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

[Shelley Haven]

Thanks for the comprehensive overview of iPad's accessibility, Ken.

BTW, you can bookmark and highlight by double-tapping a word.  This brings up a Dictionary / Bookmark / Search pop-up.  You can extend the highlight by dragging it to include a phrase, sentence or entire paragraph (selected text will have a yellow highlight).  All these bookmarked items can then be found on the Table of Contents page under "Bookmarks", listing the chapter, page number, and context of the bookmarked and highlighted text. 

- Shelley

_____________________________
Shelley Haven  ATP, RET
Assistive Technology Consultant
www.TechPotential.net



On Apr 16, 2010, at 11:02 AM, Ken Petri wrote:


> 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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