This could be a messy ordeal - The fight of the decade; I am comparing the specialised software that has been promoted by organisations around the world as accessible for the blind and visually impaired with an “off the shelf” product from a mainstream vendor. 

I have personally used a Nokia 6700 Slide Symbian powered mobile with the following specialised accessibility for over a year, and it with this experience I call on to make the comments in this post.

opponent in the Blue Corner of this battle, the reining champion, promoted by organisations around the world. 

The Specialist Visually Impaired and Blind Software.

    #   Item                 Attribute

1. Hardware:       Nokia 6700
2. OS:                Symbian S60
3. Accessibility:    Nuance TALKS
4.                      Nuance ZOOMS
5.                      KNFB Reader

Pro’s

1. The Nokia is a small device
2. It can be operated with a single hand.
3. Good control over speech rate

Con’s

1. Bluetooth stack unreliable
2. Phone unstable would guess memory leak or management issues needed resetting daily
3. The top row of numeric buttons are really hard to get to with large fingers
4. Limited range of applications with even fewer free apps
5. Memory issues with accessibility app loaded means not much room to add additional apps even if they were readily available.
6. No future for the OS so app development has stalled further
7. Not every Symbian S60 phone can support the accessibility
8. Mainstream popoularity plummeting
9. TTS (Text To Speak) is aimed at supporting particular applications as opposed to supporting all applications.

Capabilities I regularly use

1. Phone Calls
2. Receive Texts (dissuade others when possible)
3. Data Modem
4. Audio book Reader (MP3)

Comments.

It was really hard having had an iPhone for around 6 weeks to find pro’s for the Nokia that were not true of the iPhone. Although the Nokia had the additional ZOOMS software that provides screen magnification, I found as my vision 

degraded and my confidence grew in using audio feedback that I did not look at the screen so I turned off ZOOMS. 

The K N F B reader is software that can be added to Symbian phones to enable you to photograph a printed document and convert it into text. When combined with Talks it enables you to photograph printed documents and listen to them when you are out and about. You can save images and text so you can listen to the document later and the reading speed can be adjusted to suit you. The software analyses the camera image and provides audible feedback to help you line up the document and ensure your document is aligned correctly.

My experience is this OCR technology still has so far it needs to go for it to change from a demonstrative technology to an actual in the field technology that people draw on and use regularly. The times where I have really wanted to use it in restaurants for example work colleagues are discussing the latest work topics and in full flow, I would try not to disturb the conversation flow and instead try discreetly sort out what I wanted from the menu, I have yet to see this actually work, most menus are not in standard fonts.

Business Services

Making and receiving calls, using the phone to provide a data modem capability for my laptop where I could then do my work on the laptop was the main capability it offered. In basic terms it is a phone and that really seems to be it.

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And in the Red Corner,

The next contender in this bloody battle with no holding back the punches is the one and only iPhone 4s mobile from Apple.

    #   Item                 Attribute

1. Hardware:       Apple iPhone 4s.
2. OS:               Apple IOS 5.1
3. Accessibility:   Built-in VoiceOver
4.                     Built-in Siri

Pro’s

1. Stable and rarely need resetting
2. Some apps have accessibility issues (see reviews of the failures on this blog)
3. A trurly mainstream device that stops disabled needs being expensive out on the fringe.
4. vast number of apps that can be used for almost anything with so many working really well with native accessibility
5. SMS dictation
6. web search using voice commands
7. wifi hot spot, turns your mobile into a mobile access point
8. Siri, its not just there for silly pranks its a serious tool too
9. vast number of free app, I have not yet purchased an app and have tried so many
10. VoiceOver (test to Speech) supported by almost everything, as in OS based not per application.

Con’s

1. It is certainly not a small compact device
2. It cannot be operated with a single hand.
3. Needs bluetooth headset with A2DP profile support to really use it with VoiceOver
4. lookaround applications currently do NOT support New Zealand
5. googlemaps support through Siri only supports US English
6. poor control over slider gadgets with VoiceOver enabled

Capabilities I regularly use

1. Receive and SendTexts
2. Data Modem
3. Wifi Access Point
4. Audio bookReader (MP3)
5. PDF reader
6. MS Office read and edit
7. Email send and receive
8. Calendar Appointment Reminder
9. Meeting Organiser
10. Adhoc Reminder (Siri)
11. Stop Watch (Siri)
12. Audio Conference Unit (adhoc handsfree)
13. Many Cloud and webdav service including Dropbox and Box.net
14. Web browsing
15. Podcasts listening
16. Banking
17. And its a phone!

Comments

I am sure that many will say that the Nokia running the Symbian OS can do much of what I list above, the difference is that I did not! It may simply have been the difficulty in finding apps that would function well on the phone and not destabilise it further, it may have been because the nokia oki suite is so awful (and I hate iTunes) that every minute I spent using it was a minute too long. Whatever the reasone it is so much simpler and ACCESSIBLE for me to use on the iPhone and I DO!

I am still in the honeymoon phase as such I have yet to find so many of the apps that I am sure I will use once I realise they are out there, I love trying different apps it makes me able to join in with conversations at work stood around the coffee machine, “Have you tried this app…”, a sense of belonging offered by mainstream and popular products is not to ignored.

The same VoiceOver screen reader made popular on the Mac is now a standard feature on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS. It’s the world’s first gesture-based screen reader, enabling you to enjoy the fun and simplicity of iPhone even if you can’t see the screen.

With VoiceOver, you simply touch the screen to hear a description of the item under your finger, VoiceOver differs from traditional screen readers in that it provides location and connection information between elements that are read out, this additional context information helps in understanding the layout.

Siri, is not simply a toy, it is a very focused piece of software that takes another technolgy area that still has some way to go “voice recognition” and by cleverly narrowing the field of context enables the resulting outcome to have a much higher probability of success. Sending SMS messages by Siri, can many times work flawlessly, where as using the dictation capability processed on the phone is more likely to end in frustration. Setting reminders, timers, and contact phoning Sir excells at these regular tasks.  

I have tried SayText which allows me to take a photo of a page of text and will use OCR technology to process and then speak the results, this is similar to KNFB Reader and has the same failing and successes, an alternative if you will. SayText is a free to download application from the Apple store.

Business Services

The iPhone can do all that I regularly used my Nokia phone for and so much more. I now regularly check and answer emails on my phone, respond to meeting invitations, use the reminder function of Siri for informal work related tasks. As I have another set of apps that I use for personal use that are not included in the list of business related apps this enables my confidence on using the device to grow it creeps into all aspects of my life and becomes really familiar.

Conclusion.

There was little doubt after the first initial few days of the steep learning curve ended that the end was sighted for my Nokia phone with its limited accessibility tools it now sits in my drawer and the battery is drained. The iPhone wins by a knockout!

As the market for “Eyes Free” software gathers momentum I have no qualms in predicting mainstream vendors will push the specialised software companies in the accessibility industry to either buck up or ship out.

Ciao

Paul

Well it’s that time again; time to name and shame.

Box.net have great claims, indeed their online cloud service seems to be on par with others,unfortunately where others have iPhone applications that are suitable for the visually impaired and the blind, box.net do not.

The description provided below is off the Apple app store for version 2.7.2 of the box.net app.

Box provides simple, secure sharing from anywhere – letting you easily store files online, send big files fast, access content from your iPhone or iPad and collaborate with others. Box for iPhone and iPad lets you: 

Unfortunately with voice-over enabled you cannot even login or selectr any buttons. Voice-over is a native application that ships nowadays with the iPhone it offers accessibility to the visually impaired and blind users.

This is by far the worst app in terms of accessibility so far to date.

Ciao

Paul 

I like many others upgraded to the new LTS (Long Term Support) version of ubuntu that was released in April, commonly referred to as Precise or 12.04

Initially everything looked fine, then things seemed to become unstable. perhaps a better way of describing the issue is that windows 7 clients could browse although slowly sometimes and download small files but would falter and fail if large files were downloaded.

It is hard to say the exact sequence of events, suffice to say after two weeks and a couple of reboots of the ubuntu server I have managed to find at least one workaround. looking back it would seem two things were evident:

1. slow downs occerred and a reboot of the server on at least one occasion returned download speeds back to satisfactory levels
2. windows 7 was affected, whereas Linux, Android and the Windows XP SMB clients were not.

It would not surprise me if one or more new memory leaks have krept into the mix with the upgrade to 12.04 and this would account for item 1 above, only time and the ability to narrow down the issue will assist.

However, for the second item a workaround is possible that allows speeds simialar to the 11.10 samba package.

Add the following line to the global setting of /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

max protocol = NT1

I kept all other configuration lines as I had them from 11.10 version of my smb.conf file.

Afterwards reboot your windows 7 clients and try to transfer files you should see a vast improvement.

The workaround was found like so many other things by searching long and hard with google, thanks to Ryan Davies who actually found the solution in amongst the google hits.

ciao

Paul

locating zombie processes can be troublesome, below is the command I use on ubuntu to find the process ID of each zombie.

ps aux | awk ‘{ print $8 ” ” $2 }’ | grep -w Z

ciao

Paul

Here I was starting to think that Apple’s tyrannicalapproach did have one advantage over the more open and free spirited android OS (at least on the surface), the consistent look and feel that came about I presumed by developers knowing they would be subjected to a vetting program, a “is your app worthy” process to be available through the official Apple channel.

Well the latest iPhone IOS 5.1.1 update changed that view really quickly.

An official piece of code from Apple themselves, sure they will have tested its suitability with the phones own native support for accessibility such as voice-over? With such a dismal failure for voice-over to announce the terms and conditions page or any of the buttons on it I would guest not.

So if you or you have a friend that are totally blind or close enough it makes no difference you may want to advise them that having a sighted person around during the update is probably a good idea.

Apple it would seem has adopted the “Do as I say, not as I do” line.

Apple, sort out out your checks on your own software and NOT just focus on policing others.

ciao

Paul 

Some NetComm NP285 homeplug devices were being redistributed today and a discussion emerged on the wiring configuration of the house and to keep the data’s traffic as short as possible on the electrical mains would be the best practise.

Well as I have no clue to the electrical wiring of this house, I figured I would use the signal and speed indications provided by the utility application that comes with the homeplug devices to indicate the optimum setup (minimal data path degradation).

So I grab the utility for install on my windows 7 x64 machine and proceed, almost immeadiatly I get the fdolling dialog that made me chuckle, what was the developer of the installation package thinking? We may never know but I found it amusing.

Awesome.

Ciao

Paul

I previously posted on my Desktop Replacement Project or DRP for short (Techy’s love acronyms), I have successfully setup an environemnt where I was using three desktops.

• HAL-DT
• HAL-PROG
• HAL-Arrow

Each of these environments were setup to use Windows 7, in actually fact the HAL-DT was actually termed HAL-HOST until recently when I virtualised the windows 7 Host environment so that I could try once again to make my move to Linux and the distro of the moment ios ubuntu 12.04 of course as its leading edge and LTS (win-win).

One of the many issues stopping me using linux as the host OS of choice was I am dependant on screen magnification and I am not ready to switch off my monitor and just use audio response to interface with my computer, there will be plenty of time to do that when the choice is taken out of my hands. The problem is that Orca the main accessibility and adaptive application on Linux is awesome in many respects but screen magnification is not one of them, to be frank in this department it sucks big time!

Well I am pleased to say with ubuntu 12.04 and following the setup in the presentation that can be found here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1663660/Zoom%20Tutorial.pptx) You can have amazing screen magnification on ALL applications as it is performed by compiz. The amazing research, testing, hard work AND the instructions were all put together by a good friend Ryan Davies. Thank You Ryan.

I still have some way to go to making Linux my main host system of choice but every step brings me that little closer towards my goal.

Ciao

Paul