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Year in review, Assistive Technology show for Dec. 30, 2009 now available
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Year in review, Assistive Technology show for Dec. 30, 2009 now available
Year in review, Assistive Technology show for Dec. 30, 2009 now available
What an exciting year 2009 has been in terms of assistive technology. Many new products and services have become available. We discussed many of these on tonight’s show including:
ipod/iphone,
GW… -
Year in review, tonight, on the Assistive Technology show
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The Assistive Technology show, CHristmas Adam edition
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The Assistive Technology show, CHristmas Adam edition
The Assistive Technology show, CHristmas Adam edition
Tonight, on the Assistive Technology show, the following topics were discussed:
Ebay woes.
KNFB Reader releases update supporting additional phone models.
MobileSpeak licensing
New accessible… -
Tonight, the Assistive Technology show – Christmas edition
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Nokia E65 with latest Talks for sale
I’m selling a Nokia E65 phone with the Talks screen reading software. Although this isn’t the newest fanciest phone out there, it’s a great option for anyone who wants an accessible series 3 Symbian device. I can give more details if needed, but the E65 is a slide formfactor and uses a numeric keypad for data entry.
I’ve listed the phone on Ebay, but would be willing to consider serious offers outside Ebay. If interested, or if you have additional questions, please check out the Ebay listing, or contact me via Email.
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Quest to find an accessible way to download Tumblr audio continues
I really love Tumblr, but one major issue I, as a VoiceOver user, have is the inability to actually play audio uploaded to Tumblr. For whatever reason, Tumblr uses an embedded Flash player for uploaded audio and this is inaccessible to VoiceOver. In Googling possible ways to download audio from Tumblr, I came across the following post which, although not exactly what I was looking for, at least explains how Tumblr audio works.
“How do I download music off Tumblr?”
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Mac users (I don’t know the Windows solution):1. Open the audio post in Safari.
2. In Safari’s menu, click “Window” -> “Activity”. (This opens a window that shows what files Safari is loading.)
3. On the audio post, hit play.
4. Among the URLs in the Activity window is one starting with s3.amazon.com. Double-click it to open in Safari.
5. Now for me, Safari won’t let me save the mp3 that’s now playing. So copy the URL and paste it in Firefox.
6. In Firefox, hit command-S to save.
7. Return my calls, Sarah.There is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that does this…and with ease.
(via nickdouglas)
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Nuance releases Dragon Search for iPhone
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Nuance releases Dragon Search for iPhone
Yep, this works fantastic with VoiceOver.
Steve
***Begin content***Dragon Search is the Fast, Accurate and Smart way to search online content on your iPhone™ using your voice. Simply speak your search queries and get simultaneous results from a variety of top websites and content sources including: Google™ (or Yahoo!™, Bing™, depending on your default settings) YouTube™ Twitter™ Search iTunes™ Wikipedia® The innovative Dragon Search Carousel allows you to quickly access results from multiple sources, and is a one-stop shop for all of your search needs, even when you are “Hands-Busy” REVIEWS Press Reviews: Mel Martin - TUAW: “The iTunes integration is quite nice. Say ‘Harold Budd’, for example, and click the iTunes icon and you’ll see what the iTunes store has to sell. Or you can search Wikipedia or Google and learn all about him.” Greg Kumparack - MobileCrunch: “The design of the application is rather clever…you can flip between them [results] on a whim via the carousel at the top…” Jennifer Van Grove - Mashable: “We were left practically speechless by the quality of Dragon Dictation, an iPhone app that does instant speech-to-text transcription. The same company has just unveiled their latest iPhone offering — Dragon Search — and it’s just as impressive as the first.” “The app is stupidly simple to use and lightening fast…” iTunes Reviews: Np2244 – “I just downloaded dragon search and it is incredible. I couldn’t ask for something so fast, accurate and versatile. I mean, search all facets of the web in one fell swoop. I love it. You let me search facebook too and it’s better than sliced bread.” Bootareen – “It has a very simple interface and convenient scroll bar on top to switch the source of your search. The sources switch instantly, I don’t know how they do it but its super efficient and convenient.” Vsqa – “Hands-down the best damn voice search app on the app store. Amazingly fast and accurate. Bug free product great work.” FEATURES • Fast and accurate, fully automated speech recognition • Horizontal tool bar enables fast access to alternative search sites • Easily modify or correct search queries by using a list of alternative suggestions Dragon Search is powered by Nuance’s world-renowned Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® software, and it is specifically designed to make searching the internet on your iPhone easier than ever. PRIVACY POLICY Dragon Search does not upload or store any personal information. Spoken search queries are processed by fully automated speech recognition technology in secure data centers with stringent privacy and security standards. These search queries are not associated with any personal data from your phone. Dragon Search will utilize spoken speech queries collected over time to continuously improve and provide high speech recognition accuracy. Details are described in the end user license agreement, provided here for your convenience: http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/EULA-search.html
If you’d like to go directly to this app in the iTunes store, simply click here. At the moment, the app is available for free.
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String THeory for Dummies and the power of social media
“String THeory for Dummies” is one of those books I’d love to read if only I could find an accessible version. I listed the book in my “to read” shelf of Goodreads which, for those not familiar with it, is a site for tracking books and sharing what you’re reading with friends. I’d honestly forgotten adding the book to my shelf and was therefore surprised when I received a comment from Andrew Zimmerman Jones, the book’s author. Mr. Jones simply commented that he would be looking forward to what I had to say about his book. I replied explaining that to the best of my knowledge, an accessible edition of his book does not exist and enquired as to whether or not he knew of plans to produce either an Etext, or audible edition. I was very pleased to have received the following back from Mr. Jones, “I regretfully have to admit that I really don’t know what sorts of blind-friendly versions the book is out in. I know that there’s no standard audiobook version yet, but I’m not sure if Wiley grants permissions for their For Dummies line to be used through bookshare and similar services, and if they do I don’t know the timetable for when books get added. I’ve written to my editor on this topic and will let you know what I’m told. I do know that the book is available through Amazon.com in a Kindle edition, and that the Kindle version has the text-to-speech functionality enabled.”
Sites like GoodReads and social media in general make it possible, and indeed easy for authors such as Mr. Jones to have contact with their readers. From my perspective, GoodReads enables me to contact authors and raise awareness of accessibility issues. I certainly can’t speak for Mr. Jones, but I suspect many authors have no idea how blind folks access books and as we’re a huge potential market, that’s a real shame.
I know there are many who still question the validity of social media, or who simply feel it’s not for them. To those people, I’d say that social media’s not just about telling your friends, followers, or fans “what’s happening” or “what’s on your mind,” but is a constantly evolving concept with many positive ramifications. I’m still looking forward to reading “String Theory for Dummies” and hope that in some small way, I’ve helped to raise awareness concerning the accessibility of books.
In closing, my sincere thanks to Mr. Stone for getting back to me so quickly and for pursuing the accessibility issue with his editor. If anyone would like to read the original thread, it can be found here.
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The wonderful sounds of bacon
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Is Sexting A Real Problem Or Just Kids Being Kids?
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formspring.me
What’s the nicest thing someone’s ever done for you?
Helped me financially, so that I could get Christmas gifts for my kids.
Steve?
Yes?
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formspring.me
What happens if I write a very lengthy question, will it get truncated, or will Tumblr be smart enough to just post the question part without my answer?
I’m honestly not sure which is why I’m going to answer my own question and find out.
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Tonight’s Assistive Technology show by stream only
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50% off Take Control Catalog
I really can’t say enough good things about these books, they’re very reasonably priced and although they come in PDF format, are very accessible. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every Take Control book I’ve read and highly recommend them to anyone just starting out with the Mac, or anyone wanting to better hone their Mac skills. I should note that their book on VmWare Fusion, the program I use to run Windows on the Mac virtually, is available at the unbelievable price of $0.00. That’s right, absolutely free.
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The Assistive Technology show for December 9, 2009
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The Assistive Technology show for December 9, 2009
The Assistive Technology show for December 9, 2009
Tonight, on the Assistive Technology show, the following topics were discussed:
Live stream finally, well, live,
Olympus digital recorders,
Skype scripts and Jaws 11,
How to add streams to the iPhone… -
Tonight, on the Assistive Technology show
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Return of the stream
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Testing audio
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Testing audio
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Testing from iPhone
Just testing the accessibility of the new Tumblr app. So far, it’s much better than the old one.
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How to preview Ogg files as if in Quicklook
One of the really neat aspects of Apple’s Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems is Quicklook, a feature that allows the previewing of virtually any file type right from within the Finder. And even for file types that the Mac doesn’t natively support, Microsoft’s WMA and WMV come to mind, plugins exist to add this functionality. Google though I might, however, I could not find a plugin to add Ogg support to Quicklook. I should note here that a solution does exist to play Ogg files within Quicktime-based applications such as iTunes (check out http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/ for more details). I don’t know why a plugin hasn’t been developed to add this functionality to Quicklook. There is, however, a wonderful solution.
BravoBug Software make a fantastic application for previewing Ogg files directly from the Finder. Although it’s not technically a Quicklook plugin, their OggQuicklook solution behaves exactly like Quicklook.
So, here’s how to get it and more importantly, how to use it: First, go to http://bravobug.com/oggquicklook where you can download the application. Unzip the app, move it to your applications folder and run it — pretty easy so far, right? When running the app for the first time, it’ll ask if it can run as a login item. Answering yes here will allow the app to run in the background, essentially making it so you won’t need to launch it each time you want to preview an Ogg file. I should note that the app takes incredibly little resources, like 0% CPU; it’s just waiting for the command to launch and do its thing. After installation, things may seem a tiny bit confusing, but understanding what’s actually going on should help clear it all up. Think of the application as two separate applications, one, the OggQuicklook Agent, that runs in the background just waiting to allow you to preview those Ogg files and another more visible one, the OggQuicklook Launcher, which is used to control the background application. By control, there are really three options, start the background application (not needed if you allowed it to run as a login item on installation) stop the background application and change the hotkey used to preview an Ogg file. In other words, you probably won’t need to perform any of these tasks after you’ve defined the default hotkey which by the way, defaults to opt-shft-e. If you’re fine with that default, simply cmd-q to quit the application, (the background portion should continue to run) find an Ogg file and press opt-shft-e. A Quicklook-like window should open and you should hear your file. To stop playback, simply press the same hotkey. Unlike Quicklook, you can even change to another window, or app and your Ogg will continue to play. But what if you want to assign a different hotkey? Not a problem, but if you’re using VoiceOver, it’s not exactly intuitive. First, launch the OggQuicklook application. Second, notice there are two ‘quit’ buttons, one which simply says ‘quit’ and the other ‘quit OggQuicklook’. The first button simply quits the foreground “Launcher” application, same as pressing cmd-q. The second option, however, stops the background “Agent” and this is what has to happen before the hotkey can be changed. Fortunately, this second button is also the default. Next, place the VoiceOver cursor on one of the other buttons, either ‘quit’ or ‘help’. Press tab until you don’t hear anything, one or two presses depending on which button you focused the VoiceOver cursor on in the previous step. Silence means you are now on the hotkey field. Simply press the desired hotkey, I’d check first to make sure it’s not in use by Finder or some other application. Once pressed, use your VoiceOver cursor to move to ‘launch OggQuicklook’ which also happens to be the default button. After the background application, “Agent” is running, simply cmd-q to quit the “Launcher” and give it a try by selecting an Ogg file and pressing your newly-assigned hotkey. As described above, a new Quicklook-like window should open and your file should play. During playback, you can switch to another application which is really nice as this would normally force QuickLook to pause any currently playing content. To stop playback, simply press your default hotkey, playback stops, the preview window closes and you’re right back where you were.
OggQuicklook is a free application, but its developer, BravoBug make a number of shareware applications worth checking out. I’m super pleased with OggQuicklook and want to thank BravoBug for giving us Ogg enthusiasts a fantastic solution.
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