Posts Tagged ‘ accessibility ’

Today Amazon announced that it was surrendering to the Author’s Guild – Amazon Backs off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com. The new Talk To Me feature, a form of text to speech, in Amazon’s Kindle will be disabled at the whim of the publisher. How many publishers will not exercise...
Read More »

Following up on my rant against the Blount Op-Ed piece, the AFB has a well-written (much better than mine) blog post on the same issue: Kindle sparks a flame war, but fails to light the fire for accessibility – AFB’s Blog. While the Kindle offers text-to-speech options, it doesn’t include talking menus or fully...
Read More »

Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology is pushing its petition to support legislation that makes technology more accessible to all people. Sign the Petition to Support the Bill: COAT now has an online petition to support passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.  Sign it now, and spread the word! I don’t...
Read More »

As you can tell, I am a big fan of WordPress, which I use to publish this blog. But I am not always at my desk when a good idea for a post strikes. I have been looking into ways to blog on the go, so to speak, even if that just means while...
Read More »

Apple has just released the latest itereation of its web browser, Safari, for Mac and Windows. As well as Apple may play with screen readers, I have not been a fan of Apple software from a readability perspective. I have found the fonts tiny (both on web pages and in the program itself) and...
Read More »

On today’s Op-Ed page in the New York Times, Roy Blount, Jr, head of the Author’s Guild, has penned a piece, The Kindle Swindle?, defending his organizations attack on the new text to speech (TTS) feature in the new Amazon Kindle 2. Over at O”Reill Media, there is An Open Letter to Roy Blount,...
Read More »

Dean, over at Bushido Designs, has responded to my call for an accessible WordPress theme. In a recent post, Surprise! Your “semantic, accessible, search engine friendly” WordPress theme is none of the above, Dean announced his development and release of the initial version of the Access theme. Among other things, the themes is designed...
Read More »

The American Foundation for the Blind is doing a Survey on Social Networking Sites . They are looking at MySpace, Facebook, Twiter, etc. This month AccessWorld asks about social networking sites. We want to find out whether you use them and how accessible you think they are. Personally, I find myself using Twitter as...
Read More »

Slashdot reports that We’re Just Not That Into You, iPhone Apps . maximus1 writes “A new report compiled by iPhone analytics firm Pinch Media finds the majority of people stop using apps the day after they download them, and only 1 percent develop a long-term relationship with any given app. Instead, most tend to...
Read More »

I have blogged sporadically about accessibility and the blogosphere. This page brings together my thoughts and tips, both specific and general, about blogging while blind. General Blogosphere Access Blind Bloggers: A Forum for Blind  (and visually impaired) Bloggers! A few months ago, at the behest of another legally blind blogger, I set up a...
Read More »

Fliq Notes is of my favorite iPhone apps. Not only is it versatile and useful, but it’s also quite colorful. This app is designed allow you to, organize and share your notes. in other colorful and intuitive interface which is remarkably accessible. Fliq Notes is part of a suite of applications, both for your...
Read More »

My iPhone Access project has a new front door. With this blog, it is not easy to collect related posts onto one page (at least not that I have found). I am in the middle of an ongoing series of posts on the accessibility of the iPhone platform, but there is no one decent...
Read More »

Learning about the iPhone and its apps is easy. Besides the Apple site and the iTunes store, there are many dedicated blogs and web sites. Interesting iPhone news makes it onto general tech and news sites. But there is little about the iPhone’s accessibility to the blind and visually impaired. Apple offers its view...
Read More »

I had two best men at my wedding. Their tandem toast revolved around my relationship to BPR. Addiction may be the word they used. So, as I was browsing the iPhone app store on my iPod Touch, I could not resist testing out NPR Mobile when I ran across it. NPR Mobile is an...
Read More »

Today’s NYT Tech Talk podcast from the New York Times features two accessibility pieces. The first accessibility segment featues Audiopoint Voice Terminal Service Brian Lichorowic, the chief executive of Audiopoint, explains how the company’s Voice Terminal Service works to bring the Internet to visually impaired users by phone. Bettina Edelstein also offers a round-up...
Read More »