Hi Sarah. I would like to encourage you about your using an iPhone if you want one. This is because I have an acquaintance who is totally blind and has lost just about all his fingers, or at parts of them due to diabetes. In his particular case, the only thing he has trouble with is doing a three finger swipe to go from page to page like in Safari, something Siri would likely improve for him. I suspect he is using split tapping, which he could do with one hand doing the finding of things on the screen and then one of his shorter fingers touching the screen to make a menu choice.
I don't know if you know this, but battery life, for one thing, is something that probably would not require dexterity because you just touch the upper right hand corner of the iPhone screen. Also, the phone can be set on touch typing so that the keyboard doesn't respond until you pick up your finger. Then it's not necessary to do split tapping or double tapping to put in phone numbers or letters. I got a chance to talk to Siri this weekend, and I discovered that Siri's voice recognition is far better than the voice recognition on my current iPhone; I have a 4 which has been upgraded to 5. If the voice recognition in the new Siri phones is that good when doing phone calls, you can call on an iPhone using voice control. I do it on my phone, but on my current phone Siri has better recognition. By the way, just in case some of you don't know about this, A T & T is letting some of us, in this case me, get a Siri phone a year earlier than Apple said I could. They sent me an e-mail yesterday or the day before and said I could. When I called them, they said I could, for the price of the $200, $300, or $400 for the discounted prices get the Siri phone a year sooner than Apple said I could. I asked them how they could do that, and they said something about my phone being the revenue producer. (They have that right for sure.) I did forget to ask them if I had to make this choice right now and then get the new phone in January when I was eligible, so I'll need to call them back and find out if I need to sign up now if I can go in when I'm eligible in January. When I told them that Apple said I had to wait until 2013, they said have Apple call them. Then we decided that instead I could go to the A T & T store downtown when I was ready. Regards, Gigi Sent from my iPhone On Nov 17, 2011, at 1:01 AM, "Sarah May" <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi: > > I am one that is blind and also have some dexterity issues with my fingers > that made it impossible for me to use an I-Phone. When Siri came out I > thought that would solve all my problems. Well, when I went to my local > Apple store to try her out for a test run, she couldn’t access voice mail for > me; check how much battery life I had left; or go into the general menus that > one would want to go into. She wanted to search things for me on Google > which was cool, and I thought it was awesome that she could tell me what the > weather was like, but if she wasn’t able to access the things that are pretty > essential in havina phone for me; I thought to myself that I wasn’t going to > spend the money when I am due for an upgrade for a new phone. Now, if voice > over, Siril, and this new program can work altogether, and they all work > really well together, then I would definitely seriously think about getting > an I-Phone. > > Sarah > > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Red.Falcon > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 4:39 PM > To: macvisionaries group; Mobile Access; Talking Apple > Subject: Apple's AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone - > NYTimes.com > > Hi all! > Well some of you have said you've got Motor-control problems! > So I wonder if this would work with vo! > But it is Apple doing there thing! > Colin > Qapla! > Chegh chew jaj Vam jaj Kak > http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/apples-assistivetouch-helps-the-disabled-use-a-smartphone/ > > Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone > > Plenty has been written about the new iPhone 4S, with its voice-controlled > virtual assistant Siri, and about iOS 5, its software. > > But in writing a book about both, I stumbled across an amazingly thoughtful > feature that I haven’t seen a word about: something called AssistiveTouch. > > <image001.jpg> > The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the > industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter. > Sign up | See Sample > Now, Apple has always gone to considerable lengths to make the iPhone usable > for people with vision and hearing impairments. If you’re deaf, you can have > the LED flash to get your attention when the phone rings. You can create > custom vibration patterns for each person who might call you. You can convert > stereo music to mono (handy if you’re deaf in one ear). > > If you’re blind, you can literally turn the screen off and operate everything > — do your e-mail, surf the Web, adjust settings, run apps — by tapping and > letting the phone speak what you’re touching. You can also magnify the screen > or reverse black for white (for better-contrast reading). > > In short, iPhone was already pretty good at helping out if you’re blind or > deaf. But until iOS 5 came along, it was tough rocks if you had motor-control > problems. How are you supposed to shake the phone (a shortcut for “Undo”) if > you can’t even hold the thing? How are you supposed to pinch-to-zoom a map or > a photo if you can’t even move your fingers? > > One new feature, called AssistiveTouch, is Apple’s accessibility team at its > most creative. When you turn on this feature in > Settings->General->Accessibility, a new, white circle appears at the bottom > of the screen. It stays there all the time. > > When you tap it, you get a floating on-screen palette. Its buttons trigger > motions and gestures on the iPhone screen without requiring hand or > multiple-finger movement. All you have to be able to do is tap with a single > finger — even a stylus you’re holding in your teeth or fist. > > For example, you can tap the Home on-screen button instead of pressing the > physical Home button. > If you tap Device, you get a sub-palette of six functions that would > otherwise require you to grasp the phone or push its tiny physical buttons. > There’s Rotate Screen (tap this instead of turning the phone 90 degrees), > Lock Screen (tap instead of pressing the Sleep switch), Volume Up and Volume > Down (tap instead of pressing the volume keys), Shake (does the same as > shaking the phone to undo typing), and Mute/Unmute (tap instead of flipping > the small Mute switch on the side). > > If you tap Gestures, you get a peculiar palette that depicts a hand holding > up two, three, four, or five fingers. When you tap the three-finger icon, for > example, you get three blue circles on the screen. They move together. Drag > one of them, and the phone thinks you’re dragging three fingers on its > surface. Using this technique, you can operate apps that require multiple > fingers dragging on the screen. > > To me, the most impressive part is that you can define your own gestures. In > Settings->General->Accessibility, you can tap Create New Gesture to draw your > own gesture right on the screen, using up to five fingers. > > For example, suppose you’re frustrated in Google Maps because you can’t do > the two-finger double-tap that means “zoom out.” On the Create New Gesture > screen, get somebody to do the two-finger double-tap for you. Tap Save and > give the gesture a name—say, “2 double tap.” > > From now on, “2 double tap” shows up on the final AssistiveTouch panel, > called Favorites, ready to trigger with a single tap by a single finger or > stylus. (Apple starts you off with one predefined gesture already in > Favorites: Pinch. That’s the two-finger pinch or spread gesture you use to > zoom in and out of photos, maps, Web pages, PDF documents, and so on. Now you > can trigger it with only one finger.) > > I doubt that people with severe motor control challenges represent a > financially significant number of the iPhone’s millions of customers. But > somebody at Apple took them seriously enough to write a complete, elegant and > thoughtful feature that takes down most of the barriers to using an app phone. > I, for one, am impressed. > > And I’d also like to hear, in the Comments, from people who actually use > AssistiveTouch. How well does it work? > > > > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 10.0.1411 / Virus Database: 2092/4018 - Release Date: 11/15/11 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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