Our last technology column served to bring up a topic which is rapidly becoming a very big thing indeed. In describing her experience with the touch screen on the iPad, Kay Bauer introduced us to a trend which may well come to dominate the technology discussion in this field for years to come. Apple iPhones and computers are also beginning to attract attention with their built-in Voiceover screen readers.
Apple is not the only major player building nonvisual access into cell phones based on touchscreens. Android, Google’s touch-oriented cell phone operating system, now provides spoken cues for most if not all commands and controls. A growing number of adventurous blind users are taking advantage of these possibilities, even though no formal training is yet available for either the Apple or Google screen readers. You will meet one of those adventurers later in this column.
First, it is worth noting that a product development project has been announced which could change the game with regard to touchscreen training for blind users. The National Braille Press (NBP) Center for Braille Innovation and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) are cooperating in the development of a notetaker or personal data assistant with a braille display which will run on the Android operating system. The new product was initially called the “The Braille Wizard.” Unhappily, “Wizard” as a name was already copyrighted, so NBP is conducting a contest in search of a new name. Although the device isn’t likely to be ready for delivery before 2012, the new Android-based product may very well be the next new notetaker in our field, as other developers look to see what its affects will be on the market and how close it will come to its unofficial price estimate of $2,000. If this new product becomes the next big thing whenever it might be released, touchscreen training for blind users will quickly become as common as books on Windows and Microsoft Word are today. For now, however, early adopters of Apple and Android products may be the best available source of information on those touchscreens which have begun to learn to talk.
Jolie Mason wasn’t an eager beaver when it came to giving the iPhone a try. It’s not as if she is resistant to new technology; she hosts a weekly radio show about technology on KPFK in Los Angeles. Here’s how she described her initial experience as a blind iPhone user during a recent telephone interview.
“Initially, I was very hostile to the iPhone, so I really have come full circle. My Nokia 6620 that I just loved started not working and my husband, a big Mac user, continually wanted to get me to use an iPhone. Well, eventually, when I had to move to a different cell phone, he did convince me to use the iPhone.
“Initially, learning all those different gestures, I didn’t find it a very intuitive environment. As I worked with it more and began to understand how you get from place to place and do different things with the interface, suddenly it was just like a whole new world opening up. Happily, they have a very nice 800 number for help with my iPhone and boy, did I talk to those people! It probably took me about a week to learn the gestures and probably about two months or so to get pretty good with the iPhone. Now, it’s just incredible!”
Q. “Tell us some of what you like best about the iPhone.”
A. “The iPhone, when you take it out of the box, has Voiceover with it. You don’t have to load other screen reader stuff. You don’t have to try to figure out how to get the thing to talk. You just press a couple of buttons, and there is Voiceover up and working on any iPhone. So suddenly, on that initial screen that you open up with the iPhone, there are twenty native apps–that just means little programs that come with it–that are created by Apple. All of those talk! All of a sudden, you have a talking GPS (navigational software for outdoor travel), you have a talking maps feature and you have a talking calendar.
“Also, when I opened up the Talking Memo feature, there is a talking VU meter (for setting audio levels). For sixteen years I have been working in radio and never had anything as easy to use as that talking VU meter.”
Considering her enthusiasm for the device, it is not surprising that Mason hosts a user group on a blog dedicated to iPhone access. In that role, she has worked with a great many iPhone applications, some of which “talk” out-of-the-box, while many others do not. She has also worked with some developers to improve the behavior of their software with Voiceover. One such application, which may have amazing potential for blind shoppers, is something called Fast Mall. It uses a combination of actual data, such as the roster of businesses in a particular mall, and a so-called virtual mapping system, to give highly specific directions to bring a shopper from point A to point B. Mason says it can be a bit of a challenge for the user to enter the name of the desired Mall into the iPhone using the on-screen touch keyboard. She uses a portable Bluetooth keyboard for typing more than a few characters at a time.
The good news about Fast Mall is that it works well with Voiceover. The bad news is that malls have to be added to the system one-by-one, often depending on a request by a specific iPhone user. If Fast Mall develops as Mason believes it will, the application will rate a separate article by itself one day soon.
Mason is also highly positive about some other iPhone applications, including a barcode reader, a piece of dictation software, and a basic orientation program which can help the user find out the name of the nearest intersection. The dictation software takes spoken language and turns it into electronic text. Mason told me that she uses it to dictate her text messages, instead of typing on the rather clunky on-screen keyboard.
Clearly, Jolie Mason thinks of her iPhone not merely as a phone, but as a full computer, complete with e-mail and internet browsing. She expects the situation to improve dramatically as new talking applications continue to appear at a rapid rate. She believes that one day soon, major hotels, hospitals and airports will be fully mapped in an application similar to Fast Mall, enabling adventurous blind users such as herself to move about the indoor environment with dramatically increased freedom. If she is correct about even a few of these developments, blind and low vision users of the future will have some intriguing choices to make. The question may no longer be “to touch or not to touch?” but “which screen do I want to get my hands on–iPhone, or Android?” Whichever operating system prevails, it seems increasingly likely that–ready or not–those talking touchscreens will one day soon be a lot closer to many of us than they are right now.
The Ghost of Products Yet To Come by B. T. Kimbrough
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