On February 17, 2009, all television stations must switch to digital broadcasting by order of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In this issue, Darren Burton discusses the switch, and evaluates four of the converter boxes that will be necessary for any television not hooked up to cable or satellite to receive signals. Tune in to find out whether these boxes are accessible.
Jim Denham, director of the technology program at the Perkins School for the Blind, evaluates VoiceOver, Apple's screen reader for the Macintosh computer. He describes the Macintosh environment and discusses VoiceOver's documentation. He also covers VoiceOver's performance when browsing the web, word processing, working with iTunes, and more. Find out how VoiceOver has improved since its introduction in 2005.
Deborah Kendrick reviews the knfbReader Mobile, an optical character recognition system installed on the Nokia N82 cell phone. This Reader is the next generation following the KnfbReader Classic, a PDA (personal digital assistant) attached to a digital camera, introduced in 2005. The phone's camera takes a picture of the print that you want recognized. When the image is processed, the synthetic voice begins reading the text. Learn how well this product performed.
Some cities now require restaurants to post the nutrition content of the food they serve. Since these signs are not accessible, Janet Ingber, author and music therapist, visited the web sites of several fast food restaurants to determine whether nutrition information was available and accessible. Restaurant chains reviewed include Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Subway, Papa John's, Domino's, Baskin-Robbins and TCBY.
Jay Leventhal
Editor in Chief
