Podcast appearances and mentions of scott davert

In this episode, Scott Davert explores the different ways to access the Home Screen on iPhones without a Home Button. With the launch of the iPhone 16e, Apple has fully transitioned to a buttonless design, changing how users interact with their devices. For those accustomed to the tactile feedback of the Home Button, this shift may feel challenging. However, several alternative methods can replicate its functionality.1. Using the Default Gesture:To return to the Home Screen without a physical button:Place a finger at the bottom center of the screen.Quickly swipe upward until you feel a slight vibration or hear a "pop" sound.Release your finger to navigate to the Home Screen.Tip: Using the charging port as a reference point can help with finger placement. Adding a small tactile marker, such as a bump dot, on your case near the swipe area can also provide a reliable guide.2. Customizing VoiceOver Gestures:VoiceOver users can assign the Home function to a different gesture for easier navigation:Assigning Home to a Two-Finger Swipe Right:Open Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Commands > Touch Gestures.Choose a gesture, such as a two-finger swipe right.Under the "System" section, select "Home".If the gesture is already assigned, iOS will notify you. Confirm the reassignment by selecting "Assign".Note: The two-finger swipe right is typically used for grouped navigation, so choose another gesture if this conflicts with your existing setup.3. Enabling Back Tap:Back Tap allows users to activate specific functions by tapping the back of their iPhone:Setting Up Back Tap for Home Screen Access:Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap.Toggle "Back Tap" on.Choose "Triple Tap".From the options, select "Home".Observation: If you use a thick phone case, Back Tap may not work as effectively. Adjust your tapping technique or consider using a thinner case if needed.4. Using the Action Button with Siri Shortcuts:On certain iPhone models with an Action Button, you can program it to bring you to the Home Screen using a Siri Shortcut:Configuring the Action Button for Home:Download the shortcut, courtesy of AppleVis' very own AnonyMouse. on a compatible iPhone.If the shortcut doesn't run automatically, tap "Add Shortcut" to enable it.Navigate to Settings > Action Button.Select "Shortcut" from the menu.Choose "Go to Home Screen" from the list of shortcuts.Now, pressing and holding the Action Button will return you to the Home Screen.Reminder: To maintain security, only download shortcuts from reputable sources.By utilizing these methods, users can easily adjust to Apple's buttonless design, ensuring a smooth and intuitive experience on modern iPhones.If you'd like to read this in a written guide, you can find it here: Finding Your Way Home in a (Home) Buttonless World: Using an iOS Device Without a Home ButtonTranscript…

2506 AppleVis and the Power of Community (Feb. 5, 2025) Show Notes AppleVis is a hub for visually impaired users of Apple products. Hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey talk with David Nason and Scott Davert, members of the AppleVis editorial team, about the evolution of the platform, the resources available on AppleVis, the recent partnership … Continue reading 2506 AppleVis and the Power of Community (Feb. 5, 2025) →

iOS 17 was released last September, bosting a number of significant braille enhancements. In this Masterclass, we were joined by Scott Davert to find out more. Scott is well regarded in the blind community as an expert in braille on iOS. He regularly contributes braille-related content to the AppleVis website, and presented a series of three Masterclasses introducing us to braille on iOS in 2022. This was an extensive presentation followed by your questions. We also covered some of the new braille features in iOS 16 which have not been covered in other sessions.

Join Dave Nason, Thomas Domville, Scott Davert, and Tyler Stephen as they delve into the recently released AppleVis Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card. This comprehensive report provides valuable insights into the experiences and opinions of visually impaired individuals who rely on Apple's VoiceOver, Braille support, and low vision features. The group dives deep into the ratings and comments included in the report, offering their own opinions and experiences along the way.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Thomas Domville and Scott Davert are joined by Hema Natarajan, product manager at Benetech, the parent company of Bookshare.Bookshare is an ebook library that currently has 1,097,526 titles and is the most extensive collection of accessible ebooks in the world. It includes books for school, career, and reading pleasure, as well as titles in over 34 languages.Hema, is excited to introduce us to Bookshare's upcoming suite of free reading tools: Bookshare Reader for Web, Bookshare Reader for iOS, Bookshare Reader for Android, and Bookshare Reader for Alexa. This suite of free tools, available summer 2022, will make reading accessible books easier than ever before.Bookshare Reader for the Web is currently in private testing in select school districts across the US. Bookshare Reader for the Web and the mobile app will be available to the public in summer 2022.Bookshare Reader for Smart Speaker is currently in beta release and only available to Bookshare Individual Members. Find it in the Alexa App store.Further information on Bookshare's upcoming suite of free reading tools is available at https://blog.bookshare.org/2022/03/benetech-unveils-bookshare-reader-suite/

We were delighted to be joined by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the use of iOS with a braille display, for the third and final part of his exploration of this winning combination. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis. In this session, he explained how to re-assign braille display commands and demonstrated web browsing with a braille display in Safari. This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 March 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, Thomas Domville, and Tyler Stephen get together to discuss Apple's “Peek Performance” March 8, 2022 event.Links: Looking at Apple's Peek Performance Event (March 2022)

Following the first successful Masterclass, we were delighted to have been joined once again by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the use of iOS with a braille display, to continue his exploration of this winning combination. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis. In this Masterclass, he introduced some more advanced navigation commands, including using the rota, and then discussed and demonstrated text editing. This session was recorded on Tuesday 15 February 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

Following our brief introduction to Braille on iOS last year, we're delighted this year to have been joined by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the topic, to explore this winning combination in more detail. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis. In a series of three Masterclasses, he discussed and demonstrated how to make the most of using your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with a braille display, from basic exploration to text editing, web browsing and much more. In the first Masterclass, he covered: Supported braille displays and how to connect themBraille settings in VoiceoverExploring the home screenSome useful braille display commands This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 February 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Alex Hall, Tyler Stephen, and Scott Davert get together to discuss Apple's 'California Streaming' September 14, 2021 Keynote.

In this update to his previous podcasts on braille, Scott Davert gives us some general information about braille displays as they relate to their use with iOS devices. He then talks about connecting a braille display using USB and then Bluetooth. Further, the braille menu under VoiceOver Settings, navigational commands, text input, how to set up auto scroll, and how to get additional help are all covered. Links mentioned in the podcast include: Apple's support page covering Common braille commands for VoiceOver on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Apple's support article listing Bluetooth keyboard commands for iOS and iPadOS Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter A roughly edited transcript of the podcast follows. [music] Opening announcement: You're listening to the AppleVis Podcast. Scott Davert: Hey, everybody, Scott Davert here. I'm going to record this podcast on using Braille displays with iOS devices. Now if you've been around AppleVis and the AppleVis Podcast for many years, you may recall that I already did this podcast. However, I did that podcast back in January of 2016. Now that we're five iOS releases later, and five years later in terms of the technology, of course, many things have changed, even some of the most basic level. What are we covering in this podcast? That's always a good question to ask yourself before, and hopefully the person recording it gives you an idea. What we're going to be covering in this podcast is, first of all, general information about Braille displays and what connects and what doesn't. Then we'll talk about connecting both through Bluetooth and USB. We'll go through the Braille Display menu on iOS. We'll talk about navigation in terms of getting around your various home screens, activating apps, and so on and so forth. From there, we'll go into text editing very briefly. We'll talk about how to get help because we all need that once in a while, and setting up auto scroll. The first topic, general information, well, pretty much any Braille display made within the last 10 years. I say pretty much because there may be one out there somewhere that I'm not aware of that doesn't support iOS. To my knowledge, all of the Braille displays on the market do support iOS and voice-over. What you will have to make sure is that you're running a compatible version of iOS. For example, if you are running one of the new Humanware displays, they recommend that you run iOS 13.6 or later. The new Orbit 40, Orbit Reader 40, I should say, emulates a VarioUltra, which means the Orbit Reader 40 supports iOS devices, going back to, I want to say, 8.3, it may have been 8.4, or something like that. Anyway, whatever it is, it goes back many iOS versions. The focus fifth-generation supported iOS, I want to say, with maybe iOS nine. I don't remember exactly on that one. Anyway, point being is, check with your user documentation if…

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, host Dave Nason is joined by four great guests for a fun, detailed and balanced discussion about the state of both Android and iOS today, in particular of course for blind and low vision users. Dave is joined by Warren Carr of the Blind Android Users podcast and mailing list, Steve Nutt of Computer Room Services, plus Scott Davert and Alex Hall from the AppleVis editorial team.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, Thomas Domville, & Tyler Stephen get together to discuss Apple's Hi, Speed October 2020 event.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, and Tyler Stephen get together to discuss Apple's "Time Flies" event. Topics covered include The Apple Watch Series 6, new iPads, Apple One services, and iOS 14.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Scott Davert interview KARTHIK KANNAN developer of Envision AI. ‎Envision AI on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/envision-ai/id1268632314 Envision - enabling vision for visually impaired Website: https://www.letsenvision.com/ Questions about Envision AI and/or Envision Glasses? Email at karthik@letsenvision.com or write to him from within the app.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Scott Davert interview KARTHIK KANNAN developer of Envision AI. ‎Envision AI on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/envision-ai/id1268632314 Envision - enabling vision for visually impaired Website: https://www.letsenvision.com/ Questions about Envision AI and/or Envision Glasses? Email at karthik@letsenvision.com or write to him from within the app.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Scott Davert interview KARTHIK KANNAN developer of Envision AI. ‎Envision AI on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/envision-ai/id1268632314 Envision - enabling vision for visually impaired Website: https://www.letsenvision.com/ Questions about Envision AI and/or Envision Glasses? Email at karthik@letsenvision.com or write to him from within the app.

This is going to sound weird, but its our first news show of 2020. And wow do we have some news to talk about. So much news that we needed Scott Davert to sit in with us. He also hangs out with us while we go over the biggest stories that came from our ATIA 2020 coverage last month. Get ready for tech, talk and even a baseball story towards the end. In The News: Breaking: Aira Tech Corp Acquired by Southern California Investment Group RT @airaio We re excited to welcome all @Target locations to the Aira Access Family! Shop @OnYourTerms. Be My Eyes announces funding to grow community and expand Specialized Help service Be My Eyes closes $2.8M Series A funding to connect blind people with normal sighted volunteers via live video calls Announcing the 2020 Touch of Genius Prize Winners NLS bard for iOS introduces new features including simultaneous downloads, airplay, braille display autoscroll Leasey Pricing and What's Coming in Version 5! Nvda Version 2019.3.1 released, bringing support for new braille displays, screen curtain, more In-Process 19th February 2020 Updated Eloquence and Vocalizer Expressive Add-on for NVDA NVDA Remote Updates For Python Changes The Feb 2020 Update Has Been Released For JAWS/ZoomText/Fusion Thanks to Top Tech Tid Bits for mentioning the 300+ hour archive of the classic A.T. Playback Magazine Hindsight Is #CSUNATC20: Or, How The Top Stories Of The Past Can Shape The Future Discussion Topic: ATIA Wrap Up The trio talk about the stories that peeked the most interest from our ATIA 2020 coverage. ATIA 2020 Wrap-Up: What's New and Noteworthy at the Assistive Technology Industry Association #ATIA20 Audio: A Menagerie Of Braille For Humanware And APH #ATIA20 Audio: Q Is For Qwerty But That's Not All For HIMS #ATIA20 Audio: Orcam Expands Into Assisted Reading And Hearing Devices #ATIA20 Audio: Bookshare Balances The Equation With Accessible Math #ATIA20 Audio: Speaking To The Power Of Braille Literacy With Objective Ed #ATIA20 Audio: Absorbing Audio Information Into Meaningful Ways With Glean Last Word: Oddly enough, in more than 200 shows, this particular story has kind of come up before. Students assist with 'super flush' at Texas Rangers' new stadium Next week, no kidding, it is that long awaited often mentioned deep dive into the Color Star... we think. No really, it's happening in BBQ 208!

The long road trip with no bathroom breaks that was 2019 has reached its destination in the form of our annual wrap up show. This year s panel included J.J., Joe, Shelly Brisbin, Scott Davert and Rookie of the Year Lisa Salinger. Read on, and tune into the podcast, to discover what trends and stories the group found to have the biggest impact on the year. Also, if you want a good laugh, see how right or wrong we were with our 2018 predictions Conventions At A Glance The entire panel attended at least one of the major Blindness and Low Vision A.T. events in 2019. You can hear what we thought were the big stories at CSUN And the Summer Conventions To gauge if those introduced products had an impact on our discussions for this episode. But we ll let you in on a little secret. What you, the readers and listeners of this site, peruse from our coverage often determines who we interview the following year. Therefore, behold the top 5 downloads of our various coverage in order of their event calendar appearances in our podcast feed. ATIA 2019 1 #ATIA19 Audio: Command Multiple Devices With The HIMS QBraille XL 2 #ATIA19 Audio: Humanware s New Braille Note Touch Plus Is One Tough Cookie 3 #ATIA19 Audio: Aces Are Hight For The Acesight And Zoomax 4 #ATIA19 Audio: IRIE-AT Is Totally Your Braille Buddy When It Comes To Phones And Video Magnifiers? 5 #ATIA19 Audio: Point Your Finger At The Books You Want To Read With BraiBook CSUN 2019 1 #CSUNATC19 Sponsored Audio: APH Is Bringing The Community Together To Impact The World At Large 2 #CSUNATC19 Audio: LS&S Would Like To Report A U.F.O. Sighting Over Anaheim 3 #CSUNATC19 Audio: A Deeper Dive Into The Process Of Updates And NV Access 4 #CSUNATC19 Audio: Feel Books And More With Feelif 5 #CSUNATC19 Audio: Row, Row, Row your Code Jumper Summer Conventions 2019 1 #NFB19 Audio: Humanware Flips The Card To Reveal Updates For Keysoft And Victor Reader Trek 2 #Sponsored Blind Bargains Convention Coverage: AIRA with Big Deals, Big Presence at #NFB19 and #ACB19 3 #Sponsored Convention Audio: APH Creates A Fun Pathway To STEM With Code Jumper 4 #NFB19 Audio: Seeing The World Wirelessly With OrCam 5 #ACB19 Audio: There Is Always Something New Over At Guidelights And Gadgets Our listeners landed on a story that we didn't cover during our look back at the past 365 days. With new products, and a new direction, APH had an abundance of announcements and our audience noticed. We additionally saw some new names make the list as well as a real interest in what Humanware brought to the Exhibit Hall tables. Off The Shelf Growing Pains A lot of the conversation that powered this discussion came from stories featured in our Mainstream Mayhem article. Of course, iOS 13 dominated the talk and Joe said with all sincerity that he admired Shelly for her work on iOS Access For All and the plight that comes along with so many updates to this year's version of the operating system. J.J. and Scott felt like Apple has too many operating systems these days to support and they should look to our friends at Apple Vis for a better understanding of what is and isn't working along all the various product lines. Even new features like Dark Mode are breaking on a system level when Smart Invert is active. And Scott noted that issues with Bluetooth audio, Switch Control and wireless Braille Displays made him glad he kept a device back on iOS 12 for employment access concerns. But Apple Park wasn't the only company with some setbacks in 2019. Joe and J.J. steered the group into the aspects of what disappointed them about Google this year. J.J. felt like Talkback regressed, Scott noted that if BrailleBack support was better he would have considered a serious switch to the Android platform and Joe talked about how Google's culture war seemed to be an underlying theme of the lack of focus for the company. Joe also stressed that the way Google releases features into the wild had him spending more time troubleshooting his Google services than enjoying them. Perhaps the easiest way to summarize the year in Google was how many in the tech press declared the Pixel 3a as their choice for Android phone of the year after the release of the 4 series of phones. Audio Description On The Rise On a much more positive note, as emphasized by our AD news article, 2019 was the year where we became Audio Described Couch Potato aficionados. A lot of titles that took flight in pop culture this year happened to have AD tracks. However, as Shelly stated, Amazon Prime Video has been steadily adding support for older titles that you might not have realized needed description. Lisa also said that it's surprising when a new movie or show isn't described these days. And she urged that we need to support these legal ways of obtaining the content we want in order to foster more content in the future or support Blind/Low Vision creators and actors with their projects. Here's an email from BBQ Crew Member Jamie Pauls that places the substantial jump for AD in context. Hello, all. JJ and I were talking last evening about adding the huge influx of audio-described content in 2019 to our end-of-year show. With JJ's blessing, I reached out to the AD project for some stats comparing the end of last year to now. They actually gave me some stats comparing the first of this year until now which is probably close enough. I am sharing the information with everyone. Copied tweets follow: 1/1/19 SUMMARY: 2418 unique described videos and TV Series. 985 videos were duplicated in more than one service. Titles From: 41 Current Movies; 1029 DVDs; 926 iTunes; 811 Netflix; 440 Prime-Video; and 197 TV Series, broken down as follows: 30 ABC, 13 CBS, 25 FOX, 20 NBC, 23 DISCOVERY, 10 HGTV, 25 HISTORY, 18 TBS, 11 TNT, 22 USA. 12/16/19 SUMMARY: 3534 unique described videos and TV Series. 1719 videos were duplicated in more than one service. 31 Current Movies; 1194 DVDs; 12 Apple TV+; 291 Disney+; 65 Hulu; 1178 iTunes; 1080 Netflix; 1508 Prime-Video; 5 Other; 228 TV Series: 35 ABC, 16 CBS, 2 CW, 24 FOX, 21 NBC, 25 DISCOVERY, 18 HGTV, 34 HISTORY, 18 TBS, 13 TNT, 22 USA. When Cameras Took More Than Pictures 2012 saw the splashy debut of Google Glass at Google i/o. So, it seems fitting that the Explorer Edition finds itself entering the Graveyard in 2020 just as others begin to really lean into smart glasses technology. AIRA and Be My Eyes both gained more partnerships and expansions into the services they provide. Seeing AI and Envision AI were joined by the addition of VoiceDream Scanner in the field of On Device OCR apps. We summarize many of these stories in our Visual Assistance article in the news section of the site. And Lisa gives us an idea of how helpful many of these tools were to her when adjusting to life in a new apartment. Scott lays out the pros and cons of using many of these tools as a Deaf Blind person. J.J. notes, as you can read below, that there are some things you must consider if you rely on these methods of viewing the world through a camera lens. Keeping Private Things Private As cool as many of these new ways to access the environment are, they do have some serious aspects to consider while using them. Lisa describes a situation she came across in a public area in her apartment building and Shelly talked about data storage and where it resides if a company is sold or acquired. J.J. illuminated upon some misgivings that could come about with public transportation adopting more open policies towards the Visual Interpreter services as seen in Boston and New York. And Joe mentioned about how some visual concepts are becoming more apparent to the community as they encounter these access options in more settings. Here are links to some of the specific items discussed during this portion of the show. Dark Patterns in Accessibility Tech The next Big Tech battleground is your ears Hey Alexa: How can we escape surveillance capitalism? An Update About Face Recognition on Facebook Stalker 'found Japanese singer through reflection in her eyes Oh, What A Tangled Web We Surf Our conversation about hacking our disabilities came about from each panel member noting a barrier to web access they met recently. Relying on one Screen Reader and one web browser seems like an illusion of the information superhighway s glory days as a combination of tools may work better for shopping, banking or even searching the web. Plus, don't even get us started on various mobile browsers on iOS or Android. J.J. noted that the latest Web Aim survey seemed to reflect the changing trends in web access and how players like NVDA are changing with the times. Lisa and Scott compare Windows Narrator to a gawky teenager growing into their own and that's a good thing for the built in technology moving forward. Joe thought it was interesting that JAWS was rapidly gaining more support for Google Chrome and G Suite products to stay relevant in the Enterprise sector. Additionally, Shelly and Scott mused how some have made the switch from mac back to Windows as a result to the modifications made to the Mac OS through the annual upgrade cycles. Pizza and music played a huge role in web access this year. Beyonce.com Lawsuit Reminds Us How Shitty the Web Is for Users With Visual Impairment BIG WIN FOR WEB ACCESSIBILITY IN DOMINO S PIZZA CASE Browser vendors win war with W3C over HTML and DOM standards The internet's accessibility reckoning Mozilla to release a new Firefox version every four weeks starting next year Here are the results of the latest Web Aim Survey The US Supreme Court Domino s Pizza delivery case rejection, dished out Accessibility, the future, and why Domino s matters What Domino s Pizza got wrong about internet accessibility Add Vimeo to the Growing List of Large Websites Taking Accessibility Seriously Miscellaneous Musings Just as some may not be aware of some of the technical aspects of using a camera for access, others are becoming more familiar with other disabilities outside of Blindness that come with aging. Lisa and Scott engage in a lively conversation about the cost of Hearing Aids and how many of their companion apps are not Screen Reader friendly. Joe expanded upon that and offered that this lack of access also falls onto apps that control the Smart Home and various appliances that tout their connectivity. Lisa found that there is a need for individual research for major purchases in that arena, over buying whatever everyone else in the community is snagging up. Tailoring your expectations, as well as concentrating on your specific needs for access, can possibly bring about a better solution than "following the herd". Joe added that apps are constantly being updated and that could break or fix access from month to month. Relying on reviews may not be the best course of action either because appliance makers are manufacturing products in smaller runs in order to offer new features at a faster rate. J.J. said that the push for outreach is still needed to bring about awareness and change with products that add Voice Assistant and app related features. And the group all noted how more televisions are coming with Speech on board, how the Instant Pot made their apps more Screen Reader friendly after Community advocacy and we do have more powerful technology on hand for navigating the gaps in access than we did in 2018. Shelly and Joe touch upon the rise in off-the-shelf tablets being used as the display on many portable Video Magnifiers. Shelly followed that up with how some in the press enforce the narrative on how well the big mainstream companies are doing with their access solutions and what impressions that can send to those who are unfamiliar with other Assistive Technology. Joe noted that some in the Community also misconstrued these messages to a point where they shun traditional technology that was designed by A.T. makers. He specifically noted discussions he heard at various events for the desire to not use something like AIRA's Horizon in favor of a possible future set of Apple created smart glasses. Finally, and ending on a high note, Lisa and Scott celebrate the fact that more people had the opportunity to compare the Braille me to the Orbit Reader in the battle of the low cost Braille Displays. Additionally, now that phones cost more and iOS is constantly influx, the traditional note taker may still have a place in being a more stable option for some tasks. Sound Off We asked trepidaciously on Twitter for ideas about what the big stories were and Jim Denham sent along his feelings in the below email. Hey guys: Just wanted to chime in with what I believe is the biggest news story of 2019. That would be, the Amazon Echo Show identifying products. This is a big deal b/c its not using the bar code, it is just identifying the product by visual appearance. Amazon is obviously using individuals who are blind or visually impaired to help develop this feature, with the long term goal to provide people the ability to reorder products just by holding them up to the Show. In this case, all involved win, as it is a great and really useful feature for individuals with an Echo Show. I also believe this is just the starting point. As machine learning continues to develop at a mind blowing pace, this will certainly grow much bigger in 2020 and beyond. Thanks for all the great audio and podcasts in 2019, you guys do an awesome job and your work is truly appreciated. Jim Last Word 2019 saw the BBQ Crew cross the 200th episode mark and place our 750th audio program into our vast archives. We have been thrilled, honored and humbled to bring you our brand of news and entertainment on a weeklyish basis for 5 years. This would not be at all possible if it weren t for our guests, interview subjects, sponsors, and most of all you, the listeners. We are not sure just what 2020 holds in store for us all in A.T. news. However, we look forward to bringing it all to you in the upcoming year! Thanks for listening!

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, and Thomas Domville sit down to discuss some of their favourite new features of iOS and iPadOS 13; along with some of the issues that these releases have introduced for blind and low vision users. Links: What's New In iOS 13 Accessibility For Individuals Who Are Blind or Deaf-Blind Apple to Release iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1 on 24 September; Bringing Many Bug Fixes and Some New Bugs for Blind and Low Vision Users The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 13 for Blind and Low Vision Users

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, and Thomas Domville sit down to discuss some of their favourite new features of iOS and iPadOS 13; along with some of the issues that these releases have introduced for blind and low vision users. Links: What's New In iOS 13 Accessibility For Individuals Who Are Blind or Deaf-Blind Apple to Release iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1 on 24 September; Bringing Many Bug Fixes and Some New Bugs for Blind and Low Vision Users The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 13 for Blind and Low Vision Users

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Scott Davert, and Thomas Domville sit down to discuss some of their favourite new features of iOS and iPadOS 13; along with some of the issues that these releases have introduced for blind and low vision users. Links: What's New In iOS 13 Accessibility For Individuals Who Are Blind or Deaf-Blind Apple to Release iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1 on 24 September; Bringing Many Bug Fixes and Some New Bugs for Blind and Low Vision Users The Accessibility Bugs Introduced and Resolved in iOS 13 for Blind and Low Vision Users

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include an in-depth look at new accessibility features coming later this year in Apple software for blind and low vision users, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible. Full transcript of podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [music] Announcer: This is the AppleVis Extra. Dave Nason: Hello, and welcome to AppleVis Extra. This is episode number 67 coming hot on the heels of episode number 66 which was our round-table about WWDC keynote on Monday. Today, myself, Dave Nason, and my colleague, Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymouse, are delighted to be joined by two people from Apple live from WWDC conference this week. We have the head of accessibility at Apple, Sarah Herrlinger, and we have one of the accessibility technicians called Dean Hudson. Thomas, thanks for joining me. We're delighted to be getting the chance to interview these guys today. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I am so excited to meet with these two. I know that we are going to learn a great deal of things today, and I hope our listeners will, too. It's going to be a lot of fun. Dave Nason: Yeah, it was a big keynote, wasn't it? We talked about a lot on Monday. People can listen to that podcast for the full details of what we talked about in our immediate kind of aftermath, but there was a lot there. Thomas Domville: Definitely! A lot to soak up, and even today I'm still soaking things up, and hearing things that we didn't really pick up on on the WWDC day itself. As we're starting to get our hands on these betas, more and more things are starting to pop up. This makes this even more exciting of a podcast to listen to. Dave Nason: I think we all know that iOS 12 was a performance update. I think whether you had accessibility needs or not, it wasn't a feature-rich release last year. This year, I think there's a bit more there in the accessibility world as well, and in general when it comes to features. I think we're going to have plenty of questions. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I think that what I came away with from Monday was a lot of people were saying "Is that all?" "Is that it?" I was like oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? There was a lot there. I think for every 1 thing they mentioned, there were probably 20 things they didn't mention. There is so much under-the-hood. Like you said, this is a vast difference, a stark difference, between last year's iOS 12 to this year iOS 13. That is the same for those with accessibility. There are quite a few small changes, and new things that we can expect which I'm very excited to talk about. Dave Nason: Indeed! Let's welcome our two guests! We have, all the way from California in the middle of WWDC week ………………they've taken the time out to talk to us. We have Sarah Herrlinger, and Dean Hudson. Do you guys want to tell us a little about yourselves? Dean, do you want to go first, and tell us who you are, and what you do? Dean Hudson: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having us. This is a real honor. I am Dean Hudson. I started here at Apple probably 2006 where things were starting to roll. I've been here in the accessibility engineering team when there were three of us. It has now expanded greatly, but it's been a real fun ride all the way through advent of iOS making that accessible up through Apple TV, Watch, and HomePod. It's been a really fun ride. I now, the last few years, have worked for Sarah, as the Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Really really fun times. Sarah Herrlinger: I'm Sarah Herrlinger, and I lead our efforts in the Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives team. I get to work with Dean which is always a lot of fun. Our team really focuses on accessibility as a core corporate value for Apple. We look holistically at all the ways that we can infuse accessibility into the Apple ecosystem. Whether that be through products, or services, or stores, or anything that we do, just making sure that every employee at Apple understands what accessibility means to us as a company, and that all of our users know about all of the amazing things that we are working to do, so that they take advantage of those, and get more out of their devices. Dave Nason: Cool! I guess your job is making sure that accessibility is there on the ground floor of every project. Is that kind of an idea? Sarah Herrlinger: Yep. Absolutely! Through both Dean and I, we look at all those different areas. We get, early and often, into all of the different projects here to make sure that everybody thinks about accessibility in what they do. Thomas Domville: What an exciting job to have! That is like a dream! It's amazing to hear you guys have been there for so long especially Dean since 2006 when he was part of a team of three. That just totally blows my mind where we are today in terms of what we have gone so far with both of you. That's-- Dave Nason: When you think-- Thomas Domville: --amazing. Dave Nason: --to join one year before the iPhone launched. Everything that's happened since. Dean Hudson: Yeah. Well, I should say I am a VoiceOver user, totally blind. It was just very fun. The thing that you have to keep in mind, and it really takes a lot of character, but you have to be patient. People want things to happen tomorrow, and it just doesn't work that way. In the end, we took some time to develop and get things right, and it has paid off. We kind of lead the industry now in accessibility, and it's because we start at a ground level as Sarah was saying. Before even any lines of code are written, we get in there with the teams, and get people to think about accessibility early. Dave Nason: That's cool! That's such an advantage for you in a sense in what you do because you're both an expert in being a blind customer, and you're an expert in Apple, and what's going on on the inside of the company, I guess. Sarah Herrlinger: That's exactly why I stole him away from the engineering team, and brought him over to become our tech evangelist because he is so good at being able to go to every team in the company, and really express to them the importance of the work that we do, and get them to really think about not just the blind community, but every community that we support. [laughter] Thomas Domville: Educate. That's the key word is to educate everyone, and explain how to dive in, and do it the right way. Dave Nason: I've seen in my own work the difference the passion can make. You know what I mean? It's not just dryly telling them this is the features, but when they can actually see a human being using those features, and the difference. I'd say I think that goes a long way when you're speaking to an executive or a project manager or whatever. Dean Hudson- Yeah. Yeah. No, there were a few times when I would just bring my device to an engineer on the audio team, for example, and say this is wrong, this doesn't work. Can you guys do something about this? They're like oh, my gosh, you've been using this? We should fix this. [laughter] Thomas Domville: That's awesome! Sarah Herrlinger: A lot of years of great work being done. Dave Nason: Fantastic! Of course, we're in the middle of a very busy time of year for you guys. We had the keynote on Monday. I would say one of the highlights of the show was the announcement of Voice Control, and that demo that we saw. Do you want to kind of tell us a little about? We saw highlights. There's probably plenty to talk about around Voice Control. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, we're really excited about Voice Control. One of the things that has been important to us as an accessibility team is to continually look at new user groups that might not otherwise be able to use our technology. How do we keep pushing forward, and making sure that everyone who wants to use an Apple product has the opportunity to do so, and has the tools available to make that simple and easy and fun? Voice Control is a feature that was built with individuals with extreme physical-motor limitations in mind. It is individuals who wouldn't be able to use their devices unless they were able to use their voice. What Voice Control does is give them full access to their devices. It is built into both Mac OS and iOS platforms, so for any iOS device or Mac, being able to really control and use your device with just your voice. That would be all elements of navigation, opening apps, opening menus, moving around on the different devices, as well as things like dictation, text editing, and doing those things in a seamless fashion, so moving from one to the next, saying open Pages, dictating text, then saying open Photos, and doing something in your Photos app. Things like that all sort of moving through seamlessly, and not having to kind of move from one to the other in a more stunted way. We wanted it to be something that was really useful and efficient for those users who rely upon their voice. Dave Nason: I sort of speculated on Monday that maybe it was built on the same framework--if that's the right terminology--as VoiceOver and Switch Control, so that if you designed for one you design for the other. Is that the case, or is it a whole different... Sarah Herrlinger: It does take advantage of the accessibility API that's built into our software developer kit. One of the messages that we really try to express out to developers this week is how important it is to use that accessibility API, and how when you do it, you get so much from it. With all three of those utilizing that, if you are someone who... It's sort of the well, if you're concerned about one group, hey, you're going to get the other ones for free. We definitely want everyone to use this, and to really be good digital citizens when it comes to accessibility because this is the foundation for so much of what we do. Thomas Domville: That's so intriguing because it makes me think in my mind. I'm trying to grasp how that framework work, as in so the elements you see on the given page, is that the same as the VoiceOver? Are you able to go into more specifics like go right four? Sarah Herrlinger: Well, so, to give an example. When you think about how important it is in VoiceOver to label elements on the screen, to label images and buttons and things like that, one of the things that then both Switch Control and Voice Control does is it hooks onto those individual elements as well. For example, with Voice Control, one of the features to it is being able to say Show Numbers. Then any of those elements, anything that would be tappable or clickable--depending on whether it's an iOS or Mac device--becomes something that shows up on the screen, so that you could, for example, in the Photos app, say Show Numbers, and then say tap 14, and it is that specific photo that you're trying to get to which really improves the efficiency for someone using voice. Underneath it's also using that same framework to it. Dean Hudson: I think even Eric gave an example in the keynote the other day--or not the keynote, sorry, the state of the union--where he tried to click on an element, and it didn't work. He said "see, it didn't work because it doesn't have an accessibility label." It definitely hinges upon the accessibility underneath the API. Dave Nason: That's cool. I was actually thi-- [crosstalk] Dave Nason: Sorry! Sarah Herrlinger: It's all the same foundational API, but we also allow even more specific APIs, so developers who want to create even better experiences for Voice Control and such, or for a Voice Control-only experience, they can do that, too. The API is the common base, but it allows very detailed customization to make really great experiences for each one of these types of assistive technology as well. Thomas Domville: Wow! That is amazing! It really does going to kind of bring, in a roundabout way, you're also bringing up VoiceOver accessibility issues up. Like you just mentioned, elements or buttons that are not labeled correctly, and that has definitely to bring up to forefront with the developers if they want to take advantage of this-- Dave Nason: Exactly. Thomas Domville: --control. What if you had, I know a lot of these elements sometimes just like to have just pictures. How do they know what to say for that particular picture? Sarah Herrlinger: Well, actually, we have a new feature that we've added in this year that I think will be very helpful in that area. I'm gonna let Dean grab this one 'cause he's-- [laughter] Dean Hudson: We're trying to wait 'til we get to the features, but you guys have pulled it out of us. [laughter] Dean Hudson: One of the features--and I'm going to get loud because talking about features I get excited--that we're introducing for iOS is to auto label buttons. If a developer puts this hamburger menu or just puts a picture on the button, we will, through machine learning-- you probably heard a little bit about that during the keynote--determine what that button might be labeled. Having tested it, it works pretty good. I've used some crazy applications, and it does a pretty good job. That's sort of how if someone does give a picture, we sort of auto label it, and that's how it would get picked up. Thomas Domville: That's interesting because you have somewhat of a feature like that now when sometimes it will predict what it thinks it is. That works-- Dean Hudson: In text. Thomas Domville: This is more enhanced. Dean Hudson: This is more, yeah, in images. Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. Dave Nason: Now, it's reading text, isn't it, that's visually on a button? Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I think one of the things that we always try and do is build on from what we've done, but never stop working on any of these features. We have had this available for text. Now, we are using machine learning as it continues to grow and grow, and use that to be able to, as Dean said, try and figure out what that is an image of, and give you that information. It might say button, possibly Home, or whatever it might be, so that as best we can, we are trying to add that additional information for you, so that you have more context. As always, we try and work with every developer, and tell them the more important thing is that you do actually go through and label all of these, and that's why we have tools like the Accessibility Inspector in Xcode with its auditing capabilities that give you information along the way as an app designer to know what you can do to be a better accessibility citizen. on top of that, we know that when people don't, we want to try and make sure that we are improving that situation, and really using tools like machine learning to make that better for the community. Dave Nason: Cool! I kind of have this idea that maybe even people who don't have any motor issues, but maybe they just have their phone on a charging stand at their desk, and rather than picking the phone up, they just look over at their phone and use voice control. Have you found yourself doing that, Sarah, at all? Sarah Herrlinger: Just start using voice control as its own even as someone who is not in the community? Yeah, I think voice control has it does have applicability that can go beyond the specific audience for which we kind of looked as at the sweet spot. I think one of the things that we will find as time goes by is the number of people who use this in many other circumstances. I've certainly had members of the media and such thus far say things like "This will be great for me as I'm driving in my car", or all different kinds of possible use cases. We look forward to seeing how people use them. It's been interesting even for us to see how people who are not members of the blind community turn on VoiceOver for things here and there. We know that a lot of these types of assistive technologies can be used for other use cases, but first and foremost, we want to make sure we're making the best tools for the communities that rely on them. Dave Nason: Yeah. Absolutely! I was just thinking, I suppose, in the context that it can really help to drive use of the accessibility API if a larger group of people in the media are talking about it. Dean Hudson: Uh-huh. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. Dave Nason: Dean, you alluded to other accessibility features, or other new features. Is there anything else that you want to-- Dean Hudson: Yeah. I'd first like to say WWDC was remarkable this year. We unleashed a ton of features that we're really excited about. Another piece of that is being at WWDC, we just saw developers one after another very excited about making their apps accessible. I just wanted to put that out there. We did a couple of events--just sort of mingle events--where we had tables set up, so people could see some accessibility features. It was just packed, and you could just feel the excitement when engineers came up and asked making my app accessible. What do I do? You have these long conversations. Well, you could do this, and try this. It was just very very cool. I'll start with VoiceOver because that's what I use on the Mac. One of the things that we were very excited to bring to the Mac this year is LibLouis. That gives us more than 80 languages for braille, and that's really really cool. As you guys know, LibLouis's open source, and so it's continually growing, so we're continuing to get more languages. Also, we've had a lot of requests for VoiceOver and braille to bring sort of a single-word mode. For iOS users, you'll know this. When you use your braille display, you've probably got maybe an 18 or 12-cell braille display, iOS only shows 1 item at a time to sort of help you maximize that little space that you have. Well, on the desktop, we brought that option there as well, so that if you have an 80-cell braille display, you turn on this option, you will see one item at a time. You can go back-and-forth between either of those modes. That was really cool. We've also improved braille input typing. We know that there are some people in the blindness world that use braille, but they are very very fast typists. We know those folks are out there. We've made it now, so that you can type as fast as you need to to get what you need done, and it'll just work great. Thomas Domville: Bravo! Bravo! Dean Hudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We definitely listened to all of you guys, and all of you. We've improved braille support on pages that support ARIA. There were some issues even in Mail that we addressed, so now when you paste text, we don't jump to the top of the email. We keep it right there. There were some issues with Messages. We fixed that, and in FaceTime. Some really really great braille improvements. We think you guys are really going to love it! Dave Nason: That's cool! I know some braille users are going to be very happy to hear that! [laughter] Dean Hudson: Yeah, oh yeah. Thomas Domville: Definitely! Dean Hudson: Yeah. Dave Nason: Has much of that made it to iOS as well, or was that Mac-specific? [cross-talk] Dean Hudson: That's all both iOS and Mac. Dave Nason: Wow, that's cool. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, including LibLouis which is also on Apple TV, too, so all of our braille-supported platforms we've brought those LibLouis tables to expand what you are able to access. Even when you think about things like the fact that on apple TV you can get captions through your braille display, if those captions are provided in one of the LibLouis languages, great way to be able to get that information, too. Dean Hudson: Some other things that we've done for VoiceOver on the desktop is custom punctuation. This is very big if you are a coder. When you're reading email, that's fine, you can have different levels of punctuation. When you're reading code, it’s very important to customize your punctuation, so that you see the symbols that you need to see. That will be sort of like activities. It will be sort of built-in. You switch between Mail, you switch between Xcode, you'll get your right punctuation level. Dave Nason: You can kind of say okay, I'm in Xcode, I need to hear the colons and the semicolons-- [cross-talk] Dean Hudson: Yeah. Dave Nason: --the brackets. Dean Hudson: Right. In Mail, I don't necessarily need to hear that. Sarah Herrlinger: Rather than just having that some, most, all, it gives you a lot more granularity in how you can do that customization. This is another one that is also on iOS. One of the other cool things about it is that through CloudKit, you can sync those preferences from one platform to the other. That which you set up as a custom punctuation on Mac OS will automatically be available to you on iOS. Thomas Domville: That's beautiful! Any improvement in Xcode especially code-reading capabilities, that's a big improvement. Dave Nason: The cloud bit. I have to say that as someone who uses both Mac and iOS, the ability to even with things like keyboard shortcuts, you don't have to set them up again. The same with punctuation, just having it sync is-- Thomas Domville: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. Sarah Herrlinger: Absolutely! Thomas, I heard you mention Xcode. Dean, I know you have been really excited about Xcode as a coder yourself. Dean Hudson: Yeah, Xcode is really huge. It's a big big application. What we wanted to do is focus on where you spend most of your time, and that's in the editor. We've improved, for example, code completion. As you're typing in the name of a function or method, hit Tab, and it autocompletes. You can now access that. Another point that we improved on is if you set--I'm going to get this wrong, I want to say landmarks, it's not landmarks--where you need to debug code, you set these markers. Those markers are now accessible. We've also added some rotors now that will allow you to navigate between methods and between scope. If you've had nested if loops, you can now navigate between those. Makes it really easy for you to jump around in your code. Many many fixes around editing. We think that's going to make that experience a lot better. Thomas Domville: That's beautiful. Dave Nason: That's cool. We do get a lot of questions on applevis.com about Xcode. It pops up every now and then, as people looking for help with it. Dean Hudson: We're continuing to work on that. One of the projects that you guys have probably heard of is Everybody Can Code. We've done that with Swift with the iPad, but we know there's more there. Eventually, you going to get to some levels that you need to use Xcode. We really want to focus on that to make that a fantastic experience. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. To stick with VoiceOver, but to jump platforms and go to iOS real quick. Couple of things to bring to your attention, one of which is just that when you go into Settings, you're going to find Accessibility in a different place. That is that it's been upleveled in Settings, so rather than having to drill in from tap on Settings, then go to General, then go to Accessibility, it's now at that top level of Settings just below General in the flow, in the chronology there. That was really important to us because we wanted to make sure that it becomes that much more discoverable for people, and that they use these features more. One of the other things we've done with it is we've also built accessibility into the sort of setup flow, what we call Buddy, as you get a new device. While for a VoiceOver user, you may already know that doing the triple-tap on the Side Button will turn VoiceOver on, for some of those other accessibility features that people may well have felt oh, I can't get to this until after I get through setup, we wanted to make sure that those were ready right up front, so that if you need to invert colors or increase your font or things like that, you can find those earlier in the process. Dean Hudson: Another one is customizable gestures for iOS. Dave Nason: You got my next question. [unintelligible] [laughter] Dean Hudson: Think about things like Control Center, Home Screen, App Chooser--App Switcher, pardon me. You can now assign those to, say, two-finger quadruple tap. Thomas Domville: Oh, that's nice. That's going to be a game changer! Dean Hudson: Yeah, yeah, we think so. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, you can even assign Siri shortcuts to VoiceOver commands. Dave Nason: Oh, fantastic! [unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Yeah, that's going to be amazing right there, customizable VoiceOver gestures. I love that! Dean Hudson: Yeah. In fact, both platforms are now we have full keyboard access. If you have your iPad now, and you have it connected to a Bluetooth, even gestures--say the Rotate gesture or the two-finger double tap and hold--you can now assign those to a keyboard command. You can perform those actions on your keyboard. [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Dave Nason: I read a bit about there being new keyboard shortcuts across the platforms. Could you tell us a little bit more about what's been kind of added there? Sarah Herrlinger: iPad OS has more commands in apps. I think that's connected to the full keyboard access that's now available. Thomas Domville: Okay. I really love the new Siri voices, by the way! [unintelligible] Thomas Domville: That was beautiful. I liked hearing that! I'm guessing we will be able to use that as a VoiceOver voice? Sarah Herrlinger: Mmmhmm. Dean Hudson: Yes. Thomas Domville: Awesome! Have we gained any new voices like Eloquence or anything like that? Sarah Herrlinger: No Eloquence voices, but that... The new Siri voices are also available on the Watch, so that's another one-- [Unintelligible] Dave Nason: We heard the U.S. one. Are there international new Siri voices, or at the moment is this U.S.? Sarah Herrlinger: My understanding at this stage is it is starting with U.S., and I think we'll have to see where they go from there. Dean Hudson: Yeah. Thomas Domville: Well, making accessibility down to the root of Settings, that is a big thing, as in terms of that Apple recognized that this should be up front to everyone that's sighted or not, they're going to come across this, and be curious, and jump into that. I'm really excited that you guys finally put that up in front and to the main section with the main components. Dave Nason: That's been a step-by-step process, hasn't it? I remember when it moved from the bottom of the General up towards the top of General, and now it's into the-- [crosstalk] [laughter] Sarah Herrlinger: Our evangelism has worked! [laughter] [Unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Good job, Dean, good job! [laughter] Dean Hudson: We haven't talked about some of the low-vision features. Dave Nason: Yeah, I was going to ask that. Dean Hudson: On the Mac... Do you want to talk about the Hover? Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, on Mac OS, we have a couple of great new features we've added. The one that I'm most excited about as someone who is a glasses wearer and who does struggle with small text is a feature called Hover Text. It's a new way to make it easy to view text on your Mac display. What you do is if you hover over any text with your cursor, and press down on the Command key, you get a dedicated window with a large high-resolution text field which gives you whatever is the text that's underneath that cursor. You can blow it up to 128-point, you can choose the font type that works best for you or that you prefer. You can also change the color of both the text and the background, and the cursor that surrounds the text showing up on the screen. Lots of customization available, so that whatever your vision needs are as a low-vision user, you can be able to sort of customize that to work best for you. One of the other things that I love is... For a long time, we've had a feature, and that is Say Text Under the Pointer. When you turn that on, you not only get this giant text customized in the way you want it to look, but it will also speak that out as it's going over the element as well. Text that would be in a menu or in a dock that might be smaller than what you would want it to be, you now have the opportunity to be able to take any text, and just blow it up on the screen. Dave Nason: That's actually huge because there's some people who are not quite at full screenreader level. They don't need that, but they need that little bit of help sometimes with a bit of speech, and I think that's huge. Also, I have an application at work which doesn't support screen readers very well in terms of keyboard commands, so I can use it with the mouse by rubbing the mouse over certain sections, and it'll read what's under there. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. We have another feature called Zoom Display which is for multi-display users. If you're someone who uses two screens, Zoom Display will let you keep one screen zoomed in close while the other one remains at standard resolution. It could be great for everyday work when you are just on your own working on two monitors in an office, but also one of the other applications for it that we've seen thus far is in terms of doing a presentation. Maybe you want your audience to see the screen in that standard resolution, but you want to blow up something on your own device, so that you can zoom in on areas, and get more information as you are presenting out to the world. A really cool way to think about multi-display users, and how low-vision users might use them differently than someone else. Also, we added in Color Filters in the same way that we have them on iOS. These are filters that support things like color blindness, and we have filters that are specifically built for different types of color blindness, but also being able to do just a straight colored tint over the screen. We've received feedback from individuals with Irlens Syndrome and other types of vision challenges where just being able to have the screen tinted to a specific color to do any kind of work on the device has been really helpful. We're excited that that has moved over to the Mac, too. Dean Hudson: I know you guys had a question about--I'm going to get the name wrong--but a feature that allows a developer to develop their iPad app, but then move that over to the desktop. Dave Nason: Project Catalyst. Dean Hudson: Catalyst, yes. Thank you! The question was will accessibility be intact, and happy to say that yes it will. Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Dean Hudson: If the developer does accessibility work on iOS, that will transfer to Mac OS. Dave Nason: That's going to open a huge opportunity for a whole range of apps. Thomas Domville: We were both talking about that how when we saw that demonstration where you were able to click that little checkbox for Mac. We were wondering if that part of that system to analyze your code would be able to take that accessibility along with it, or improve on it, and point it out to them in certain areas. We had thought about that. Dave Nason: Will that then, I suppose, automatically change from the hint text, for example, which might be double tap to select on the iPad app, and that's VO Spacebar to select on the Mac. Dean Hudson: Yeah, some of those little things we have to work through, but for the most part, they look exactly the same. Some of the sounds we've brought over to the desktop. Sarah Herrlinger: The nice thing for the developers, they can use that iOS accessibility API, and it just ports over to the Mac. The time and effort and energy that someone puts in on one pays forward over into the other. Dave Nason: It's a really interesting project. There was mention onstage Twitter is back suddenly. There was a lot of talk-- [unintelligible] [laughter] Thomas Domville: Yeah, definitely. Can you say, Dean, if the developers have tools of any kind that can analyze their code, and let them know where they lack in the accessibility areas, and where to focus on to make improvements? Dean Hudson: Yes. The Accessibility Inspector is where to go, and we've made, over the last few years, several improvements to it. One is really cool is that you can audit an application. The developer can have their application up on their iPad, target that iPad, and change accessibility right there. If they see a button that's not labeled, they can label it there. They can touch on their iPad, and suddenly it has the label. We highly recommend, at the very least, that the developer runs that audit tool, so at least they know the areas they need to go and fix. Dave Nason: have you ever considered--people will ask this on the site sometimes--have you ever considered requirements along those lines, as opposed to recommendations, or is that something that's possible? I know accessibility is such a broad thing, and every app is different, but we kind of wondered that. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, that is one of the things that we... We look at this issue a lot. It's not something that goes unnoticed, but it is a very complex issue. I think as we look at how many things fall under the term accessibility, and as well the levels of accessibility of something. Even if you look at just VoiceOver, what is the stamp that says seal of approval? We're constantly trying to look at new ways--including things like doing the machine learning automatic label detection--to try and make it easier, and to build these tools to be more comprehensive, and to be simpler and easier for developers, so that they have fewer reasons to not do it. We want everybody to just do it, and make it so that it's not even necessary to have a listing, but mostly we just want to try and do everything we can to make everything as accessible as possible. One of the other things to note as well in terms of auditing, we also now have a new accessibility audit tool for web content in Safari. That's another area where we've tried to look beyond apps, and into web content as well. Thomas Domville: Oh, that's nice. I appreciate you being up front because you're right, Sarah, the complexity. I can't imagine defining the word what is accessible. For a blind person, that's one thing. For low-vision is one thing, those with dexterity or motor issues is another thing. It's not a clear-cut and dry scope that we could just stamp it, and say you guys got to do this. I can't imagine the complexity to have to be behind something. Obviously, we can't just say this is VoiceOver-accessible because then you're singling out all the others that have other accessibility issues. Dave Nason: Even accessibility is connected to usability, and I might find an app very intuitive and you may not, or... Dean Hudson: Yeah. I mean, I have plenty times where someone says "is this accessible", and say it's accessible for me, I can use it. Someone else may go I don't like that-- [unintelligible] [laughter] Dean Hudson: It's a really really gray area, but it's something that we're striving to make easier as Sarah said, and I think we're going to get there. Thomas Domville: That's awesome. Now, one of the things you guys were talking about in the keynote, and I had wondered, the new gesture to do a three-fingers pinch to copy and three-finger spread to paste. I thought oh, that's so brilliant. I suppose that can be used as a VoiceOver custom gesture? Dean Hudson: We have accommodated that, yes. Thomas Domville: Awesome! Dean Hudson: We have some gestures that you can use to do that, perform those actions. Sarah Herrlinger: yeah, I think as with everything. Our goal even for things that would be considered general mainstream elements of the OS, we always do try and be thoughtful in how a VoiceOver user could navigate that or use it, and also how someone using Switch Control could or how someone using Voice Control. I mean, we look at all of these different elements, and try and be as thoughtful about each as we can. Dave Nason: That does bring us back actually to a related question that I guess I forgot to ask earlier was Voice Control and VoiceOver. Can they play together, or are they distinct in terms of features? Sarah Herrlinger: I would say at this stage, much in the way that VoiceOver was initially built as a feature for the blind community, our goal with Voice Control was to be able to support those with extreme physical-motor limitations. We look at that first and foremost. If you use headphones with Voice Control and you're a VoiceOver user, you may be able to get functionality out of it. When we do these, we often sort of look at let's build out one thing, make sure we've got it, and then we continue to iterate from there, and do more. In the same way, that initially the way that Zoom and VoiceOver work together that's improved over time, the way other things have happened, I think we want to come out of the gate with something that's really a great feature for the community that needs it most, and then figure out from there how we expand. Dave Nason: Absolutely! It's got to be one of the most complex features you've built in a long time, I would imagine. Thomas Domville: No doubt. I'm thinking, too, is that just yesterday somebody revealed how there's a new feature within Accessibility for those on iPad that can use their little mouse. They can actually use that as a cursor pointer. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. We do now have mouse support for iOS. It is a part of Assistive Touch. Just to give that little bit of background on Assistive Touch. Assistive Touch is another one of our features that we created specifically for individuals with physical-motor limitations which allows them to be able to use the device when they may have very limited dexterity, but some. For example, if you can only use one finger, and one finger alone, to work device then when you start thinking about things like how do you do a four-finger swipe, or a pinch, this is something was built in to support those users. A logical extension of that is someone who may need--they aren't using their finger itself on the screen, or on their devices, even on computers--but they use something like a joystick or an assistive mouse that allows them to be able to use the device, and navigate in an alternative fashion. Adding in mouse support on iOS is really, first and foremost, meant to make sure that another community that might not otherwise be able to use a product has that opportunity to do so. We're getting feedback that other people are appreciating it as well, and that's fantastic. We really initially look at how we make sure that we continue to widen the users who are able to use our products in their own individual unique ways. Thomas Domville: oh, no doubt. I do have clients that will use that mouse, and they will hover over something, and it will speak back to them what they're hovering it over, so little things like that that I've seen in the desktop realms is... We always try to wish for things on iOS and iPad iOS and things like that, so any new features like that is very welcome to all line of disabilities. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I think one of the key things with this is what we wanted to do was figure out how to use a pointing device like you would use your finger. Not so much reimagine how an iPad and a mouse would work, but really focus on how you can get that sort of touch functionality, but using a mouse. Thomas Domville: Now, that we're getting to kind of wrapping things up, I am curious if you guys have any other comments or further features that you would like to reveal to our listeners that may have not been discussed at the keynote, or into the mainstream in terms of iOS, iPad, or the Mac? Dean Hudson: Well, one we haven't talked about that was not in the keynote, but was in another presentation, is the Apple Card. I know that there's been some concerns about how that would work for people who are blind. I've been using it here, testing it, and it's fantastic. One of the things that I've experienced with credit cards is you get this bill, paper bill, and I have no idea what that thing says. I can scan it, and even then it doesn't tell me where I'm spending my money. Now, having that all accessible on iOS is amazing. Just thought I'd put that out there. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I would say just sort of in the bigger picture around things, we didn't even get to all of the things even just for the blind and low-vis communities that we've done over the course of this set of updates. To add in one more, just a quick one. Zoom went through a pretty big re-design on TV OS to just make it easier for individuals or low-vis to be able to control and navigate their devices. I think we could pull out a few more, but in thinking about time, well... Part of it, I would say, is just go in, and start exploring because I think really in all the nooks and crannies, you're going to find different settings, different new things that are there that are helpful. We want people to take advantage of it. We want people to give us feedback. To give the plug for the accessibility@apple.com email address, that is our customer-facing email address. We appreciate that we get a lot of great feedback every day from our users on how things are working for them whether it's asking us questions, reporting bugs, whatever it might be. We would love to get your thoughts on the work that we've been doing, and helps us to figure out what we keep doing into the future. Dave Nason: Great stuff! Well, I think that about does it for us today. Thank you guys again for joining us! We really appreciate it on what is a really busy week, I'm sure. Sarah and Dean, thank you so much, and Thomas, thank you for joining me today! Sarah Herrlinger: Absolutely! Thank you so much for having us! Dean Hudson: Yeah, thank you! Dave Nason: Thomas, interesting conversation. Thomas Domville: Oh, indeed! I'm sure I'm like everybody else. I was just ready for the next thing, ready for the next thing, ready for the next thing, but yet I'm so focused on what they had to say. I really love the time that we had to spend with them in details, but as always it's never enough time. I'm so blessed to have these two people that probably are so busy in their life already! We were just so honored and blessed to have at least a half hour with these folks. In general our listeners is that for every single thing they discussed here today that is new and revealing to you, there's probably 10 more new things under the hood that we going to see when iOS 13 comes out. This is the exciting part about this year, Dave, is this is not like iOS 12 where we had a few things, and that was it! This sounds like we have a lot of little changes coming our way along with some big changes that were not announced like-- [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: Oh, yeah. Dave Nason: I think we hit the highlights, but there's definitely a lot of little hidden gems hopefully. I think-- [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: I thought the low-vision people got a huge boost in the Mac area-- Dave Nason: I think that was overdue as well. I think Zoom and some of those users probably had felt a little neglected versus VoiceOver users in recent years. It looks like Apple have really put an effort in this year to make sure that they really caught up to where they want to be. Thomas Domville: It tells you the significant because they made a point of that. Not only just on the Mac, but as Sarah was saying and she made a point of it, they revamped it in iOS which is long overdue, but especially... The first and foremost of everything that's even new if they came out hard and heavy on the braille stuff, that was huge. Dave Nason: I had Scott Davert speaking in my ear the entire time while they were talking about braille. [laughter] Thomas Domville: All the millions of questions I'm sure that a lot of people have, but just knowing the fact that they're focused on braille this year is, forward and foremost, it was way way overdue, and I'm so ecstatic and excited to hear that. Dave Nason: Crossing all our fingers and all our toes that the performance is there. Thomas Domville: Yeah. Speaking of crossing fingers with toes, what did you think about the VoiceOver gestures customized? Dave Nason: That's really cool! Really really cool! Thomas Domville: I mean I'll have to see how deep- Dave Nason: See which gestures? Yeah. Thomas Domville: Yeah. How deep can we get with it? It sounded like the keyboard is going to be where it's going to really take hold. You can re-do some of the gestures with the keyboard. If it's complicated already for us to do a four-finger double tap on something, oh my gosh, we can now make that easier, but if we can intertwine this with a certain thing that I want to use day-in-day-out, that's a game changer. Dave Nason: Yeah. Absolutely! Even like iPhone 10 and above that don't have the Home button, and maybe some people struggle with those new swipe, the new Home gesture and the new App Switcher gesture, so maybe they could replace that with a two-finger double tap or whatever it might be that they will find easier to perform. Thomas Domville: Mmmhmm. I like the fact that the Voice Control, as a whole, it was meant for a specific people with disability. In a whole, it does cover with the VoiceOver API which means that you're going to knock out two birds with one stone really because-- Dave Nason: That's why I love the media attention Voice Control is hopefully getting because this drives the developer to go I'm going to actually put the effort in to do that, we'll get VoiceOver support for free alongside that. Thomas Domville: Exactly. Boy, I'm going to have to have a label on that, so that they can say something or whatever now. I think it works hands-in-hands. On top of that, Dean was really getting excited about that we now finally have more accessible means to code now with Xcode where Xcode was so alien, and a lot of things just didn't work the way we want to. They put an emphasis in coding, and so those I've always dreamed to be a coder can now have that reality come true. Plus, I love how when they analyze the code for iPad to move over to the Mac, that includes the accessibility with it. Dave Nason: Mmmhmm. Yeah. Yep. I think that was a question a lot of people would have had... I think they renamed it. That was Project Marzipan last year. Thomas Domville: Correct. Dave Nason: It wasn't an overwhelming success, I think. Even Craig said onstage "look, we learned a lot. That was 1.0, and this is 2.0 now." They've given it a new name, and a new lease at life, I think, hopefully. [laughter] Thomas Domville: Well, Catalyst in itself is a whole different separate topic because then we can go on forever because there's a lot of things we want to know. How's this going to work? How's it going to feel? How's it going to smell? Everything about it, Marzipan which is now Catalyst, is going to be very interesting. I can't wait to dive in! I'm excited that they finally put Accessibility under Settings. I heard that rumor before this cast, and I was excited to hear that they put that upfront and foremost with other important buttons under Settings. Dave Nason: Yeah, and it's not down at the bottom. She said it was right underneath General, so that's-- Thomas Domville: Right underneath General where you find Display and Brightness. Dave Nason: Mmmhmm. I think it is positive, and it's good to see that. As you said, we're looking forward to getting stuck into iOS 13. Hopefully, the whole team will be, as usual, beta testing over the summer. [Unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Stay tuned. Dave Nason: Hopefully. Thomas Domville: We will have more information for you. Whether it's in terms of podcasts, or on the website, come to applevis.com to check out in-between during the summer, and definitely check back in the fall when iOS 13 and everybody else gets dropped along with Catalina, the new Apple TV, the new iPad OS, and check out AppleVis for all the latest and greatest and what we've found, and what you can expect in terms of accessibility and other many things. Dave Nason: Thomas, I think that about wraps it up. Thank you again for joining me! Thomas Domville: It was quite an honor. I enjoyed it so much! I hope you did, too, Dave. It was an amazing experience to talk to those two especially Dean now that we now introduced Dean, I think he's coming in as blind and been working there since 2006 was an awesome awesome awesome input on the show. I loved this! Thank you! Dave Nason: Thank you so much! My name is Dave Nason. This is the AppleVis Extra. Thanks for listening! Bye-bye! [music] Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode of the AppleVis Extra. To learn more about us, visit our website at www.applevis.com. Follow us on Twitter @Applevis. Like us on Facebook.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Thomas Domville, Scott Davert, and Tyler Stephen get together to discuss the announcements made at Apple's WWDC 2019 Keynote. You can read our summary of the keynote here; where you are also encouraged to share your own opinions on what Apple did and did not announce.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Thomas Domville, Scott Davert, and Tyler Stephen get together to discuss the announcements made at Apple's WWDC 2019 Keynote. You can read our summary of the keynote here; where you are also encouraged to share your own opinions on what Apple did and did not announce.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason, Thomas Domville, Scott Davert, and Tyler Stephen get together to discuss the announcements made at Apple's WWDC 2019 Keynote. You can read our summary of the keynote here; where you are also encouraged to share your own opinions on what Apple did and did not announce.

In this podcast, Scott Davert shows us the features available with MFi supported hearing aids or Cochlear Implant processors from the perspective of a VoiceOver user. MFi compatible hearing aids come from many manufacturers and there are numerous models supported. You can see Apple's official support page which gives a fairly accurate account of which hearing aids have MFi support. However, this article has not been updated since October 2018, so anything newer than that will not be listed on this page. For more general information about hearing aids from a blindness perspective, you can listen to this Accessibility Moving Forward podcast featuring some familiar voices to AppleVis. Finally, there is a mailing list for blind hearing aid users that you can join by sending a blank email to blindhearingaidusers+subscribe@groups.io.

In this podcast, Scott Davert shows us the features available with MFi supported hearing aids or Cochlear Implant processors from the perspective of a VoiceOver user. MFi compatible hearing aids come from many manufacturers and there are numerous models supported. You can see Apple's official support page which gives a fairly accurate account of which hearing aids have MFi support. However, this article has not been updated since October 2018, so anything newer than that will not be listed on this page. For more general information about hearing aids from a blindness perspective, you can listen to this Accessibility Moving Forward podcast featuring some familiar voices to AppleVis. Finally, there is a mailing list for blind hearing aid users that you can join by sending a blank email to blindhearingaidusers+subscribe@groups.io.

In this podcast, Scott Davert shows us the features available with MFi supported hearing aids or Cochlear Implant processors from the perspective of a VoiceOver user. MFi compatible hearing aids come from many manufacturers and there are numerous models supported. You can see Apple's official support page which gives a fairly accurate account of which hearing aids have MFi support. However, this article has not been updated since October 2018, so anything newer than that will not be listed on this page. For more general information about hearing aids from a blindness perspective, you can listen to this Accessibility Moving Forward podcast featuring some familiar voices to AppleVis. Finally, there is a mailing list for blind hearing aid users that you can join by sending a blank email to blindhearingaidusers+subscribe@groups.io.

We speak with some of the best podcasting people out there. Our long time friends, Thomas Domville, Scott Davert, and Parker Wattington. We talk about how they adjust to their hearing ades. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/randy-rusnak/message

In this episode of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason is joined by Scott Davert, Tyler Stephen and Club AppleVis Member Tate Luck to talk about Apple's service oriented March 25 event, titled "It's Showtime". At the event, Apple unveiled updates to the Apple News and TV apps, alongside new subscription services called Apple News+ and Apple TV+. In addition they introduced a gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade and a new Apple credit card. You can also check out our blog post recapping the event.

In this episode of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason is joined by Scott Davert, Tyler Stephen and Club AppleVis Member Tate Luck to talk about Apple's service oriented March 25 event, titled "It's Showtime". At the event, Apple unveiled updates to the Apple News and TV apps, alongside new subscription services called Apple News+ and Apple TV+. In addition they introduced a gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade and a new Apple credit card. You can also check out our blog post recapping the event.

In this episode we hear from Scott Davert from the US. Scott is a braille advocate and deafblind specialist and sits on the Disability Advisory Committee of the Federal Communications Commission. As well as this, he actively promotes braille in the Applevis community, and has recently written a series of braille display reviews which have ... Read more...

Scott Davert introduces us to the amazon Echo Dot. Two popular apps, Roger and Alexa get together. Dan Kysor talks with Mike May about Seeing eye GPS and safety. Then Larry Skutchan tells us about Nearby Explorer from American Printing House, another GPS app. We finish by telling you how to identify all those photos of your adventures using GPS apps with Caption Bot.

The excitement is rising for a lot of new tech in the next couple of months, and we highlight a little of what will be happening in the coming week. Then we learn all about iBlink Radio, and learn more of the features of goldwave as MainMenu features these two informative segments for you this week. Scott Davert brings us a demonstration of the new iBlink Radio for Mac thanks to the fine folks at www.applevis.com. And, Daren Duff and Tim Cumings continue their class on using the Gold Wave Sound Editor. We will see you next week to start our coverage of all that is new in the latest tech this September.