Dear AccessWorld Editor,

I am writing to request that AccessWorld publish a series that will empower ordinary screen reader users to better advocate for greater web accessibility.

Last night, I had to struggle unsuccessfully with the new Yahoo Groups interface. A volunteer organization I'd recently joined made participation in this group mandatory, and I could not adjust my preferences without using the Yahoo Groups pages.

I talk to students with vision loss who face these challenges daily, whether it's attempting to buy groceries on the web, participating in an online class discussion, updating a résumé on a job bank, posting a notice on a web-based bulletin board, or purchasing travel tickets.

Despite all the attention given to designing accessible Flash, despite all the training on how to navigate headings, frames, links, and tables, and despite new features screen reader vendors roll out regularly to make the web supposedly easier to use, my experience is that it isn't.

When I'm struggling with some frustrating site, I often ask myself, "Is it this site or is it me? Have I forgotten some detail from my screen reader training" Should I be trying to use Firefox and not IE on this site" Should I learn ChromeVox? Would NVDA work better to read the screen here, or is this simply an inaccessible page, and am I wasting my time?"

I keep my browsers and screen access solutions upgraded, but sometimes access degrades with new updates. For example, with JAWS 14 and IE 10 I no longer am able to review the screen with the JAWS cursor to find and click on items. With newer websites, you sometimes are supposed to turn the virtual cursor off and use the arrows to change focus, but on other pages, often on the same site, you need to follow traditional virtual cursor and quick key navigation practices. How is a poor user supposed to know which "mode" to enable?

After a couple of grumpy and fruitless hours, I do usually give in and track down a sightling, only to get information I can't readily use. "The preferences button is on the left nearer the bottom," my helper will say. Or "The required fields you need to fill are in red." Or the sighted person will say "When you did that the box disappeared." Basically the sighted assistant has no idea how the screen reader is rendering the page to me, and the screen reader has no way of communicating to me how the web page looks to a sighted person. We are speaking different languages, the screen reader with its fingers deep in the document object model, and my sighted friend with her view of colors, fonts, and placement. Particularly irksome is that the visual layout of the page, so evident to the sighted, has disappeared from the screen reader's rendering. Yet, the geographic relationships between objects often communicate important information. So when the sighted friend tells me to click to the right of where I am, or when I try to show where it's reading or displaying braille now, it's impossible for us to work together to figure things out.

After I've gotten sighted help to click on buttons the screen reader doesn't see, to read important messages that for the life of me I never found and to fill in fields that aren't labeled, I decide to complain to the webmaster. I carefully craft a polite letter explaining that the site isn't accessible and ask that they fix specific items. For example, I might complain that though they use ARIA, all the regions are simply labeled "Region" making them useless for navigation purposes. Or I might point out that elements I need to interact with are unlabeled graphics or that posts in an online forum are not separated by any navigable elements. Frequently, I can't even figure out what to tell them is wrong.

If my letter goes to a faceless corporation, I'm unlikely to get a reply. A smaller company's customer service does often answer my letters however. They tell me the page is 508-compliant and that they've followed accessibility guidelines.

They ask me to repeat, in exact detail the steps I took so they might replicate my problem in-house.

This cookie-cutter support response isn't helpful. Product support agents are not likely using a screen reader, and my explaining the steps I took isn't going to resolve the problem. So once again I patiently e-mail them, explaining that though their site did pass automated accessibility checkers, labeling graphics with the alt tag of "Click Here" provides no useful information, and that requiring the user drag elements on the page to reorder a list is not helpful if you can only use the keyboard. The support agent assigned to my "issue" is unlikely to even know what a screen reader is, much less anything about HTML or accessible web design.

Complaining to the screen reader vendors doesn't really work either. Perhaps my problem is indeed a bug in the screen reader, but how would I know" And the vendors can't possibly take the time to look at every site out there. All the screen reader vendors do is add more features, many of which simply extend the learning curve and drive us farther away from the web experience of the sighted.

I have a very basic knowledge of HTML, and I understand today most sites are built with a CMS, a content management system, so the webmasters themselves may simply be clicking on objects to build the site, and not know much more HTML than I do. I wonder whether the CMS then is the culprit or if it has features to improve accessibility that the web designer has simply neglected to employ.

I believe AccessWorld can address this with an article that answers the following questions:

• How do you know as a user whether a site is inaccessible or you need to review your screen reader training"
• How do you determine and document the problems with the site" Can you tell which CMS was used to build [the site], and is this information helpful"
• How do you contact someone in charge of a website to express your concerns and be heard"
• What references can you put the webmaster in touch with to help them improve a site's accessibility"

Basically, we need a web accessibility series that is not geared for the web developer but instead for the average screen reader user!

Deborah Armstrong

Dear AccessWorld Editor,

In AccessWorld's September "Letters to the Editor," Richard Petty asks for an accessibility review of online learning.

I work at a community college and act as a support reference to others at colleges throughout my state when problems with access technology arise. To save funding, more and more campuses are turning to online courses to broaden the scope of their offerings. Not only does each college use its own course management system, but administrators are turning to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) to help students succeed. Though a few dedicated people are toiling to plug the ditches of inaccessibility, in large, most of these courses are a challenge for screen reader users.

And academia is ignoring the problem.

I'm thinking a good way for AccessWorld to start is with MOOC platforms [that[ are free and available worldwide to any user. Consider reviewing courses from the four big networks: Coursera, EdX, Udacity, and Canvas.net.

Next, consider reviewing some representative samples of the customized courses based on popular platforms like Moodle and Blackboard.

You also might wish to interview the individuals who are trying to improve access to online learning.

Lastly, I'd like to see some steps the average student can take when he or she enrolls for a course that turns out to be less than accessible.

Best regards,

Deborah Armstrong

Dear AccessWorld Editor,

I would like to say how much I appreciate the work that goes in to AccessWorld articles and the AccessWorld app. It's a fantastic resource for information. I am wondering if it would be possible to have an in-app notification when a new issue of AccessWorld is available.

Regards

Mike Taylor

Response from Lee Huffman, AccessWorld Editor-in-Chief:

Hello Mike. Thank you for reading AccessWorld and writing in with your suggestion. An in-app notification is a feature the AFB app development team had not considered. That is a great idea, and we will certainly take it into consideration for a future app update.

Dear AccessWorld Editor,

My comments are in response to Joe Strechay's October article entitled, 2013 Employment Resources for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired.

This is an excellent article with interesting options and points. I'm glad the picture is improving somewhat.

I would like to make AccessWorld readers aware of The Statler Center out of Buffalo, New York. A friend of mine attended this program in fall 2011 and found it very well run. People did what they said they'd do. Too often in programs for the blind, people do not do what is promised and subtly, and not so subtly, imply somehow the blind person is at fault for not finding a job. There seems to still be little accountability in this arena. I vividly recall explaining what the National Library Service was to a job coach working on a Master's in Rehab. She was nearly finished with her education. Somehow, her university missed something somewhere! I also recall participating in a medical transcription program many years ago. A key selling point for me was their saying we'd do an internship. We never did.

On another topic, I want to bring it to AFB's attention that I have found, and it concerns me, that looking for mentors on CareerConnect can be tricky and problematic. I was once told, "It's hard getting a job in my field" by a highly placed, prominent mentor who offered little else in the way of mentoring. Several e-mails to other mentors also went unanswered. It does AFB no service to have unhelpful or unresponsive mentors. Perhaps there should be a rate the mentors section in Career Connect. I realize, not everyone has the time to mentor well.

I hope more people with vision loss assume management roles in National Industries for the Blind and in head-hunting firms. I find the job search process today very complicated and exhausting. Too often online searches include running up against websites with capchas, tricky edit boxes, and complicated layouts. My friend found Statler excellent in helping her with this problem.

I suspect the continuing complexity of access technology has caused some people to become exhausted in always struggling to learn new software. Personally, I have found no teachers up to standard in my home state, possibly due to the fact we have no screening agency.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to this article.

David F.

Dear AccessWorld Editor,

I am writing in response to Aaron Preece's October 2013 article, Fine Reader Professional Version 11 by ABBYY and Text Cloner Pro Version 11.5 by Premier Literacy.

I used Text Cloner Pro for eight years and got along fairly well with it, until I attempted to upgrade to version 10 in 2011. To make a long story short, my computer crashed, necessitating the purchase of a new one. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem. It was months before I learned the flatbed scanner I was using was incompatible with the newer version of Text Cloner Pro. This was also the case with other scanners I tried in my futile attempts to resolve the issues the program posed. The company's customer service is poor, assuming you can get it at all.

Spend a couple hundred dollars more and get Serotek's DocuScan Plus. No more worries about whether your software is up-to-date either. I made the switch last year and have no regrets.

Sincerely,

John Wesley Smith

Dear AccessWorld readers,

Last month, AccessWorld celebrated Disability Employment Awareness Month by focusing on employment and providing information about employment resources, strategies, and insider perspectives. Good job search strategies and resources are important all year long, so I encourage you to look back at last month's issue if you may have missed it and forward information to anyone you know who may be looking for employment or for better employment opportunities.

I want to offer a special thanks to CareerConnect Program Manager, Joe Strechay, for sharing his insight and perspectives in last month's Editor's Page.

As you know, there is now a chill in the air, and the days of fall are well upon us. It's time to start thinking about the holiday gift-giving season. I know, I know…I can't believe it, either. Summer completely passed me by. Ready or not, the shopping season is just around the corner, and the AccessWorld team wants you to be ready with gift ideas for those in your life of all ages who experience vision loss.

In this issue, Janet Ingber provides great gift ideas ranging from low-tech items to high-tech productivity tools. Some of her ideas are "high-dollar" whereas others are "nearly priceless." Janet, once again, takes us on a virtual tour of popular online shopping sites and provides advice, tips, and tricks to get the most from your online holiday shopping experience.

The AccessWorld team hopes this issue will give you ideas and inspiration for finding just the right holiday gifts for your family and friends with vision loss.

The AccessWorld team wishes you and yours health, happiness, and prosperity as we enter the holiday season.

Sincerely,
Lee Huffman
AccessWorld Editor-in-Chief
American Foundation for the Blind

VisionAware Introduces Getting Started Kit for Those Newly Diagnosed with Vision Loss

With over 21.2 million Americans reporting trouble seeing, VisionAware has created a Getting Started kit for adults experiencing vision loss for the first time. VisionAware.org is a free online resource for the millions of people who have difficulty seeing, offering dynamic social networking and customized guidance with rich content and practical tips on living with vision loss. The Getting Started kit is intended to provide hope and help to handle the challenges of vision loss, and to connect users with the resources they need. Many people are unaware of specialized services and products available to them. The kit is composed of 10 "tip sheets," with each sheet addressing practical solutions to everyday tasks such as reading, cooking, using computers and other technology, helping friends and family understand what they can do, and more.

"These tip sheets represent just a small sample of the wealth of information visitors can find on VisionAware, including the latest news on vision loss and specific eye conditions, a community of peers and professionals, in-depth articles, and coping tips," said Priscilla Rogers, VisionAware Program Manager. "We hope anyone experiencing vision loss, as well as their loved ones, will use the tip sheets and then explore VisionAware.org."

The Getting Started kit's tip sheets contain the following helpful information:

• Steps to Take to Get Help, including who to see about vision loss and your roadmap to VisionAware
• Questions to Ask Your Doctor about your eye condition
• Bathroom Safety Tips
• Kitchen Safety Tips
• Tips for Making Print More Readable
• Your Home Office (how to manage correspondence, finances, and other personal business)
• Technology Tips, including an overview of access technology that can be helpful in everyday life
• Keeping Fit
• Having Fun, including options for continuing to enjoy leisure time activities or starting new ones
• Do's and Don'ts When Meeting a Person with Vision Loss (for friends and family members)
• A diagnosis of vision loss can be frightening, but armed with the right information, individuals who are losing their sight can learn how to best cope with vision loss. Visit VisionAware.org.

HumanWare Sees Its Global Development Expand Through a Partnership with Essilor

HumanWare recently announced a major strategic partnership with Essilor, a leading ophthalmic optics company, which became the majority shareholder of the company specializing in access technologies for people who are blind or have low vision.

This new alliance offers greater global visibility for HumanWare products while promoting access for a larger number of people with visual impairments. The alliance will also accelerate investment in research and development to offer new and innovative high quality products for both blindness and low vision.

"We are very pleased to be partnering with Essilor, whose knowledge in optics and access to optician distribution networks will accelerate innovation to help people with visual impairments. Together, we will contribute to developing the notoriously under-penetrated global market," says Gilles Pepin, CEO of HumanWare.

The new partnership has already enjoyed its first success with the awarding of the prestigious Silmo d'Or to HumanWare for its new 2-in-1 Prodigi electronic magnifier, which features an installation wizard developed with the collaboration of Essilor. Prodigi is a digital personal vision assistant for people living with visual impairment.

Commenting on the partnership, Hubert Sagnières, Essilor Chairman and CEO, explains, "Helping visually impaired or blind people regain greater independence is a natural extension of the group's mission to help more than 4.2 billion people see better to live better. This partnership with HumanWare allows Essilor to take a fundamental step in the development of a range of effective and accessible vision tools for the greatest number of people."

About Essilor

The world's leading ophthalmic optics company, Essilor designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of lenses to improve and protect eyesight. Its corporate mission is to enable everyone around the world to access lenses that meet his or her unique vision requirements. To support this mission, the Company allocates more than €150 million to research and innovation every year, in a commitment to continuously bring new, more effective products to market. Essilor's flagship brands are Varilux, Crizal, Definity, Xperio, Optifog™ and Foster Grant. It also develops and markets equipment, instruments and services for eyecare professionals. Essilor reported consolidated revenue of approximately €5 billion in 2012 and employs around 50,700 people. It operates in some 100 countries with 22 plants, more than 400 prescription laboratories and edging facilities, as well as several research and development centers around the world. For more information, please visit the Essilor website. The Essilor share trades on the NYSE Euronext Paris market and is included in the Euro Stoxx50 and CAC 40 indices. Codes and symbols: ISIN: FR0000121667; Reuters: ESSI. PA; Bloomberg: EI: FP.

The 3rd Annual M-Enabling Summit to be Held June 9–10, 2014, in Washington, DC

The only global conference and showcase exclusively dedicated to accessible and assistive mobile solutions for seniors and users of all abilities, the fastest growing user group in the mobile market place.

The Summit provides an opportunity to network with over 600 high-level government and industry leaders in an environment dedicated to cutting edge technology, solutions, and the sharing of innovative ideas.

Held in cooperation with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the 2014 Summit is a must attend event for anyone participating in this fast expanding market

In the spotlight at the 2014 Summit:

• Mobile and social media leap forward in accessibility
• Mobile at the center of smarthomes development
• The next generation of wearable gear
• Opportunities for users of all abilities with BYOD (bring your own device)
• Adaptive user interfaces
• Market opportunities for new services for seniors and persons with disabilities
• How leading corporations promote consumer apps for users of all abilities

Last month was Disability Employment Awareness Month, and for those of you who are still in "employment mode," this article recaps some of the blogs related to employment preparation from the newly launched CareerConnect Blog and the AFB Blog. If you haven't read my pieces before, my blog posts tend to provide useful information with a dash of humor. Humor tends to be my go-to delivery style, and I hope you enjoy this travel through my favorite employment-related blog posts.

From the CareerConnect Blog

The CareerConnect Blog, launched on July 1, 2013, has eighteen or so posts from me and my CareerConnect colleague, Detra Bannister.

Thoughts from the Road: Interactions with the General Public and Always Being "On"

I wrote Thoughts from the Road while I was traveling for work. The post was inspired by a few specific unpleasant incidents. My wife, Jennifer, had remarked to me that the negative experiences we encounter while traveling and interacting with airline, transportation, and hotel staff due to my vision loss, get to her. Since I am married and we travel for vacation and family events, we regularly encounter situations where we are treated differently. Every person with a disability encounters situations when you realize you are being treated differently. I do my best to keep a level head, attempt to educate, and hope to move past the situation. I don't often outwardly express the frustration that comes during some of these situations, but every once in a while, you encounter one that really sticks in your side. I think at times, it bothers my wife more than me, because I have been dealing with it for a lot longer, and my work has trained me to be able to talk about and handle such situations. This blog post addresses some of those situations that I have come across.

Dealing with the Public is Typically a Great Experience

Dealing with the Public is Typically a Great Experience was a fun post to write. After writing Thoughts from the Road, I thought it was my duty as a professional to make sure that all of the readers understood that positive situations are more common than negative. I also wrote this blog while traveling, providing some of the cool and really positive stories from my work travels over the years. During these travels, I have met so many interesting and impressive people, and I have stayed in contact with many. You never know where your next adventure will come from if you live your life with a positive attitude.

Self-Awareness: Knowledge of Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses Gives You an Employment Edge

The Self-Awareness post is based on content I speak about around the United States. Many people go through life with limited self-awareness, and job seekers who are self-aware have an advantage. It is even more important for job seekers who are blind or visually impaired to be more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Many job interviews include questions about a job seeker's strengths and weaknesses. The importance also relates to maintaining employment and succeeding on the job. If a person is unaware of a weakness and not attempting to improve, this weakness could lead to poor work performance. This blog post also provides links to appropriate resources.

Dress and Impress: Not Just a CareerConnect Video, it is a Must for Interviews

I wrote the post Dress and Impress because of a discussion I had with a group of teenagers regarding interviewing. I make presentations, and I always speak about the importance of personal appearance and dressing to impress, and there are always a few who don't grasp it. I have met adults as well who don't believe it is necessary to dress professionally for an interview or work. The post also references a story from my twin brother, Dan, about students from notable colleges interviewing for internships with him. Dan said, "It is a bit disturbing that people don't grasp the idea that you want to set the best impression possible during an interview."

I think back to my time interviewing for internships towards the end of my undergraduate studies at East Carolina University. For my interviews, I dressed extremely well, and I even cut and donated my long hair prior to the interviews. I was glad I had put in the effort because my appearance was brought up during one of my interviews. I was wearing a small beaded necklace under my suit, which sat low on my neck. When I bent over to reach for something at the end of the interview, the interviewer saw the necklace and he remarked, "I just saw your necklace, if I had seen that in the beginning of the interview, I would have thrown your resume in the garbage." He went on to explain that the organization was conservative and had a military culture. He said, "It isn't like this is the sixties and you could show up with long hair; that wouldn't fly here." He offered me the position, and I left and cut off the necklace right outside and never mentioned that I cut my hair two days prior.

Do Your Research on Possible Employers: Putting in the Work Pays Off!

The blog post Do Your Research on Possible Employers is pretty self-explanatory; the piece expresses the benefits of doing prior research on employers. A job search is a full-time job of its own, and part of that job is researching possible employers. A job seeker should research a potential employer's history and current viability, trends specific to the field or business, and the range and type of work that the employer does. Often an applicant can break away from the pack by demonstrating their knowledge of the business. Employers like to see that applicants have done their homework prior to an interview, and research can also be come in handy when composing a cover letter.

The Road to Employment can be a Rough Trail, but it is the Best Path

The Road to Employment can be a Rough Trail was based on a message I sent to a job seeker who contacted me about his struggles with employment. This job seeker with vision loss had reached out to me in frustration with his lack of success. I tried my best to address the issues he raised and to provide ideas for new strategies. There are many reasons why people struggle with employment and it's important to try new and innovative strategies when things aren't working out. If we continue to try the same thing, and it doesn't bring success over a period of time, it's time to reevaluate the situation. Detra Bannister and I try to provide job seekers with solid advice. We are not local rehabilitation counselors, nor do we know every job seeker's full story, but we try our best to help.

From the AFB Blog

I have been writing blog posts for the AFB Blog for about four years now. Originally, I think Elizabeth Neal, AFB Web Strategy Guru, got me interested in it. Maybe Liz's title isn't Guru, but it should be something quite similar. I started writing more posts when my AFB colleague, John Mackin, joined our organization. John is the AFB Social Media Manager. He has encouraged my blog post writing, and allowed me to voice my opinion on many subjects. Okay, many of the subjects I have addressed on the AFB Blog are not exactly employment-related, but there are a few. What can I say; I am quite opinionated! Anyway, below you will find some of my favorite employment-related blog posts from the AFB Blog.

Get Your Children Thinking about Employment

Get Your Children Thinking about Employment is a post that I wrote about the importance of Bring Your Son or Daughter to Work Day. I recount my memories regarding my mother, who is blind, and my brothers, and my experiences regarding her work. I mention her going back to school and her career. I observed her navigating employment as a person with vision loss, and this definitely had an impact on my life.

In a related post on the FamilyConnect blog, I wrote Bring Your Son or Daughter to Work Day: Suit Up, Head Out, and Get Your Work On! The post recaps some of my earliest memories involving my father bringing my brothers and me to his office in New York City. All these early memories regarding employment definitely impacted my view of the importance of work. My parents were very dedicated to us and to their work. They also demonstrated a lot of passion and fortitude to provide the best for our family. In these blogs, I mention some of the lessons I learned in their work places. Read about my experiences, and help your children or future children gain some experiences that will last a lifetime.

Wall Street Journal Story Sheds Light on Common Issue for Job Seekers with Vision Loss

In Wall Street Journal Story Sheds Light on Common Issue for Job Seekers with Vision Loss, I addressed the Wall Street Journal's take on a study by the National Industries for the Blind (NIB) regarding the gate keepers to employment and their feelings on workers who are blind or visually impaired. NIB's Kevin Lynch provided feedback on the results of the study. There is still a lot of education that needs to be done with employers and the general public. We have made strides, but there is still a ways to go.

An Examination of the Portrayal of Persons with Disabilities in the Popular Media

Last October, I wrote the blog post, An Examination of the Portrayal of Persons with Disabilities in the Popular Media, in reference to my own article in AccessWorld. The article addresses a number of the portrayals of persons with disabilities in television from the 1980s through last year. I would love to take another shot at this to address current portrayals, since a lot more have popped up since.

Be Kind, Rewind: How Your First Job Affects Your Entire Career

I wrote the blog post, Be Kind, Rewind, because our first job is so important when shaping our work ethic and attitude about work. Teens often believe their first job will be their dream job, and that isn't the case. My first job was at a video store in New Jersey, and in this post, I present some of the lessons I learned from that first job in Parsippany, NJ at Korner Video Photo.

I Want to be My Own Boss: Is Self-Employment Right for Me?

In I Want to be My Own Boss: Is Self-Employment Right for Me? I wrote about self-employment after I attended a conference on the subject. I felt like I had not addressed the subject much in writing and I wanted to share some information. The post provides advice, input, and resources specific to getting prepared for self-employment.

Working from Home: Everybody Likes the Idea of It

Working From Home: Everybody Likes the Idea of It influenced the post above. In the past, I received a few calls a week asking, "Can you find me a job where I can work from home and make good money?" Finding people work is not a part of my job. I provide connection to resources, curriculum, tools, training, advice, mentoring, and strategies related to employment and navigating the employment process. On occasion, employers come to me with job opportunities, and I do help connect them to agencies and organizations. The post addresses the many misconceptions surrounding working from home.

Read More, and Thank You!

If you want to read more of my posts, there are many more on a variety of topics on the AFB Blog.). You can find a lot of my blog posts through the link to "read more posts by Joe Strechay." I suggest that you start tracking the AFB Blog.) and the CareerConnect Blog. I hope to connect with you in the future through our comments on our blogs.

Comment on this article.

Mike May was a blind Californian who, in 2000, became a sighted Californian. A rare and risky stem cell transplant surgery restored sight to a man who had been totally blind for 43 years. The operation made for exceedingly interesting media coverage and a biography/memoir highlighting his accomplishments with and without sight. For blind and low-vision users of technology, his name is forever linked with GPS technology, accessible maps, and wayfinding.

Background

Mike May became totally blind in a backyard accident when he was three years old. If acquiring a disability enhances the qualities already intrinsic in any given personality, then the three-year-old Mike May must have been exceedingly smart, charismatic, and an inquisitive seeker of adventure. Those are the traits, in other words, that define the adult he became.

After some work with the CIA and gaining recognition as a world class blind downhill skier, May positioned himself in the heart of technological developments benefiting people who are visually impaired. His passion for exploration and mapping meant that the power unleashed by global positioning software and the unexpected bonus it would be for blind people was a natural connection for Mike May to make.

In the mid-1990s, Mike May garnered media attention within the disability community and mainstream media with a GPS configuration using a standard laptop and screen reading software. Developed by May and Charles LaPierre, the product was called Strider. It was eventually abandoned in the pursuit of more sophisticated applications. Atlas Speaks and GPS-Talk enjoyed some popularity when released in 1995 and 2000, but their use declined as the computing world made the transition from DOS to Windows-based platforms. When HumanWare released a PDA notetaker called the BrailleNote, Mike May's company, Sendero Group LLC, was about to take a giant leap forward. In 2002, Sendero Group LLC and HumanWare launched the first GPS software designed to run on portable devices with braille and speech output. With Sendero GPS running on a BrailleNote or VoiceNote unit, someone who is visually impaired or blind could map out turn-by-turn routes to destinations, check current location whether on foot or in a vehicle, "look around" to see where the nearest points of interest might be, and perform countless other tasks related to wayfinding that simply had not previously been possible. The effect in 2002 was something akin to magic.

Milestones

In the last decade, Sendero has gained widespread popularity among people who are blind and low vision, with versions of its GPS software running on a variety of portable devices employing braille and/or speech output. We have all seen technology changing rapidly in the last decade, and as a user of access technology himself, Mike May and Sendero Group have kept pace with those changes.

While Sendero GPS software continues to be effective on such note taking devices as the HumanWare BrailleNote family of products and HIMS Inc. Braille Sense family of products, not every blind person uses one of these devices. In 2010, Sendero released the Lookaround app for iPhone users. While not a turn-by-turn application, Lookaround lives up to its name. Shake your phone and Lookaround will tell you the address of your current location, nearby points of interest, and nearest intersection. Using it in a taxi, for example, Lookaround can at least inform the blind passenger of the general route being taken.

Also in 2010, a product called PC Maps became available. Sitting at your desktop or laptop keyboard, you can plan virtual routes or just "walk around" a familiar or unfamiliar neighborhood. Earlier this year, an add-on to PC Maps called Sendero PC GPS enhanced that virtual product by adding GPS capabilities. You can, in other words, map a route to your destination and then, if your laptop is equipped with GPS receiving capabilities, take your netbook or laptop along for the walk or ride to give you turn-by-turn instructions.

For this article, I used Sendero PC Maps to look around my own neighborhood and several others, both familiar and unfamiliar. I created routes, some designed for walking and others for driving, for trips spanning from .5to 1,000 miles. By using simple keystrokes (the letter "I" for going forward, "J" for turning left, and "L" for turning right) you can explore the streets outside your door or a thousand miles away. The PC Maps programs include not only a vast database of commercial points of interest (restaurants, hotels, banks, and dentist offices, for instance), but also enable users to add their own points of interest. In other words, if there is a really fascinating statue of Tecumseh in front of a particular office building, you can add that statue as a user point of interest, share it, and thus enable other blind travelers to find and appreciate it, too.

The Sendero PC Maps package includes a "copy to clipboard" feature that makes a simple business of extracting a route or list of points of interests or other discovered data from the program and pasting it into a Word document or e-mail message. In this way, for instance, you can save and print out a route to give to a friend or e-mail yourself a list of Vietnamese restaurants in a city you are planning to visit. You can create a Favorites list of locations and examine your own exploration history.

Mystic Access

Many of the Sendero products have been made easier to learn and use with the help of tutorials created by Chris Grabowski of Mystic Access. A former technical support specialist for Sendero Group, Grabowski formed his own company in April 2013. Besides training and information, his company, Mystic Access, provides excellent and affordable tutorials on many of the Sendero products.

For this article, I used a Mystic Access tutorial to guide me through the learning process. It was clear, concise, broken into small and manageable MP3 files, and rendered the learning curve a pleasant and relatively painless experience.

What's Next

When I interviewed Mike May in late spring, his hope was that the latest Sendero solution, called the Seeing Eye app, would be ready for release in July at the National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind conventions. It was indeed ready. Designed to be a complete turn-by-turn GPS application for iOS devices, completely compatible with VoiceOver, the Seeing Eye app, named so because it was developed in partnership with the Morristown, NJ, guide dog training facility, has already gained wide popularity. It will be reviewed in a separate AccessWorld article.

Although Mike May enjoys the convenience of partial sight, he considers it a kind of pleasure-laden add-on. He still uses a braille notetaker, still uses a Seeing Eye dog, and is still exploring the world, both metaphorically and literally, for new possibilities. At 59, he says his current aspiration is to spend half his time on Sendero and the other half on projects as yet unnamed. It is highly likely that those new projects will be ones the rest of us will want to follow as well.

For More Information

For GPS product information and pricing, visit Sendero or call 888-757-6810.

For information on tutorials and training, visit Mystic Access. The book chronicling some of Mike May's adventures while both blind and sighted, Crashing Through, by Robert Kurson, is available in hardcover and paperback from Amazon. Accessible versions are available in braille and talking book format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, as well as from Bookshare, and Audible.

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In a time when college students can receive most of their textbooks in electronic formats, mentors are available to students who are blind or who have low vision, and college students enter fields of study across nearly all disciplines, it is difficult to imagine that not long ago, none of these accommodations were possible. Dr. Abraham Nemeth, whose name is as familiar as that of Louis Braille to any braille-reading student of science or mathematics, had no such advantages and yet he excelled as a professor of mathematics, a Hebrew scholar, a musician, and a charismatic teller of jokes and tales.

On October 2, just two weeks shy of his 95th birthday, Dr. Abraham Nemeth, inventor of the braille mathematics code that has carried his name since its adoption in 1951, died peacefully in his Southfield, Michigan apartment.

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York's Lower East Side in 1918, Nemeth grew up at a time when blind children were taught to knit, weave baskets, and cane chairs. At the time it was thought that manual labor was the only way blind people could escape a life of begging on the streets.

Nemeth's immigrant parents didn't know or care about those expectations, raising their son (and his blind sister) to be independent and motivated.

He rode his tricycle up and down Stanton Street, went to the grocery for his mother at the age of six, and learned from his father to pay attention to the sun and the direction of cars to determine whether he was walking east or west on a given street. He attended public schools, where he learned to read and write braille (and to speak English along with all the other children whose families spoke Yiddish at home).

In adolescence, he developed a passion for mathematics. Experts told him that mathematics was an unwise pursuit for a blind man, however, so he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at Brooklyn College in 1940. When there were no jobs, the same experts encouraged him to get a master's degree in psychology as well, which he earned from Columbia University in 1942.

Still, there were no jobs, and Nemeth finally found employment at the American Foundation for the Blind in 1943. There, the brilliant young man (who played piano in clubs around Brooklyn and took mathematics classes on every free evening for fun) worked at stitching pillowcases, loading talking book records onto trucks, and counting phonograph needles into envelopes.

He also made friends with such luminaries as Alexander Scourby and was invited to join a research committee, comprised of bright blind New Yorkers who solved simple technical issues for homemakers and workers in other fields. Through that committee, he met Clifford Witcher, another exceptional blind man of the era, who worked for AFB and held a PhD in Physics. Familiar with Abe's passion for mathematics, Witcher came to Abe one day, desperate for a table of integrals.

"I have one," Abe told him, "but it's written in my own private code. You wouldn't be able to read it."

Witcher convinced Abe to teach him the private code, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Cliff Witcher happened to be a member of the Joint Uniform Braille Committee (the 1950s equivalent of the Braille Authority of North America.) He invited Abe to present his code for braille mathematics notation to that committee. Abe gave his report one morning in 1951 and in the afternoon his code, called then and forever thereafter the Nemeth code, was unanimously adopted.

He volunteered to tutor returning World War II veterans struggling with calculus at Brooklyn College and that generosity led to a breakthrough in pursuing his dream. As he circled the room, writing on chalkboards, patiently explaining each step of each equation, he was unaware that a professor was observing him. When a teacher in the math department became ill, Abe received a telegram one Friday evening that changed his life: he was asked to serve as a replacement.

Eventually, his wife, Florence, asked him: "Wouldn't you rather be an unemployed mathematician than an unemployed psychologist?" With that question, Abe quit his day job at AFB, Florence went to work, and Abe enrolled in a doctoral program in mathematics at Columbia University.

Four years and one hundred employment letters later, he was offered a job teaching in the mathematics department at the University of Detroit.

There, he taught every graduate and undergraduate course in mathematics and founded the computer science department in the 1960s. He was invited to speak and teach in England and Russia and around the United States.

In 1985, he retired from teaching, but his retirement was by no means a time of relaxation. He became thoroughly involved in advocacy, chairing the Michigan Commission for the Blind and becoming active in the National Federation of the Blind. His Jewish faith was an integral part of his life (indeed, he and his father together proofread the first Hebrew Bible produced in braille), and in his retirement he took on the gigantic task of reorganizing Jewish prayers under the direction of JBI International (formerly Jewish Braille Institute) in New York. The intent of the project was to arrange prayers needed for any given service in such a way that a blind worshiper need take only one braille volume to synagogue rather than a wagon load of nineteen! Carefully arranging English alongside Hebrew for each prayer, checking and double checking with a fellow scholar as well as relatives, he was meticulous and a perfectionist in this as in every other task he accepted.

A gifted and self-taught musician, Abe Nemeth picked up extra cash playing in clubs when he was young, and continued giving weekly concerts in his retirement community until shortly before his death.

His apartment was filled with the numerous honors and awards he received for his work over the years, among them the Migel Award from AFB (of which he was particularly proud) and his bust of Louis Braille (presented to him by the American Printing House for the Blind).

Abe Nemeth was a consummate storyteller, having a joke, a tale, or a limerick for every imaginable occasion. He loved telling the true story that his obituary had been published twice! First, in 1984, when a Jewish magazine for the blind mistook a death notice that read "A. Nemeth" as referring to Abe, rather than his brother, Aaron. In 2000, the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, the professional and educational journal published by AFB, made a similar mistake upon the death of Abe's wife, Edna.

"The news of my demise has been greatly exaggerated," he quipped to me in recalling those two premature obituaries. It tickled him to say such things. And it tickles me to remember him saying such things.

Abraham Nemeth traveled throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan as a young man, using subways, buses, and his own two feet, memorizing routes and never hesitating to take any part-time teaching job or piano gig. He did it without a long white cane; he simply used what he had available to him: his intelligence and common sense and the work ethic and independent spirit instilled in him by his parents.

Blind physicists and engineers and math teachers and software designers everywhere thank Dr. Nemeth and say his name daily as they run fingers across lines of complexity written in Nemeth code. Certainly, as an inventor and mathematician he is remembered and mourned around the world. For those who were privileged to know him, he will also be missed as a warm, funny, and generous man who just happened to be blind and whose life is an example of what can be accomplished with the right blend of faith and intelligence in one truly treasured human being.

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How Far We've Come!

In October of 1999, I stood in the middle of a parking lot with my respected colleague Mike May, President of Sendero Group LLC, after a breakfast meeting during an annual technology conference. Mike had been bringing me up to speed on all things GPS, and had convinced me to check out some of the GPS development work he had been doing using a laptop PC as the primary vehicle to convey information about an end user's whereabouts. So on this brisk October morning, Mike saddled me up with a backpack that contained a whole bunch of wires and a laptop, which, by today's standards was huge. Sorry Mike, this feels too much like a trip to the gym for me!

In 2002 and 2003 I had the pleasure of working with Mike to bring his GPS know-how to the first ever Windows-based notetaker. Again, Mike dragged me along this journey kicking and screaming. My view of what GPS technology for the visually impaired should consist of did not involve a $5,500 notetaker tethered to it. Again, Mike was very patient and kept reminding me of what the future would hold for those of us who are mobile and are curious about our surroundings.

In 2007 and 2008, our paths crossed once again as Mike, with the assistance of Code Factory, developed the first Windows-mobile GPS system that ran on a mobile phone! I was now hooked and an avid user and proponent of Mobile Geo. My optimism was short-lived as the developer of the Windows Mobile operating system elected to upgrade its operating system in such a way that third party access technologies could no longer run on this operating system, virtually squashing this innovative, practical product offering.

In January 2013, I stood in Mike's suite at yet another annual technology conference more excited than a giddy schoolboy during the holiday season! Finally, news had broken about a GPS system designed for Apple products. Mike now had the robust, intuitive mobile platform with built-in accessibility to take his GPS know-how to the place where so many of us want it to be!

Seeing Eye GPS, Pinnacle of Decades of Innovation

In the spring of 2013, Sendero's Seeing Eye GPS was released in Apple's iTunes Store. This app was the culmination of a stellar development effort, beta testing process, the contributions of Seeing Eye, the iOS operating system, and a robust hardware portfolio of products capable of handling the taxing demands that an intuitive GPS program designed for those who are visually impaired places on it. Seeing Eye GPS depends on the Voiceover screen reader for speech output, and does not have its own built-in speech synthesizer. One may freely download the app from within the iTunes App Store. The first time the app is launched, the user is given the opportunity to purchase a license for the functionality of the app for either one year for $69, or three years for $129. Before questioning the price tag associated with this app, it's worth noting that past current proprietary GPS solutions cost between $700 and $1,500, and even the Windows Mobile GPS solution referenced above cost $800. Mainstream GPS apps designed for a sighted market that is vastly larger than our adaptive technology market charge upwards to $40 to purchase their GPS apps that do not possess nearly the same degree of pedestrian focus that Seeing Eye GPS does.

The user may purchase the license of their choosing by selecting the desired license and signing in with their Apple user ID and password. The only slight criticism about making such a purchase is that there is not a trial period in place for the user to evaluate Seeing Eye GPS. This app can be installed and used on all of Apple's devices that are capable of running iOS 6. The user may create a password associated with their license to reinstall and use this app on another device of their choosing. For this product review, I installed this app on my new iPhone 5S running iOS 7.02. I primarily tested the app using speech output as well as the dictation feature within my iPhone. I did use a portable wireless braille display with this app as well.

Issues Worth Considering

Before we dive into the meat of this product review, there are a few points for new users to consider:

If you are a new user of Apple devices, get acclimated with all of the intricacies, methodologies, and strategies for using the powerful, yet oftentimes complex touchscreen technology. There are plenty of resources out there to get you up to speed, but don't try tackling this app without a firm foundation of iOS know-how under your belt.

This app will perform in accordance with the device you use. When I purchased the license for this app and began using it, it was on an older iPhone. When I migrated to my new 5S a few weeks ago, I observed a drastic improvement in battery life, and the speed and responsiveness of the app. This app can only perform as well as the resources within a given device that supports it.

If you don't have any functional vision, turn your screen curtain on within Voiceover and turn off your Bluetooth service if you can. This GPS technology is great, but it's not synonymous with incredibly long battery life for one's device. Guess what? The same holds true for sighted iOS GPS users who oftentimes have the luxury of charging their devices from within their vehicles.

Be aware that there are three modes of input for interacting with Seeing Eye GPS.

• Use the onscreen keyboard and select your preferred typing method via Voiceover's Typing setting. This is probably my least favorite because I personally do not use either of these touchscreen methods for extensive data entry.
• Secondly, use an external, wireless keyboard or one of many wireless, refreshable braille displays for either QWERTY or braille input/output. As much of a proponent as I am for braille access, I must confess that while I was out and about putting this app through its paces, I rarely used several braille displays that are at my disposal. Braille does give the user actual, tactile feedback as to various street and city spellings, and it is a feasible solution for those who are deaf-blind. But for my purposes, I prefer to travel as light and as hands-free as possible with any GPS solution that I've used, past and present.
• Lastly, the iOS dictation feature offers a fantastic, quick, and fairly accurate means for the user to announce addresses, street names, cities, and postal codes. I use this feature a great deal when quickly locating points of interest and addresses and then creating vehicle and pedestrian routes to my desired locations.

Which leads me to the final issue worth mentioning: Seeing Eye GPS will try to locate exactly what is entered into the respective fields. If the app has difficulties locating a specific point of interest or street name, be sure that all relevant data is spelled correctly, or that all words in a particular point of interest are present within the name entered. If you are not sure, simply enter the first word of the desired information and Seeing Eye GPS will try to find it. For instance, I tried to locate "Austin's Steakhouse" an establishment that I frequent near my home. When I couldn't find it, I entered "Austin" and immediately "Austin's Smokin Steakhouse" appeared as my first option to select.

Setting Up Seeing Eye GPS

As previously mentioned, setting up this app is pretty straightforward. I was able to quickly search for Seeing Eye GPS in the App Store, download it, launch it, purchase my subscription and establish a password for subsequent installations on other devices. Of course, when I purchased the new iPhone 5S, I couldn't locate my password. No problem. I selected the appropriate "forgot password" element within the App, and the great folks at Sendero Group e-mailed me a reset password within minutes. I was off and running with Seeing Eye on my new, much speedier iPhone!

Using Seeing Eye GPS

On launching this app, it immediately attempts to establish your location via the GPS satellites orbiting the earth. From within my office, to inside vehicles, walking down the street, and on public transit, I had no problems establishing a fix on these satellites relatively quickly. Seeing Eye GPS immediately lets the user know their current location by identifying the nearest street address, distance to nearest cross street, direction the user is facing and even the altitude above sea level.

The three most important functions of this app are present on the home screen: "routes," "POIs" (points of interest), and "location," with location being active by default. A single finger gesture to the right or left enables the user to review location information. Prior to location information being spoken, the app presents the user with a "look around wand" which is off by default. When enabled, the mobile device can be waved and points of interest within one's immediate vicinity are spoken. I found this feature to work only while remaining in one place, which I'm assuming is how this feature was intended to be used. There is also a "map" button, which presents a visual map primarily for low-vision or sighted peers. Lastly, a "settings" button which allows for the customization of "general" and "route" settings. By default, NavteQ map data is used although one may switch to OSM map data. The user may also extend his "subscription" an additional year or three years quite easily from the settings tab.

Points of Interest

We'll come back to "routes" functionality, but first let's cover this app's "POI" functionality. Seeing Eye GPS allows for searching for Points of Interest using the Navteq, Foursquare, OSM databases. You can select specific categories of points of interest, or you can simply enter in the name of an establishment within the edit field, and navigate/activate the search button. The desired establishment will be displayed and if more than one location exists, the closest location to one's current location will be given as the first option followed by all subsequent locations listed from nearest to furthest from the user. When selected, you may "call" the point of interest, create a pedestrian route, or create a vehicle route to the desired location. When selecting the "other" option, bicycle or multimodal routes can be created; I did not create either of these route types. I did use the "getting warmer" function, which worked extremely well.

Routes

I was able to create countless pedestrian and vehicle routes using Seeing Eye GPS. There's a handy "route to home" feature which allows for the establishment of one's "home location" to which routes can be created from anywhere back home! Again, I use the dictation feature for locating points of interest or entering specific street addresses and then creating vehicle and pedestrian routes.

Seeing Eye GPS is eerily spot-on when following a route. There's no delay in responsiveness, and if one inadvertently goes off route or listens to one's sighted spouse, Seeing Eye GPS firmly, yet kindly, recalculates the route and gets the user back on track.

Arriving at a given location is incredibly accurate, both walking up the driveway to my home as well as pulling into the driveway in a vehicle, Seeing Eye GPS lets me know that I've arrived when I am within 30 feet of my house. Such accuracy is displayed when arriving at a variety of locations either by foot or by vehicle.

The Bottom Line

Last weekend I put Seeing Eye GPS to the ultimate test and used it extensively for a business trip with a bit of leisure travel out to the West Coast. A sighted friend and colleague accompanied me and did a fair amount of driving. We put Seeing Eye GPS up against a mainstream iOS GPS product. Seeing Eye GPS provided the more direct route every time. Seeing Eye GPS did not send us in circles. Seeing Eye GPS was not easily confused or confounded by the chaotic on- and off-ramps of the Southern California freeways. By the end of the trip, we were only using Seeing Eye GPS as our mode for navigation. My friend even asked if this app could be purchased by sighted GPS users.

If you are a savvy iOS user with a lifestyle that includes a great deal of pedestrian or vehicular travel, Seeing Eye GPS epitomizes all of the features that Mike May promised to me so many years ago. It's a wonderful product offering and worth every penny, whichever subscription you choose to purchase. While I realize that no app is 100 percent perfect, I have not found any issue within Seeing Eye GPS that would discourage me from using or recommending it. It definitely lives up to, and surpasses, the marketing hype!

While I suppose there is still a market for proprietary GPS solutions that may be simpler to use but lack the functionality of Seeing Eye GPS, I truly believe that as more and more individuals begin to rely heavily on mainstream product platforms, these proprietary solutions will outlive their usefulness. Apple has put so much power at our fingertips, why not leverage off of decades of know-how from a leader like Sendero Group to harness the power of a platform such as iOS and share in reaping the benefits of all that these devices have to offer, much like our sighted peers, colleagues, friends, and family?

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Most video games are not accessible, and making them so would be extremely difficult because of the amount of information that is visually represented at any given moment. Audio games provide a level playing field for people with vision loss as they only produce sound as output. In this guide, I will explain what an audio game is and provide examples of several from both the Windows and iOS platforms. I will also describe resources that will allow you to find and play many more audio games than those I mention. In the past several years, the audio game market has exploded with new titles and they have become far more advanced than they have been in previous years. It is an excellent time to immerse yourself in the world of audio games.

What is an Audio Game?

An audio game is an electronic game where audio provides all of the feedback to the user. Text is spoken and the playing environment is based on sound alone. Even though this seems rather limiting, a great deal of information can be given to the player using nothing but sound. In many games, the position of sounds in the stereo field alerts the player to where objects are in the playing area. For example, in a Space Invaders style game, the spaceships would be represented by constant sounds that are distributed throughout the playing area. A louder sound would mean that a spaceship is closer to landing and the position of the ships in the stereo field would designate their position. Therefore, if a ship were to the left of you, it would be in the far left of your stereo field. As you move your player left, the sound would become closer and closer to the center of the stereo field as you come nearer to the ship on the left. Once you had centered the sound of the ship in your stereo field, you could eliminate it. Audio puzzle games and board games will usually have tiles representing the playing area that you can move through, listening to each tile's information as you select it. Other game information, such as points, is usually displayed by pressing a hotkey and listening to the spoken information. In most video games, such information would be constantly displayed on the screen. If you wanted to check how many spaceships had landed from our example above, you may press the "M" key to have this information read to you.

Audio Games for the Windows Operating System

A massive number of audio games are available for the Windows operating system. Many audio game developers are individuals who program games in their spare time, so many games that you will find will be free to play and those that are commercial are rather inexpensive.

Q9 Action Game

A great game for audio game beginners is the Q9 Action Game by Blastbay Studios. In this game, you play the role of a small alien who has crashed his spaceship on earth and is attempting to find it so that he may return home. This game is an excellent game for beginners as the game controls and playing environment are simple and easy to learn. The sounds are also described, which makes it much easier to begin playing if you have never played an audio game before. You use your Left Arrow and Right Arrow keys to move left and right and the Up Arrow to jump. Game information is obtained by pressing various keys such as H to hear your current health and L to listen to the number of remaining lives you have. You can press the spacebar to use your weapon and the numbers 1 through 4 to select which weapon you would like to use. Obstacles and enemies move towards you from right to left making constant sounds. Because you only have two directions in which to move, you will not become lost or confused. Even if you prefer games that have less violence, the Q9 Action Game is a great place to start learning the major aspects of an audio game. The Q9 Action Game has a demo allowing you to play two of the 12 game levels; the full version of the game costs $29.95.

Castaways

An example of a more complex game that can be played by both sighted and visually impaired players is Castaways by Jeremy Kaldobsky (also known as Aprone). In this game, you control a colony of survivors from a shipwreck who are attempting to rebuild their civilization and defend themselves from the angered native population. You must assign your colonists jobs, gather resources, and construct buildings while keeping yourself alive. The playing area in this game consists of a tiled board with each tile representing different terrain. For example, there are forested areas where you can hunt and areas of cleared ground for buildings. You use hotkeys to learn about your colony and assign jobs to your colonists; game events are spoken by either your screen reader or a speech synthesizer. Visual tiles and game menus allow sighted players game play via sight as well. The game also includes a multi-player component so you can trade your resources with other players over the Internet. The game is free of charge.

Audio Games for the iOS platform

Audio games are available for the iOS operating system as well.

Papa Sangre

An example of an audio game for the iOS platform is Papa Sangre by Somethin' Else. In this game, you navigate through the underworld to rescue your true love. The environment is presented entirely in audio; sounds pan from left to right based on where they are in relation to your character; objects behind you are somewhat muffled. To walk about, you tap on the left of the screen to raise and lower your left foot and tap the right side of the screen to raise and lower your right foot. Therefore, to move, you must alternate by tapping left then right as if you were walking or running. To turn your character, you swipe across the top of the screen. Swiping left turns your character left and swiping right turns your character right. This game can be found in the Apple App Store, and it retails for $4.99.

Stem Stumper

Stem Stumper by Ananse Productions is a puzzle game in which you must guide a vine through its growth, finding the best path to the finish. The game has visuals, but everything is also represented in audio. You must overcome obstacles and obtain all of the fertilizer items to complete each level. To interact with the game, you move your finger about the touch screen. The background music changes depending on which type of obstacle or item you are close to and the music will change to a fuller melody when you have placed your finger directly on the given obstacle or item. The item will also be announced by the Apple VoiceOver screen reader. As you clear obstacles, you will open a path for your vine. For example, in a given level there will be a wall with an acorn obstacle in the middle. The fertilizer will be located on the other side of the wall. First you would double tap on the acorn to remove it. Now there would be a path directly to the fertilizer so that you could double tap on the fertilizer to obtain it. Fertilizer provides you with "FlowerPower" which is calculated as a number of points that decrease as you take actions such as removing acorns. The game is rather unique as it relies on spatial reasoning: you have to find the exact position of each obstacle and visualize the best path for your vine to win the game. This game gives you an efficient method for interacting with and understanding your environment. You can quickly learn where each item is in relation to the others. Such a game on Windows would require you to move cell-by-cell using your cursor which would not provide nearly the amount of feedback as the touchscreen. Games such as Stem Stumper demonstrate the innovation in games that is possible using the touchscreen. Stem Stumper is available from the Apple App Store for free with the option of an in-app purchase of $1.99 to remove advertising.

The Bottom Line

This article offers a mere glimpse into the world of audio games. There are hundreds more audio games available in every genre imaginable. The number of titles available can be daunting, but a variety of resources can help you find audio games of interest to you. One of these resources is the Audio Games website. This website has resources concerning audio games, including a database of over 300 games with descriptions and links to where they can be found. It is possible to narrow the database by developer, genre, and license. The site also contains a forum where users discuss accessible games. This forum is often the first place where news of upcoming and newly released games will appear. The forum is well regulated and members are welcoming to individuals who are new to audio games. Because of the database and the forum, this is the best place to begin if you are new to the concept of audio games.

Another resource for accessible iOS games is the AppleVis website, where a section of the apps database is dedicated to accessible games. Games are described in detail with information on their accessibility. The AppleVis forum also has a section dedicated to iOS gaming where accessible iOS games can be discussed. A final resource for audio games in general is the Audyssey Gamer mailing list. Accessible games are discussed in detail on this list and the mailing list is often one of the first to receive news of upcoming projects and new releases. With these resources, you should be able to find the type of games that interest you on the platform of your choice.

Product Information

Product: Q9 Action Game
Price: $29.99

Manufacturer: Blastbay Studios

Product: Castaways
Price: Free
Manufacturer: Jeremy Kaldobsky (Aprone)

Product: Papa Sangre
Price: $4.99
Manufacturer: Somethin' Else

Product: Stem Stumper
Price: Free or $1.99 with in app purchase
Manufacturer: Ananse Productions LLC

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At the spring 2013 M-Enabling Summit, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse announced the upcoming availability of the LG Optimus F3, "the first phone to come pre-loaded with Google TalkBack, which allows users who are blind or visually impaired to receive assistive voice prompts." According to Hesse, "By pre-loading Google TalkBack onto the new device, we've enabled users to start getting prompts the moment they take the phone out of the box and turn it on."

This Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone is currently free at Sprint.com with a two-year contract or can be purchased for $179.99 with a no-contract plan from Virgin Mobile.

I obtained a test unit from Sprint and spent some time putting it through its paces. Here is what I found.

A Brief Tour of the LG Optimus F3: Inside and Out

The Optimus F3 is 4.57 inches long by 2.44 inches wide by 0.40 inches thick, and weighs four ounces. This touchscreen LTE phone felt very comfortable in my hand, and slipped easily into my pocket. The device is housed in a durable, textured plastic shell, available in either silver or purple. The design is extremely uncomplicated, with just three buttons: the Power button, located on the upper right edge, the volume rocker, located on the upper left edge, and the hardware Home button in the lower middle of the phone's 4-inch LCD display. The 3mm headphone jack is on the upper left edge.

The Optimus F3 comes with Android Jellybean version 4.1.2 installed, and it is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, an 800 by 480 resolution display, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of ROM. There is only 1.2 GB of program storage. You can expand this by up to 32GB with a micro SD card installed in the appropriate slot inside the battery compartment, but as is common with many Android phones, you can only use it for data; you cannot install apps on the phone's removable storage.

The Optimus F3 features N-standard Wi-Fi, Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities, and Bluetooth for headphones and external keyboards. It also sports two cameras, a 5-megapixel, LED flash-enabled rear facing camera and a VGA front facing camera.

The quality of the speaker compares favorably with my iPhone 5, but unfortunately for left handers such as myself, it is located on the phone's back surface, exactly where the fleshy ball of my thumb meets the phone as I hold it in my right hand while typing with my left. Typing an "A" or an " R" is fine, but typing a "P" or an "L" causes me to press the right edge of the phone into my palm, blocking the speaker and muffling the voice output by up to a half.

Call quality was good, as were 3G download speeds. I was unable to test LTE download speeds, because this service is not yet available from Sprint in my town. Battery life was high to excellent for me, but I did experience Wi-Fi interruptions in rooms in my house where other devices have no problem.

In short, the Optimus F3 is a solidly constructed, value-priced Android phone whose features make no pretense of being the "latest and greatest." For the sight-impaired community, however, build-quality and price are only a part of the value proposition. Sprint has touted the Optimus F3 as the first phone with Talkback not just pre-installed, but also pre-enabled. Here's how it works.

Talkback Activation

Many Android phones and tablets allow you to hold two fingers on the screen to activate Talkback when you first power up. The LG Optimus F3 does not require this step. After inserting the battery and pressing the Power button, Talkback came up with no user intervention. All users, sighted or not, receive the message voiced using the Google speech engine.

Before activation, you can turn on the Talkback voice navigation feature for the visually impaired. Double tap the center of your screen to activate this feature. To enable other features, tap "Accessibility" then "Settings." To continue activation, tap "Next."

While the phone continues to activate the Talkback tutorial comes up. You can cancel this tutorial or use it to practice several Talkback gestures, including touch navigation, swiping, double tapping, two-finger sliding up and down lists, and navigating by letter, word, or paragraph. At every step you are offered a "Finish" button to skip the rest of the tutorial.

While I ran the tutorial, I was interrupted by messages alerting me that the activation was complete and prompts for menus to set location services and Wi-Fi. These could easily distract and confuse first-time Talkback users; it would be better if they were held until after the tutorial is completed or exited. On the positive side, when I tried resetting the phone to factory settings after two reboots, Talkback auto-started with the same opening message, again allowing me to get up and talking with minimal user intervention.

The pre-enabled Talkback on the Optimus F3 is not the latest version. Consequently, many useful Talkback features are not available out of the box, including enhanced sound cues and automatic scrolling through long lists. One of the benefits of running Talkback on an Android phone versus Voiceover on an iOS device is that the screen reader can be updated independently of the operating system. Talkback can be upgraded to the latest version via the Google Play Store, and this was the very first app I downloaded.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Android operating system itself. The latest version of the OS features several enhancements that enable additional screen reading capabilities, but as is the case with most Android phones, there is no telling if and when the Optimus F3 OS will be upgradable.

Talkback and the Optimus F3 Interface

Like most other Android phone manufacturers, LG adds a number of add-in programs and other interface elements that don't always interact well with Talkback. For me, the problems started with the LG keyboard.

Logging into my Google account, I discovered the Speak Passwords option had not been enabled, so I was unable to log in to the Play Store with the preinstalled LG keyboard until I had returned to the Accessibility menu and toggled this option. This is a Talkback setting, so I can't count this as a strike against the LG keyboard, but the problem was enhanced by the fact that the preinstalled LG keyboard disabled (not turned off by default; disabled) all touch and sound feedback. Plus, there is no way to add the voice dictation key to the keyboard.

The keyboard is very small, but considering this is a four-inch screen, that is to be expected. However, the keyboard is positioned very low, practically touching the "Back" and "Menu" soft keys on either side of the Home button. These buttons are touch activated. You don't have to lift your finger; merely touching these buttons causes them to activate. Also, where you might normally find the Dictation button, the LG keyboard has a keyboard settings button. This button is also touch activated, and the upshot is that it is nearly impossible to touch explore and type a space character or to reach either the Shift or Symbols keys without activating one of these soft keys and finding yourself tossed out of the app into which you were trying to enter text.

I solved this problem simply enough by installing the Google Keyboard, but there were other accessibility issues that weren't so easy to work around.

LG phones feature a suite of QSlide apps that allow users to play music or videos, access a web browser, jot a memo, check a calendar appointment, or do a quick calculation from a window inside your current screen. You can resize QSlide windows and adjust their transparency so you can work in another app while they are open. You can even run more than one, making it possible to control your music and jot a note, all without leaving your browser. I can see where the QSlide suite would be very handy to have around, at least as a sighted user. As a user with vision loss, these apps quickly became a major headache.

The QSlide apps are only minimally accessible using Talkback. They were exceedingly easy to invoke accidentally, however, interrupting my workflow while I searched for the Close buttons, which were not always easy to locate and access. Often, I could not find the Close button at all, causing the QSlide apps to announce various options (everything but "Close") as I navigated my home screen using a left or right one-finger swipe. The QMemo app was particularly annoying. You can invoke this app by pressing the middle of the volume rocker. This is something I did frequently by accident when used my thumb to adjust the volume, again, interrupting my workflow with an unwanted pop-up app. You can't delete the QSlide apps. I am told you can hide them, but there are no instructions in the phone's documentation, and I was unable to determine how to do this during my time with the phone.

Of course LG is not alone in modifying the stock Android experience on their devices. Indeed, most Android phone manufacturers add custom interfaces that modify many aspects of the user experience with enhanced home screens and keyboards, extra programs and widgets, and the like. In a crowded marketplace these custom interfaces help phone makers distinguish their offerings and can increase the appeal of a given device. Unfortunately, almost universally they also interfere with accessibility to one degree or another.

Phone companies also customize their offerings with carrier-specific software. Sprint and Virgin Mobile encourage users to install ID Packs: bundles of applications, ringtones, wallpapers, settings, and other interface elements that can customize your phone to reflect your particular needs or special interests. My Optimus F3 came with the Essentials ID pack preinstalled, which included quick download links to access Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed, and Pandora. The Mobile ID app also featured links to Entertainment, Green, and Socially Connected ID Packs.

Invoking the "All ID Packs" button called up a search box, and a few keyword searches led me to five listings of particular interest to the visually-impaired: Accessibility ID Pack, Accessible Entertainment ID Pack, Accessible Navigation ID Pack, Accessible Daily Living ID Pack, and Reading Made Easier ID Pack. Unfortunately, none of these ID Packs were even mentioned in the phone's documentation or promotional literature. I only stumbled upon them as I neared the completion of this review, and when I tried to download one or the other, I received a "server unavailable" error message. I reported the problem, and a few days later I was delighted to discover that an Accessibility ID Pack had been added to the others listed on the default ID Pack menu. I still had to download the currency identifier, accessible music player, and other apps contained in this curated list, but I did not have to slog through the Play Store discovering and locating them one by one.

Veteran Android users will doubtless already have a number of must-download apps they will want to start using right away. Novice users may not be as familiar with the growing number of accessible apps that are available. The Accessibility ID Pack is a great way for the company to help new users get started, and I was pleased that they took such quick action to not only correct the problem, but also to bring the information to the forefront. I hope they will be just as quick to update the Accessibility ID Pack with newly minted accessible apps, and even better, perhaps they could offer a "Would you like to install this now?" option to the initial Talkback setup.

The Bottom Line

New Android phones are constantly being introduced and released, and by the time you read this, the Optimus F3 may already have been superseded by a newer model. Almost certainly the new Android Kit Kat OS will have been released, potentially enabling even greater accessibility. However it's doubtful the Optimus F3 will be upgradable to this newer OS, at least not immediately. The reason for this review, therefore, is not so much to evaluate this particular phone as it is to assess Sprint's announced commitment to accessibility, which the Optimus F3 represents.

During my conversations with senior User Experience Designer Justin Eddings, he expressed the hope that soon every Sprint phone will be as useable by the vision impaired as they are by sighted users. Enabling Talkback for all users is an excellent start, but as demonstrated above, there is still much work to be done.

I applaud Sprint's commitment to accessibility and trust it to be genuine. But without the device makers' support I think their efforts can only achieve so much. One of the first questions I asked Justin Eddings was why the company had chosen an LG phone over products from other manufacturers for their first Talkback pre-enabled device. "We wanted to partner with the company who most shared our passion for accessibility," he explained, and perhaps of all the current Android phone makers, LG does demonstrate the strongest commitment. But actions speak louder than words. When I tried installing the Netflix app on the Optimus F3 I was utterly unable to review the sign-in screen. I finally asked my sighted wife to log me in, but even then, the app was completely inaccessible. When I mentioned this to Eddings he offered to ask the engineers at LG why this might be happening. He repeated the request several times, but to my knowledge he still has not heard back.

In monitoring the Eyes-Free news list, a gathering place for Android users and developers, it's been my perception that the happiest Android users are those who use a Nexus phone, which features an unmodified upgradable version of the Android OS, and those who have "rooted" their devices, which is to say they have wiped their phone's ROM clean and installed an unmodified Android version. Nexus phones tend to be expensive, however, and they are generally not subsidized. And "rooting" a device should definitely be left to the technically savvy.

As for the rest of us: The LG Optimus F3 is an adequate if not exceptional Android phone with a price tag that may appeal to many novice Android users, especially those who do not have sighted help readily available. You will definitely want to replace the default keyboard, however, and first time Android users should also explore the accessibility ID Packs to jumpstart their Talkback experience.

Update: Another New accessible Phone from Sprint

As I was completing this review Sprint doubled down on its commitment to accessibility by introducing the KYOCERA Kona, a feature phone with built-in text-to-speech and voice commands. I spent a few days with a sample unit. Here's a quick look.

What You Get

The KYOCERA Kona is a clamshell phone with a 2-megapixel camera and an accessible keypad, which is to say, the keys on the dial pad have enough separation to distinguish them by touch. The phone includes a text-to-speech engine and a "Voice Guide," but the guide is not turned on by default. You will need one-time sighted assistance to enable this feature from the Settings/Other menu. The voice is medium quality, but when using ear buds (not included) I heard a constant clicking sound in one ear. The speech can be set to slow, medium, or fast. There are no pitch or tone controls.

The Voice Guide reads most menu controls, with the exception of the Help and About screens, which did not voice. It did a good job speaking names and addresses in my contact list, and reading text messages. Entering contact information and replying to text messages was also completely accessible. Tapping the 2 key three times typed a C character, although the Voice Guide did not voice the intermediate A and B characters, only the final character after a brief pause. Numbers and punctuation are accessed by pressing the Right Soft Key, which calls up three options: characters, numbers, and a grid of punctuation marks and other symbols. You move among these options by pressing the 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock positions on the navigation wheel that surrounds the OK button.

The KYOCERA Kona includes web browsing capabilities, though it runs entirely over the Sprint data network. There is no Wi-Fi functionality. Web pages voiced from the top down, and the reading was continuous. Pressing the 12 or 6 o'clock positions on the navigation wheel is supposed to stop the voice and advance one line up or down the web page, but often the only way I could stop the voicing was to press the "Back" key and exit the built-in browser. There are no navigation features to move from heading to heading, link to link, etc. Also, long URLs for unlabeled buttons and other web page elements were read character-by-character in their entirety, often slowing my web experience to a crawl. As mentioned, using the 6 and 12 o'clock positions on the navigation wheel ring moved up and down the page by lines, but I never was able to navigate word-by-word, or letter-by-letter, in either the browser or anywhere else on the phone.

The KYOCERA Kona also features rudimentary voice recognition. Pressing and holding the Talk key just above the keypad number 1 brings forth a prompt to "Say a command." I tried "Call Bill" and the phone dialed my home number, which I had previously added to my contact list. Other commands I successfully invoked included "Check battery," "Check time," and "Open settings." Open Accessibility did not work, though I was able to create a shortcut to the Accessibility menu for one-button access.

The Voice Recognition menu includes an "Adaption" option to train the phone to your voice. Unfortunately, this screen did not voice. The Voice commands only work on the main "Idle Screen." Pressing and holding the Talk key within a menu caused the voice commands either not to work or to redial the last number I called.

Recommendations

Many people wish to use a cell phone to make phone calls and to send and receive occasional text messages, and that's all they want. For them the KYOCERA Kona is an excellent accessible choice. Like the Optimus F3, the phone is free after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year service contract. The downside is you need to enroll in the Sprint unlimited My Way program for $60 per month, excluding taxes and fees, in order to access the data network you are not likely to use to full advantage. This pricing may be comparable to a land line phone, however, and for those considering cutting that cord, the KYOCERA Kona paired with the My Way plan may be an excellent, accessible choice.

Contacts

Sprint
Phone: 800-777-4681

Virgin Mobile
Phone: 888-322-1122

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For many of us, the thought of waiting around to receive a phone call via a traditional landline versus a smartphone is about as foreign a concept as handwriting a letter rather than sending a quick text message or e-mail. At a fast rate, many households are dropping their landlines altogether and relying exclusively on their mobile devices. So where does that leave the population of seniors with visual impairments who may be less tech savvy, and who are unable to effectively see or operate a mobile device? The accessibility features of smartphones running Android and iOS are equipped with some impressive accessibility features, but the learning curve needed to understand and integrate these features into daily life can be daunting. Very often, seniors have had fewer opportunities to become acquainted with smartphone technology than younger generations, but they are still in need of some of the more essential tasks available on the smartphone.

Caption: Screenshot of BIG Launcher User Interface

The BIG Launcher app could be the solution. Running on Android-based smartphones, BIG Launcher was, according to the app website, "designed for seniors and people with vision problems." Take a look at this YouTube video demonstration of BIG Launcher to learn more about the app.

BIG Launcher overrides the user interface of the Android smartphone with a Home screen that includes large, high contrast icons, and provides quick access to commonly used features such as the date, time, phone, e-mail, camera, photos, and a programmable emergency contact referred to as "SOS." Providing an accessible, easy-to-use solution to Android smartphone users with low vision is all the more imperative when considering the fact that the majority of smartphones sold today run Android. According to TechCrunch, an online technology publication, 79.3% of smartphone shipments being shipped worldwide run the Android operating system. Accessible smartphone solutions become much more feasible when the devices are more readily available and competitively priced across the board.

Two versions of BIG Launcher are listed in the Google Play Store. The paid version is simply called BIG Launcher, and sells for $10. The other app, listed as BIG Launcher Senior Phone DEMO, is, as its name implies, a free download for demonstration purposes. The demo version provides you with the general experience of the paid version, but has several limitations, including a maximum of five additional screen themes, a limit of five recent items displayed in the calling log, and a cap of 20 sent SMS messages. This review will focus on the paid version of BIG Launcher.

A Nexus 4 smartphone running Android 4.3.3 was used to put BIG Launcher to the test. This app is evaluated in the following categories:

• Installation
• User Interface
• Text Size
• Speech Output

Installation

According to its website, the BIG Launcher app is capable of running on Android 2.1 or higher. The installation setup wizard uses a large print, high-contrast interface. You select from three text sizes during setup: Default, Bigger, and Biggest. On the Nexus 4 with its 4.7-inch screen, these sizes translate into 14-, 22-, and 28-point font, respectively. The black font against the light grey and white background within the setup wizard provides a high level of contrast. A large green checkmark and red X are also used throughout the setup wizard to either accept or reject the changes being displayed.

You also have the option of selecting from several languages during setup, based on the languages available on your particular smartphone. The default setting is Automatic, which selects the language currently being used on your smartphone.

Three color themes are available: light, dark, and blue. You also have the option of disabling deletion of items such as call history, messages, and contacts. This is of significant importance, especially to seniors with little or no experience with smartphones. Reducing the anxiety associated with inadvertently deleting important contact information and items on the phone can help build more confidence to strike out and explore other options and tasks on the phone.

During the installation process, you have the option of including quick access to the Preferences within the Android OS. This is especially useful if the Android smartphone being used does not have a dedicated Menu button to access options.

User Interface

BIG Launcher replaces the Android default Home screen with its own customized screen, which consists of six large, high-contrast icons, plus the date and time prominently displayed at the top of the screen. BIG Launcher provides you with quick and easy access to some of the commonly used features available with smartphones. The six large icons on the Home screen include access to the phone, text messages, camera, the photo gallery, and an SOS icon, which provides immediate access to preselected phone and text messaging recipients deemed as emergency contacts. The Applications list icon allows access to other apps and settings of the phone.

BIG Launcher lets you customize the icons of its user interface and create links to other pages and menu items. Additional themes and icon packs are also available for download within the Preferences setting. It can be a delicate balance to provide a non-techie with enough options to customize a phone for maximum efficiency and ease of use without overwhelming him or her. The BIG Launcher app strikes a happy medium. The method to access many of these options under Preferences can be easily ignored by a non-techie, or can be utilized by a person who is willing and able to tinker around with these customizable settings in order to further maximize the user experience.

Text Size

The font size chosen within the initial setup wizard is applied to many, but not all, of the menu items and lists provided with BIG Launcher. For example, the phone number contacts are displayed in the font size chosen during setup. However, when adding a contact, the display defaults to the standard screen and font size of the Android operating system. The camera and photo gallery buttons simply link to the default camera and gallery apps of the phone, and do not provide any additional accessibility. BIG Launcher applies the increased font size selected through the setup wizard to the SMS messaging feature for sending and receiving messages. The default keyboard within the Android OS appears any time the focus of attention is within an edit box, with no additional options for keyboard enhancement or magnification other than what is available within the accessibility features of the Android operating system itself. The Android speech-to-text feature, accessed via the Dictate button immediately to the left of the spacebar, could serve as an effective alternative to the small keyboard. The challenge with relying on speech-to-text technology is the deliberate and uninterrupted style of speaking that it requires, and the skills required to edit unintended text. It can also impact your privacy when used in the presence of others, and could potentially be socially inappropriate in public settings.

The "SOS" button effectively provides large print access to the features and options within it. The Applications button also provides access to a large number of options, both within apps, and within the OS itself. For a novice user of smartphones who is only interested in quick and easy access to the commonly used features of the phone, some of the options listed within the Applications button may be a little daunting.

Speech Output

BIG Launcher itself does not provide its own speech output capability. However, it is possible to run the app simultaneously with Talkback, the screen reader included with Android. Combining the screen magnification of BIG Launcher with Talkback speech output capabilities may initially seem like an effective solution to people who could benefit from both. A common line of thinking is that with the combination of speech output and screen magnification, a person can effectively have text read to them if they are unable to see it. For some people, the screen magnification and speech output combination may indeed be an effective solution. However, the target audience of BIG Launcher is a demographic that may not have the desire and/or aptitude to utilize an Android device beyond its more basic functions. Using Talkback and BIG Launcher simultaneously requires multitasking skills that incorporate both auditory processing and visual processing, which can quickly become overwhelming for novice smartphone users. The ability to retain and carry out the gestures for tasks such as reading text and navigating within lists can also become more daunting and overwhelming to non-techies than they may have originally bargained for.

The Bottom Line

Considering the diminutive screen size of smartphones, access to mobile devices for seniors who are visually impaired is all the more imperative. BIG Launcher is certainly one possible solution. The app does an effective job of increasing size and contrast via its user interface when accessing the more commonly used functions of a smartphone, while at the same time maintaining a clean and easy-to-use design. The screens of most smartphones range from four to five-and-a-half inches. Depending on your functional vision, the text sizes available via this app may not be large enough for your needs. Download the free app to determine whether the font size and contrast that BIG Launcher offers is sufficient before buying the paid version. Testing the demo app will also tell you if the full app will indeed run your specific Android device.

Product Information

Product: BIG Launcher Version 2.3.1
Cost: $10.00

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Once again, it's that festive time of year when we consider what holiday gifts to buy.

This year's online shopping guide will cover Newegg, the Apple Online Store, Sharper Image, REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.), and GiftCardMall.

Before You Shop

Before you go to any online shopping website, make sure it's legitimate. Most major brick-and-mortar retailers have websites as well. Be careful if an online deal on an unknown website sounds too good to be true.

Website Accessibility

Unfortunately, not all retail websites are fully accessible. Some have minor issues while others are totally inaccessible. However, some online shopping sites have excellent accessibility, where web elements such as links and forms are clearly labeled.

If you find a website with accessibility issues or there's just too much clutter on the page, try using a different site or see if you can determine if the retailer has a sub-site specifically designed for optimal accessibility. For example, Amazon has an accessible site that is uncluttered, with clearly labeled elements.

Computer Skills

Before beginning your online shopping, it's important to know how to navigate using features such as links, forms, and headings. Each screen reader has its own set of navigation keys. In addition, you might need to use mouse hot keys and arrow keys.

All retail websites use forms to search for items, to add an item to your shopping cart, and to pay for your purchase. The search form will contain an edit box for entering a search term. There may be a button or a link to activate the search. Some search forms also contain a combo box to select a category for your search.

Search results may not always be clearly displayed. Some sites provide a combo box to sort results with the results located right below the combo box. Other websites may have results listed beneath a heading that says something like "Search Results." In some cases, the results of a search may be difficult to locate. You may need to arrow down until you locate them or use your screen reader's Find command to search for the words "search" or "results."

Since retail websites change frequently, the websites reviewed in this article may have been modified by the time of publication. For this article I used Windows 7 and Window-Eyes 8.3.

Newegg

The Newegg home page loads with 400 links. The first heading, which is also a link, says "Newegg.com - Computer Parts, Laptops, Electronics, HDTVs, Digital Cameras and More!" Although most links are clearly labeled, there are some broken links.

The home page has headings for various featured deals, new arrivals, items getting the most attention, most wished for items, and top-rated items.

The search form consists of an edit box, a combo box, and a link to activate the search. The combo box has categories such as "electronics," "cell phones," and "accessories." Using Window-Eyes 8.3 I could type my search term into the edit box, press the Tab key, and be on the link. However, to use the combo box, it was necessary to make a choice from the combo box, go back to the edit box and then tab to the search link.

I typed "headphones" into the edit box and chose "electronics" from the combo box. The new page, which could not be navigated by headings, loaded with many links. Since search results are usually listed below the site's search form, I started checking out links that were listed below the form. I found a link that said "All Headphones and Accessories." Directly above this link was text that said, "Headphones and Portable Speakers." Unfortunately, it was just text and not an actual heading.

Under the "All Headphones and Accessories" link were links for different types of headphones including earbuds, over-the-ear, Bluetooth, and noise-canceling. I activated the link for Bluetooth.

The next page showed the results. By using the Window-Eyes Find command, I searched for the word "results." Further down was text that said, "useful links." Under this text were links for sorting results by various categories including best-sellers, free shipping eligibility, and price ranges.

I activated the link for $10 to $25, and when the new page loaded, I again used the Find command to find the results. Arrowing down, I found a link for Wireless Bluetooth Headsets and activated it. The next page showed different brands, and I activated a link for an Arctic Cooling Bluetooth Stereo Headset.

The item's page had many images and a description. There was an edit box for quantity. One way to review the item is to use your screen reader's find form key to find that edit box and then arrow up to read the item's information. There was an "Add to Cart" link that I activated. There were also links to purchase an extended warranty for the headphones.

When the next page loaded, there were edit boxes for existing customers to use and boxes where a new user could create a user name and password. There was also an option to receive e-mail updates from Newegg; the box was unchecked by default. The rest of the registration form was relatively easy to complete.

Getting Help

Newegg has a Knowledge Base to answer questions. The site suggests that if you are having difficulty with your order that you either activate a link for live chat or empty your shopping cart and try again. The live phone number was buried several layers deep. It's: 800-390-1119, but they cannot take orders over the phone.

The Bottom Line

Although Newegg carries a wealth of products, navigating the website can be very frustrating. The site is cluttered and sometimes difficult to get around. This is definitely not a good website for beginners, and more experienced users might want to look on other, more accessible websites such as the accessible version of Amazon.

Sharper Image

This retailer is known for selling interesting and out-of-the-ordinary products. Categories include clothing, electronics and a variety of gadgets for both adults and children.

Although the Sharper Image homepage loads with more than 270 links, it's not cluttered and can easily be navigated with the up and down arrows. There are headings on the page, but they are not located within the item categories. At the very top of the page, there are three links that may sound like gibberish, but they are actually links for "New Arrivals," "Outdoor Products," and "Sale Items."

Further down the page are category links such as "Apparel," "Electronics," and "Gadgets." Some of these categories have sub-links as well. For example, some of the sub-links in the Apparel category include "Clothing," "Umbrellas," and "Watches." I activated the Gadgets link, and when the page loaded, I was presented with check boxes to choose my price range. I located the check boxes with my forms hot key. It was necessary to down arrow after each check box to determine what the box was for. When the next page loaded, additional check boxes were presented to sort by category.

It was easy to find my search results. My screen reader's table hot key brought me to the search results table, and I could scroll through the various items with my headings hot key. Each result clearly stated the item's name and price, and included a link labeled "See More."

The other way to find an item is to use Sharper Image's search form, which consists of an edit box and "search" button. I typed "headphones" in the edit box and activated the search button. The page formatting was the same as when I searched for Gadgets. This made page navigation easier than reading the information with arrow keys.

I decided on a pair of wireless ear buds and activated the corresponding link. I found the product information with the headings hot key. The information was clearly presented without clutter. There was an "Add to Cart" button. When the next page loaded I found my item with the headings hot key. There was a check box to include a gift bag. This button was unchecked by default.

Sharper Image has the user choose a shipping method early in the checkout process. The shipping table can be found with the table hot key, and the shipping method is chosen with radio buttons. There are buttons to checkout or continue shopping. There's also a button to save the item. The form controls in the checkout form are clearly labeled and easy to navigate

Getting Help

Customer Service can be reached at 877-714-7444 or by e-mail.

There is also extensive online help. Activate the "Contact Us" link to get help.

The Bottom Line

This website is a good example of how to create an accessible site that still has many links. Since screen reader tables, forms, and headings hot keys can be used, it's possible to move quickly through a lot of information. Live customer service is an added benefit. Sharper Image has both expensive and inexpensive merchandise; you might just find what you're looking for at a good price.

The Apple Online Store

This Apple website opens with 63 links and 25 headings. At the time of this writing, a significant amount of the site is devoted to the two new iPhones, iOS 7, and iTunes radio. Fortunately, the second link on the page is to the Apple store. Under this are links for Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, and Support. There is a search form that Window-Eyes reads as a combo box, but it was difficult to use. I found the various links on the pages easier to work with.

Activating the "Store" link brings up a page with links to shop for each of the iOS devices and Macs. Activating a specific product link on the store homepage loads a page about that product. For example, if the iPod link is activated, the next page will give information about the iPod.

The first heading and link on the iPod page was to "Compare Models." This brought up a comparison table. Window-Eyes read each column instead of reading across. Table information included product name, size, price, features and colors. If you find the table too bothersome to navigate, after the table are separate links for each type of iPod.

I activated the link for the iPod Shuffle. When the new page loaded there was a very detailed overview of the shuffle including its size, how to put music on it, how to control it, and what VoiceOver does on the shuffle. The description can easily be read with arrow or heading keys.

There was a link labeled "Tech Specs," which loaded a table that was easy to read. Information included size, file types that the shuffle can play, and weight. After the table, there were headings that contained information such as: system requirements for your computer, what comes in the box, and other accessories for purchase. All the information was clear and easy to navigate.

Under the Tech Specs link was a link that said, "Buy iPod Shuffle Now." This loaded a page to begin the purchase process. The first part of the process presented radio buttons to choose a color and select a "Continue" button. The next page had an edit box for free engraving. The following page presented options to buy various accessories and iTunes gift cards. The rest of the checkout process was straightforward.

Getting Help

The phone number for Apple is 800-692-7753.

Activating the "Contact Us" link brings up additional options including chat and links on various topics.

The Bottom Line

Apple has an accessible website. Web elements are clearly labeled and easy to navigate. Live help is a big plus.

REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.)

REI is known for selling outdoor gear and clothing. REI also sells general merchandise including jackets, gloves, and shoes, so it's worth checking to see what's available.

When the homepage loads, there are 148 links. Window-Eyes also indicated that there were three tabs. Two of the tabs mentioned specific outdoor activities, but the first tab is the one for All Merchandise. There is always a link to the "Deal of the Day" and a link to "See What's Available in the REI Outlet."

The website's search form consists of an edit box and a "Search" button. For this article I typed "North Face Fleece" into the edit box and activated the "Search" button.

With the headings hot key, I quickly found the search results. There were several ways to sort the search results, and it was easy to navigate with the headings hot key. The results were first sorted by gender and age; additional sort criteria included features and size.

I activated the link for "Women's jackets" and when the new page loaded, the easiest way to find the search result was to use the forms hot key to find the sort-by combo box and then arrow down. I could have chosen different sorting criteria by selecting that method from the combo box. Along with the search results, towards the bottom of the page was information on related products and additional ways to sort the search results such as by feature and fabric. I chose a jacket and pressed the Enter key. My result could be navigated with the headings and forms key. There was a description and a link to watch a video. The size and color are selected with a combo box and there was a button to add the item to my cart. When this button was pressed, Window-Eyes did not say anything else. With sighted assistance I learned that the item was added to my cart. There was a link to checkout. The easiest way to find it is to either use the screen reader links list or search for the word "check" with the find command.

The next page had edit boxes for e-mail address and password for people who have REI accounts. There are links to create an account or to register as a guest. I chose the "Guest" link.

The registration form was straightforward. I accidentally entered a wrong digit in the address field, and I noticed that the "Continue" button was disabled. I could not find any text to explain why the button was disabled. Again with sighted assistance I learned that REI couldn't verify the address. Even after I made the correction, I still got the error message.

Getting Help

Telephone help is available at 800-426-4840. There are also links for chat and e-mail assistance.

The Bottom Line

Initially this site worked well, but that changed once it was time to add an item to the cart. If you want to use REI, the best way to go is to review the items on the site and then call REI to ask questions and place your order.

Gift Card Mall.Com

Gift cards have become a popular way of giving gifts. On any gift card website, carefully check the shipping costs and the variety of gift cards available.

When the website loads, there are 52 links. Window-Eyes did not say "Gift Card Mall." However, when I arrowed down, I learned I was indeed on the correct site. The website can be navigated with headings, links, and form controls, but the interface was difficult.

There is a search form consisting of an edit box and "Search" button. Search results can be found with the headings hot key. Under the search form, near the middle of the page, are links for popular retailers including Starbucks, Bed Bath & Beyond, iTunes, Amazon, and Subway. There are also links to "shop by occasion" and a link labeled "Gift Card Index". This link brought up an extensive list of merchants in many categories including Restaurants, Clothing Stores, and Electronics Stores. Activating a link will bring you to a detail page for that particular merchant.

While working with this website I had very mixed results. For each merchant entry there was a description of the business that could be accessed with the headings hot key. Under the description was an option to choose a card design, since usually more than one was available. Since the designs were graphics, I had no way to know what they were.

Under the design choices there was sometimes an edit box to enter an amount and then a button that said "Required." I had no difficulty activating the link for a Starbucks gift card and then locating the description. I didn't do anything with the design, but I entered an amount in the edit box and activated the button. When the next page loaded, with the headings hot key I found the form to add a personal message. I wrote my message and searched for the "Submit" button. I found links to close, but that didn't work. I needed to type Control-Shift-A to get Window-Eyes out of forms mode first; then, tabbing once brought me to the "Submit" button. When the next page loaded, using the headings hot key, I found my cart with the Starbucks gift card in it. However, I had no idea what the card looked like.

My next attempt was with a Visa gift card. I had no difficulty adding the amount. When I activated the "Required" button and the next page loaded, I learned that I had chosen a baby ducky Visa gift card. I tried to select a different type by arrowing to a different graphic before filling in the amount. Unfortunately, I still wound up with the ducky.

My next merchant was Forever 21, a trendy clothing store. Although I could easily read the description, I couldn't find anywhere to enter a gift card amount. With sighted assistance I learned that the "Continue" button was actually a graphic. I called customer service, and the woman who helped me gave me a description of all the available Forever 21 gift cards. When I asked her if she could order the card for me she said they don't have that capability, and I had to put in the amount and order the card myself.

The checkout process is a long one and not all controls and instructions are clearly labeled.

Getting Help

Gift Card Mall can be reached at 877-426-2551. There is also online chat and e-mail.

Although the customer service representative was very nice and gave me a description of all their Forever 21 cards, I would still have had to order it online. That would have been impossible because there wasn't anyway to get items into my cart.

The Bottom Line

Unless you have enough vision to read the screen or you have sighted assistance, forget this website.

Almost all online retailers have a link to buy gift cards on their websites. Many of these retailers also have live help. Many physical stores carry assorted popular gift cards. Try those options as alternatives to this site.

Conclusion

It's unfortunate there are still online retailers who do not consider the needs of people with visual impairments. On the other hand, some merchants do have very good websites.

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