IFocus 10 Its All About the Watch

2015-05-28 iFocus 10 Its All About the Watch

Douglas Walker

Larry Muffett

Welcome to Seminars at Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett, I’m a member of Hadley’s Seminars team, and I also work in curricular affairs. Today’s seminar topic is the tenth in our quarterly iFocus series entitiled, It’s All About the Watch. Our presenter today, as usual, is Hadley access technology instruction specialist and idevice trainer Douglas Walker.

All right. Here we are with out tenth quarterly iFocus seminar. And the big news, of course, is a certain new product release from a certain California-based company. Okay. Today is, of course, all about the Apple Watch. Even though it’s been out for about a month, it’s still a very new device and people are still very curious as to exactly what it can do, so today we plan to discover all of the accessibility features that are built right into our watch. And then we’ll actually end up navigating through our watch and checking out exactly what it can do for us. Now, some of the gestures are very similar to how we typically navigate through our other idevices, so if you’re fairly proficient at using Zoom or Voiceover on your iPhone or your iPad, then the learning curve shouldn’t really be that big a deal to you.

Apple watch. Double tap to open.

Okay, and we’ll just single finger double tap to open it.

Apple watch. My watch. Heading.

All right, here we are in our Apple Watch app on our iPhone and we have been placed on our My Watch heading at the top center of our watch’s menu here. Again, this menu is going to look very similar to our iPhone settings menu and we’ll find our watch’s accessibility settings, you guessed it, under our general button. So how about we just right flick until we find our general button? We’ll just right flick.

App layout. Button.

Okay. Here’s our app layout button. Now activating this will give us the ability to control exactly how our apps will appear on our watch. And so that’s pretty great. But we’re headed to our accessibility settings, so we will just right flick.

Airplane mode. Button.

And here is our Airplane mode button. Now we’re able to turn our watch, or put our watch in Airplane mode right here. However, we can also choose to have our watch’s airplane mode sync with our iPhone, so if we place our iPhone in airplane mode, then our watch automatically goes into airplane mode, as well. And I really like that feature. Okay, so let’s just right flick.

Apple watch button.

Okay, so here’s our Apple Watch button. And this is where we can unpair our watch if we need to, and so we’re not going to do that, so how about we just right flick?

Notifications button.

Okay, so here’s our notifications button. Now this is where we’ll be able to control the types of notifications that we receive on our watch. So we have the ability to turn on and off notifications such as calendar alerts, text message alerts, email alerts, and maybe our reminders. I mean, we really do have a lot of control over the types of alerts that we get here. All right, so let’s just right flick. We’ll just right flick.

Glances button.

All right, here’s our glances button. Now, we’ll be checking out exactly what glances are in just a bit, when we’re using our watch. So let’s just right flick past this for now. So we just right flick.

Do not disturb button.

All right, and here is our do not disturb button and you guessed it, we have the ability to mute all of our watch’s notifications. Of course just like our airplane mode feature, we have the ability to have our do not disturb feature mirror our iPhone settings as well. And that can be really handy for us. Okay, so let’s just right flick again, so we’ll just right flick.

General button.

All right. Here we are on our general button and this is exactly where we want to be, because this is where we’ll find our accessibility settings, but before we activate our general button, let’s look at just one more button on this screen, so we’ll just right flick one more time, so we’ll right flick.

Brightness and text size button.

Great. Here’s our brightness and text size button, and if we were to activate this, we really do have a lot of control over the text size on our watch, and so that is really nice. Okay, so how about we head back to our general button so let’s just left flick again. So we’ll just left flick.

General button.

Great, and we’ll just single finger double tap to open our general settings here, so we’ll just single finger double tap.

General. My watch. Back button.

All right, so we’re getting there. Our general settings have opened and we’ve been placed on our back button in the top left corner of our screen, so we would just right flick until we find our accessibility settings on the screen. And we’ll just right flick.

General heading.

And there’s our heading, so we would just right flick again.

About button.

Okay. Here we find our about button, and this is where we will find all of the details regarding our watch, so we’ll just right flick again.

Software update button.

Okay, and here’s where we will have the ability to update our watch’s software. So just like updating our iPhone, it should be easy to keep our watch updated as well to its latest software. Okay, so we’ll right flick a couple more times, so let’s just right flick.

Automatic downloads button.

Okay, and here we find our automatic downloads button, now this feature gives us the option for having our apps automatically download to our watch. Now I prefer to have a bit more control over my apps that are synced. So I have this feature turned off at the moment. All right, so we’ll just right flick.

Watch orientation. Left wrist. Button.

Okay, so here’s our watch orientation and here we’ll be able to choose the wrist on which we are going to be wearing our watch. And this will be really handy for our left-handed users, as well. Oaky, and finally, if we right flick one more time, we will find our accessibility button, so we’ll just right flick.

Accessibility button.

And here we are, so we’ll just single finger double tap to open up all of our accessibility setting here, so we’ll just single finger double tap.

Accessibility. General. Back button.

Great. And here we are on our back button in the top left corner of our screen so we’ll just start right flicking through our accessibility settings to see what we have here and we’ll just right flick.

Accessibility. Heading.

Okay here’s our heading in the top center of our screen here, so we will just right flick.

Vision heading.

All right, so here’s our vision heading. So we know that everything listed here will be related specifically to our vision accessibility settings, so we’ll just right flick. We’re going to right flick.

Voiceover. On button.

Great. Here, we find our voiceover settings and as voiceover just announced, voiceover is of course turned on on our watch. So how about we just single finger double tap to open our voiceover settings and we’ll do that. We’ll just single finger double tap.

Voiceover accessibility. Back button.

Okay, so here we are on our back button, so let’s just right flick to explore all of our voiceover settings here for our watch and so we’ll just right flick.

Voiceover. Heading.

And there’s our heading in the top center of our screen again, so we’ll just right flick.

Voiceover on. Double tap to toggle setting.

And of course, here is where we would single finger double tap to toggle our watch’s voiceover on and off and we want to leave it on, so we’ll just right flick from here. So we’ll just right flick.

Voiceover speaks items on the screen.

Great. Now just like our iPhone’s settings menu, we’re given just a few voiceover gestures here. And these will help us hopefully get up and running. So we’ll just flick through these. So we’ll just flick.

Tap once to select an item.

Oaky, so we tap once or touch the screen to select an item here. We’ll just flick again.

Double tap to activate the selected item.

And just like our iPhone, we’ll single finger double tap to activate whatever item is selected. Let’s right flick again.

Swipe two fingers to scroll.

And here we swipe with two fingers to scroll. Now it’s a little bit different on our iPhone. You swipe or flick up and down with three fingers to scroll, so that gesture has been changed, of course, because our screen size is so much smaller. On our Apple Watch. Let’s flick again, see what we have here.

Speaking rate heading.

All right, so that’s it for our little hints that you get here. And just like our iPhone, it’s pretty much given just enough to be dangerous, but that’s actually just enough to move around, so let’s move on from here. All right. Here we find an adjustable bar for changing our speaking rate, so let’s flick to that. We’ll right flick one more time.

Speaking rate. 50%. Adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.

All right, and we currently have ours at 50% here, which is the default for our watch. So we’ll just leave it at that and let’s right flick again. And you know, we could right flick or flick up or down to change that speaking rate there, so let’s just right flick.

Voiceover volume. Heading.

All right, and here we are able to adjust voiceover and volume on our watch. And we’ll flick to that.

Voiceover volume, 80% adjustable.

There it is.

Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.

And as we heard, we can swipe up or down to adjust the value there. That’s pretty great. All right. We’re also able to use a two finger double tap and hold on our watch. And then we can slide our fingers up or down our screen to adjust our watch’s value, and we might actually take a look at that how that works in just a bit if we have time when we’re actually navigating through our watch. But for now, we’ll just right flick from here, and check our the rest of our voiceover settings, so we’ll just right flick.

Hints on. Double tap to toggle setting.

All right. And here’s our hints toggle switch. Now I have found that it is really handy to have our hints turned on when we first begin using our watch because many of our gestures are the same as they are on our iPhone. However there are some that are just a bit different, so it’s kind of nice to hear these hints when we’re first learning how to navigate our watch. And we’ll hear these in action in just a bit when we’re using our watch. So we’ll just right flick.

Screen curtain. Off. Double tap to toggle setting.

Okay, so here’s our screen curtain button, and just like our iPhone, we have the ability to have our screen blacked out or completely dark, and you know, this is really great if we need a little bit more privacy when we’re using our watch. All right, we have one more voiceover setting, so we will just right flick.

Speak on wrist raise. Off. Double tap to toggle setting.

All right, here we have our speak on wrist raise button. Now, mine is currently turned off because I don’t want voiceover to announce the time every time I raise my arm up or lift my arm. That can be, can kind of get to be quite annoying after a little while. I just prefer to have the ability to just touch my watch’s face to wake my watch up and have the time announced. Anyway, the option to speak on wrist raise is here and it’s available if we need it.

Accessibility. Back button.

That right there. And we’ll just single finger double tap to move back to our previous page here. Single finger double tap.

Accessibility. General. Back button.

Okay, here we are, back in our accessibility list, so we’ll just right flick until we get past our voiceover button. And so we’ll just right flick.

Accessibility. Heading.

Accessibility heading.

Vision heading.

That’s our vision heading again.

Voiceover on.

We’ll flick again.

Zoom off button.

Okay. Here we have our Zoom, or magnification feature. And as voiceover just announced, it’s currently turned off, so how about we just single finger double tap to open our zoom feature here so we’ll just single feature double tap.

Zoom accessibility. Back button.

Okay, here we are on our back button in the top left corner of our screen, so we’ll just right flick to explore all of our Zoom settings here. And so we’ll just right flick.

Zoom heading.

Okay, there’s our Zoom heading on the top center of our screen, so we will just right flick again.

Zoom off. Double tap to toggle settings.

All right. Again, Zoom is currently turned off, but here we have a toggle switch for turning it on and off right here. Okay, so just like our voiceover settings, we’re going to be given some hints or beginning Zoom gestures here, so let’s just flick through these to see what we have here, so we’ll just flick through these hints.

Zoom magnifies the entire screen.

And it’s just a descriptor for what zoom does there, so we’ll right flick again.

Double tap two fingers to zoom.

All right. So instead of double tapping with three fingers to zoom our iPhone when we’re on our watch, we just double tap with two fingers there to turn our magnification on, so let’s just right flick, see what the rest of these hints give us.

Drag two fingers to move around the screen.

All right, and since our screen is a little smaller, we don’t drag with three fingers, like we do on our iPhone, we just drag with two fingers around our screen to be able to move around on our screen when we’re magnified there so lets, let’s flick again.

Double tap two fingers and drag to change zoom.

Okay, so we double tap with two fingers and hold and then we push up to increase our magnification on our watch, and we’ll pull down to decrease our magnification, so those are the gestures that can quickly get us up and running when using Zoom. All right, so let’s flick again, see what we have here.

Maximum zoom level. Heading.

Okay. We have, this is our last zoom setting on the page here, so and this is our adjustable bar that gives us the ability to set our maximum zoom level. Now, this can be a huge help, because on the watch, if we get our screen size too large, it can really be very difficult at times to determine exactly where we are on our screen, so having the ability to set a maximum zoom level can really help to keep us from getting everything just way too large. All right, so that does it for our zoom feature, so let’s just back out of this screen and get back to our accessibility list here so that we can check out the rest of our accessibility settings, so we just touch our back button in the top left corner.

Back bar accessibility. Back button.

And we’ll just single finger double tap.

Accessibility. General. Back button.

All right, we’re back in our accessibility list here, so let’s just right flick past zoom and check out what else we have here, so we’ll just rick flick.

Accessibility. Heading.

And there’s our heading there.

Vision heading.

And there’s our vision heading.

Voiceover on button.

Voiceover.

Zoom. Off button.

There’s our zoom button that we just explored, so let’s flick one more time.

Grayscale off. Double tap to toggle setting.

Here we have our grayscale button. Now this could be really handy for people that might have issues with seeing or viewing color. This does a great job to strip out all the colors and just gives our screen different shades of gray here. All right. And we’ll just right flick from here. Let’s just right flick.

Bold text. Off. double tap to toggle setting.

Here we have our bold text button. Now we know that Apple loves to use fonts with really thin lines. Well, activating our bold text button will give our text a much bolder look. It’s really going to help to make the text on our watch much easier to see, so that should really help to reduce our eye fatigue. All right so let’s just right flick.

Reduced motion. Off button.

Okay, so here’s our reduced motion button. Now another thing that we know about Apple is that’ they’re all about animation and they love to make objects fly in and fly out of our screen. Now for someone with low vision, this can be, it can really make items really difficult to follow at times. Well, activating our reduced motion button can help to keep items more stationary on our screen and again, this could really help to cut down on some possible eye fatigue for us, so that’s a great feature there. Okay, so let’s go ahead and just right flick again, so we’ll right flick.

Reduced transparency. Off button.

Okay, so here’s our reduced transparency button. And another thing that Apple likes to do is to make some of our backgrounds kind of transparent. This means that we’re able to see kind of a blurred out image of what’s beneath what we actually want to see. So this really helps to activate, this really helps to turn on our background into one solid color for us. And it makes our primary screen a lot easier to see. Okay, so we only have just a few more accessibility features here, so we’ll just right flick.

On slash off labels. Off. Double tap to toggle setting.

Okay, so here we have our on-off labels button here. Now this is something that is very subtle. However, it really helps low vision users to more easily determine if a button is toggled on or toggled off. And it does this by placing a small zero by the button if it’s turned off or it places the number one on our button if it’s turned on, so it really is kind of nice to have that extra little visual cue there.