Hi Bryan,
I read with interest your description of using the iPhone as a video
magnifier with the "Spectacles" app (method 1) that uses the iPhone 4
LED feature of the camera to provide illumination. This is not
something that I can immediately test (without borrowing an iPhone 4
and its owner <smile>), but with regard to your description of item 5
of method 1 -- specifically not being able to manually turn the LED on
or off, and having the LED automatically turn off when you switch to
another app via the app switcher -- have you tried turning VoiceOver
off and simply tapping the screen to turn the LED on or off? In the
circumstances you describe, with a fairly simple interface, no
apparent settings controls, and no other announced controls, I would
guess that a simple tap on the screen would be used to toggle the LED
control if you were using standard gestures. Sometimes doing a simple
double tap on the screen would work for this, but if you start up the
program with focus on the slider for adjusting magnification (item 2
of method 1), you may not be able to switch focus from the slider
easily in this interface without turning VoiceOver off to do your tap.
In a situation like this, I would use the triple click home as a
VoiceOver toggle, but I understand that you want the zoom functions,
and may have set triple click home to "ask" in the Settings > General
> Accessibility menu.
I'm cc'ing this post to the macvisionaries list, both because it may
be of interest to low-vision VoiceOver users there, but also because
I'll be able to easily find it in the searchable Mail Archive and link
to it as needed for later references. Thanks for providing a nicely
detailed description of these apps. I note there are also apps in the
store to amplify sound.
Cheers,
Esther
On Aug 19, 2010, at 16:25, Bryan Jones wrote:
I've been experimenting with using my iphone as a video magnifier
for reading text up close. I have a pinpoint of residual close-up
vision in my left eye and was hoping I could replace my little "i-
vu" pocket video magnifier with equal functionality in my new
iphone. While I haven't managed to push the iphone to match the
clarity and zoom levels provided by my i-vu magnifier, I have been
able to duplicate some of the functions and thought I'd share my
findings here for anybody who might be interested. This is a long
email as I've tried to be as detailed as possible. I found 2 methods
that met my criteria, though both methods are imperfect. If you know
of any better way to do this, or have any ideas, please let me know.
I set the following 5 minimum requirements that I wanted my iphone
to meet in order to replace my dedicated pocket video magnifier:
Requirement 1. I must be able to operate it using standard VO
methods, which is how I do the majority of my work on the iphone.
Navigating the i-vu is done by tactile controls so I require some
non-tactile equivalents on the iphone. If you have enough vision to
work the iphone without VO my findings will still work for you, you
will just need to adjust your navigation methods accordingly.
Requirement 2. It must be able to magnify the text substantially.
Requirement 3. It must be able to focus clearly when held as close
as 2 inches (5 centimeters) from the subject.
Requirement 4. It must have the ability to illuminate the subject
and to turn off the illumination if desired.
Requirement 5. It must have the ability to reverse the screen colors
on the fly.
My findings and instructions were written with the following
assumptions and I don't know if any of this will work on other
iphone models or devices.
Assumption 1. This is being performed on an iPhone 4 running IOS 4.02.
Assumption 2. VO is enabled on the iPhone.
Assumption 3. The User is familiar with how to use VO to navigate
the iPhone.
Assumption 4. Triple-click Home is set either to "Ask" or to "Toggle
White-on-Black."
Method 1: Install a magnifier app. The US App store is full of apps
designed to use the iphone camera's digital zoom capabilities to
mimic a magnifier; however, I was only able to locate one app that
combined magnification and with full use of the iphone 4's built-in
LED light. The app is named "Spectacles" and costs US 99 cents. In
my testing it allows me to magnify printed text held within a few
inches of the camera, turns on the LED light to illuminate the text
being read, and works with the triple-click home to toggle white-on-
black for contrast options. The app is very simple to use and can be
navigated with VO, but it does require some prodding as I detail
below. Also, the developer of this app and his/her website have been
unreachable so I've not been able to get any further information or
request changes from the developer. I've left positive feedback with
a request for features on the itunes page for the app.
Here is what I've been able to figure out about using this app:
1. When I launch the app it automatically turns on the LED light and
begins using the entire iphone screen as a video display for
whatever the rear-facing camera is aimed at.
2. The only user interface element I've been able to locate is a
slider to adjust the level of magnification. There seem to be no
buttons, menus or settings in this App.
3. The magnification slider is a bit tricky to use with VO but can
be controlled as follows. These notes assume you are holding the
iphone in landscape mode with the home button to the right. The
magnification slider will be located along the bottom of the screen,
with an increase to the right and a decrease to the left. Do a one
finger double-tap and hold in the center of the screen, then move
the finger right or left. VO announces the corresponding increase or
decrease in magnification, the slider moves, and the magnification
changes accordingly. The following is a second method to adjust the
slider, but it does not appear to fully work. Perform a standard one
finger swipe up or down, VO announces a corresponding increase or
decrease in magnification and the slider moves but the actual
magnification does not change.
4. The app seems to work fine in both portrait and landscape modes,
and the slider remains along the longer edge of the phone regardless
of orientation.
5. The LED light turns on automatically, but I was not able to
manually turn it off or on. Also, when I switch away from the app
and then re-launch it from the home screen or the app switcher, the
LED does not turn on. I needed to quit the app using one of the
normal IOS 4 methods and then re-launch the app before the LED would
light up again.
6. I was able to triple-click home and turn on and off the iphone's
"white-on-black" feature while inside the app and this worked just
fine.
7. Here is the link to this App in the US App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spectacles/id380054681?mt=8
Method 2: Use the iPhone 4's built-in camera.
After poking and prodding my iphone I was able to get most of what I
wanted using the built-in camera. I prefer to use the Spectacles app
mentioned above because the following method involves more steps,
but this is the free method.
Task 1: How to put the iPhone 4 camera into Video Mode.
Task 1, Step 1: Launch the Camera App.
Task 1, Step 2: In the camera app, navigate to the camera mode
button. On my phone VO announces this button as "Mode." Double-
tapping this button toggles between "Photo Mode" and "Video Mode."
Once I have double-tapped to toggle into Video Mode, my iphone
automatically begins functioning as a video camera. Note that it is
not recording video at this point, it is just sort of acting as an
active viewfinder. Sorry, I don't know what the technical term for
that would be. <smile>
Task 2: How to use the camera app's Zoom function to increase the
"magnification" level.
Task 2, step 1: With the camera in Video mode, swipe to the Zoom
control which is a slider.
Task 2, step 2: Quickly perform a one finger swipe up or down to
increase or decrease the level of zoom. I was only able to get this
to move 10 percent with each swipe, and needed to repeat steps 1 and
2 repeatedly to make significant changes.
Task 3: How to use the camera app's built-in LED flash function to
illuminate the subject.
Task 3, Step 1: In the camera app, with the camera already in video
mode, swipe to the "Flash Mode" button. On my phone this button is
in the top left corner if the phone is in portrait orientation, and
it is in the bottom left corner if I'm holding the phone in
landscape orientation with the Home button to the right. VO
sometimes announced it as "Flash Mode" but other times VO just read
the current mode, e.g. it might announce "Auto" if the flash mode is
set to auto.
Task 3, Step 2: Double-tap to bring up the list of three flash mode
choices, labelled on my phone as "Off, Auto, and On."
Task 3, Step 3: Swipe right and left quickly to find and highlight
the choice labelled "On,"
Task 3, Step 4: Double-tap to select "On." Note: On my phone, I
needed to act quickly to make steps 3 and 4 work. The flash mode
item list only stays on my screen for 3 seconds before it
automatically closes and reverts to the previously selected flash
mode. After taking these steps, the L E D light on the back of my
iPhone is illuminated as a steady light. The light stays on as long
as my phone is awake and in the camera app in video mode.
Task 3, Step 5: Turn off the LED light: Taking any of the following
actions will turn off the LED light:
1. Swipe to the Flash Mode button and toggle it to either "auto" or
"off."
2. Press the Home button to go to the Home screen.
3. Use the app switcher to switch away from the camera app.
4. It will turn off if the iphone screen turns off as when I press
the sleep/wake button or when my auto-lock kicks in.
General Notes:
Note 1. Focus. Apparently, Apple has locked their camera app to only
use auto-focus, no manual focus is possible as far as I can tell. In
some of my testing the camera constantly attempted to adjust the
focus and VO politely announced each time this happened.
Note 2. The LED light works only for the back-facing camera. I have
my iphone in a Griffin Elan Passport case, and it appears the pre-
drilled hole for the camera is also large enough to let the LED
light shine through. The LED is pretty bright and it did good job of
illuminating the materials I was attempting to read.
Note 3. Brightness of the iphone display. The brightness of the
display during its use as a video magnifier seems to be affected by
my selections in the iphone's Settings / Brightness section. I
achieved better results when Auto Brightness was turned off.
Cheers,
Bryan
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
