A friend's father underwent surgery a while back that left him blind and with major mobility problems. I believe he only has some, but limited dexterity with his fingers.
I was wondering if it is viable for someone who is blind and also has mobility problems to use an iOS device as his "computer" and interface to the world.
Although I am very familiar with Voiceover myself, I was thinking that he might be able to use Voiceover with the iOS Voice Control. I'm not sure how well those two work together for someone who is totally blind since Voice Control seems to be aimed at people who are sighted but who have mobility problems.
I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience and/or knowledge about this issue or who might have any other advice that might be useful to my friend's father.
There might also be other solutions out there worth considering like Dragon Dictate and JAWS or NVDA, or perhaps there are solutions on the Mac platform.
Any pointers would be appreciated.
Thanks.
--Pete
Comments
Voice control works well,…
Voice control works well, keep in mind I last tested it on iOS 13 so what I say might not be totally accurate. Still, nothing lost by trying, is there?
My findings
VoiceOver and Voice Control together work much better than they used to. Also something to keep in mind is that Voice Control has VoiceOver exclusive commands. For example, if you wanted to go to the status bar with Voice Control, normally you would say something like select status bar or highlight status bar. With VoiceOver also turned on, you have to say VoiceOver select status bar, etc.
Also, it might be good to have some type of headset on, while using both, as in the past Voice Control has been known to pick up on what VoiceOver was saying, and tried to perform commands based on VoiceOver speech.
Just some food for thought. :-)
I haven’t used voice control in awhile, but
Wasn’t there an issue, in about iOS 13 or, maybe iOS 14? Wear Voice control would drain your battery unbearably fast?
Voice Control
Shaun was talking about this on Double Tap, yesterday or the day before and was saying how well it worked. I think he is only using it for specific things like being able to shout at his phone to control YouTUbe etc It sounds good but also like it might be quite tedious to use if you are wanting to do lots of swiping through things.
If he still has some limited use out of his fingers, it might be that a keyboard would be easier than swipes. I suspect Windows might be easier than a phone or Mac in this world as it tends to do a lot of things with single key presses which might be easier. I know the Mac has single key nav although I'm not sure how well you can get away with using single key presses. I think the iPhone may also have this but I've never tried. Maybe this might be helpful in conjunction with voice control.
There might be some other specialist keyboards or controllers that could be easier to use.
Re: Voice Control
@Mr Grieves,
Thanks for your comments. I decided to play around with Voice Control myself a bit using Voiceover.
I didn't find any commands for doing things like "swipe right" or "swipe left" to navigate around the screen to read a dialog item by item.
The "Show Numbers" command to overlay a grid of numbers didn't seem to work reliably. Sometimes it overlayed a grid of number and spoke them and sometimes not.
When the grid of numbers was active, it was easy to activate a certain number.
The problem I had using Voiceover was to find a good way of reviewing the text on the screen.
Dictation seemed to work pretty well. If one got used to it, it seems like it would be an easier way of editing with Voiceover than using the keyboard and gestures to select and correct.
I'll see if I can find any on-line demos of people with mobility problems using Voice Control with Voiceover and not being able to see the screen.
Perhaps your suggestion of using some sort of external controller like a Hable One or simple keyboard is worth investigating.
At first blush, however, this doesn't seem straightforward using Voiceover.
Thanks again.
--Pete
Update
After posting my last comment on some snags I ran into using Voice Control with Voiceover, I did some more web searching and found that there are specific commands that should be used with Voice Control to emulate Voiceover gestures. There is an entire section of Voiceover specific commands that one can use.
For example, before I found the Voiceover specific commands, I couldn't figure out how to move from one item to another as I would when flicking right or left with my finger. I tried the "swipe right" command under the Navigation section, but this was similar to a three finger swipe right and not what I wanted.
After finding that there was a special section for Voiceover specific commands, I found commands like "Voiceover move to next item". Most of the Voiceover specific commands start with "Voiceover...".
Also, since many of the Voiceover specific commands are rather lengthy, Voice Control also lets the user define their own vocabulary. So, for example, one could change the "Voiceover next item" command (which emulates a single finger right flick) to "flick right".
In addition, Voice Control also lets the user "record" a series of commands that can be assigned to a user defined command that, when run, will run the set of recorded commands.
Now that I've learned a bit more I'm going to test this out to see if it will be workable for my friend's dad.
Hope this helps someone else.
--Pete
External controllers
If using an external controller would be a viable solution, consider using the accessibility feature Switch Control.
A couple of other options
It sounds like Voice Control may be a winner, but I was thinking about this post some more and had a couple of other thoughts.
Firstly, you mentioned Hable - I had discounted it as I have the Hable One and have only used it in the normal mode. But Hable Easy might be an option as it is one button press. I suspect you know this already as you mentioned Hable but just in case.
On a similar note, I wondered if something like the BlindShell Classic 3 may be easier to use than the phone. It still requires some use of fingers as it has physical buttons but again might be easier than swipes. I believe it is like the old fashioned T-9 phones. Being a closed garden it has less that you can do - so your banking app won't run on it for example. But for the basics it might be worth a look - again depending on the severity of the motor impairment. I've not used one myself though.
And going even more off on a tangent, something like an Echo Dot might be worthwhile. It is obviously not going to do everything but for listening to the news, podcasts, music etc or getting the weather forecast and other things then it might be a good companion to something else. In theory with the new and improved A lady it might be more useful but I think we all need to be convinced of that!
Re: A Couple of Other Comments
@Mr Grieves
Thanks for the additional suggestions. Very good ideas.
Up to now, I have only spoken with the son of the man with the motor and vision problems. I need to understand in more detail exactly what tasks the father would like to perform. I do want to play around with Voice Control and Voiceover a bit more though since it might be useful to him as well as others.
Thanks again.
--Pete