VoiceOver commands and tutorials 2012 What VoiceOver can tell you

VoiceOver can give you the description of all the items on the screen, battery level, status, cell network signals time of day and even let you know if the orientation of your iPhone has changed.

VoiceOver Controls

Single tap to hear a description of what you have tapped

Double tap to activate

Swipe to adjust a slider

Flick to the left or right to move to the next item on screen.

Three fingers to scroll

VoiceOver will also deliver contextual information, such as the location of objects on the screen or tell you about adjoining objects. Since you are directly touching the part of the screen you want to have read out loud to you it is much easier to get the information you want faster than with other voice applications.

When you enter text on VoiceOver the letter you press is spoken to you when you touch it and then repeated again when you enter it. This is quite a tedious process but you can have VoiceOver speak the whole word instead. Flicking up and down will move the cursor to the left and right within the text for editing.

VoiceOver will try and predict the word you are typing to make the typing experience less stressful. I find this process very arduous and would rather use a dictation app like Dragon instead.

It uses sound effects to alert you when certain apps are open and can also lower the background music so that you can hear VoiceOver more clearly. When you select something a black rectangle shows on that item.

VoiceOver Adjustments

There are a variety of adjustments you can make to VoiceOver so that it is customized to your needs. You can adjust the speaking rate so it is as slow or quick as you like.

Languages offered

VoiceOver comes in 21 languages: Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Dutch, English (US), English (UK), English (Australian), Finnish, French (Canada), French (France), German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean,

Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish.

Compatible Apps

iTunes

Safari

Mail

The Rotor

Place two fingers on the iPhone and turn them and you get a dial-like set of options

for VoiceOver. This allows you to flick up or down to move through only the text

you desire.

The Rotor is especially useful for navigating through a webpage, and options include:

Lines

Heading

Form Controls

Tables

Characters

How to delete contacts on the I phone

Article

Posted by Everette Bacon — February 14, 2012

1. Move to the bottom left of your phone’s screen and double tap on “phone.”

2. Slide your finger left to right until reaching “contacts” and double tap

this choice.

3. Move to the top left and slide down to locate the contact to delete. If

it is not on the first screen, use the table index to locate the one to

delete.

The table index is activated by:

B. Flick one finger down and you will hear “table index.”

C. Keep flicking one finger down the right side which will move through the

alphabet.

D. When reaching the letter that would contain the desired contact, move to

the left side of the phone.

E. Move down through the available contacts and double tap your choice.

4. Now you’ve located the contact to delete and have it opened, move to the

top right and locate “edit.” Double tap this button.

5. Swipe up with three fingers once.

6. Move to the bottom left and move up a finger with to “delete.” Double tap

this button.

7. Move back to the bottom left again and move up about two finger widths

and tap delete again. The contact is now gone and you are placed back into

your contact list again.

Double tap the contact from the all contacts list

Hit the edit button on upper right

Swipe up with 3 fingers and the delete button is on the bottom left.

I phone and I pad downloads

Article

iphonevip@yahoogroups.com

Mailing list submitted by chris hallsworth

Date: Sunday, January 08, 2012 5:23 AM

From a later version of iOS 4 and all versions of iOS 5, including the

current release, it is possible to automatically download new items you

download from the store. How it works is if you download a new app from

within iTunes on your computer, it also downloads to your other device(s),

wirelessly, via iCloud. Here is how you set it up:

1. On your iOS device, go to settings, then general, then store.

2. On your computer, and using a screenreader, assuming you are using iTunes

for Windows, open the preferences dialogue box with ctrl-comma.

3. tab to the general button

4. right arrow to the store button and press the spacebar to activate it.

5. Make your selections then click ok.

Comparing Ebook Readers for Your iDevice

Article

Posted by Deborah Armstrong — November 07, 2011

iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. I’ve provided links to the app store for each of them.

From that link you can read a description, link directly to the iTunes page for acquiring

that app, either on your iDevice directly or from within iTunes and you can also

go directly to the app developer’s page. Additionally you can read user reviews.

For this report, I’ve tested all the apps with VoiceOver and chatted with sighted

and low-vision friends to get their comments. I’ve also read online reviews to learn

something about the app’s layout and features.

Note that as apps get updated, access may improve or disappear. This report is current

as of November, 2011. Please comment if you find any inaccuracies.

Blio

Works well with either VoiceOver or Zooms. Has some great features for low-vision

so you can have Blio read out loud without even needing VoiceOver. Has a built-in

bookstore and supports many smaller publishers with interesting offerings. Supports

books with visually rich content, and a variety of views for best experiencing the

book.

OverDrive Media Console – Library eBooks and Audiobooks

your local public library. The epub books it downloads are all text-based, so there

is no problem reading them with VoiceOver. The audio books it downloads are MP3,

and play within the app. After the loan period expires, the downloaded books are

automatically removed from the device; there’s no worry about overdue fees and forgetting

to return a book to the library.

Kindle

Unfortunately, this app has no accessibility features. It currently is not compatible

have found this app easier to see on an iPad than struggling with the low contrast

of an actual Kindle ebook reader. The free app does give existing Kindle users a

way to get to their content using an iDevice, and its interface is reported to be

easy and intuitive. The WhisperSync technology means you can read a book on several

devices and not loose your place.

Nook

This is the app that compliments the Barnes and Noble Nook reading device, but it

Like Kindle, it synchronizes easily with other Nook apps on the Mac or PC and an

existing Nook user will want to have this app on his iDevice so he can read the same

content there. Note that Nook does let you change the background color — unlike many

other readers, making it easier to adjust contrast for people with minimal visual

limitations. Also note that the former EReader app is now discontinued and Nook supposedly

supports all the formats that the older Barnes and Noble ereader used to support.

In my testing I was disappointed that many accessible commercial ebooks that can

be purchased from fictionwise.com are now inaccessible through this Nook interface.

If you have a fictionwise bookshelf and use VoiceOver, you’ll probably want to skip

this app for now.

iBooks

but at least it is a no-cost and hassle-free download from the app store. iBooks

probably gives the best overall reading experience for the VoiceOver user. Access

was not an afterthought and you can always swipe down with two fingers to read continuously

from wherever you start. Turningg pages, searching, selecting text, using the dictionary

or accessing another portion of the book through the table of contents also works

quite well visually or through use of VoiceOver. The built-in store has thousands

of free classic books and adds new commercial titles every day. Prices tend to be

a bit higher than Kindle or Nook, but not as expensive as buying the printed book.

Free samples are often 50 pages long. iBooks lets you also read

PDF

files you can transfer through iTunes or DropBox, and any

with underlying text will read fine with VoiceOver.

PDF

files which have images and no text, will of course not be accessible.

Formerly RFB

&D, Learning Ally offers a library of textbooks and professional materials for print-impaired

students. These human narrated audio books are recorded by volunteers. You can move

to a specific page, heading or chapter using Daisy navigation, but the books contain

no text. Many figures, photos and diagrams are described by the volunteer readers.

Currently, the app is $19.95. It goes without saying that it works with VoiceOver.

Read2Go

members access to its entire content. You can browse and search the bookshare library

from within the app. These books are also Daisy, and let you navigate by page or

section, but the quality of the books varies because many were scanned in by members.

A growing number of books are superb quality however as they were directly provided

by the publishers. These books do not expire and will remain on your device until

you delete them. In the United States membership is free for students. The app works

with Voiceover but also has built-in higher quality voices which work best when VoiceOver

is turned off. For faster response, the built-in voice can be disabled, while VoiceOver

is used to read. The app also lets you change fonts and contrast and works well with

zooms.

Daisy Worm

Note that these people create unprotected Daisy books for their own patrons that

have full text, full audio, but the audio is read by a computerized voice. Their

library is open to anyone in any country but they obey the copyright restrictions

of your particular region. Because this app is primarily intended for reading the

Daisy books they provide, it will not read Daisy variants such as offerings from

Bookshare or Learning Ally. Though it supports only the older Daisy 2.2 format, it

works well with VoiceOver and is not as complex as other Daisy reading software.

InDaisy

Another Daisy reading app, that does support Bookshare, as well as Daisy from a variety

bugs than other Daisy reading apps. Note it will not read Daisy from Learning Ally

because those titles are in a protected format. Several tutorials are available on

the net for using this app with VoiceOver.

Audible

A free app which gives you access to thousands of commercial audiobooks all downloadable

books by section or chapter, but they aren’t Daisy, and there is no text. Many best-sellers,

radio documentaries, magazines and commedy as well as a variety of books for children,

christian literature and even sexually explicit x-rated reading material. Note that

these books must be purchased. The app is quite accessible, and recent improvements

have made it even more accessible.

Audiobooks

Originally this app offered only free audiobooks: classic literature typically recorded

by the Librivox project in the public domain. However they now offer some commercial

selections you can purchase. There is both a paid and a free version of this app.

It works reasonably well with VoiceOver but is not as easy to use as Audible.

Cobo Ebooks

This free app focuses on free or low-cost ebooks and social networking among book

readers. It makes it easy to share book passages with friends, for example. Advertises

that it gives you access to over a million free books. Seems to work OK with voiceover,

but is not as easy to use as some other ebook apps.

Stanza

This is the oldest of the ebook reading apps and has millions of loyal fans. The

repositories. It also gives access to many commercial ebook vendors including technical

publishers like O’Reilly. All books are in the Epub format and read well with VoiceOver

though the interface is not quite as attractive or seamless as iBooks. Stanza is

very accessible and efficient to use. It does not have as many customizable display

options as other ebook readers, but its companion app for the PC makes it easier

to convert most any unprotected ebook on your PC to epub and transfer it directly

to your iDevice.

Google Ebooks

Google has long enabled sighted users to browse both public domain and commercial

books online by looking at images of the book’s pages, and by searching for specific

text. But only the non-copyrighted books were offered in epub format, which is text-based

and accessible to screen reading software. This app which now also offers access

to the newly opened google ebook store, seems to follow this pattern. Books that

are text-based can be read with VoiceOver but are much easier to access through iBooks,

OverDrive or Stanza. Books that are image-based are still not accessible.