Dear Access World Editor,
I read your article "The Braille Must Go Through: A Review of Two Lower-Cost Braille Printers," and I would like to see more reviews of embossers. I think it would be great to see a review of the Romeo Attaché Pro and the Index Basic D. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Cullen Gallagher
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
Thanks so much for Janet Ingber's article "Working with Text and VoiceOver on a Mac" in the July issue. I am considering going to the Mac, and this will help if I decide to do so. You are no doubt familiar with the great National Braille Press (NBP) book regarding the iPhone. Is there such a book for the Mac? I know NBP doesn't have one, though I have suggested it. The Apple material on VoiceOver is, in my opinion, for people with some sight, as the explanations of operations seem geared to looking at the screen. Thanks for any ideas you may have about a better solution for the totally blind.
Beth
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
Congratulations on a very well-written and informative article on some of the newer magnification features in Android 4.2.2
As a low vision smartphone user myself, I actually have a couple of other points you might be interested in as to why I think Android is actually a better large print platform than iOS currently.
The iPhone 5 has a four inch screen, and prior to that iPhones had a 3.5 inch screen while Android screen sizes range up to 6 inch. I read an article yesterday about a phone in the works with a 6.8 inch screen! For me, I actually find the magnification a bit clunky to use (more so on iOS where you need to swipe with three fingers rather than two to move except to flick it on and off as you note to be very handy), I think, because I'm used to moving the mouse on a computer to click on things and the magnification follows whereas on my phone, I need to put my fingers on the screen right where I'm trying to read. Because of the smaller screen, I need to physically move a lot more to read a page of text. Unfortunately, the larger font options aren't universal even within the built-in apps (which on Android are minimal at best anyway), so a larger screen will at least make everything just a little bit bigger.
The greater flexibility of Android means that options like Big Launcher can enlarge things like the desktop and phone dialer that iOS just can't do.
In any case it's great to see something written about using the phone with magnification and large print as most of the other articles I've come across concentrate solely on VoiceOver or Talkback.
Regards,
Quentin Christensen
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
In the April 2013 issue of AccessWorld, you reviewed the New Generation Victor Reader Stream. I am both pleased and somewhat disappointed with the Next Generation Stream.
I did not find the muffling in the speaker as annoying as I thought I would. The speaker on my model, at least, sounds fine when the volume is turned down slightly and only distorts at the highest volume. I own several battery-powered speakers that sound similar when volume is cranked up high.
The Ryan and Heather voices do sound better when not sped up, and they pause in strange places, which is perhaps at the end of lines. However, you can always prepare MP3 files of a text or Daisy-based book using a favorite voice. Kurzweil 1000, Open Book, Balabolka, and TextAloud are among the many accessible possibilities. For reading technical books (since the Stream ignores most punctuation), I still keep my old BookCourier around.
The smaller size is welcome in my overstuffed purse, but the silicon case is nothing more than a fashion accessory. My previous Stream failed because the keypad wore out or perhaps got dirty, and this new case, although it gives the Stream a non-slip grip, does nothing to protect the buttons on the front of the Stream. It has no carry strap, so I immediately knitted up a secure little carrying pouch with sturdy neck and belt straps and a secure flap in case it gets turned up-side-down.
My wireless access point uses a hexadecimal key. I tried entering it numerous times, first with the multi-tap texting method and later using the ability to create a network profile within the HumanWare companion. I tried both upper and lowercase. I tried separating the hex codes with colons and without. The Stream failed to connect, implying I'd entered the code incorrectly. As for using the companion software, I got a network configuration error. Because it was such a vague error, I couldn't figure out if the firmware couldn't cope with hexadecimal or if I was simply entering it wrong.
What worked was updating the firmware using the USB cable. When I updated at first using the companion, it switched me from the Heather voice to the Louise French voice, but the configuration I'd created previously on the SD card, which had previously given an error, now worked just fine. So, I was now connected to Wi-Fi but I had lost my English voice. Pressing and holding "Menu Key 7" after I'd exited the online bookshelf did let me toggle away from Louise and back to Heather.
I ended up having to finally update the firmware the manual way, downloading it from HumanWare's site and, then, moving it to the SD card. I had to use the Graham and Rachel British voices because the firmware version for Heather and Ryan was a lower number. (By the way, the USB cable which now comes with the Stream is non-standard. You no longer can substitute any old cable with a similar mini-connector because this one has extra pins, probably for charging.)
The metaphor of the online bookshelf seems clumsy now with its only ability being to update the device and install user authorization keys, but I'm sure HumanWare marketing intends it to do much more. No doubt HumanWare engineering is frantically trying to implement those features. I don't mind waiting patiently for the Wi-Fi feature to be expanded, but I do hope they won't be so busy adding features that they forget to fix the awkwardness I've documented above.
A final gripe about the New Generation Stream is worth noting for those who are less computer savvy. My old Stream came with an SD card and a CD chock-full of music, sample Daisy books, and tutorials. Later, when I assisted a new user, I found that her Stream came with updated tutorial material, including a raft of podcasts from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I also later noted that for the older Stream a wealth of updated audio tutorials were available to download and transfer to the device.
By contrast, the SD card that came with my New Generation Stream was absolutely empty except for containing the requisite $VR folders for storing future content. Had I been a novice and unsure of how to transfer or navigate content, I would have had no tutorials or sample files to work with.
Also, if a user followed the directions in the "Frequently Asked Questions" page (FAQ) on the HumanWare site for obtaining a user authorization key from Learning Ally, they would have been confused. Learning Ally has completely changed its site, so a user authorization key is obtained from following a wizard on the "My Bookshelf" portion of the site and not "My Account" as the FAQ incorrectly documents.
I don't regret at all the money spent on my new Stream. It does a superb job playing books from Bookshare, the National Library Service (NLS), Learning Ally, and Daisy. It plays music and podcasts with the expected facility, including correctly reading file names and ID3 tags. The companion software also does a fine job of extracting ASCII from text-based PDF files, so I can peruse product documentation away from my PC.
Though I enjoyed the adventure of exercising my troubleshooting skills, I do hope HumanWare will fix some of its early glitches in the future.
Deborah Armstrong
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
Thank you so much for providing all the useful information to the vision impaired communities across the world. I truly enjoy reading AccessWorld, so please keep up the great job.
I have a question regarding a new device designed for the blind, the OrCam, a glasses-like sensor which sees what is in front of it, understands information, and reads it out through a bone-conduction earpiece.
I wish that AccessWorld could provide a review of this product, which I think will beyond doubt be a very valuable device for the blind.
Thank you,
Tess Tey
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
I am enjoying the IOS AccessNote application. Is it possible for Voiceover on an IOS device to read the letters as you type them? I am using a Freedom Scientific Focus 14 wireless keyboard and braille display. I use both uncontracted and contracted typing, although I prefer contracted typing.
A second question is: Is the only way to enter numbers into AccessNote is by using the number sign? I believe using lower cell numbers, such as dot 2 for the number one, does not work.
Regards
Louis Maher
Response from AccessWorld author Darren Burton
Hello Louis,
Thank you for using AccessNote and for contacting us.
For hearing characters spoken as you type, you have to first make sure in your iPhone's Settings that it is set to do that. You need to go to Settings/General/Accessibility/VoiceOver/Typing Feedback to set that. There are settings in there for both software and hardware keyboards, so you will want to make sure to set hardware keyboard feedback to characters. You can then hear the letters as you type if you use uncontracted braille. You can also type numbers as lower cell numbers without the number sign; this is also only in uncontracted braille. You can hear what letters you are typing if you use contracted braille but you have to type extremely slowly. This is caused by the way iOS handles contractions. If you type normally, you won't hear what you are typing because it takes a second for iOS to decide what you typed, and by the time it finally appears, VoiceOver is already somewhere else as far as I can tell. The numbers do need a number sign when using contracted braille. If you use lower numbers it types symbols like Commas and the like. This even held true if I added a number sign first.
We're pushing Apple to open up the sandbox a bit for us developers, so we can do more with uncontracted braille, but for now, this is how it works.
Thanks again for using AccessNote.
Darren
