Steve Kelley
While most of us have been grumbling about the impact COVID-19 has had on our lives, author Michael Feir attributes the disruption to motivating him to get his new book, Personal Power: The iOS Edition, off his desk and out the door. Feir said of his recent work, a 250,000-word in-depth guide to the Apple operating system used in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, “I’d been pounding away for three and a half years…but I might have published a bit later in the summer rather than in April… COVID-19 just really gave me the sense that this could really help people now. Holding this back really weighed on me.”
The book is available as a free download from Michael Feir’s Blog. Feir sees technology like the iPhone as a game-changer for those who use accessibility features like VoiceOver, because these features come packaged on a mainstream device that can be purchased anywhere, and offer an economic leverage that is really unprecedented. As an example he offers this: “I have close to 3,000 Kindle books on my iPhone right now, that I’m holding in one hand, that are fully accessible, that I didn’t pay a cent more for than anyone else."
Feir recounted a time when he’d been given a book on video games that contained 624 pages. “I was able to scan it, but it took over 50 hours. It was nuts. Of course my pages were out of order—it was not a perfect scan, and there were all sorts of problems with it. So I went into the iBook Store, and for like fifteen bucks, I downloaded a copy of the same book, opened it up, and there was a perfect copy of the book! “
In addition to the ready availability of books that the iPhone makes accessible to all users, Feir pointed out how the development of low-cost apps has also offered a new level of economic leverage. He described the cost, both financial and temporal, of a scanning program for the computer: $1,000 for the program, updates at $180, per-page processing time at about 30 seconds, and so on. Then he compared this to an app for the iPhone that cost $100 and updated itself at no additional cost: “You snap a picture of the page—it even helps you line up the shot—and it just started reading. I kept waiting for the scanning mistakes. It just kept reading paragraph after paragraph of perfect capture, perfect interpretation, and just kept reading flawlessly. That was utterly mind-blowing to me and I realized the implications were just huge!”
Feir made it clear in our conversation and the book that he is not promoting the Apple iPhone so much as he is promoting the opportunities it provides for reading, GPS, sighted assistance using apps like Aira and Be My Eyes, using the camera as a tool, and engaging more with the world by accessing the Web, writing blogs, emailing and texting friends and family, and on and on. All of this in a mainstream device that doesn’t include the added cost of many assistive technology devices. “Here’s a device I can hold in my hand with a working GPS that is better then the Trekker Breeze was, right? In the same device you have a library, …a scanner, …a word processor,…a stereo. The implications, especially if you are living on a lower income or on the margins…are tremendous.”
Although Feir is very optimistic about the potential of an iOS device, the many tasks it can be used for, and the other, more expensive devices and software it might replace, he is also a realist. He identifies one of the downsides of switching from an assistive technology device, like a braille notetaker, for example, to a more mainstream device with accessibility built in: “Of course there are downsides, and this is something I wanted to make really clear to people. The whole idea of being part of something larger than the blindness products…you have to come at it from a different perspective.”
As an example, Feir pointed out that most of his book, which would be over 500 pages in print, was written using an iPhone with a connected Bluetooth keyboard. During a system update near the end of the project, the spellcheck “got broken.” He makes the point that some of the features are not going to work as flawlessly as they might on a dedicated assistive technology device, requiring some user flexibility and a willingness to use creative workarounds. Feir encourages us to recognize that, while these glitches are disappointing and need to be called out when they happen, they are also a part of having access to a much broader range of possibilities at a much lower cost.
Personal Power is really written with the beginner in mind, but the book is so thorough that someone currently using iOS with VoiceOver is going to find plenty they’ve not yet discovered. Feir’s approach is to guide the reader through a comprehensive look at the whole Apple environment—the App Store, accessible apps for productivity, leisure, and health. There is even a section dedicated to the benefits and support of using an iOS device during COVID-19 social distancing efforts.
“I want to help beginners get enough of a positive starting experience that they realize the potential…and maybe discover something that I haven’t yet," he says. "That would be a huge reward if that starts happening!”
Michael Feir’s writing style and the layout of the book make for a leisurely read, with pauses along the way for background information. Reading Personal Power can be a self-paced tour for the novice through the land of iOS, or with a more selective approach to reading various chapters, it can also prove to be a guide to getting up and running more quickly. As he puts it: “This is about your personal life, the pursuit of your own interests…not about learning Excel to do your job. This is about writing to friends, family, blogging, engaging in online worlds, playing games, listening to music, podcasts, Netflix—all the things that the iPhone can let you do.”
While Personal Power was not intended primarily to help users develop employment skills for a job, Feir recognizes and is quick to point out that the technology skills essential for employment are often more quickly developed when involved in something enjoyable. “There’s a lot of potential out there,” he remarked—citing the often heard statistic of a 70 percent unemployment rate among job seekers with visual impairments—“and hopefully this will help galvanize some of that…We learn best when we are having so much fun we don’t even know it’s happening. The skills you learn playing an adventure game, learning to type, learning to swipe and tap your way through a choose-your-own-adventure—those are the kinds of skills that are going to help you come back and do your work faster on Monday. I always encourage people when they get a piece of technology like this to find something fun, find something you actually want to do that isn’t work related.”
True to his word, chapters in Personal Power explain the App Store, iTunes, music apps, games, FaceTime, reading, along with a chapter titled, “Time to Play." The novice who needs to get up and running with iOS quickly, or just wants to see if one of the iOS devices is right for their needs, will find a couple chapters that will help them. Going straight to the “Quick Start” chapter to get a great overview on setting up an iOS device and the basics of VoiceOver. “Reaching Out,” will get you up and running quickly with the phone, texting and email. When it’s time to really get down to business, the chapter “Getting Things Done” offers more traditional work-related sections like, “Apps for Better Notetaking,” “Time and Task Management Apps," and “Crunching the Numbers.” For the braille user or newcomer to iOS curious about how braille is done on a flat screen, the chapter, “Going Dotty,” puts it all together.
One of the features that makes Personal Power stand out are the chapters related to accessories. Sections in the chapter, “Your iOS Device and Accessories,” include: “Accessories Beyond the Basics,” “Bluetooth Keyboards,” Audio Accessories,” “Cases,” and more. For the beginner or skeptic, a great section to help decide where an iOS device fits into the tech mix is, “Why not a Note Taker or Laptop,” in which he explains some of the practical pros and cons of using an iOS device to replace or compliment other less portable or more expensive devices.
As mentioned at the outset, Personal Power: The iOS Edition is available as a free download in ePub format, which is easily opened in a wide range of apps including Voice Dream Reader, or as a Word/RTF document. Feir mentioned that a third-party has expressed interest in creating a DAISY version of the book that will allow even broader access.
Personal Power: The iOS Edition is a valuable resource, is written by a devotee of iOS devices, and a realist who himself started as a novice and a bit of a skeptic. Through trial and error, Michael Feir uncovered many skills and shortcuts and has written this book in order to generously share this knowledge, along with the greater engagement in learning, community, and work these devices offer their users.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
Related articles:
- A Review of Navigating Healthcare: When All They Can See is That You Can’t, by Deborah Kendrick by Janet Ingber
- A Review of Dinner Delivered: Accessible and Easy Ways to Receive Meals Direct to Your Door, by Kim Loftis and Chris Grabowski by Bill Holton
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