[Athen] FW: Students can Work with their iPads directly from their PCs

[Ken Petri]

VoiceOver on iPad is as effective as it is on iPhone and most of the blind
users I know really like iPhone: Not good for everyday work-related
computing, but pretty nice as a media consumption and simple note-taking
device.

One of the things we are interested in is e-book accessibility. Yesterday, a
blind sys admin and I, along with the lead tech guy from our e-learning
group, tested out iBooks on one of the iPads that group bought. It is
impressive as an accessible reader, not as good as DAISY on a good reader
and it doesn't have the features of the to-be-released Blio software, but
pretty damn impressive, nevertheless: You can access a table of contents
from any page, use the search feature, navigate by words, characters, and
page (pages numbers are generated by iBooks, not hard-coded--a function of
the ePub format), audio-scan the contents of pages by dragging your finger
around on the page, turn on reverse video/high-contrast, enlarge fonts,
alt-texted images are read aloud, you can easily audio browse your library
of books--and its in a platform that itself has strong accessibility. So,
pretty good, yes?

You cannot annotate or highlight and I don't think you can place bookmarks
(features Blio will have and which most DAISY readers have). It does not
highlight text as it reads (again, as Blio will do). There is no MathML
support (not surprising, since only ghPlayer has decent MathML support). So
for many applications in the higher-ed market, it's not all the way there.
But I think we need to consider that this is version 1 and that it is a
general audience commercial rather than an accessibility specialty product.
It has very real potential and is wholly usable for a lot of things already.

Look, I'm no Apple fanboy. I won't be buying a Macbook until they
incorporate a trackpoint and get a keyboard that can come close to an IBM
keyboard (read: never). But it is heartening to see high quality access
technologies go mainstream.

Best regards,
ken
---
 Ken Petri
 Program Director
 OSU Web Accessibility Center
 102D Pomerene Hall
 1760 Neil Avenue
 Columbus, Ohio  43210
 Phone: (614) 292-1760
 Fax: (614) 292-4190
 mailto:petri.1 at osu.edu


On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Dan Comden <danc at washington.edu> wrote:


>

> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Shelley Haven wrote:

>

>  *We definitely need a term to collectively refer to iPhones, iPod Touches,

>> iPads,

>> and iWhatever-Else-Apple-Conjures-Up.

>>

>

> iCandy?

>

> Ok, enough of that

>

> Yes, I have an early adopter coworker who demonstrated remote desktop

> access to his Windows machine via his iPad. I would definitely be able to

> put something like that to use. Would have to have a BT keyboard for true

> usefulness, though.

>

> Have not had time to explore, nor have I yet heard, of the true

> usability/utility of VoiceOver on this platform.

>

> -*- Dan Comden                 danc at washington.edu

>    Access Technology Lab      www.washington.edu/computing/atl

>    University of Washington   UW Information Technology

>

>

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>

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