As an amusing aside, I knew a guy who used voiceover on his device to
read long documents to him while he commuted to work. He had no vision
impairments, he just found it useful to be able to have stuff read to
him while driving.
CB
On 12/18/13 11:33 PM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
oh but of course.
After all compare the number of apple screen readers there have been
what two? three at most? outspoken which did the job fantastically
with apple's input, , still can with the right equipment, then
voiceover. because apple understood the importance of including speech
for many populations.
what always blows my mind though is the assumption that voiceover
exists solely for , and benefits only individuals experiencing sight
loss. The very idea is a limitation in and of itself.
The broader the understanding that there can be more people and more
definitions of successful interaction then the one you are personally
using, the easier it is to draw others on board for inclusion.
just my two cents having only read Tim's comments and not the rest of
the thread.
Kare
On Wed, 18 Dec 2013, Tim Kilburn wrote:
Hi,
Well said David. While I understand people’s frustration and totally
despise discrimination, I’m not sure that I fully agree with some of
the opinions/comments shared prior to that.
I’ll chime in here to express just a few points. Way back when OS X
first came out, I recall going down to the city to do some training
with Apple and I commented on the lack of a screen reader within the
new OS. I had been using OutSpoken for Mac in OS 6 through 9 and was
interested in continuing to use the Mac as it evolved. In normal
Apple fashion, no real concrete things were said but it certainly was
hinted that they were working on something of their own instead of
having an outside vender developing such an animal. My point is here
that I don’t believe that it was the noise made by the blind
community that got Apple on the screen reader and accessibility
wagon, I’m pretty sure that it was in the cards for quite a while. I
certainly know that magnification and other accessibility features
were built right in to the MacOS back in the late 80s,. I don’t
believe for a minute that accessibility is not a priority.
The old saying that you attract more flies to honey than you do to
crap comes to mind. Constructive dialog and collaboration usually get
better results than ranting and raving. Expressing frustration and
asserting yourself and your rights are fine, but speculation and
exaggeration seldom result in positive productivity.
Later…
Tim Kilburn
Fort McMurray, AB Canada
On Dec 18, 2013, at 1:33 PM, David Chittenden <dchitten...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Wow, such interesting arguments. When eBook readers do not have
built-in speakers, speech output is impossible. When the page of the
book is a picture of the page, a scanned image, speaking that page
is impossible. When the law is written such that the copyright
holder has more rights around who can and cannot access the book
than the potential reader has, accessing the book may not be legally
possible.
If you want to just flail around ineffectually making lots of noise
but not necessarily getting very far, your stated approach can have
limited success. However, would it not be better to learn the
specifics in any particular situation so you can actually become
effective? For instance, the author's guild is focused on keeping
the copyrights law strong since writing and controlling who and how
the book is read specifically effects the author's income. Authors
do not earn any money for books which are checked out of libraries.
However, people who really like books they read in libraries have a
greater chance of purchasing their own copy. The argument against
text-to-speech in all eReaders has actually been, if text to speech
is used, people will not purchase the recorded versions of books,
and the recorded versions are much more profitable. This is why NLS
is so strict about who can access their professional recordings.
When software is being designed, adding text-to-speech is
significantly less difficult than adding TTS access at a later date.
The same is true for wheelchair access to buildings.
Depending on how the code is written, adding TTS and screen-reader
navigation may well be extremely complex. In some cases, the entire
operating system needs to be rewritten in order to add TTS and
spoken navigation. To rewrite an OS can take a few years. You have
no idea how long the original software was being developed before
the company released the product, so the blanket statement that
adding speech is a trivial matter, is completely incorrect in most
cases.
Bugs should be fixed quickly. I love this statement. It demonstrates
complete and total ignorance. Bugs usually take a lot longer to
track down and correct than adding new features. Operating systems
are extremely complex. Bugs may have several causes. Changing code
to repair one bug may cause a worse bug somewhere else in the
system. Back when I studied programming in university, I spent most
of my programming time tracking down, correcting, and then tracking
down the bugs that the corrections generated. Sometimes, I left
minor bugs because they did not impair the program's primary
function, and I could not get the program to run any other way.
All that said, unless you can either get a strong public upswell
behind you to get laws changed, or you can develop good will between
you and the developers, ineffectual flailing around may cause as
much harm as good to your efforts.
David Chittenden, MSc, MRCAA
Email: dchitten...@gmail.com
Mobile: +64 21 2288 288
Sent from my iPhone
On 19 Dec 2013, at 8:35, eric oyen <eric.o...@gmail.com> wrote:
well, when I get what I want in a timely manner, I don't worry
about it. Its when I get substandard service, features or it takes
a lot longer than it should to get them,, then I am one of the most
complaining bastards out there. I make no bones about it, I expect
excellence and anything less deserves attention to resolve.
Take, for example: the book famine for the blind. We have the same
rights as the general public to access media, yet there are those
that are fighting us tooth and nail because they don't want to deal
with the problem. The American Authors ild is particularly strident
on this. They won't allow the publication of content for the blind
unless we sign up on a special registry (does anyone at the library
have to do this just to borrow a book?).
How about the E-book consortium which is trying to get a waiver
based on flimsy reasons (such as design modifications to the
hardware, etc). Most all functions on these devices are in SOFTWARE
and is not difficult to code for. Yet Amazon (and others) seek to
get that waiver knowing full well they are locking out a
non-trivial market segment.
Now apple did give us accessibility. However, that wouldn't have
happened if these two conditions were not met:
1. we bitched to them for 4 years before they took notice
2. the blind represent the 2nd largest market segment for computer
and smartphone technology among the disabled.
in the 1970's, the deaf demanded (and got) close captioning (which
started showing up on TV in the early 1980's).
2. wheel chair users fought for 20 years for accessibility rights
(and got them with the ADA in 1992).
Now, we the blind are the last to get anything and we are having to
fight tooth and nail to get it.
My point is this: we are being put last before anyone else. We get
treated like incompetent idiots, yelled at because they think
blindness equals deafness and generally get disrespected in general
public. If you are happy with this situation, fine. Just don't
expect the rest of us to just lay down and accept it. I want whats
mine and I will work to get it. If this means that I go into court
to get what is legally mine, I will. Why be satisfied with anything
less than what everyone else gets without even asking for it?
If anyone says I can't do a thing because of my blindness, then
they had better stay out of my way while I prove them wrong (in the
most public manner possible).
We have rights and its time we had them enforced.
-eric
On Dec 18, 2013, at 2:52 AM, Krister Ekstrom wrote:
Yeah, and it doesn’t matter if we get what we want, because then
we whimper and whine about the fact that we have gotten what we
want, either it is too late, too little, too much or just plain
spoken the wrong way. I know that what i now will say is gonna
offend people and i apologize in advance for that, but if we bash
Apple accessibility and Apple decides that they don’t want to have
anything whatsoever to do with the blind community then it’s a
catastrophy that we deserve. Don’t misunderstand me, pointing to
bugs and things that aren’t right isn’t wrong and shall be done
provided it’s done in a constructive, polite and creative way,
complaining serves no purpose and in the long run could end up
really badly for us.
/Krister
18 dec 2013 kl. 03:42 skrev David Tanner
<david.tanner...@gmail.com>:
Well, Robert it probably does more to hurt all blind users of
Apple devices than it ever will to help make things better. But,
as I am sure you known blind people have a long history of being
hateful, spiteful, not appreciating what is done for them, and
constant complainers.
Sent from my accessible iPhone
On Dec 17, 2013, at 7:53 AM, ROBERT CARTER <nc5rn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi,
I think the idea that accessibility is less important to Apple
since the death of Steve Jobs is nothing more than pure
speculation and if anyone can prove otherwise, I would love to
see the evidence. I see no value in such comments.
Robert Carter
On Dec 17, 2013, at 7:42 AM, Scott B. <sb356...@gmail.com> wrote:
Absolutely right. They can talking to engineering. But
engeeniering has the final say. I agree since the great Steve
Jobs has passed we're probably not seeing as much interaction
from Accessibility as people saw before. To sum it up very
briefly Accessibility is where you take the accessibility
suggestions or problems. They either act upon them y supporting
you the person who needs help or passing it on to the
engineering team by escalation. Please also keep in mind these
are tier 2 support personnel so they can't know everything
either so be easy on these people.
On 12/17/2013 03:37, Ray Foret Jr wrote:
Of late, I have noticed complaints against the Apple
accessibility team as if to suggest that we are being ignored.
It seems to be the belief of some that the Apple accessibility
team fixes accessibility bugs and problems with Voice Over. I
do not believe that this is the case. It is my belief that the
Apple accessibility team has, in fact, a very limited role at
Apple. Frankly, with the passing of the late great Steve Jobs,
that role has perhaps demenished greatly. I believe that the
Apple accessibility team never has had actual decision making
capacity with respect to actual implementation of fixes for
Voice Over. They didn’t even have this power under Steve Jobs.
Unless I am very much mistaken, all the accessibility team has
any power to do is to forward our findings over to the
development teams but nothing more. They cannot even tell us
whether or not our reports will be acted upon. Now, this last
is most likely a part of Apple’s non disclosure policy:
however, I suspect that even if this was not so, Apple’s
accessibility team would not be informed in any case. In
short, it seems that the only function that this accessibility
team has and will ever have at Apple is not much more than a
kind of clearing house of feedback from us blind users. I
cannot help wonder how many Apple app developmental teams look
at submissions from the accessibility team and say to
themselves, “Oh, no, not again.”. I suspect that this explains
why it is that our reports seem to go unheeded.
Sent from my Mac, the only computer with full accessibility
for the blind built-in!
Sincerely,
The Constantly Barefooted Ray, still a very happy Mac and
Iphone 5 user!
--
Scott Berry
Email: sb356...@gmail.com
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