Prizmo, a scanning, OCR, and speech application for iPhone and iPad, has been updated with enhanced support for VoiceOver. From the release notes:

Prizmo is made for everyone, and is thus fully compatible with VoiceOver. It provides voice guidance to help position your iPhone when taking document pictures, and will find the text orientation automatically if it’s turned left, right or upside down. Prizmo’s quick capture mode provides a fast path from picture to speech synthesis for an improved workflow, and it provides a high-quality voice reader (individual voices available as in-app purchases).

So far, in our tests, the app works exceptionally well. The user is guided by voice instructions to properly fit the page in the camera’s view, and a series of tones leading up to the snapping of a picture helps to alert the user if their hand is not holding steady. OCR output has been surprisingly accurate, and the conversion works quickly and cleanly. We highly recommend this app!

Thanks to the Prizmo team for making another great OCR option for VoiceOver users.

If you guys have been running away from the Zombies like I have, you’ll know how fabulous this app is. If not, check out the Zombies RUn Game site or read the description I’ve posted further below, taken from the App Store.

This app is a real motivator for my exercise regime! I constantly want to get on the bike and run from the Zombies, help complete missions and build my base to build the future from the Zombie apocalypse. This wasn’t entirely true before.

As a blind iPhone user,, who relies on the built in screen reader, VoiceOver, and someone who is determined to get fitter, I was intrigued when I learnt the guys over at Six To Start were working hard on accessibility in the this app. Now blind users can not only complete the missions but we also have access to the base builder. The redesign of the app has made the experience slicker for VoiceOver users and now I can pedal away on the exercise bike, running from the zombies just like everyone else.

The audio interface made this game and health motivator perfect for a blind audience but up until the 2.0 release we didn’t have full access to the entire game components. Thanks to Six To Start, it’s now possible.

My increasing fitness level thanks you Six To Start!

App Store Description

You tie your shoes, put on your headphones, take your first steps outside. You’ve barely covered 100 yards when you hear them. They must be close. You can hear every guttural breath, every rattling groan - they’re everywhere. Zombies. There’s only one thing you can do: Run!

Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive running game and audio adventure, co-created with award-winning novelist Naomi Alderman. We deliver the story straight to your headphones through orders and voice recordings - and when you get back home, you use the supplies you’ve collected while running to build and grow your base.

BBC NEWS - “The only way to save yourself is to run for real.”

WIRED - “In the style of Runkeeper, with an exciting undead twist.”

LIFEHACKER - “A really cool way to get outside and exercise.”

CNN - “Turns exercise into a game - a terrifying, terrifying game.”

TIME.COM - “Takes all the fun of a zombie game and funnels it into a fitness app.”

WALK, JOG, OR RUN ANYWHERE

Zombies, Run! works anywhere and at any speed. You can jog in a park, run along a beach, or walk along a trail. It even works on treadmills!

YOU ARE RUNNER 5

Hundreds of lives are counting on you. You’ve got to rebuild your base from a few shivering survivors into a fortified beacon of civilization by collecting critical supplies and avoiding roving zombie hordes. Can you save them and learn the truth about the zombie apocalypse?

A WORLD OF STORIES

You become the hero in an epic story of humanity’s struggle for survival where your running really matters - and there’s a deeper mystery to be uncovered as well… This app includes all 26 missions from Season 1 as well as the first 7 missions from Season 2; and there’ll be a further 60+ Season 2 missions released weekly and available for purchase!

YOUR OWN MIX

Choose your own custom playlists before you start running: the story unfolds in between your tracks through a series of dynamic radio messages and voice recordings.

INTERVAL TRAINING - WITH ZOMBIES

With our optional ‘Zombie Chases’ mode, you’ll need to increase your speed and work up a sweat if you hear zombies on your tail. That’s right - we’ve made interval training fun!

VIEW YOUR RUNS ONLINE WITH ZOMBIELINK Register with our free ZombieLink service to view and share your runs online, complete with maps, full run history, and the ability to ‘play back’ zombie chases so you can see how much faster you ran when the living dead were right behind you! Plus you can sync your runs with Runkeeper and export them as GPX files.

KEEP THE SURVIVORS ALIVE

You automatically collect items like medicine, batteries, and ammo while running - but when you’re back home, who needs them more: the soldiers or the doctors? Which buildings need extra defenses? It’s up to you - and the bigger your base, the more missions you can play.

NOTES

• Requires iOS 6 or above. Works on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod Touch 4th gen and 5th gen.
• Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.
• Accelerometer mode can dramatically decrease battery life.

Samsung has suffered a setback in its effort to win an iPhone ban based on a function making its software accessible to blind people.

The South Korean firm had sought an injunction in a German court arguing Apple’s VoiceOver screen-access facility infringed one of its patents.

This article is definitely worth a read. It speaks volumes about Samsung’s character, (or lack thereof), demonstrating just how low they will sink to score a point or two over Apple. If their questionable tactics weren’t suspect before, I think they certainly are now. Might be time for the folks in South Korea to hire some new faces in PR.

★

The linked blog post is fantastic, but this is the best bit. Go check it out for a great read by a great developer. And, if you’ve not tried Zombies, Run! you should.

Regardless of whether you use the graphics view or the schematic view, you’re playing the same game. Initially we thought that the accessible version of the base builder might simply show a list of buildings in your base, rather than a map.

But that created a problem - how do we convey to the user that they can’t build a building because they’ve run out of space? And even if there is enough space, how do we explain that the building is the wrong shape for it? We considered throwing out the “space management” aspect of the accessible base builder entirely.

Ultimately we realised this was stupid. Why should we make the game simpler just because the interface needs to be accessible? Why should we deprive people the fun of cramming their buildings together into the most efficient possible layout? We discarded the list idea and implemented a proper map instead.

A game for everybody

Given that Zombies, Run! is at its heart an aural experience, it is one of our highest priorities to make the game fully accessible to all of our players, be they sighted or visually impaired. We are delighted that this will be possible on iOS from day one, and are working hard to bring the same accessibility to Android as soon as possible.

★

The OCR application Prizmo for Mac is currently on sale for 50% off for a limited time. The app is accessible, and even includes special accessibility features, great for VoiceOver users.

In our tests, the OCR rendered was very accurate, and the application is easy to use. It allows importing of images, PDF’s, or direct scanning or picture taking within the app itself, along with many other useful features. Among its accessibility features are the ability to warn the user if an image is blurry, and various progress and status messages.

For the next day or two, the app will be available in the Mac App Store for $24.99 USD, which is 50% off of its typical $49.99. At either price tag, the app is far more affordable than other options, such as DocuScan Plus or Abbyy Finereader.

CUPERTINO, California―January 29, 2013―Apple® today announced a 128GB* version of the fourth generation iPad® with Retina® display. The 128GB iPad with Wi-Fi and iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular models provide twice the storage capacity of the 64GB models to hold even more valuable content including photos, documents, projects, presentations, books, movies, TV shows, music and apps.

★

Today, Apple released an update for the AppleTV set-top box, bringing the software up to version 5.2. Among the changes are support for Bluetooth keyboards, iTunes in the Cloud, Up Next, and some tweaks to accessibility.

When browsing the AppleTV interface with VoiceOver users will find that the grid layout of icons is better represented. VoiceOver navigation will stop at the far left or right ends of a row of icons, clearly delineating between rows. This should eliminate some of the confusion navigating experienced by some users.

More significantly, a new option can be found in Settings->General->Accessibility, to toggle on an Accessibility Menu. When this option is active, pressing and holding the Menu button on the AppleTV remote will activate a small menu which allows for quick toggling of VoiceOver and closed captioning. This feature will be met with particular relief from households including a mix of family members with and without disabilities.

Using the Bluetooth keyboard works very well with VoiceOver. Pressing the first few letters of an onscreen option jumps immediately to that item. For instance, typing the first few letters of "Music" moves directly to the Music option on the home screen of the AppleTV.

Update: The Accessibility Menu has been available since the prior version of the software.

The New York Times has updated its iPhone application today. Among the new features are improved accessibility for VoiceOver and AssistiveTouch. From the release notes:

• Visually impaired readers can take full advantage of iOS’s Accessibility features, including VoiceOver and AssistiveTouch.

It may take time for the update to make its way to all devices. At the time of this writing, we can view the update on our iOS devices, but not within the iTunes or web interfaces of the AppStore.

The New York Times application is free to download and all users receive free access to the Top News section. Users can choose to subscribe to full access to over 25 sections.

The New York Times is another in a series of high profile applications which have been released with, or have introduced, enhanced accessibility support in recent months. It joins Firefox, the Magazine, Barnes & Noble Nook, YouTube, and Apple’s iWork suite, among others.

A new app was just released today for IOS called vo starter.  This app is designed for voiceover users.   This app has several categories dealing with elements such as buttons, text input etc, and in each one there are instructions on interacting with these categories.  This app is free for a limited time, so you might want to grab it.  It is developed by Michael Doise.

Here’s the link in the iTunes store.

In this special episode of the Maccessibility podcast, we speak to blind recording engineer Slau Halatyn, who has long been working with Digidesign and now Avid, to improve VoiceOver support in ProTools, the premier audio production software system. Avid has recently decided to make voiceOver accessibility an integrity part of its UI development and in-house testing, and Slau is here to give us all the details. This development is yet another example of how patience and cordial engagement with developers can yield remarkable results.

• AssistiveWare® released major updates for their popular Proloquo2Go and Pictello apps for iPad, iPod touch and iPhone. The updates will be introduced at this weeks American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Atlanta. Pictello is a simple way to create visual stories, talking photo albums and talking books in 25 languages. Proloquo2Go is an award-winning Augmentative and Alternative Communication solution for those who have difficulty speaking. Individuals with autism, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, ALS, developmental disabilities and many other conditions benefit from the Proloquo2Go technology.

★

Amsterdam, November 5, 2012 - Today AssistiveWare® and Acapela Group announced the release of Infovox iVox 3.1, which brings the first four genuine, natural-sounding children’s voices to Mac OS X. In addition, the update adds three new male voices. These voices work with any Mac application, including Apple’s VoiceOver, TextEdit, Preview, Safari, Adobe’s Acrobat Reader, AssistiveWare’s VisioVoice, Proloquo and GhostReader.

Impressive update.

★

Matt Gemmell has provided us with redemption codes for his Favorites for iPhone application, which features VoiceOver support. We’ll tell you how to win one of the redemption codes below, but first, here’s more about the app.

Visual speed dial, FaceTime, SMS and email that’s right at home on iPhone!

Add and organize your favorite contacts for quick access, and call, SMS or email with one tap. Featuring a beautiful user interface similar to the iPhone’s Home screen, you’ll be right at home with Favorites the first time you use it.

Features a comprehensive built-in tutorial, dynamic help and animation throughout. Choose contacts, names, add badges for Mobile, Home or Work numbers, and more. Favorites can also be customized to behave the way you want it to via the iPhone’s Settings application.

More information about the app is available from the developer’s web site.

Please be sure to read all of the rules below for this give away.

You can enter to win one of the ten available redemption codes in two ways.

• On Twitter, use the #VOLive hashtag and tweet about an accessible iOS app you find particularly useful or fun.
• Tell us about an accessible iOS app you find useful or fun via our contact page and selecting the “feedback” category.

Rules to be aware of are the following:

• You can enter once per day until 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, 11/November/2012. -If you submit multiple entries on the same day, only one will qualify.
• If you enter on Twitter, make sure you are following @Maccessibility so we can contact you via DM if you win.
• All winners will be notified during the week of 12/November/2012.
• Rules are subject to change.
• This offer is void where prohibited.

Apple has released iBooks 3.0, the latest version of their ebook platform for iOS devices. In addition to a variety of other improvements, iBooks now includes enhanced VoiceOver support for PDF documents.

Previously, VoiceOver treated PDF document pages as single entities, and only allowed navigation through the text of an entire page word-by-word or character-by-character. This could become extremely tedious when traversing a large amount of text.

In iBooks 3.0, Apple has addressed this problem. PDF documents now behave much the same as their epub and iBook counterparts. When the VoiceOver user slides a finger vertically on a page, VoiceOver navigates through the various lines of text. This makes skimming and quickly locating specific passages much easier.

“iPad mini is every inch an iPad. With its gorgeous 7.9-inch display, iPad mini features the same number of pixels as the original iPad and iPad 2, so you can run more than 275,000 apps designed specifically for iPad,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPad mini is as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper, yet packs a fast A5 chip, FaceTime HD and 5 megapixel iSight cameras and ultrafast wireless―all while delivering up to 10 hours of battery life.”

★

Apple has just announced that it will be live streaming its event today at 10:00 AM PDT/1:00 PM EDT on both Apple.com and the AppleTV. As a result, Maccessibility will not be streaming our usual live discussion during the announcements.

Apple is widely expected to take the wraps off of a new, smaller iPad device and unveil enhancements to its iBooks platform. Rumors have circulated in recent days about possible refreshes to other product lines as well.

The popular vizWiz iOS application, designed to assist blind users in identifying objects visually, has been updated to version 1.4.3. From the release notes:

• iOS 6 and iPhone 5 Support.
• Performance enhancements.
• You can now choose a photo from library in the first page. (Left bottom button)
• You can now play back your recorded question before sending it to your selected sources. (Right bottom button)
• No longer supports iOS 4.2 or lower versions.
• Minor bug fixes.

vizWiz is available from the iOS AppStore.

Join us tomorrow, 18/October, starting at 9:00 AM PDT, 12:00 PM PDT, for another live stream of the Maccessibility Round Table podcast. The knights will be discussing the latest from the world of Apple, and you can interact and ask questions via Twitter using the hashtag #VOLive.

To tune in, click the “Listen Live” link in the site navigation bar around 9:00 AM PDT, 12:00 PM PDT tomorrow. We hope to see you then!

After years of waiting, Mozilla Firefox V16.0 offers preliminary VoiceOver support in its official release. As the “preliminary” qualifier suggests, this support is a long way from being ideal, but it does mark a significant step forward for the popular open source browser.

Our initial impressions are that, while VoiceOver accessibility of the application and web content itself is quite good, performance is very poor. VoiceOver often becomes sluggish or unresponsive, and occasionally windows are presented which VoiceOver does not immediately recognize.

While it is unlikely that, in this initial state, VoiceOver users will opt to make FireFox their default browser, this release marks an important step forward for accessibility on OS X, and a significant change for Mozilla, which had initially claimed that it would be unable to make Firefox accessible to VoiceOver users. We look forward to seeing how VoiceOver support progresses in Firefox.

The social network App.net is a micro-blogging platform designed as an paid alternative to Twitter. Users can register and use the service ad-free for $5 US per month, or $36 US per year.

Today, version 1.1 of Rivr, an iOS client for the App.net service was released. Among its advertised new features is support for VoiceOver accessibility. The improvements are a massive leap forward, and Rivr is now a viable client for visually impaired App.net users on their iOS device.

Sign up for App.net, then checkout Rivr.