Hello Sieghard and list There is another aspect with makes me very unhappy and that is the price. We saw this with Nearby Explorer and now with Seeing Eye, and that is that developers of blind apps make them available to only part of the blind community. From what I could gather from APh is that Nearby Explorer will eventually only be available for the US and Europe. Now we see the same with Seeing Eye: only for US and Europe. That was the same for the Voice Sense GPs. A friend here in South Africa had to purchase the local maps from Hims for Nearly half the price of the Voice Sense, so I assume if we would like to use seeing eye it would cost so much for the maps, if any, that it would not be worth while. Regards Fanus
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sieghard Weitzel" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2013 7:04 AM Subject: RE: Announcing the Seeing Eye GPS app free preview, new 2013 Sendero products, and remote CSUN access! Hi Christopher and Mark, You are correct, Christopher, Garmin has no reason why they should engage in such a partnership, in fact, they would never do so since they would have to give Sendero access to their entire code and then make sure what Sendero does is not messing up anything else. Navigon, of course, is owned by Garmin so there is no difference there. Comparing Voiceover with something like GPS apps of course is comparing Apples to Oranges (pun intended) since Voiceover is developed by Apple because Apple chose to make their devices accessible. I guess one could say that if Garmin did make such a huge commitment to accessibility something like what Mark invisions could theoretically be possible, but making one app accessible does not nearly carry the importance of making an entire group of devices, an entire platform and an entire eco-system of content accessible. If Garmin had any interest in that they could have long since included accessibility in many of their stand-along Nuvi products. I know that Mark, and I mean no offense by this, seems to have a huge problem with anything that even hints at being geared towards the visually impaired. Those among us who understand that some things are just done better when they are done with the blind user in mind typically have no such problem especially if the product or, in this case, app in question most likely will be well within the price range of 95% or 98% of iPhone users. You could take Mark's argument and apply it to anything. I am not sure if Mark has a guide dog or is using a cane, but if he is using a cane, why not lobby the manufacturers of white canes to make them more appealing so that maybe sighted people would also buy them as walking sticks or whatever. Maybe they could come with all sorts of cool graphics and white ones would only be 2% of all canes manufacturered and instead of $25 they would now cost only $18. OK, enough said on this topic, there is always Apple Maps which does have a significant amount of accessibility built into it and there are apps like Navigon, Motion GPS or TomTom, of course Mark would have to use a blindness specific app like Blindsquare, Ariadne or Sendero LookAround to get the most out of them as all of us who have been using these solutions for the last few years have done. I definitely prefer to spend whatever Sendero will charge for the Seeing Eye app in the hope that I will get all of what I can do now with several apps and in time probably more out of one app. If I add up all I spend on the various GPS apps hoping I find one that works better than another I could have probably bought the Seeing Eye app twice over. That of course is not taking into account the$2,000 I spend in 2007 to buy a Trekker Maestro and the $900 I spent in 2009 to buy MobileGeo after I bought my first Windows Smartphone with MobileSpeak. Regards, Sieghard -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 7:58 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Announcing the Seeing Eye GPS app free preview, new 2013 Sendero products, and remote CSUN access! I'm not sure how this would work. What would be Garmin's motivation for doing this? I'm not sure the development costs still wouldn't be more to provide an accessible option to a given product than develop an accessible product from the ground up. The amortization argument was mostly targeted at the downloading of maps, which we know this product won't do. It also isn't clear that this product will cost significantly more than existing products. Agencies don't have the deep pockets they might have had at one time. On 27/02/13 21:36, Mark BurningHawk wrote: > So it would still make more sense to partner with a > company who makes > such a silent, visually appealing app, and piggy-back a > Sendero type > level of verbal interaction at the user's command. This, > after all, > is what VoiceOver does to the native IOS when it's > invoked. Then, > this amortization thing you speak of can be spread not > only over a > wider customer base but over two companies' resources. > The problem > with a product that costs significantly higher because > it's targeted > primarily toward blind people . Okay, let me start that > again. > *another* problem with this approach is that there are > agencies and > the like with deep pockets who will justify such a > purchase in their > rehab or other budgets, which keeps up the barrier between > the blind > and the world at large. I see a win-win for Sendero to > partner with a > more conventionally familiar name, I.E. Garnin or someone, > or even > with the Apple Maps app, provide their product as an > option when > wanted, and at a significantly lower cost to everyone. Will I get it and all the maps I need when it comes out? Most likely, unless it's off the scale. I personally hope at least one ," or "home," map comes free with it, or perhaps a set, one from each map source. But making the price too high might not be as damaging as making the target user base too small. Reinventing the wheel seems a bit redundant, if you'll allow me to repeat myself a little bit one more time again. > > Mark BurningHawk > Skype and Twitter: BurningHawk1969 > Home page: Http://MarkBurningHawk.net/ > -- Christopher (CJ) chaltain at Gmail -- 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. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
