Terrie l.arnold
Begin forwarded message: From: "joe harcz Comcast" <[email protected]> Date: October 28, 2011 11:03:44 AM CDT To: <[email protected]> Subject: [acb-l] iphone and blind in the news Just goes along with some tthreads recently... Joe iPhone Opens World of Information to Visually Impaired 10/27/2011 (Updated 8:43:19 PM) (Source: Jason Weinstein) This voice... Reading emails, or letters on a keyboard... It's a voice that belongs to Ken Fernald's iPhone. And it allows the visually impaired Vice President of Binghamton's A.V.R.E - the Association for Vision Rehabilitation and Employment - to conduct business in much the same way as a fully-sighted person. "Somebody with a vision impairment is going to struggle with access to information. This helps level the playing field ever so slightly. But it gives people with a vision impairment or who are totally blind the same access to information that somebody who is totally sighted has," said Fernald. When Fernald runs his fingers over an email - a voice reads it. Over a keyboard - a voice reads a letter until Fernald double-taps the one he wants. "Somebody who is visually impaired or blind can use the phone using either large print or voice output as I do," said Fernald. Fernald has been using his iPhone for a year. The big reason - all of the features that make it so useful to the visually impaired are already built into the phone. "It works seamlessly. There's no glitches, where the other phone I was using had a third-party application where sometiems it didn't synch up right. Sometimes the voice activation didn't work well," said Fernald. The newest iPhone 4GS features a greater voice-command system - giving a user more features based more on speech than typing. And as much as his iPhone has helped Fernald with his flow of information - it's the continued march of technology that has him looking toward the future. "The level of accessibility that's available today versus 10-15 years ago is just amazing. So I look forward to the future and what comes next," said Fernald. VIEW VIDEO FOX 40 WICZ TV - iPhone Opens World of Information to Visually Impaired [10/27/2011] - News, Sports, Weather, Contests and More - Binghamton, NY http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=20752 _______________________________________________ acb-l mailing list [email protected] http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-l
_______________________________________________ ATI (Adaptive Technology Inc.) A special interest affiliate of the Missouri Council of the Blind http://moblind.org/membership/affiliates/adaptive_technology
