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Most of us don’t need VoiceOver, the accessibility feature that’s built into the operating system of each and every iPhone.
But for one blind iPhone owner, it has been a life-changer.
Writing back in June, Austin Seraphin described an extraordinary first week using an iPhone with a $2 app called Color ID (pictured above): “I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as ‘Horizon,’ ‘Outer Space,’ and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown.”
Apple might have spent time on things that really, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter (I’m looking at you, Ping). But this – VoiceOver – matters, and it’s good. And the work’s not over yet, because as Austin points out, iTunes still needs a lot of work before it’s usable via VoiceOver. But it’s a start.
Final word goes to Austin, from a recent post about buying an iMac: “I joyfully look forward to the day when blind people finally catch on and realize that for $700, HALF the cost of JAWS for Windows, the most popular software used or rather pushed on the blind, they can get a fully functional computer that delivers a superior experience and comes with a superior screen reader with superior speech. May the Mac relegate Windows to the recycle bin, where it properly belongs.”
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the Cult of Mac:
