IFocus Program Tips on Using the Vision Accessibility Features in ios introducing Alex in ios douglas Walker

Introducing Alex in iOS 8

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker, and I am an instructor of assistive technology here at Hadley School for the Blind. Today, we are going to be looking at introducing Alex. We’re using the iPhone 6+ for today’s demonstration, but fear not, all these same features are going to work whether you’re using the iPhone, the iPad, or the iPod touch. Okay. So part of the big news when it comes to the new iOS 8 software is that we now have a new voice. Yes, the Alex voice on our Mac has finally come to our iOS devices.

Okay, so lets head right over to our voiceover settings, so we’ll go ahead and flick to our settings menu here.

Settings. Double tap to open.

And then we just need to single finger double tap to activate our settings, so we’ll do just that, we’ll single finger double tap.

Settings.

All right. Now all of our accessibility options are found under our general button here, so we will just right flick until we we get to this general button, so I’ll right flick through the screen until we hear general.

Airplane mode on. Wi-Fi off. Bluetooth off, cellular.

We’re just flicking to the right.

Notifications. Control center. Do not disturb. General button.

All right. And here’s our general button. So we’ll just need to single finger double tap to open our general options here.

General. Settings. Back button.

Okay. We’re in our general options now, and we will need to right flick until we get to our accessibility button, so we just right flick.

General. Heading.

Looking for accessibility.

Software update. Siri button. Spotlight search. Hand off and suggested apps. Accessibility button.

All right. So here’s our accessibility button and activating this is going to open a list of all of our accessibility options here, so we’ll just single finger double tap to open it. So I’ll single finger double tap.

Accessibility. General. Back button.

Okay, so here we are in a list, again, of all of our accessibility options. Now, our voiceover options is where we want to go to find our new speech. So and it’s the first item in the list, so we’ll just right flick until we find our voiceover button, so we’ll just right flick.

Accessibility. Heading. Vision heading.

There’s our vision heading there so we’ll flick to voiceover. Okay, so here’s our voiceover button, and we heard voiceover announced, that it is turned on. Okay, so let’s go ahead and single finger double tap to open our voiceover settings here so we’ll single finger double tap.

Voiceover. Accessibility. Back button.

Now we’ll need to right flick a few times to find our speech button in this list, because that is where we’re going to find our new Alex voice, so we’ll just right flick until we find speech, so we’ll go ahead and right flick. There’s a bunch of stuff on this page, so bear with us as we flick through these.

Voiceover. Heading. Voiceover on.

A bunch of instructions here. I’m right flicking.

Slide three fingers to scroll. Voiceover practice. Speaking rate. Speaking rate. Speak tense. Use pitch change. Use sound effects. Speech button.

Okay. And here we are on speech, so we’ll just single finger double tap to open our speech settings, so we’ll just single finger double tap.

Speech. Voiceover. Back button.

Now our speech options have opened and we’re actually looking for our first button on this page. So we’ll right flick until we find it here, so I’m going to flick to the right.

Speech. Heading.

There’s our heading there.

Default dialect. English, US, default button.

And there is our…

Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.

All right, excuse me for interrupting there. Here’s our default dialect button though. Now we’ll just single finger double tap on this to open up all of our voice options here, so we’ll single finger double tap here.

English. Speech. Back button.

Okay, now our speech options have opened here, and we’ve been placed on the back button in the top left corner of our screen. Now this screen simply gives us a list of all the different voices for our English dialect here that we’re able to choose as our default voiceover voice. And since we chose English, of course, as our default language, when we first set up our device, we get a list of different English voices and dialects, which to choose from. So let’s just start right flicking through the screen to see what this looks like here. And so we’ll just right flick.

English heading.

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

Edit button.

Now, there’s an edit button in the top right hand corner of our screen here. Now we would use this edit button if we wanted to delete any of these buttons from our list, you know, after we had downloaded, but we’ll just right flick into our list now so let’s go ahead and right flick.

English, US. Heading.

And here’s our English US heading. Now under this heading, we’re going to have three voices, and which we’re able to choose here. So we’ll just right flick to check them out here, so we’ll go ahead and flick to the right.

Selected. Default.

All right, and there we have our default voiceover voice, which is what you’re hearing right now. Now most people refer to this voice as Samantha. Which is kind of a popular screen reader voice which we’ve all come to know and love. And as we heard, it’s currently selected, of course, like we said, as our default there, so let’s right flick to check out these other two choices there that we have, so we’ll just right flick.

Enhanced quality Using 156 megabytes. Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.

All right, now this is our enhanced quality voice, and selecting this will give us a much more robust sounding Samantha voice. Of course, we also heard that this will require 156 megabytes of storage space to download, so if storage space is an issue, we might need to just stick with the default voice there However, we already have this one downloaded here. So let’s just single finger double tap to check it out. Let’s single finger double tap.

Selected. Enhanced quality. Using 156 megabytes.

All right, and there we go, and it’s just a little bit more robust, it sounds a little fuller, the voice does. Okay, so enough of this. Let’s right flick one more time to find our new Alex voice here, so we’ll just right flick.

Alex. Using 869 megabytes. Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.

All right, now Alex is a very large file and what we mean by that is it will take up 869 megabytes of space if you download it, so again, if storage space is a concern for you, we might want to stick with our default Samantha voice there. However, we’ve already downloaded Alex to this device. So we’ll just single finger double tap to select it, so we’ll do that, single finger double tap here.

Selected. Alex. Using 869 megabytes.

And there he is. Now Alex has been around, like we said, for a long time on the Mac, so it really is nice to hear him on the iPhone. Now, to truly appreciate Alex, though, of course we need to hear him in action because guess what, Alex breathes, right? Yeah, we can actually hear Alex take an occasional breath while he’s speaking, so to check this out, let’s go ahead and head over to an iBook and see how this sounds, so we’ll tap our home button here to close our settings.

Home.
Douglas Walker

All right, and…
Alex

Notes. Double tap to open.

Let’s go ahead and find out iBooks app here so hopefully…

KNFB reader. Over 40. Double, my radar, WX, Dropbox. Doprbox. WX, my radar.

I’ll find it.

Sports Center. TV Go. YouTube. IBook.

All right, I’ll…

Double tap to open.

A lot of flicking, but we eventually found it there. All right, and we’ll just single finger double tap and launch our iBooks here.

iBooks library button.

All right, so the last book that we were in just opened and surprise, because it is Winnie the Pooh. Okay, so just for demonstration purposes, right, anyway, let’s just get this book started here because we all want to hear Alex breathing. So we’ll go ahead and start our book reading here so I’ll find a place on it.

Board which had Trespassers W on it.

We’ll get Alex reading.

Board which had Trespassers W on it. When Christopher Robin asked Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather’s name and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn’t be called Trespassers W and Piglet said yes, you could. Because his grandfather was and it was short for trespassers will—

And there we go. Alex is reading and yes, Alex is breathing. And that’s pretty cool. Again, Alex has been around for a while and it’s nice to see him and it really is nice to have a high quality voice like that on our iOS devices. All right, again, my name is Douglas Walker and I am an instructor of assistive technology here at the Hadley School for the Blind. Take care and I’ll see you next time.