Thanks for your thoughts. Spoke to my father today about getting an iPod Touch, and he says so long as I have the cash once I am settled in at my own place then I could consider buying one. But like you I'll probably need to look at it and have a ply before buying one. I mean, it sounds easy enough, but if I can have a demo then I do not have to worry about buying one, only to return or sell it because I find it difficult to use. As I have mild cerebral palsy my main concerns is whether I can not only touch the area I want to interact with, but also double tap, and do other gestures. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Many thanks.
Signed by Chris Hallsworth On 20/06/2010 12:47, Yusuf wrote:
I paid a visit to the Apple store on Upper Regents Street yesterday. Whilst the staff were knowledgeable and helpful I found the environment impossible. The store is huge and extremely noisy. There are tables with demonstration models of various Apple products. You stand at the table in order to play with the various toys. Not a particularly helpful environment for someone who is blind to really get to grips with a completely new interface, but I was determined to spend as much time as I could on examining an IPhone and an IPad. I first looked at the IPhone. I found that the icons seemed to be crushed together often leaving parts of the screen where there seemed to be nothing at all. Also I found double tapping very difficult. I'm not sure what I was doing wrongly, whether I wasn't tapping fast enough, or if my finger moved slightly between taps which meant they weren't counting as double taps, even though Voice Over was repeating the name of the item I was trying to select. After what felt like an hour, although was probably more like 15 minutes my double taps did seem to be improving, but I still found the process cumbersome and terribly frustrating. Definitely no way near the speed I can achieve on my N95. I found the IPad even harder to navigate. Because its larger than the IPhone there are even more parts of the screen with nothing. Double tapping was still a problem and I found typing with the keyboard in the notes app difficult and frustrating. I thought the IPad had a different interface than the IPhone, but either this particular model didn't or its a function that you can change in the accessibility settings. By this stage however I'd spent over half an hour and had had enough. My whole interest in the IPhone was based on the fact that I'm due an upgrade on my phone, but given my experiences yesterday I'd need quite a bit more time playing with an IPhone before I'd be comfortable even considering an upgrade. I've been trying to think back over my experiences of computers, phones and PDAs. The first computer I saw was a BBC and that would have been in the mid to late 1980s and although there have been huge changes in computers, speed, power, operating systems, the interface from a blindness perspective has changed very little. We're still using a keyboard which is pretty similar to what we would have used 20 years ago. Even with my Trekker, I've got a tactile overlay over the touch screen. The IPhones and IPads are a completely different prospect using a tactileless interface and I do have serious doubts about whether I'll be able to make that transition. I shall be writing to the accessibility people at Apple to see if there's any way I can arrange a time and date to spend a few hours playing with an IPhone in a quiet environment, that's the only way I'm ever going to find out if its worth considering. I suppose I could upgrade and then return it within the time period, but right now I'm not even going to consider that. Of course this is one person's perspective on a short play with both products and I know that there are a number of blind people who are happily using IPhones, I'm not sure if I'll be one of them though and more seriously I wonder where all this touch technology is going to leave me. Yusuf ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
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