Google is, and may forever be my hero. I say this not only because they are a great company that values innovation, but they also care deeply about accessibility. In February I told you in “Making the G1 Accessible”, how Google had created a program so that you could dial a number on the touch screen without having to look at the screen. Two months later they have expanded their library of eyes free programs, and they are continuing to make more.
Four of their feature eyes free apps include:
Talking Dialer which allows you to go through your contact list with one hand and hear the list using TTS.
Know your location which uses GPS and cell towers to tell you where your current location is.
Device state which tells you important things like battery life and signal strength
Date and Time which tells you the date and time.
To watch video tutorials on how to use these apps visit the Eyes Free Shell YouTube Channel.
If you're a developer, or just want to learn more about the project, visit the Eyes Free Shell Project Homepage.
Google clearly understands that eyes free apps are not only useful to the blind, and if they can figure out how to make a touch screen usable without sight, than I believe that other manufactures like Apple will see how easy it really can be.
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Identification by Color, Not for Me
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by Donna J. Jodhan
When I had sufficient vision, I used to depend heavily on colors to help me
identify things. I could remember that when I was growing u...
4 days ago
Wow, is there anything Google can't touch and turn to gold? I hope this makes its way to the smart phone market to drive down development costs.
ReplyDeletePerhaps also interesting for your readers:
ReplyDeletehttp://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative#Android_Accessibility
Thanks for the link.
ReplyDelete