Is the iPad the ultimate accessible electronic accessory? Of course not, but it has some serious potential. Right away, iPad 1.0 already wins the accessible tech toy race hands down. With a few small changes, next year’s iPad 2.0 could begin to render many low vision aids obsolete. Out of the gate, the iPad is...
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My new favorite app for writing emails and other documents on my Touch is WriteRoom. It it both accessible and versatile, though it is not free. Despite the rather hefty price tag at $4.99, it is well worth it. For me, accessibility is key and WriteRoom wins hands down here. Not only does it...
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I have blogged before about how much I enjoyed Joe Abercrombie’s books and about my quest to have them released as audio books (See Best Served Cold (& Audible), The First Law Series Going Audible and Best Served Audible). Abercrombie reports today on his blog in “First Law Audiobooks” that...
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Blind Photographers has written already about iPhone photography ins Shooting the iPhone 3GS. What will the iPad bring to the table? Nothing yet, as the tablet, like its older sibling, the iPod Touch, lacks a camera.  However, hope is not lost. PCWorld reports that they are  Sleuthing for an iPad Camera. “General consensus is...
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Apple’s new iPad has had me doing some thinking about its potential impact fro the visually impaired, particularly for blind photographers. Reading an article today (thanks, Dad) about a new e-book reader software, Blio, soon to be put out by a company run by Ray Kurzweil, prompted me to consider a new issue, accessible...
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Spotted on CNET, Ray Kurzweil tries to build a better e-reader. His latest project, Blio, is an effort to improve the emerging electronic book field with software that turns e-books into more than just a digital copy of the print edition. Blio, which is due out next month, is software that...
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Despite Apple’s leading efforts in accessibility technology, I have always found iTunes extremely hard to use. Apple’s major focus has been on VoiceOver and screen reader software compatibility. There are many visually impaired computer users out there (and right here) who have not made the switch to a non-visual interface, preferring to rely...
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Back in March of 2006, I contacted the author of an economics book that I was interested in reading. This was part of a personal campaign to encourage authors to produce audio editions of their books, blogged here.  The author graciously responded, offering to bring the subject up with his publisher. I have heard...
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One of my favorite new authors is Joe Abercrombie. A few year ago, he published The First Law trilogy, a dark fantasy series, followed recently by Best Served Cold, a novel set I’m the First Law world. I picked up the first nook in the trilogy a few years ago in paperback and was...
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I have had some trouble focusing recently. Not with concentrating (not more than usual anyway), but with my camera. Being visually impaired, I have to rely on my camera’s autofocus. Using manual focus requires that I can see the viewfinder. I use the viewfinder to compose (mostly), but definitely not to focus. Unfortunately, autofocus...
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The WordPress development team is planning to update WP’s media handling in the next version. Via WordPress › Blog » Vote for 2.9 Media Features, “A large percentage of the requests we get from users are for more/better media features, so we’ve decided to focus 2.9 on building an infrastructure for improved media handling...
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Today, author Joe Abercrombie announced that his new book, Best Served Cold will be released in the US on the Kindle. I have found the Kindle app on my iPod Touch to be very readable on the largest font setting  and with the inverse color scheme (white text on a black background). Despite this,...
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I blog quite a bit about acceptability and one of my favorite topics is the Firefox browser. One of the programmers who helps make Firefox such an accessible way to use the internet is a guy named Ken Saunders. And he is now famous. BusinessWeek featured Ken in a recent article, Mozilla’s Crowdsourcing Mystique...
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Finding accessibility add-ons for Firefox can be tricky. There is no add-on category for accessibility. Different searches yield different add-one. I have blogged about my favorite add-ons, but not everyone reads this blog. So I have put together all the accessibility related add-ons that I use inot one ‘collection‘, a new way to group...
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Getting online is not always easy when you are visually impaired. Font sizes can be too small, images hard to see and colors hard to make out. But there are ways to minimize these problems. I have been tinkering with my web browsers ever since I used my first one many years ago. I...
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