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

[Ken Petri]

Shelley,

Thanks for the info on the highlighting.

Do you know how screen reader/VoiceOver accessible performing a highlight
is? Once the bookmark/highlight is list in the TOC, then I'm sure it will be
accessible via VoiceOver, but creating the highlight may be a pain. Any
experience with it yet?

In any case, the fact of having this highlighting makes an even more
compelling argument for the device.

I've seen screen shots of books from SitePoint as rendered by iPad and they
are pretty impressive. But what about more complex textbooks? I think the
visual formatting capabilities of ePub are fairly limited. For instance, I
don't think it is possible to do multiple columns, as in PDF for XPS.

Oh, and it is also worth noting that any bluetooth keyboard should work fine
with iPad. I saw this demonstrated with an old apple bluetooth keyboard
yesterday.

Thanks,
k


On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Shelley Haven <
ShelleyHaven at techpotential.net> wrote:


> 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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>

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>

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