Or perhaps you have no ideas at all and you wonder how you’ve ever managed to write anything.
***Note: This post was written in 2012. Unfortunately American Heritage Dictionary 5th Edition became totally inaccessible in July 2016. So what you read below is no longer valid and only reflects history. To see what happened to this invaluable app and how it became inaccessible again, please visit this page. Thanks.
It feels like losing an old friend. Or perhaps losing one's love of life. But American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language was my friend in the world of iOS apps and my love in the world of dictionaries. So going to bed one night with an awesome dictionary which ticks all check boxes in terms of accessibility and getting up the next morning, hearing about the app's takeover by a new developer, re-paying for and downloading it, and finding it an absolute mess in terms of accessibility is nothing but a huge blow to one's morale. And the story doesn't even end there...
GoodReader, reportedly the world’s top-selling PDF file management, viewing, and annotation app for iPhone and iPad, has recently released an update which adds VoiceOver compatibility.
At the end of each month, members of the AppleVis Editorial Team take a look at all the apps that have been posted to the site during that month—either for the first time, or where there has been a significant update—and decide which of these they think is the most noteworthy.
The AppleVis Editorial Team app picks of the month for December 2014 are as follows:
New iOS App Directory entry (version 1.1.6); December, 2014.
From the App Store:
Update: All of the promo codes have now been taken.
Handelabra Studio has recently updated three of their apps to provide full VoiceOver support.
The apps are RE.minder, GAME.minder and Better Clock.
The first 2 of these are free, whilst Better Clock is 99 cents.
I've tested RE.minder, and was very impressed with it's accessibility.
Google recently announced that it will shutdown its popular RSS aggregation service, Google Reader, on July 1. If the tech pundits are to be believed, the early frontrunner to be many people's replacement RSS service is Feedly.
We are pleased to announce the launch of the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame, where we will be acknowledging and celebrating the apps that exemplify all that is great about owning an iDevice.
Our goal for the Hall of Fame is to showcase the passion and hard work that app developers put into creating great apps that are fully accessible to VoiceOver users. These apps place powerful tools into the palms of our hands, and give access to services, information, media and entertainment that the sighted world takes for granted.
AppleVis already has posts on iOS9: we've seen an overview of the new accessibility features, a podcast covering all that iOS9 brings to the table, a list of bugs in iOS9.0, and more.
Apple has received much praise since accessibility became an integral element of iOS. Much has certainly been said and written on how this has been a life-changer for so many people, and that it has opened up a world of possibilities.
These are sentiments that it's hard to disagree with.
The number of iOS games which are playable by VoiceOver users seems to grow daily, with developers either releasing new titles that are accessible out of the box (such as The Inquisitor Audiogame Adventure and Clever Clues) or joining the VoiceOver party by making existing games accessible.
The fact that this question is being posted on a website for blind iOS users means that you should already be able to hazard a shrewd guess at my likely answer. However, before we head towards that seemingly inevitable conclusion, I should begin by acknowledging that the answer is always going to be heavily dependant upon comparative levels of knowledge and experience. So, if given the choice between an experienced iOS user or a novice, you should probably always go with the former, regardless of any differences in their visual acuities.
The Kindle app for iOS devices is not usable with VoiceOver. We believe that it is time for Amazon to stop excluding blind iOS users from their Kindle Book Store, so hope that you will support our Campaign for fair and equal access by lobbying them to make the app accessible. Not only would this be a good commercial decision for Amazon, but it is simply the 'right' thing for them to do and arguably something they have a legal requirement to do. As consumers, it would also provide us with some much-needed competition and choice when shopping for eBooks.
This post will offer you an account of my experience with conducting the job search on iOS. I will begin with a little information concerning the pre-requisites to beginning the job search, and the changing trends regarding how businesses advertise vacant positions.
The current post will then consider the 3 primary iOS applications which I used during my job search, and I will also inform you as to the services offered by recruitment agencies and the possibility of other iOS applications specific to your location.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), and to mark this we are urging everybody to use it as an opportunity to reach out to iOS and OS X developers - to either encourage them to make their applications accessible and usable by the vision-impaired; or to show your appreciation for applications which already are.
After much anticipation, the KNFBReader app for iOS finally landed in the iTunes App Store today.
Having been the subject of much speculation, blind users will now finally have the opportunity to see if is has been worth both the wait and its $99 asking price.
Update, 7/15/2014, 12:22 PM CDT: Added a link to the official unveiling and demonstration of the KNFBReader app.
K-NFB Reading Technology has today announced a wealth of information about the upcoming KNFBReader iOS app.
The KNFBReader iPhone app, which is expected to be available to the public in late August for $99, was demonstrated at the 74th annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), a membership organization of blind people in the United States.
Some of the features of the KNFBReader iPhone app include: