[access-uk] How Apple's iPhone can open up a whole new world - Telegraph

From: Gordon Keen <gordonkeen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 11:04:16 +0100

Although I posted a link to the original article about the blind wblogger I
think it's worth noting how this is gaining ground in the main stream media and
on the whole, while I am rather cynicla about the tone of such articles, this
can only be a positive move if it leads to other developers going the extra
mile with accessability.

Here's the article and link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8037384/How-Apples-iPhone-can-open-up-a-whole-new-world.html

Partially sighted? Hearing-impaired? There's an app for that.

Rather like the apes that crowd around the monolith in the film 2001, very few
could realise that this device would revolutionise how the hearing-challenged
would be able to communicate; only geniuses can do that.

In retrospect it seems obvious and hindsight is a wonderful chimera. The
extraordinary mass adoption of SMS and the fact that mobile phones could
vibrate when a message came through meant that some operators began to offer
special tariffs to the hearing-challenged; tariffs that remain to this day.

The smartphone is taking this process further. Text messaging is all very well,
but it doesn’t convey feeling or body language, so the University of Washington
recently began trials to develop a system that helps deaf and
hearing-challenged users to communicate using sign language over video chat.

Moreover, another group of people are also benefiting from the explosion of
apps that are available on the iPhone and it is as refreshing and beautiful as
the emancipation of the hearing-impaired.

According to a blind American man, Austin Seraphin, the iPhone "changed [his]
universe as soon as it entered it". Reading about his experiences certainly
brings a tear to the eye and means I will find it hard to ever argue against
Apple again.

Seraphin describes how his cynicism about products for the blind dissipated
when he tried out the touchpad interface with speech on the iPhone – it
immediately changed his world. Weather reports, stock prices and even stock
graphs, "which the blind had never had access to before", were easily
accessible.

But the complete killer app for Seraphin was Color Identifier [link opens in
iTunes], an app that enabled him to "hear" colours through the iPhone’s camera.
This clever piece of augmented reality software meant that he could listen to
the subtle changes in the colours of a sunset, an experience that he describes
as "psychedelic". It really is quite extraordinary.

Rather like the mobile phone engineers of yesterday who didn’t realise they had
created a device that would help the hearing-challenged, so it seems with the
makers of Color Identifier. Naming colours such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic,
Hippie Green and Opium suggests that the psychedelic may have had more to do
with other things, but who cares?

Alexander Fleming stumbled accidentally when he discovered penicillin, as have
these people. But no matter, these locked-out people have finally been allowed
in and that is a gift to humanity no less important.

[access-uk] How Apple's iPhone can open up a whole new world - Telegraph

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