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Welcome to the very first iA DemoCast! In this episode, Matt Dierckens will walk you through updating software on macOS Sierra, using Apple’s built-in screen reader, VoiceOver. We hope you find this demonstration useful; if you have topics you would like to see covered on the DemoCast, please let us know! As always, thank you for listening!
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Welcome to episode 26 of the #IACast! This episode was recorded on November 9, 2016. Listen to this podcast to hear Michael, Jessica, Daniel, and Jason discuss the following topics:
As always, if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with friends! Also, you can reach us on social media, or email us with feedback! Thank you for listening!
We’ve already talked about how VoiceOver works with the Touch Bar on the new MacBooks, but what about low vision users? How could Apple possibly make items on such a tiny screen usable by the visually impaired? It’s called Touch Bar Zoom, and we’re going to tell you all about it.
Much like Zoom on the Mac, Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, Touch Bar Zoom magnifies elements, making them easily accessible to everyone. Since the Touch Bar is small, Apple opted to show a zoomed version on screen whenever it’s needed. Once the user has selected an option, the icons disappear from screen.
To disable Touch Bar Zoom, follow the steps listed above, and deselect the checkbox.
Note: Touch Bar Zoom is not available while VoiceOver is running, due to conflicting gestures.
To show the Touch Bar on screen, hold one finger on the Touch Bar. Note: Simply tapping it will not work.
If the version of the Touch Bar shown on screen is either too small or too large, you can adjust the zoom level. This is done by holding down the command key, and performing the pinch to zoom gesture on the Touch Bar. Just as it does on iOS, bringing the two fingers closer together (pinching) will zoom out, and spreading the fingers apart will zoom in.
Holding one finger on the Touch Bar will show it on screen. Then, slide your finger to the item you wish to select. The circle surrounding it on screen will change color, and then you can lift your finger. Alternatively, you may split-tap items to select them. To do this, touch and hold an icon you wish to select, then tap the Touch Bar once with another finger.
When the new Macs were just rumors, we were concerned that low vision users would be left out in the cold. However, we really should have known better. Regardless of what accessibility features a user needs, the Touch Bar is completely accessible. We wish Touch Bar Zoom would work with VoiceOver, but we believe this is a great start. We cannot wait to get our hands on the new MacBooks!
Featured image from iMore
Have you ever traveled to a destination and had difficulty finding your luggage? Tile, a new device with a mobile app aims to fix this issue is now available, but is this solution accessible? Lets take a look at the app and the devices themselves.
•What is a Tile?A Tile is a small device that is sure. It has the word Tile on the device, and the e is a button to press to find your phone or pair the device with your phone. There is no tactile way of knowing where this button is, so I simply pressed on the device until I found it since it is very small.
There is also a round hole in the device to add the device to your key ring so you could use it to find your keys, or attach the device to another object.
The Tile does not have a place to charge the device, so when the device runs out of battery power then it is dead. Tiles use Bluetooth LE, which stands for low energy to be found only when called upon. They use very low amounts of energy, so the battery should last for years.
Any device running the Tile app that supports Bluetooth LE is also a Tile. You can find your iPhone or iPad that is paired to a tile by pressing the e on the Tile device.
The Tile app is how you set up your tile devices with your phone. To use this app, Bluetooth must be on, and you must have a connection to the Internet.
Once you start the app you will need to sign up or sign in. I did not do this portion of the review with VoiceOver, so if someone could add their experience with signup in the comments then we will have a better understanding of this part of the app.
After you sign up, you will be asked to buy a Tile or Pair one. We will assume that you already have a Tile and are going to pair it with your phone or tablet. To pair your Tile to your phone, do the following steps when you are at the correct place in setup.
While text is readable on the add screen, the buttons are not properly labeled and can be confusing.
Once a Tile is set up, you should see all of your tiles in a table view. At the time of this writing, the table view only shows button labels, and the labels that you give to your tiles during the adding process are not read by VoiceOver. You will also notice that no labels in the detail screens are read either, which makes the Tile service completely unusable to VoiceOver users. Buttons and text elements can gain focus by VoiceOver, but only the button and text label names are read instead of their contents.
While the Tile devices are a good way to find luggage and items that you can’t easily find, they do not offer a good experience at this time for VoiceOver users, and the lack of a tactile pairing button on the actual Tile make it difficult for visually impaired and blind users to even pair their devices to their phones.
Sierra has been out for awhile now, and while I haven’t had the chance to play with it as much as I would like, I have found some interesting new features and changes. If you’ve been following macOS Sierra news, or if you are using the new OS yourself, you’ll probably know about most of these. However, there’s a chance you might find a few mew gems.
First and foremost, let’s get the big one out of the way! Yes, we now have Siri, Apple’s digital assistant, in macOS Sierra. The functionality is more limited than I would like, and there are a few accessibility issues with it, but it is a great start! I can’t wait to see future improvements made to Siri on the Mac.
For more coverage on Siri in macOS, check out these articles:
Another feature we also have covered on iAccessibility is the ability to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch. This is a huge step for convenience and security, and those who have tried this feature absolutely love it!
However, there are some limitations, such as:
Some of these limitations may be show stoppers for some users, such as myself. Unfortunately, I own a 2012 MacBook Pro, so I am unable to use this feature.
One of the great features from the iPad is now available on the Mac! If supported in the app, or if you are watching video in Safari, you will be able to continue watching video while working in other apps. The video will take up a corner of your screen, and you can continue working. Even if you have little or no vision, this is a great feature, because it means your audio will continue as well! Nice!
Wait, what backs? LOL! Basically, reactions to iMessages is available in macOS. Want to know more about iMessage in iOS 10, check out this article.
In macOS, simply right click on a bubble, choose, tap backs, and then the reaction you want.
This feature is great if you need to reply to a message, but do not want to lose your train of thought and want to return to working quickly.
Yes! Finally! In macOS Sierra, you can now rearrange menu extras. Simply hold down the command key while dragging icons to rearrange them. Note: This feature does not seem to be VoiceOver accessible at this time.
Now VoiceOver users can quickly access any notifications they have waiting in an easy-to-use VoiceOver menu.
That’s right. Simply press VO+N to access new notifications. Enjoy!
This is most likely every VoiceOver user’s favorite new feature, especially if they frequent Twitter. One Row Added, One Row Added, One Row Added got annoying very quickly.
Now we have more control over what happens when the number of rows changes under the VoiceOver cursor, and it is awesome! Most users will most likely choose nothing, but you can also have a sound played or have spoken feedback as before. This is great, because there are instances in which you would want to know a row has been added, such as when adding a marker to an audio file.
Related Article: There’s an Activity for That
Take a trip through system preferences and VoiceOver Utility, and you’ll notice that some options appear to be missing, have new locations, or are worded differently. Although it is a subtle change, it is a welcome one. It helps to simplify changing preferences, and remove redundant options.
…and that’s it, at least for me! What do you think? Are there any new features I should have added? Do you think tabbed interfaces for all apps should have made it onto this list? Feel free to share your favorite features in the comments, and thanks for reading!
Like many other Apple fans, I recently upgraded to an iPhone 7 Plus! I was excited about all the new features, like the better camera, better performance, new home button, and stereo speakers. However, once I started setting it up, I found some wonderful new accessibility surprises.
Note:, These are not necessarily designed as accessibility features, but any feature which makes the hardware or software easier for people to use is a form of accessibility.
Let’s start with the new home button. As you may have heard, it is a capacitive home button on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. This means, there is no mechanical switch underneath. Instead, it measures force, and uses haptic feedback to simulate a button press.
Great, but how is this an accessibility feature?
One example of how the new home button improves accessibility is in that it cannot be pressed if the phone is off. That’s right. It doesn’t move at all! This is a new way for people who cannot see the screen to check if their phone has powered off or not.
Although I have usable vision, I have found this useful when updating my phone. It helps to know if the phone is off or just sitting on a dark screen.
Another great thing about the new home button is it does not require as much force to press it. This means anyone who has difficulty pressing hardware buttons can remove the home button from their assistive touch menu.
Lastly, an accessibility feature provided by the new home button is that it can be accessed by developers. I am not yet sure what this will look like, but it has the potential to be very useful for everyone.
The second new feature that opens up new possibilities when it comes to accessibility is the System Haptics toggle in Sounds and Haptics.
This means you will literally be able to feel when you perform certain actions. These include, but are not limited to:
I encountered haptic feedback while setting up my new iPhone, and it really was a wonderful experience.
Being a low vision user, sometimes, my aim is off and I don’t tap the toggle switches exactly, and nothing happens. Now I will know immediately if I missed or hit my target. This is also great for users whose hands shake as they will have immediate feedback when an action is performed correctly.
It’s also a joy to feel the selection change in a picker or to feel the other elements you are moving over when reordering a list. It is very helpful to me, and I believe others will find it a wonderful experience as well.
Personally, I feel this is the very beginning of what is to come, and this makes me very excited! I cannot wait to see the changes to System Haptics as the feature matures and Apple does more with it.
Note: Some haptic feedback does not occur when VoiceOver is enabled. We hope this issue is resolved soon.
What do you think? Do you have an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus? What is your favorite new feature! Let us know!
Clearly in competition with Apple’s iMessage, and other messaging services, Google recently released Allo – a messaging app for Android and iOS. Most of its features are very similar to iMessage, with a few exceptions.
First of all, as stated above, unlike iMessage, Allo is cross-platform. That means, regardless of whether you’re rocking an iPhone 7 or a samsung Galaxy S7, you will be able to use this app.
Additionally, Google’s assistant is baked right into the app. You can chat with it, play games with it, and more.
Lastly, Google will read messages sent with the service, unlike Apple’s iMessage. Note: There is a way around this, but it involves giving up most of the app’s unique features. Is that a deal-breaker? Well, that would depend on who you ask.
We have already talked about iMessage on iAccessibility, so we know it is accessible. So, how does Google Allo stack up? Is it worth using to communicate with friends? Let’s see.
The setup process is fairly straight forward. Like WhatsApp, Google Allo uses your phone number to create an account. This means you will have difficulty if you wish to message using tablets or other phones. After verifying your phone number, you are prompted to give the app access to your contacts and to send you notifications. Then you take a selfie, and add your name. And that’s it! You are all set up!
Once you’ve completed the setup process, you’ll notice there’s already a thread with Google Assistant. In this thread, there are unread messages. This is where I first began to encounter accessibility concerns on iOS, but not on Android.
The first thing Google assistant wants you to do is allow access to your location. This makes sense given the fact that the assistant can help plan a night out, among other things.
The reading of messages in this thread by VoiceOver is quite erratic. Some messages are read at least twice and out of order. I quickly learned that it is better to flick rather than to explore the screen by touch.
The smart replies are completely accessible, and I had no problems with those.
However, in some replies from the assistant, VoiceOver will get stuck in a continuous loop. For example, when asking what can you do.
Talkback, on the other hand, has none of these issues as far as I could tell. I was even able to successfully play Tic-Tac-Toe with Talkback running on Android. That was a lot of fun, and it was accessible, too!
I did appreciate the attempt by Google to make the conversation with Google Assistant more like chatting with a friend, but it was a little creepy at times. For example, it wants to know where you are and more about you. For me, it felt a little like talking to a stalker.
So how about chatting with a friend?
Well I tried that too. The same messaging issues that plague the Google Assistant message thread also affect any other threads you have. The most annoying thing for me is constantly hearing VoiceOver say, “double tap and hold to open message edit menu.” I do not know what that means. With all the double tapping and holding I did, I could not make any “message edit menu” appear.
One neat thing that Google Allo has over iMessage for me is that the quality of audio messages is so much better! I get why Apple uses low-quality recording, but it is such a disappointment. similar to Apple’s iMessage, you double tap and hold on the “record an audio message” button and swipe up to send or left to cancel.
If text effects are your thing, you can easily do this with VoiceOver running. Simply enter text, and then double tap and hold on the send button. Without releasing the button, swipe up to make text larger and swipe down to make text smaller. Note: there is no feedback to inform you of just how large or small your text is, regardless of whether you’re sending or receiving.
You can also send your location, stickers, take a photo or video (and draw on it), or attach a photo or video from your camera roll. I was extremely disappointed to discover that taking a photo or video in the app, and sending stickers are both completely inaccessible on iOS. VoiceOver sees no elements on the screen. Android, once again, has no such issues.
There are also a few inconsistencies as far as the interface is concerned. One example is to delete a conversation on iOS, you need to double tap on the menu at the top right of the screen while you’re in the conversation. On Android, on the other hand, you long press on the conversation thread and then double tap delete.
Another inconsistency is that Android users can access quick replies in notifications, whereas that does not appear to be an option on iOS. Neither version of the app allows you to quickly write out your own response, which is disappointing.
I also tried out encrypted one-on-one chats with myself, and that worked just like any other chats. The interface is dark instead of light, which I honestly preferred, and messages can be set to expire. Also, notifications are very vague, only telling you that you have a message.
Overall, I like the app. I think it’s great if you can convince enough people to download it. You can send text messages with it, but you can’t use any of the app’s main features unless the recipient of your messages is also using Google Allo. Also, there are legitimate privacy concerns. If you’re OK with Google reading every single message you send, unless you remember to start an incognito chat, then go for it! Lastly, accessibility has room to improve, especially on iOS, but it is a very new app.
What do you think of Google Allo? Have you tried it yet? Do you plan to download it? Why or why not? Let us know!