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Spotted on Slashdot, Hand-Mounted Sonar For the Blind: The Tacit, a wrist-mounted sonar device with haptic feedback, is like strapping a bat to your wrist to help you see. It makes use of two sonar ping sensors to measure the distance to the nearest obstacle. The relative distance to an object is then fed...
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A new company may have solved one of my biggest challenges as a visually-impaired photographer. Manual focus is out of the question for me. Automatic focus is a gamble as it often picks the wrong subject to focus on. I have too many shots that have the background in sharp focus while the subject...
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I do not understand something about the mobile web. The ‘mobile web’ entails all the sites made for smart phones and other mobile devices. Despite being designed for small screens, most mobile site disable the best feature on mobile browsers, the pinch zoom. This makes no sense to me. How could this benefit mobile...
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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...
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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 his debut series is...
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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 combines a full-color...
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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 on...
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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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