This is a fantastic overview of the Amazon Kindle iOS app’s VoiceOver support by Justin Romack. It is a fair and accurate assessment. It also provides some information for those who may be confused by the app’s somewhat unique interface. I highly recommend you read this review first, before putting too much stock in pieces posted by those with other agendas.

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But first I’ve got bad news for people looking forward to the full VoiceOver support that we promised on iOS for Zombies, Run! 2 - it will not be available in tomorrow’s update. Instead, we will be making good on our commitment for full VoiceOver support in version 2.1, which we will release AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after April 16th. If you depend on VoiceOver to play the game, you should hold off on updating until 2.1 is out, when we will have made the game fully accessible.

If only all developers were this communicative! While this is a disappointment to many, the rest of this piece contains a lot of good information about why there was this delay. The good news is that it sounds like they’ve already finished the VoiceOver support, and will be submitting the update to Apple immediately. Hopefully, this will mean version 2.1 will be available for VoiceOver users very soon.

If you’re a fan of this game and rely on VoiceOver, this post is definitely worth reading.

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Today we released a minor update to Infovox iVox. This update solves a couple of small issues, including:

• Distorted speech after switching between Apple and Acapela voices. *Interruption of demo mode.
• Incompatibility with Mac OS X 10.4.11.
• Incompatibility with Kurtzweil 3000.

In addition, we can confirm this also fixes the problem with Acapela voices in games by Draconis Entertainment, and likely several other third-party software developers whose products rely on the system voice settings.

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Marco Arment writes:

If you’re using an iPad, must you be reading during taxi, takeoff, and landing instead of watching a movie or playing Super Stickman Golf 2? Am I allowed to listen to Phish in my headphones while I’m reading? If not, are audiobooks or screen-readers allowed, or are we discriminating against the visually impaired?

This entire piece really hammers home the problems with drawing distinctions between the types of devices we have now, and what we do or the types of media we consume with them. We’re back to the same old question: “Are iPads computers?”

In either case, specifying reading consumption does indeed pose some serious accessibility questions, as Marco rightly points out. And, unless you’re blasting audio through your earbuds, how would anyone know if someone is listening to the latest Stephen King novel or the latest Dido record? Who cares? Even if exceptions were made, are flight attendants going to be expected to police visually impaired travelers’ devices to make sure what they are actually listening to is textual? This is a bizarre and ill-conceived distinction.

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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.

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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.

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We have always seen our keyboard as a universal technology, and as something that can help millions of users be more productive in their daily lives. We are today very happy to see that we are well on track on this mission, and we are working hard to integrate our technology in the next generation of hardware and software to come.

We realize that a good virtual keyboard is something users expect to be integrated on their device and be available in every application. This is by far the biggest request from our iOS users, and one that we can unfortunately not provide until each platform we target supports such functionality.

In our effort to bring Happy Typing to even more users, what we can do is make Fleksy on iOS free for everyone. We feel that making Fleksy part of the daily lives of many more people will help us continue to showcase how smartphones can be made both more accessible and useful for everyone.

I find the wording of these paragraphs curious. The specificity of “next generation” hardware and software seems like an odd choice of phrasing. I have no inside information whatsoever, but one has to wonder if the fact that the app is going free, coupled with the wording above hints at something else in the works. Could there be a built-in Fleksy keyboard in a future release of iOS? I have no idea…but time will tell.

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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.

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With the right apps, the iPhone’s camera solves a slew of problems that blind people have traditionally relied on bulky, single-use devices to handle.

This is a good overview of some popular and useful iOS apps intended, for the most part, to assist visually impaired users via the device’s camera.

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• 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.

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In this blog post, I will cover accessible clients for the app.net service, ordered by platform. It will be updated with new information as I become aware of it. I will also mention some apps in each platform’s “Other” section that I’ve tried and not found accessible, or which have problems severe enough to prevent productive use.

Great piece by Marco Zehe on the Accessibility of App.net clients. Not only are Mac and iOS clients covered, but Android, Windows and web clients are also discussed.

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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.

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As one has come to expect from Apple, accessibility is built right into the device out of the box. Of course, the Nano doesn’t have an external speaker, so you need to use the headphones that come with it. Also, setup has to be done by connecting to iTunes, since it doesn’t have wireless capabilities. You also need to turn on VoiceOver through the Universal Access options in iTunes, though you can set the triple click home option to work for VoiceOver on the iPod itself in the Accessibility settings area once you have the device synced through iTunes.

This is a great hands-on piece on using the iPod nano 7th-generation with VoiceOver. Check it out. It’ll make you want one.

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For those with visual impairments, iOS devices are a lifeline. They’re a bionic enhancement - a pocket full of superpowers. The difference that they make to the life of a blind person is truly profound. They’re tools of independence, and of participation. Blind and VI people want to use your app, even if you can’t imagine how they’d possibly do so.

So, please, consider spending some time on accessibility; an hour or three will very likely be enough. It’s a truly worthwhile thing to do, and will have an enormous positive impact on those who don’t enjoy perfect vision - or any at all.

The most effective advocates to iOS developers for VoiceOver support are not the blindness community, but other developers themselves. This piece is a must-read for its clear, succinct, and compelling explanation of the importance of good accessibility, and its ease of implementation in iOS apps.

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“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.”

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• Fleksy now takes full advantage of the iPhone 5 and its bigger screen
• Facebook integration! Post to Facebook directly from Fleksy. Thank you for waiting guys (smile)
• Posting to Sina Weibo for our Chinese users is now as easy as posting to Twitter
• iOS 6 bug stomping continues. We will keep fighting for a bug free Fleksy
• Clicking sound when hovering over letters in accurate typing mode
• A lot of visual improvements. Typing now feels fluid and fleksible, as it should
• Freed up text area space by optimizing alternate word suggestions position

Looks like a solid update.

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The filing, titled “Voice assignment for text-to-speech output,” looks to create “speaker profiles” which can change the voice characteristics of TTS output to match parsed-out metadata like age, sex, dialect and other variables.

As noted by the application, many systems exist today to aid the visually impaired, including the system on Apple’s iPhone, however most TTS engines “generate synthesized speech having voice characteristics of either a male speaker or a female speaker. Regardless of the gender of the speaker, the same voice is used for all text-to-speech conversion regardless of the source of the text being converted.” Apple’s invention proposes a different solution.

This is a great read, and a fascinating concept. I was very skeptical as I started reading this piece, but as I understood all the nuances of the invention, (pun intended), I found myself nodding. This could be an excellent advancement for TTS.

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Apple on Tuesday announced a special event to be held on October 23, 2012 in San Jose. The event is scheduled to take place at 10:00 am PT.

Unlike other recent events that have been held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Apple will hold this event at the California Theatre in San Jose .

It is widely expected that Apple will use this event to unveil a smaller form-factor iPad.

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Partially from these constraints, and partially in the spirit of Louis C.K.’s anecdote, The Magazine’s articles won’t be laid out separately for portrait and landscape orientations. Articles won’t have custom designs at all. You won’t see any infographics, slideshows, or interactive panoramas. These multimedia features can all be valuable, and they have their places in other publications, but not here.

Instead of the traditional labor-intensive magazine layout and expensive multimedia production, The Magazine’s article format is similar to Instapaper’s: one clean, adjustable, reader-friendly template with HTML, occasional images, and some small conveniences. It loads quickly, integrates well with sharing and system conventions (including text selection and VoiceOver), occupies minimal storage space, and shows the utmost respect for your time and attention.

A new publication for geeks, complete with a VoiceOver mention in the magazine’s introduction. The app looks great, and accessibility support is strong. Definitely worth a look.

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Some users have been looking for something like this for a long time…

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