Hi,
First of, I'm glad to see that we do have braille support (at
least for some of us). For those of us who're researching on our
next phone or PDA, this news allows us to rethink about our
options.
As for some of the posts I read, I'd like to give some thoughts
on this:
Android devices are, as far as specs are concerned, are PDA's in
some sense. The real power of Android is avaibility of apps like
Mobile Accessibility. The distinction between phones and PDA's
has blured since 2008, and it'll be more so when 64-bit phones
come out in a few years (the largest RAM I heard on the phone is
1.5 GB).
As for the whole arena of braille support on MA 1.9 and the
messages it has generated: I believe we have three more things to
advocate before Android can really become an OS of choice for
blind people on the move: full, native touchscreen access
provided by Google (Google may have laid the foundation with
4.0), advocacy to Google on increasing their market presence to
blind people and developing accessibility frameworks to use
tablets (not possible quite yet), and more awareness from app
developers (mainstream apps for Android) on potential of making
their apps accessible (which, I think was the main reason why iOS
took off). Braille support is, in my opinion, a good milestone
for some of us (who'll be using their phone for more than calling
and texting; to some, to unleash the power of its OS via
programming one day); but unless we play a part of advocates and
if we have partnership with Google and app developers, we'll see
Android as yet another Windows Mobile for blind consumers. I say
Google, because of understanding they need, and to app developers
(including Code Factory, in some sense) to bring awareness that
blind people are their potential customers.
As far as company communication is concerned, I'd write to CF
directly regarding bugs that we've seen and heard, as well as
provide streams of suggestions that could allow MA to compete as
a good accessibility tool for Android devices.
And as I conclude, I'd like to humbly suggest that we sit back
and think about this for a while: should we just stick to the
nest that we were given, or one day venture out and explore what
the landscape is really like? I'm sure that we want our voices to
be heard and one day wish to venture out into the world and use
Android just like our sighted friends (at least using the tools
availible to us such as MA). In order to do this, someone needs
to help us and we need to play a part: more understanding from
Google and app developers, in turn more support from us to
continue to make Android a viable choice as a phone/PDA/TABLET
OS.
That's all. Thanks. Hope I didn't offend anyone.
Cheers,
Joseph
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