Hi David and others, I recently listened to a Podcast from a guy in Marburg, Germany which is where I attended the German Secondary School for the Blind and he reviewed a new Samsung phone running Android 4.0 (Icecream Sandwich).. The Podcast consisted of 2 approx. 1 hour episodes and after I listened to the first I definitely had heard enough. Yes, there is speech and he was, after many attempts, able to turn it on and set up the phone, but if James thinks it is frustrating to work with Voiceover I think maybe he should get an Android phone, it's like people who complain about the standards of living here in North America or Europe, I always say to thm they should maybe go and live in a country like the Philippines or some other third-world country and to do so in the way 95% of the population lives there. Let's say Android has a long way to go to even come close to being as accessible as the iPhone, if James thinks Apple should update more often to push out specific fixes, how would that be in the Android market where the majority of users still use version 2.2 or 2.3 and these users probably won't even be able to upgrade their devices which are maybe less than 2 years old whereas any iPhone 3GS user can update to the latest version of iOS. Oh yes, and when was the last time you heard a commitement or even a mention from Microsoft or Google about Windows Phone 7 or Android accessibility? But with over 1,200 people on this list there are bound to be some who always look at the cup as half empty rather than half full, I prefer the half full approach, it makes for a more content and happier disposition. By the way, just to add to the Voiceover going silent thing, I have an iPhone 4S and while I don't use a dock, this has not happened once to me since I bought the phone last October. It happened a couple of times on my iPhone 4, mostly when using it with a dock at the time, I also sometimes had Voiceover become a bit sluggish and maybe a couple of times the phone sort of crashed, but typically it was nothing a power off and turning it back on didn't fix and it is a far cry from my old Windows Mobile 6.1 HTC S743, I had to always carrya paper clip or tooth pick so I could reset the thing. I could of course continue with one example after another demonstrating how the iPhone has changed the game completely by making a main stream device fully accessible, but I think we all know this so let's just remember it and show a bit of grace when it comes to the odd bug, after all, even sighted people deal with bugs and from what I heard Android users deal with enough of them even without throwing in a screenreader or other accessibility features. Oh, and one last remark regarding the size of the visually impaired market. It may be small now, but as the population ages and that is a worldwide trend especially in the western countries where a combination of good food, medical care and very little hard physical work causes the average age to go up more and more, there will be more and more old people who experience some sort of vision loss. At the same time more and more older people have used computers and technology so I predict that in the future, say 15 to 30 years from now the market for accessible devices will greatly increase. Regards, Sieghard
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. 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/viphone?hl=en.
