[mac4theblind] Re: Article: Reviewing the 3 most popular free news apps from a Voiceover and braille users point of view
- From: David Hilbert Poehlman <poehlman1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: mac4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 15:02:58 -0500
tru and there are a bunch more apps for news that are great.
On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:14 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
It almost just makes more sense to stick with Safari. You get a better
selection of news to read, and you don't waste so much bandwidth. After all,
many new sites actually have pretty good versions for mobile phones. They are
accessible and a lot easier to handle and they would be on the computer for
example.
Regards
Justin Harford
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 2, 2012, at 5:15 AM, Scott Davert <scottslistmail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> taken from:
> http://www.applevis.com/blog/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-review-3-most-popular-news-apps-perspective-voiceover-and-braille
> One of the many things that one can do with a mobile phone is keep up
> with current news events. For users of iPhones who are blind and
> deaf-blind, this is no different. But are the most popular apps
> accessible? Below, the three most popular free news apps for the iOS
> platform are reviewed for their usability with VoiceOver and Braille
> displays.
>
> The three apps evaluated are: NYTIMES (the New York Times Company),
> CNN (CNN Interactive Group Inc.), and Fox News (Fox News Digital).
> These were the top 3 free apps in the news category in the App Store
> on January 25, 2012. All 3 apps were found to be updated to the latest
> version on the date specified above. These reviews were done utilizing
> an iPhone 4 (CDMA) running iOS 5.0.1 and a Refreshabraille 18. All
> apps were tested using their default settings. The below information
> does not endorse any news media outlet or any of the three apps listed
> below.
>
> NYTIMES:
> The biggest difference between this app and the other two reviewed is
> that once installed, NYTIMES is not found on the home screen, rather,
> it is found in the Newstand folder. Also unlike the other apps, this
> one appears just like the newspaper does.
> Perhaps the biggest issue with this app has nothing to do with
> accessibility. Rather, it's one that anyone who does not pay the fee
> for premium content would most likely complain about. When the app is
> started, it will download all of the content of the paper to your
> iDevice. However, the amount of content one can access as a free user
> of the app is restricted mainly to the headlines. This both takes a
> great deal of time and also consumes bandwidth. If one is on a 200 MB
> data plan, this could become an issue, particularly since there are
> images with each story. Each time a user of the app refreshes the
> content in the app, it downloads approximately
> 32MB of data. When accessing the settings within the app itself and
> through settings/NYTIMES on the iDevice, there is no option to choose
> which sections of the paper one would like to download. The only
> content related options available are whether to store content on the
> phone (known as offline mode), and to disable downloading of images.
>
> From an accessibility standpoint, this app is well put together. All
> buttons are labeled, and both speech output and braille work nicely.
> There are several different ways of browsing articles, all of which
> can be found on the Doc portion of the screen in the form of tabs.
> From left to right, the tabs are: Top News, Most Emailed, Favorites,
> and Sections. When one double taps one of these tabs, once the app has
> updated all content, the screen itself fills with the results of that
> selected tab. By default, when the app is launched, Top News is always
> selected. if you try to click on certain content within a portion of
> the app that has yet to be updated, it will launch another story from
> the previous time the app updated its list of stories.
>
> At the top of the screen, you will find a settings button where you
> can log in as a premium user, and next to that will be the information
> related to when the app was last updated and whether an update is in
> progress. If you would like to refresh the content, if you close the
> appp out with the App Switcher, you can then reopen it and the content
> will refresh automatically. It is also possible to refresh the content
> by using the pull down VoiceOver gesture if you do not wish to restart
> the app.
>
> Starting with the Top News tab, one can navigate from story title to
> story title by flicking left and right throughout the stories
> available. To read the article, simply double tap on the title and you
> will be taken to the screen containing that article. You will be
> presented with a few options before the article itself such as the Top
> Stories button previous,, next, etc, along with images that can be
> skipped across by flicking right. Once the story itself is
> encountered, it can be read using standard VoiceOver or braille
> display commands. There are also options at the bottom of each article
> to make the story a favorite, share it on Facebook, and to adjust the
> text size. One can then navigate through the Top Stories section of
> the app utilizing the next and previous buttons or by returning to the
> Top Stories section by activating the back button and continuing to
> browse article titles.
>
> The other tabs behave much in the same manor with one exception. When
> selecting an article from the Most Emailed or from within any of the
> sections of the actual paper, one can only read the first few
> sentences of any given article. The user can double tap the article to
> view 20 articles each month for free, but must pay beyond that 20
> article limit. The app then indicates that the user must pay to have
> access to the entire article. As the author was uninterested in paying
> for content that could be accessed freely through other news sources,
> the premium content was not investigated. However, given that the
> lay-out of the rest of the tabs and subsections is the same as the Top
> Stories tab, it is reasonable to assume that the premium content is
> accessible with braille and VoiceOver.
>
> CNN
> When launching this app, it will automatically grab the latest news
> headlines. At the top of the screen are the articles featured in the
> Headlines section. Each Story is displayed twice when flicking across
> this portion of the app. The first of these two is a link that allows
> the user to view the story in Safari, and the second actually launches
> the article from within the app. When an article is selected, one is
> presented with the back button and an action button before the article
> itself. Activating the Action button gives the user the ability to
> either share this story on Facebook or to save the story for later
> viewing. After all of the news headlines, there are a series of
> buttons which control the category of content being viewed. These
> buttons are: Top Stories, World, U.S., Politics, Justice, and
> Entertainment. VoiceOver indicates that these buttons are all dimmed,
> meaning that they are unavailable, but this is misleading. Activating
> any of the buttons will present the user with the content available in
> each section. Navigation is done with each section as outlined above
> with the Headlines button.
>
> At the bottom of the app, there are a set of 4 tabs: Headlines, My
> CNN, Video, and TV. The Headlines tab is selected by default, which
> was the tab just discussed.
>
> The My CNN tab gives you local information once you have it configured
> to any place you desire. The news articles from that area are
> displayed, and one can double tap on each article to view it. However,
> as most of these articles are from different sources, ease of access
> and whether to view the article requires you to have an account varies
> greatly. The weather portion of this app is only somewhat accessible.
> It will give the current conditions and temperature, but when looking
> at the provided 10 day forecast, each day is labeled as "today" and
> only the sky condition is read/displayed. So the only way to tell what
> day the app is referring to is by counting the number of days from the
> actual day you’re currently in, and even if you decide to do that, the
> only part of the forecast you’ll be getting is the sky conditions.
>
> The video tab is very accessible and each video has a title and then
> the length of the video is displayed. Although the videos streamed
> with some difficulty on 3G, they worked well on a Wi-Fi connection.
> The Live TV tab only works if you have a cable or satellite TV
> subscription, which the author does not, so this feature was not able
> to be reviewed.
>
> Finally, there is the iReport. This is a tab from CNN where viewers
> can submit their own content. There are a lot of different types of
> stories submitted, and accessing the content works well with Voiceover
> and braille. The buttons are all clearly labeled and easy to navigate.
>
> Fox News:
> Upon launching this app, the city you have set for your current
> location is displayed. To the right of this, the current local
> temperature is shown, and flicking further to the right will display a
> series of buttons which are dimmed. Just like the buttons found in the
> CNN app that are dimmed according to VoiceOver, these buttons are
> actually active. They are: Top Stories, U.S., World, Politics, and
> Entertainment. By default, the Top Stories button is selected.
> Whichever button you select, the titles of each article are not
> accessible. Flicking right from here, the Voiceover and Braille user
> will find nothing, although VoiceOver does click, alerting the user
> that they are moving over a different icon when flicking left and
> right. However, with Braille, there is no indication that you have
> moved from story to story, and the Braille display simply goes blank.
> Double tapping the article will bring that article up and it is easy
> to read, but you must double tap on each article to find out what it
> is. Below the unlabeled articles, one will find five tabs: Articles,
> Videos, Slide Shows, Shows, and More. When you launch the app, you
> will be put in the Articles tab.
>
> Starting at the top left of the screen when the app is first launched,
> will be the city you are currently in. Once you double tap the city,
> you are presented with a “more, back” button, then an edit box to
> search for any city or state’s weather forecast. When continuing to
> flick right, the current conditions for this city are readable,
> including temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more. Beyond this is
> the ten day forecast. VoiceOver presents each day, but no information
> about that day. Double tapping the day does nothing. However, beyond
> the listing of days, there are high and low temperatures listed. While
> not extremely accessible, one can keep track of how many days’ worth
> of high and low temperatures have been encountered, and count them.
> For example, if I have encountered 3 days of high and low
> temperatures, and today is Wednesday, that means the fourth set of
> these must be for Saturday. However, this only gives the user the
> forecast high and low temperature. There is no way to find out what
> the sky conditions will be, whether there will be a chance of
> precipitation, or any hazardous weather expected.
>
> Beyond the ten day forecast, and beyond any section of this app, there
> is an “info” button which will give you the option to share stories
> with friends through Facebook or Twitter if logged in, information
> about the app itself, along with a redeem button, after pressing the
> done button which is located in the upper left hand corner, you’re
> returned to the screen you were at previously. Beyond the info button,
> there is an option to refresh your GPS location, which will retrieve
> your local forecast if it’s different than your current one. A button
> to refresh your GPS status which will see if you’re in a different
> location or not. If you are, the new local forecast will be displayed
> in the same format.
>
> The back button, as with all apps, is located at the upper left hand
> corner of the screen. In this case, the back button will not take you
> back to the previous screen, however, but instead takes you to the
> More tab. For the sake of following the structure of the app, however,
> we will continue by moving right from the Articles tab to the Videos
> Tab. As with the titles of articles not being accessible, VoiceOver
> shows the same behavior for all five tabs. You cannot get article
> titles, show video titles, show names, or any other information a
> sighted person can simply look at before deciding whether they would
> like to view specific content.
>
> At last, we have the More tab. There is an edit button, followed by
> favorites, weather, and audio. Double tapping the Edit button gives
> you a list of tabs, but once you select a tab, there is nothing to
> configure according to VoiceOver. There was also nothing in my
> favorites, since I couldn’t even read any of the article titles to see
> if I was interested. The final item with the More tab is Weather,
> which has already been covered. Of the three apps, this one is clearly
> the least accessible.
>
> Conclusion:
> While it’s great that most people can simply install apps on their
> iOS devices and have access on the go, the gap in terms of
> accessibility creates issues for VoiceOver and braille users. Just
> like reviewing any type of application in a comparison, they all have
> their advantages and disadvantages. While the NYTIMES app is fully
> accessible, you must pay extra for premium content. The CNN app is
> accessible and is free. However, if CNN is not what the reader desires
> to choose as their favorite media outlet, they may have very little in
> the way of choices. Fox News, sadly, is quite inaccessible with
> VoiceOver and braille. Given the fact that Fox News is a popular media
> outlet, and the 3rd most popular free news app in the app store, it is
> a shame to see that they are denying equal access to VoiceOver and
> Braille users. Just like in any form of technology, blind and
> deaf-blind users are being forced to choose what media they access
> based on whether the actual delivery method is usable.
>
> Scott Davert
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