Source: Braille Monitor November 2009.
Tactile Access to the iPhone Is Here
by Tony Olivero
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From the Editor: For several months now we have been hearing rumors
that the Apple iPhone is actually accessible or soon will be. Tony Olivero
is an access technology specialist in the Jernigan Institute International
Braille and Technology Center. Here is his report of learning to use an
iPhone:
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Apple computer is generally regarded as a company on the cutting edge
of consumer computing technology. Many of Apple's products have brought
advanced ideas into the mainstream and popularized sleek form and easy-to-
use interfaces. The iPhone was certainly no exception. This device was the
most powerful handheld computing, telephony, and information-access device
on the market at the time of its initial launch. Unfortunately, as happens
with many new pieces of consumer technology, for two years blind users were
denied access to this cutting-edge product.
This lack of access changed in June 2009 when Apple released the
iPhone 3GS, the latest version of the phone's hardware platform with the
ability to use third-generation mobile phone networks to provide high-speed
data connectivity to the device. The iPhone 3GS is also the first touch-
screen device to provide out-of-the-box, built-in screen access.
Incorporating a version of Voiceover (Apple's screen-access product
included in the Macintosh Operating System since version 10.4 Tiger) the
iPhone provides blind users access to built-in software applications,
including email, text messaging, the Safari Web browser, and the telephone
itself. While this article will primarily focus on the speech output
provided by VoiceOver, accessibility features called "Zooms" and "White on
Black" may be useful to low-vision users.
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The iPhone
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The iPhone 3GS comes in either a black or white case with a silver
Apple logo emblazoned on the back and offers either 16 or 32 gigabytes of
storage. The phone is a candy-bar-style device, which means it is flat and
does not fold like a flip phone. The back of the device is convex, allowing
the phone to rest comfortably in the user's hand. Users interact with the
iPhone almost entirely by using a touch screen. The phone has only four
buttons.
Most of the front surface is the screen, where information is
displayed to sighted users and they control the phone. At the top of the
front panel is the speaker hole, where sound is heard when the phone is
held to the ear. At the bottom is a round button, the home key. When
pressed, this key returns the user to the home screen, from which
applications are chosen.
Along the left edge is an up-and-down rocker switch used to control
volume for system sounds, speech output, and callers. Just above the volume
control is a two-way toggle switch used to select silent mode or sound.
When the toggle is nearer the front panel, the silent mode is disabled.
Options for silent mode can be customized by using the Sounds tab of the
Settings application.
The headphone jack is located at the top edge of the phone (it
accepts a standard 3.5mm plug for stereo headphones with or without a built-
in microphone). The Screen Lock/Power button is also located on the top
edge, at the right side. Pressing this button once turns the screen off,
placing the phone in locked mode, or wakes it up, presenting the user an
unlocked screen. Double-tapping the Unlock button provides access to the
phone. To power the phone off, hold down the Power button for ten seconds
and, when prompted, double-tap the Power button. The bottom edge of the
phone contains no controls, but it does house the speaker and dock
connector, where the charging/data transfer cable is inserted.
In addition to the phone, users receive a CD containing iTunes
software; a USB cable that connects to the dock connector; a pair of stereo
ear buds with a microphone, volume control, and Answer/Hang-up button built
into the right-hand ear bud cord; an AC adapter that accepts the USB cable
and allows charging from a standard outlet; and printed documentation.
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Setting up and Synchronizing the Phone
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In order to set up the iPhone for the first time, users must connect
it to a computer running iTunes. When iTunes detects the phone, it will
prompt the user to verify that he or she is the account holder and finalize
the configuration of the phone. Once the phone has been authorized, the
user can move onto configuring options and establishing synchronization
parameters.
When iTunes recognizes that an Apple device has been connected to the
computer, a devices node appears in the sources tree. Under this node will
be another node for each connected device. To configure the option for the
iPhone, use the F6 key to move to the Sources Tree, locate your iPhone with
the Up and Down Arrows, and press the F6 key (usually twice) until you move
into the iPhone pane.
The content pane for the iPhone contains tabs allowing you to
customize which, if any, content from iTunes will automatically be
synchronized when the iPhone is connected. You can instruct the computer to
copy certain playlists, podcasts, videos, and other media items; backup
installed applications; and synchronize mail, contacts, and calendar
appointments from your mail program, among other options. One of the most
important options on the General tab to blind users is the Universal Access
button. Activating this button allows the user to turn on one of the
iPhone's accessibility features, which include VoiceOver (providing speech
output), Zooms (providing magnification), and White on Black (providing
reverse contrast video).
iTunes is also supposed to detect whether screen-access software is
running and enable VoiceOver by default. Owing to a SIM card failure
requiring a trip to an AT&T store, I was unable to test this feature
because I had the AT&T representative enable VoiceOver for me (on the plus
side, however, he did know exactly what VoiceOver was).
Users can also enable or disable accessibility options by going to
the Settings icon on the home screen, choosing General, and then selecting
the Accessibility button. Finally, the iPhone OS version 3.1, released on
September 9, 2009, allows the user to specify an accessibility feature to
be enabled and disabled by triple-tapping the Home button. One item of
note: since they use identical gestures, Voiceover and Zooms cannot be
active at the same time.
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Gesture Control
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Ninety-nine percent of user interaction with the iPhone is done on
the touch screen. Sighted users tap icons representing everything from
applications to letters on the keyboard and numbers on the telephone dial
pad. This phone has absolutely no physical keyboard. Apple has created a
set of gestures that, when used on the touch screen, assuming accessibility
features have been enabled, allow a blind user to interact with the iPhone.
The most basic gesture is touching the screen. When a user taps
anywhere on the display, the object under the finger will be identified.
For example, touching the lower left corner of the home screen tells the
user he or she is on the Phone application. The instruction follows to
"double-tap to open."
For the blind user the double-tap is the equivalent of the sighted
user's tap on the screen. This gesture activates the icon under the user's
finger. The double-tap can be used to open an application, open an email or
text message, or enter text through the on-screen keyboard.
Users are not limited to tapping the screen to find icons. If one is
not familiar with an application, a finger can be slid around the screen as
well. Objects under the finger will be identified. In addition to the
double-tap, the user can keep one finger on an icon while tapping the
screen with a second finger. This performs a simulated double-tap and can
be faster in some cases than performing the actual double-tap maneuver.
The flick is another technique for moving around applications. This
gesture is performed by swiping a finger from left to right, right to left,
up, or down on the screen. Performing a left-to-right or right-to-left
flick moves the user between interface elements: icons, text areas,
elements of a Web page, items in a list box, or any other screen component.
The flick can be a useful way to explore a new application or move through
a list quickly. It is possible to tap when one means to flick, thus losing
the original cursor focus, but this is less of a problem with practice. The
up and down flick gestures are used to move through elements by a specified
increment set by the Rotor Control. For instance, if the Rotor is set to
"character," flicking down speaks the next character in the current
element. This gesture can also be used to move the insertion point when
editing text.
The Rotor control is Apple's solution for giving the user a way of
selecting a method for moving through the currently active control or
interface area and is designed to emulate an analog dial on a radio. By
placing two fingers on the screen and rotating one clockwise or
counterclockwise, different options can be selected. The most basic of
these are "character" and "word." In an application supporting HTML
navigation, such as the Safari Web browser or an email message written in
HTML, the available options on the Rotor control increase to support
navigating by headings; links; unvisited links; images; visited links; and,
in the most recent iPhone software, static text. Copy and paste
functionality is also available on the Rotor dial.
Other gestures are also available. Placing two fingers on the screen
and swiping downward instructs VoiceOver to begin reading from the current
position and stop when it reaches the bottom of the text or screen. Tapping
two fingers on the screen silences speech. Placing three fingers on the
screen and sliding them left or right moves one between tabs in multitabbed
areas such as the home screen. To move to the next page, slide your fingers
to the left (like turning pages in a book). Placing three fingers on the
screen and sliding up or down scrolls through content that spans more than
one vertical screen-full. Users should be aware that you slide your fingers
down to move toward the top of the content and slide up to move toward the
bottom. This may be confusing at first since the typical scroll bar on a
computer is dragged down to reach the bottom and pushed up to find the top
of the document.
The pinch gesture is accomplished by placing two fingers on the
display and moving them closer together or further apart. Blind users use
it to increase or compress the amount of selected text when performing a
cut or copy function.
The final two gestures are used to control the VoiceOver speech and
Screen Curtain functions. A three-fingered double-tap silences or enables
speech output. A three-fingered triple-tap enables or disables the Screen
Curtain function. As the name suggests, Screen Curtain blanks out the
screen so nothing is visible to passersby.
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Text Entry
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Many people find text entry the most frustrating part of the iPhone
experience. Sighted users are quite likely to share this opinion. When a
user double taps to activate a text-entry field, the iPhone converts the
bottom half of the screen to an onscreen keyboard. Users then select keys
by using the tap, double-tap, or slide and tap methods. Some users have
reported success using two thumbs to type, one thumb finding the letter on
its half of the keyboard while the other is available for tapping duty once
the letter is found. I have been most successful holding the phone in my
left hand while my right index finger skims over the keyboard to the
desired letter and my middle finger performs the tap to enter it.
Many applications allow the user to turn the phone sideways,
activating landscape mode. This provides a wider keyboard horizontally with
bigger keys, but it is compressed vertically.
With a combination of time, muscle memory, and practice, typing speed
increases. It is also possible to adjust the keyboard echo verbosity to
echo entered letters, words, or neither. I have found that turning off
letter echo (letters are spoken when a finger is above them, but only a
click is heard when they are entered) and allowing words to be echoed
provides a nice balance between speed and editing as I type. The built-in
predictive-text features of the iPhone also provide for corrections if you
press the wrong letter. For example, typing "thr" and pressing space will
generally result in the word being corrected to "the."
One thing to remember, and something that confused me at first, is
the direction of entered and deleted text when editing. Using the Rotor
control, you can elect to move by character or word to edit your text. The
up and down flicks then move you through the text by the selected element.
Remember that, unless you are at the end of the text, the Delete key will
delete in the direction you last flicked. So, if you are expecting to
delete the character before the one just spoken and you have been moving
forward, you must flick upward to orient the cursor to move back.
Otherwise, pressing Delete deletes the most recently spoken character. One
other cautionary note--occasionally edit fields on Web pages and in certain
applications do not speak correctly when echoing characters or editing, but
the text has been successfully entered.
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The Home Screen
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This screen is the launch pad for all iPhone applications. When the
round Home button is pressed, the user is taken to the first screen of
applications. Up to nine pages can be used to display icons for installed
programs. Each page consists of a four-by-four grid of icons and a single
row of 4 icons at the bottom of the screen. The single row, which by
default contains the Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod apps, is present
regardless of which page is currently being displayed. The three-fingered
left and right scrolling gestures can be used to move between pages.
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Web Browsing
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The Safari Web browser provides access to Web pages and some
streaming media content. By default the Safari icon is the third from the
left in the static bar at the bottom of any home screen. Web browsing using
VoiceOver has generally been a pleasant experience. The Web browser
provides an address bar at the top for directly accessing a URL, a text box
to enter a search that will automatically display the results in Google,
and bookmark features to allow rapid access to frequently used Websites.
When you are in the browser, several mechanisms exist to locate
information and read content. By using the left and right flick gestures,
it is possible to move through page elements sequentially. All elements
will be spoken as you encounter them. The options available with the Rotor
control increase to include frequently used HTML elements including
headings, links, form controls, images, and text. By selecting one of these
options and employing the up or down flick, you can move to the specified
element as you would use a quick navigation key on a computer.
Unfortunately, there is not much auditory indication that a selected
element is not available on a page when one is using the Rotor control. If
"heading navigation" is selected and there are no headings, you may hear a
thunk when you try to use the up or down flick. Some users may prefer a
message such as "no headings" to indicate that their input has been
received.
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Email
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It is possible to set up the iPhone to check a personal or work email
account. The Post Office Protocol (POP3), IMAP, and Microsoft Exchange
protocols are supported. Email accounts can either be set up and
transferred through iTunes or be configured in the Settings application
under Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Default server profiles exist for
several common email providers, or the user can manually enter the
information for a provider not listed. There are some problems with the
email account set-up in the 3.1 version of the iPhone OS. Username fields
are not correctly labeled when you are setting up an IMAP account, and it
has been reported that no fields are labeled when your are configuring a
Microsoft Exchange account.
Once a mail account has been configured, it can be accessed through
the Mail application. This is typically found on the home screen as the
second-from-the-left icon on the bottom row of applications. In addition to
the title "Mail," the icon displays and speaks the number of unread
messages.
When opened, the email application places the user in the most
recently accessed folder. It is possible to use the left and right flick
gestures to move through the list of messages or slide a finger up and down
to scroll with the scroll gestures. When a message is double-tapped, it is
displayed on its own page. Icons are present at the bottom of the screen to
refresh, move, delete, reply to the message, and compose a new message. If
you wish to forward a message, activate the reply icon, and you will find
options for Reply, Reply All, and Forward.
In an email message the Rotor control can be used to move through
elements, including HTML, if the message is written in that format.
If you delete a message while it is displayed, the next message in
your inbox will be displayed. Occasionally VoiceOver is not properly
refreshed with the new content if you use the flick left and right
gestures. You have to tap your finger at the beginning of the new message's
body and proceed from there.
From the inbox view it is possible to delete multiple messages.
Activate the Edit button and double-tap any messages you would like to
delete. The messages are selected, and the Delete button at the bottom of
the screen updates to reflect the number of messages to be deleted.
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IPod
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One of the iPhone's key selling points is its multimedia features.
The iPod application is where many of the media tasks are accomplished. As
with many other iPhone applications, a set of icons at the bottom of the
screen provides a quick way to access common functions. By default these
icons are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and More. Tapping one of the
first four buttons will bring up the media matching that parameter. Tapping
the More icon will present a list of additional media categories including
Albums, Audio Books, Compilations, Composers, Genres, and Podcasts. All of
the categories make use of the metadata provided by multimedia files to
sort and display content. The media content and the associated metadata are
transferred to the iPhone when it is connected to a computer running iTunes
as described earlier in this article.
When a media track begins playing, you can press the Home button and
return to the Home screen to perform other tasks. When VoiceOver is
speaking, the media file's sound will duck under the VoiceOver sound so you
can hear the speech clearly. If you receive a phone call while the iPod
application is playing a file, the file will pause until the call is
complete. At any time you can double-tap with two fingers to pause or
resume playback.
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Phone
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While the iPhone offers many advanced and powerful features of a
handheld computer, it is also a telephone, and I would be remiss if I
didn't discuss that function. The Phone app can be accessed from the static
bar of apps at the bottom of any home screen. Alternatively, the Home
button can be pressed twice quickly, which will also launch the
application. There are five components to the phone: Favorites (the iPhone
equivalent of speed dial, where you can designate up to fifty numbers for
quick access), Recents (displaying recent calls), Contacts, Keypad
(allowing manual entry of a phone number), and Voicemail. The Recents and
Voicemail icons include a number of unseen events if they are present, and
that number will be announced following the name of the icon.
Favorites, Recents, and Contacts are all list views and can be
navigated accordingly. The contacts screen also provides a search bar at
the top to locate a contact quickly. Once a contact is selected, double-
tapping any programmed number dials it. Double-tapping a number in
Favorites or Recents automatically dials that number as well.
The Keypad allows one to dial a number that is not stored in memory.
In addition to the standard telephone numeric keypad, buttons for Call and
Delete are present below the zero and pound keys. The Delete key deletes
the number to the left of the insertion point.
While you are on a call, icons on the screen allow you to perform
actions including muting the call, placing the caller on hold, conferencing
in another caller, and bringing up the keypad to interact with touch-tone-
controlled systems. If the phone is pulled away from the user's ear, the
speaker phone automatically activates. It does not seem to be possible to
use the on-screen icons while the speaker phone is off. Using the headphone
that is included provided the best experience for me when dealing with an
automated customer service or voicemail system because the VoiceOver speech
is loud enough to be heard, and this is not always the case when using the
speaker phone.
The iPhone has a unique way of accessing Voicemail. The voicemail
system is called Visual Voicemail. When you activate the voicemail section
of the Phone app, you see a list of all voicemail messages. The list
indicates whether the message is unheard, the caller's identity, and the
time the message was left. Double-tapping the message causes it to be
played through the phone's earpiece. If you wish to play the message
through the speaker phone, first activate the Speaker button located before
the message list. A delete button is located near the bottom to the right
of the application. This deletes the currently selected voicemail message.
When an incoming call is received, the caller ID is spoken. Depending
on the volume of the selected ringtone, you may wish to silence the ring by
pressing the Power button once and tap or flick to repeat the caller ID.
Double-tapping the answer button connects the call. You can also use a two-
finger double-tap to answer and end calls.
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Third-Party Applications
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The iPhone offers developers a chance to create applications that
take advantage of the power and high-speed data connection offered on the
iPhone platform. Applications can be downloaded to the phone through iTunes
or directly by using the App Store application on the phone itself. As with
desktop applications, the method of development determines how accessible
the application is to users of VoiceOver. Apple provides guidelines and
tools to allow developers to build their applications so that they are
accessible, but the developer must make use of these tools.
Commonly, inaccessible applications simply present unlabeled icons as
"button." In some cases it is possible to figure out the use of these
buttons, but in others the lack of identification renders the application
completely inaccessible. Depending on the application, the unlabeled
buttons may be graphics that are not meant for interaction. For example,
the Twittelator Pro application (a client for the popular Twitter social
network) has unlabeled buttons placed between user posts, timestamps, and
usernames, but these buttons do not appear to perform functions that are
unavailable elsewhere.
In some applications users are flicking through a list when the
cursor gets stuck and repeats the same item over and over. This can be
remedied by tapping a finger on the next list item, but it is annoying when
it occurs. This behavior is seen commonly in the Newsfeed section of the
Facebook app.
Many applications, however, are completely accessible and present no
challenges to the blind user. For example, the Around Me app, which uses
your GPS position to locate nearby places of interest, presented no
barriers to access. You can select from categories, including gas stations,
hotels, restaurants, or all nearby places, and receive a list of matches.
For historical monuments and landmarks, a brief description from the
Internet is also included. Other accessible applications include the
Sirius/XM Player, and the Pandora radio application.
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Conclusions
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This article has by no means been a look at all the applications and
features of the iPhone 3GS, but I hope it has provided an idea of the user
experience a blind VoiceOver user encounters. While a few challenges and
barriers still exist in some applications, Apple has managed to provide
nonvisual access to a mainstream device at no extra cost to the blind user.
If you are considering purchasing an iPhone, I encourage you to visit an
Apple or AT&T store and spend a few minutes with your hands on the phone.
You will be able to get a feel for the navigation and user experience. Many
resources, including the very active viphone user group, a mailing list for
blind iPhone users, which can be found at <groups.google.com>, are
available for users to ask questions and learn more about the product as
well. Apple's efforts in this area are quite positive, and we look forward
to other manufacturers following in their footsteps to provide access
solutions as part of mainstream products.
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