Well Tarry, I have been using an iPhone for just shy of three weeks and I find the touch screen not to be an issue for me. In fact I think any blind person has a very good shot at learning to work with the interface with some time and patience because any new interface will take a little more time to learn. I have successfully read/sent e-mail, played music, podcasts, loaded several applications, and even have a very affordable (for $90) a rather accessible GPS solution. I just got the MobileNavigator software, so have to work with it a bit more. Of course there is the iPod Shuffle and Nano, which the Shuffle offers playback only, but is very accessible with the controls in the earphone cord, and the Nano now offers recording audio and video as well as a FM radio, and is controlled with a wheel you would slide your finger around. Now as far as iTunes, I've been using it with great success for many years. I find iTUnes to more than fit my needs and for most people it will work fine. SOme folks do have special requirements that perhaps iTunes does not meet, but for transferring music to the device, it'll get the job done fine. Now of course it's easy for me to say since I use a Mac and iTunes just works beautifully and not having used it on a windows machine, the results may be different. Just wanted to share the fact that there are options that do not require you to flash a device. I've done this, so I'm familiar with the process and know it is not overly complicated, but it just seems unnecessary when there are accessible solutions available. I personally did not like Rockbox myself and this was a number of years ago when I tried it out, but just the way it handled speech always seemed to behave oddly.
On Oct 30, 2009, at 11:22 AM, Terry Klarich wrote: > On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:49:22 -0500you write: > > > >But, > > > >Why do you need this Rock Box Software? > > > >Thanks. > > > >Claudia > > An mp3 player is nothing more than a small computer. It has storage, > cpu, memory ... The rockbox software is the operating system > that runs on the device. Since, an mp3 player is considered to be an > imbedded system, the software is known has firmware. Rockbox > is a replacement firmware for several players. > > The reason rockbox is of interest to us is that it provides speech > output for the mp3 players it runs on. It will not play .aa > files. I get around this by converting my .aa files to .mp3 files on > my computer. I use it for making recordings as if it were an > old tape recorder. It would have been very helpful if this > technology was available when I was in College. A good part of my > music library is stored on my iAudio. > > To use rockbox, you will have to find a player somewhere that is > supported. (ebay, internet out-let creg's list ...). You will > have to learn how to flash (load the firmware) and generate voice > files. I read somewhere about an open source player. I have > kept this in the back of my mind for the day when my iAudio has to > be replaced. > > I have heard that the ipods are now speech accessible; but, know > nothing further. I don't think a blind person and a touch screen > would get along very well though. Also, I don't want to have to mess > with that itunes funny business. > > Hope that helps. > > Terry > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
