Techwire

Potential  Feature for App Store Would you buy a song that may or may not play, a car that may or may not fit in your garage, or a remote that could or could not work with your TV? Probably not, but a similar problem is facing VoiceOver users (and users of other built-in accessibility features) every time they look for a new app on the App Store. This user base is growing quickly due to high quality accessibility features that Apple builds into every iOS device. Currently, the App Store offers no way for users to know if the app will be accessible before hitting the buy button. For VoiceOver users, this means throwing away money if the app turns out to be inaccessible. While the issue of app accessibility has been getting a lot of buzz lately, hopefully Apple can implement some solutions to the problem before and until app accessibility is virtually ubiquitous. One way to help users know if an app is accessible before hitting the buy button is to add an accessibility report to the...

Launch Center Pro is an app for iPhone , iPad, and iPod Touch that allows users to launch apps and simple tasks directly from the app. Instead of launching Safari, navigating to the search site, and typing in your search, for instance, Launch Center Pro lets you directly search Google or Wikipedia; Launch Center Pro also can be configured  by users to set up group email, instead of having to type in the email address of each recipient. Launch Center Pro uses a simple interface to make it easy to simplify some of your common actions and launch them quickly. I frequently text my sister "where are you?" Instead of launching the Messages app, finding my sister's contact, and then typing the message, I created a Launch Center Pro action that sends a text to my sister saying, "where are you?" Now, when I want to text my sister, I just touch the icon for this action and a text saying "where are you?" is on its way to my sister. , Creating actions is easy wi...

PDF Expert 5 is a well designed PDF management app for the iPad . The app includes many useful features that allow you to read, edit, and annotate PDF documents easily. Unlike some other feature -rich apps, PDF Expert 5 does not feel cultured. The elegant design makes the app easy to use. PDF Expert is an assistive app because of its  text-to-speech integration with the added benefit of extra features. One caveat, while the app is good for non-disabled and dyslexic users, I would not recommend the app for VoiceOver users because of some VoiceOver problems I have found. Readdle , the maker of the app, should work on fixing these VoiceOver problems so blind and visually impaired can also benefit from the app.  PDF files can be imported from numerous cloud storage services including Google Drive, Drop Box and SkyDrive or using the "open-in" feature of many other iOS apps . You can also view other file types, but the built in text-to-speech reader is only available for PDF do...

Kidspiration Maps is a kid friendly mind-mapping app for the iPad . Kidspiration is similar to the Inspiration Maps, but Kidspiration includes more kid friendly templates and clipart like graphics. Kidspiration allows users to create mind mapping webs to help organize ideas and information visually. Unlike Inspiration Map s, Kidspiration allows users to insert a large variety of clipart images into their maps. Kidspiration also includes the ability to add a recorded voice note; a feature that is unfortunately missing in Inspiration Maps. Kidspiration Maps includes a large number of pre-loaded templates for reading and writing, social studies, science, and math. These templates are geared for elementary school children and range from an “all about me” web to sorting and matching activities. If no template is applicable there is an option to start a new document. One template contains a number of words and instructions to arrange the words into alphabetical order while another asks kids ...

Prizmo 2.0 for iOS was just released in the App Store. Prizmo now works on the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch. The update includes many exciting new features. The original version of Prizmo included optical character recognition ( OCR ) but did not include the ability to scan documents to a PDF or text file. The PDF files are not just images but include searchable text. Prizmo 2.0 also allows users to export the documents to other apps. To create a new document in Prizmo you can simply take a picture of multiple pages. Prizmo will automatically detect the edges of the page. In version 2.0 you no longer have to crop documents manually. Once you have captured all of the pages you can recognize the text of the document which is surprisingly fast and accurate. If the Prizmo does make a mistake you can edit the OCR zones or manually edit the text. After the text has been recognized you can email or export the document as a PDF or te...

NaviDys is a web browser for the iPad . The app allows full customization of a website's font, line spacing, letter spacing, and text size. Currently it is only available on the iPad not the iPhone or iPod Touch. While it feels very much like the built in Safari browser that comes with the iPad, NaviDys has features that make it easier to read the web. For people with low vision the ability to enlarge fonts and increase spacing is beneficial. Also, for dyslexics NaviDys includes the Dyslexie font. But using a third party browser does not come without trade offs. You cannot open links from other apps directly into NaviDys. Unlike Safari NaviDys does not include a reader  mode to remove distractions from web pages. NaviDys costs $2.99 from the App Store. Click read more below to view screenshots of NaviDys.

PDF Expert is an elegant PDF manager, viewer and annotator. The app is available for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch but the iPhone version and iPad version must be purchased separately. You can easily add PDF to the app by using the "open in" feature. Once you have PDFs in the app you can organize them into folders and sub-folders. The highlight of PDF Expert is its annotation features. PDF Expert allows you to quickly and easily add note, text, signatures, watermark stamps, images from the camera roll or audio notes to any PDF. You can search for a PDF by title or by the contents. PDF Expert also includes a passkey lock feature that allows you to protect your sensitive PDFs.  Unfortunately, PDF Expert does not include text-to-speech for PDFs. Even PDFs created on the computer cannot be read allowed. Also there is no optical character recognition feature for scanned PDFs. If these features are not important to you than PDF Expert is a great choi...

Ariadne GPS is an app for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch that allows people with visual impairments to navigate their surroundings. Ariadne GPS app is best suited for the iPad and cellular iPad because those devices have the most accurate location information. The app is fully compatible with VoiceOver allowing visually impaired users to use all features of the app. Ariadne GPS helps the user explore their surroundings by using the GPS of your iOS device to convey information about location, direction of travel and nearest favorite locations. The app can enable blind users to navigate streets, transit systems and even large buildings. When traveling on a train or a bus a blind user could set Ariadne GPS to alert them when they were getting close to their stop. A blind user could also program there classroom locations into the app in order to help navigate a large school building. As a user walks with the app can read street names and numbers. iAriadne GPS a...

Apple announced the iPhone 5 at an event today in California. The iPhone 5 includes and bigger screen, better camera, faster processor, thinner design and more. The iPhone 5 will run on iOS 6 Apple's mobile operating system which includes accessibility features such as VoiceOver , Guided Access and Speak Selection. Click here to learn more about  iOS 6 . The iPhone 5 will be available for pre-order on September 14th and for sale on September 21th starting at $199. Click read more below to view more images of the iPhone 5.

HumanWare recently released the HumanWare Communicator app for iOS devices . The app is designed to make communication between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person possible.When the conversation is started an introduction is displayed for the sighted user to read. The deaf-blind person uses a Bluetooth   braille display to type a message to a sighted person, this message appears on the screen of the iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch.  Then the sighted user can respond using the virtual keyboard and the message will appear on the refreshable braille display . The conversation can then go back and forth with the deaf-blind person typing on the braille display and the sighted user typing on the device's virtual keyboard. HumanWare describes the app as follows, " The HumanWare Communicator application is intended to establish a text conversation, through a chat window, between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person. All interaction appears both on the deaf-blind pers...