“Today is World Sight Day, and that got me thinking,” David Pogue writes for Yahoo Finance. “A few years ago, backstage at a conference, I spotted a young blind woman using her phone. The phone was speaking everything her finger touched on the screen, allowing her to tear through her apps. My jaw hit the floor. After years of practice, she had cranked the voice’s speed so high, I couldn’t understand a word it was saying.”
“And here’s the kicker: She could do all of this with the screen turned off,” Pogue writes. “Her phone’s battery lasted forever.”
“Ever since that day, I’ve been like a kid at a magic show. I’ve wanted to know how it’s done,” Pogue writes. “I finally got my chance. Joseph Danowsky offered to spend a morning with me, showing me the ropes.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s accessibility features are simply unmatched. They’re light years ahead of would-be rivals.
SEE ALSO:
Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple seeks to ‘take disability out of the equation’ – May 14, 2018
Apple’s HomePod will support VoiceOver, other accessibility features – July 28, 2017
Apple wins kudos for accessibility and smart home tech empowering people with disabilities – May 18, 2017
Apple continues to lead in accessibility awareness and innovation – May 19, 2016
How a simple Apple feature is changing lives – July 28, 2015
How the Apple Watch is opening up new ways to communicate – May 20, 2015
You know, blind people can actually use touchscreens – January 29, 2015
iPad app brings Braille keyboard to blind users’ fingertips – January 24, 2015
Apple patent applications reveal In-App features, fingerprint scanning enrollment and accessibility inventions – July 31, 2014
OS X Mavericks: How to control your Mac with your voice – April 9, 2014
Can Apple help make hearing aids cool? – March 10, 2014
Apple files new patents relating to haptics, Thunderbolt, iSight and improved accessibility for the hearing impaired – August 23, 2012
Inside Apple’s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: New iOS-style Accessibility – July 18, 2012
Stevie Wonder thanks Steve Jobs, praises Apple for iOS accessibility – September 15, 2011
Good news for music fans with vision loss: Apple adds accessibility features to iPod nano and iTunes – September 18, 2008
How could she interact with the screen off? WHAT?
You turn the screen brightness down “to zero.”
“If you do a three-finger triple-tap, you turn on Screen Curtain, meaning that the screen goes black. You gain visual privacy as well as a heck of a battery boost. (Repeat to turn the screen back on.)”
One of my closest friends is totally blind and when iPhone launched, I initially assumed that touch screen phones would be impossible for him to use, but he finds that iPhones, AirPods and Apple Watch have given him a huge degree of extra independence.
Apple has long included accessibility features – old time users might recall how the printed manual for the original Mac had a large print section explaining how visually impaired users could enlarge the display and optimise the contrast of everything on the screen.
The accessibility features which Apple have built into IOS are very well thought out, immensely practical and can assist with a number of impairments.
Using a variety of cues such as vibrations, beeps and spoken text, he uses his iPhone to do most of the things that the rest of us do and furthermore with his Apple Watch, he now feels confident to venture out in unfamiliar surrounding using just a white stick ( he never uses a guide dog ). The white stick alerts him to what’s within 1 pace, while Watch navigates for him by tapping his wrist to tell him when and where to turn. He regards his IOS devices as life changing technology.