Hi,
I thought I'd describe what I know about the accessibility feature of
the iPod nano in the hope that it helps listers understand the limits
of the technology.
First and most important, there is no text to speech engine on the
nano. This is why it doesn't work out of the box. When you enable
the feature in iTunes, iTunes builds audio files of your system voice
speaking all the strings in the iPod menus as if it were converting a
text file to mp3 or aac file. Then, iTunes will synch and associate
that small file with the menu items. Thus, when you navigate the
iPod menu, it plays back the associated file corresponding to menu
name.
This is very clever in that it doesn't penalize people who don't want
text to speech by clogging up their iPod with Alex and the engine
application. The bad part is it doesn't help with dynamic content
like the current time or applications. I personally expect this
technology to migrate to the classic, but don't expect it to move to
the iPod touch. In essence, Apple built in an audio interface to the
menu interface if associated files exist.
Ironically, I mentioned this exact approach to a colleague who is now
at Apple a few years ago.
Maybe the shuffle will support jumping by audio book chapter next. :)
--Scott
At 9:38 PM -0700 9/18/08, Justin Harford wrote:
Hi
Well that makes a great promotional, but could someone write about
how well it actually works? What we can expect when we purchase it,
bugs, purks, of course it talks but what else is there to know about
it.
I have been wanting to try one of these things out for a while now
but can't seem to figure out how as you have to set it up through
your itunes library and you won't find any such unit at an apple
store.
One interesting thing I did notice about the nano is that if it is
playing music and you start to move through the menus, the music
volume gets cut in half, presumably so that speech may be heard.
Pretty cool, but again, no experience actually using the speech.
Regards
Justin Harford
On Sep 18, 2008, at 9:22 PM, Josh de Lioncourt wrote:
Thanks go to Shane Jackson for his review of the iPod Nano 4G and
its speaking interface. You can read the review at this link:
http://www.lioncourt.com/shake-shuffle-and-roll/
Josh de Lioncourt
...my other mail provider is an owl...
--
--Scott
