Thanks Kiran, I am a user and have not technical knowledge. However, I
was alarmed after reading such comments. There is alreasy a rumour (I hope
it is that) that Apple is stopping voiceover developments. If we make such
comments, we are not at all helping our cause. On the contrary, we must
make a lot of noise and as Kiran suggested we must check facts prior to
making comments.
I am scared that not enough is being done in this area and especially in
India no organization is akin to this area.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kiran Kaja" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: [AI] What is Google up to?
My comments below prefixed with KK:
But I wouldn’t dismiss Nokia, whether on Symbian or Meego just yet. Nokia
may stil have a couple of aces up its sleeve. It would be up to third
party screen reader developers to innovate along with the newer changes
that Nokia comes up with and that could even mean charging more.
Of course, it wouldn’t be as good as the iOS devices.
KK: if history is any indication, Nokia hasn't done much to promote
accessibility of its devices. We have solutions now for Symbian because of
couple of excellent developers who figured out means to get into the
operating system. Symbian has *no* accessibility API while every other
mobile platform except Windows Phone 7 has it. And I haven't seen any
indication of an accessibility API in Meego.
Android has a lot of future potential when it comes to accessibility. Even
with the current limitations of the accessibility API, it offers better
options in terms of GPS as well as speech recognition than the iPhone.
In fact, an Android based cell phone with a keyboard is currently the only
fully usable GPS solution for the blind right out of the box in India and
many other countries with good Google Maps.
The GPS solutions available on the iPhone mostly come with maps covering
America and Europe. While there are apps that use freely available data
that comes from Google maps on the iPhone, but if you are going to end up
using Google’s data anyway, Android has better apps for this purpose.
KK: Agreed. Navigon has released their iPhone app for India which I am
told is accessible with VoiceOver. I use it here in the UK.
One last thing, I personally believe that Google’s accessibility team is
doing the best they can. Introducing accessibility changes lead to
security issues and instability that requires further resources to debug
such problems. It comes down to core kernel developers to decide what goes
in and what does not.
KK: Wrong information. A properly implemented Accessibility API doesn't
lead to any security or stability issues. In the early part of this
decade, OS developers did have a misconception that some accessibility
features lead to security leaks but I haven't seen any such issues for
more than 6 years of accessibility related work experience. The so called
accessibility team at Google was till recently a collection of two
developers who were working on accessibility issues only a few hours a
week. They now have one more full-time developer. To put it in
perspective, Microsoft has more than 40 and Apple has about 15. Finally,
Android is an open source platform. So, anyone can submit fixes and
improvements and they will be accepted if they are proven to be of
acceptable quality. So, Kernel developers have nothing to do with
accepting or rejecting code contributions other than setting some
base-line quality standards.
Please try and get your facts right before rattling off opinions.
Statements like "Accessibility changes can lead to security and
instability" are very irresponsible and are detrimental to our cause.
Thanks and regards,
Kiran
--- On Thu, 12/16/10, Kiran Kaja <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Kiran Kaja <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AI] What is Google upto?
To: [email protected]
Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 2:57 PM
I don't think Symbian will see many
of these technologies and applications.
It is a dying platform no matter what Nokia says. In fact,
they are trying
to move to a different platform called Meego which is Linux
based. Having
used an iPhone for a while, I can't imagine myself going
back to a Symbian
phone. Of course, it isn't possible for everyone to afford
the iPhone. That
is where Android comes in. We are beginning to see mid to
low end handsets
running Android. There are some screen reading solutions
already but there
are not good at all. All Advocacy organisations like RNIB
and AFB are
pushing Google to improve Android Accessibility.
I think this is one area that blind and partially sighted
users in India can
have their say as well. We are going to be a large user
base and it is about
time to make our voices heard. I suggest that every one of
us who are either
using a mobile phone or is planning to use in the future
write to Google's
Accessibility team and ask for a full-fledged screen reader
and
magnification features in Android platform. In this day and
age, we do not
have to rely on 3rd party software for our accessibility
needs. Apple have
demonstrated that it is possible to include accessibility
features in an
operating system at no extra cost. There is no reason why
Google and other
major IT companies can't do it as well. So, lets start
writing to
[email protected]
individually asking for accessibility features in
Android. Alternatively, we could assemble our individual
requests and one of
us could submit them on behalf of AccessIndia.
Sorry for deviating from the topic but technology is
evolving rapidly and if
we don't take our concerns to the right people at the right
time, there is a
risk of blind and partially sighted users being left
behind.
Regards,
Kiran
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Harish Kotian
Sent: 16 December 2010 01:54
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AI] What is Google upto?
Hello
Check out on the links below and get a feel of exciting
days ahead for us.
These technology are in its infancy but surely there is
more we can expect
from it.
Presently the concern is all these buzz are focused around
Android and
IPhone and not symbian centric.
Anyways:
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/
www.google.com/latitude
Harish Kotian
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected]
with
the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any
other changes, please
visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected]
with the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any
other changes, please visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected]
with the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes,
please visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected]
with the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes,
please visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with
the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please
visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
