Triple-click Home

Listen to Triple-click Home episode 33: Where’s the Braille

The entire Triple-click Home team is back for this month’s podcast. Jamie and Derek join the team to discuss the recent Apple event announcing new iPhones plus the unveiling of Apple Watch. Discussion next turns to the good, the bad and the undecided with regard to iOS 8. Also included are some AppleVis links not discussed in the podcast.

Hands-On First Impressions of the New iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

iPhones with bigger screens may find eager senior buyers

Apple Pay Is The Most Important News Out Of Today’s Launch Event

Why Apple Pay could be the mobile-payment system you’ll actually use

Why Walmart and Best Buy aren’t backing Apple Pay

Sources Say The Next Version Of The Apple Watch Is Going To Be Much Better

Exclusive: Two Apple medical trials shed light on how HealthKit will work

Everything That You Need to Know About iOS 8 Will Be On AppleVis On Release Day

Acapela Voices Temporarily Not Available in iOS 8

The Accessibility Bugs in iOS 8: From Serious To Minor

What’s New in iOS 8 Accessibility for Blind, Low-Vision, and Deaf-Blind Users

Mailbag

From Jenine Stanley:

Oh can I relate to Buddy’s Pro Tip for those of us who find ourselves straddling both worlds.

My work laptop is a Windows machine and it’s good for what it does, sort of, but I’m really enjoying most of my leisure and home chores on my MacBook Pro.

Nope, those Mac commands do not work in Windows and sometimes they do very bad things to your work. I recently went all the way to getting a trouble ticket written for a problem I was having. When I talked to the tech at the outside support service, he asked me for exact steps. I told him and he laughed, in that way you know you’re not supposed to do but …

“Ma’am, that’s a Mac command. Do you use a Mac at home?”

“Uh, yeah, I do. thanks. I’m going to just dig a big ole hole now.”

And yes, Alena, I was taught way back when to start with any new program by exploring the menu system. See what it offers and how to do those things. It’s held me in good stead for many years, many more than I care to think about.

And Buddy, evil as you are, I’m with ya in the playing pranks on the computer teacher. Of course we’d just gotten the IBM Selectric typewriters when I was in high school and the Trash 80 computers didn’t come out until a couple years later. I had my fun at work.

We set up the old DOS machines we had so that the screen came up with a red background and red letters. Then I did a whole demo on some aspect of accessibility. Then I got called into my boss’s office to hear how that wasn’t funny. Made my point though.

Oh and you could indeed set up some key commands, like hot keys, outside of the screen reader, for Windows and more for DOS. Could I remember how to do it now? No, but I had a couple cool ones back in the day.

Blog comment from Jesse

There seems to be a lot of wining about a larger iPhone screen in recent episodes. True, some people don’t want larger screens and that’s fine. But there are many blind and low vision users, low vision users especially, who are really looking forward to a larger iPhone, myself included. I have looked at several Android phones with larger screens, and would love to have an iPhone with these types of screens.

Simply getting an iPad Mini isn’t a good solution either, for a couple of reasons. first, as a low vision user, I use the camera in my phone all the time. The camera in all iPad models isn’t as good, and for some reason, Apple has yet to add a camera flash, making many camera apps on the iPads rather pointless. I use my phone as a portable CCTV all the time and absolutely love it. A little larger screen would be very helpful, and when combined with a more open camera for developers, will make the iPhone even more comparable to dedicated handheld CCTV’s.

Also, I use data everywhere on my phone, and don’t intend to pay for an expanded data plan to have data on my iPad. I’m fine with a Wi-Fi only iPad for now.

These are just my thoughts though. I say, “Bring on the bigger phone.”

Otherwise, I love the podcast, and keep up the great work.

From Beth

Hi, I was introduced to the slate and stylus in mid elementary school but I tended toward wrist rolling and hand pain when using it and, since I was adept at the Perkins Brailler, I did not persevere with the slate and haven’t since, with no desire to. I have no need to write stuff down when I’m out and I use the Perkins and the PC at home. I was fortunate to have parents and teachers who took my individual needs into account. I wonder about the wisdom of teaching screen readers at a very young age. Computers and phones are more intuitive if you have vision, since direct action can be done with the mouse or touch screen.
Screen readers place a bridge of gestures and/or keyboard commands between the user and the device. Yes, very young kids’ brains are pliable and can soak up knowledge well but should so much info be thrown at such a young brain? Also, who will have or take the time to teach a very young child a screen reader? Most kids now are in homes where both parents work and, in general, parents do not have the time, energy or enthusiasm to learn a screen reader themselves, let alone teach it. We don’t have the resources to have that many teachers of the visually impaired to teach that many kids. Beth

Wrapping Up

Apple Creates Tool for Users to Delete Unwanted U2 Album

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:

Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter

Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter

Follow John Panarese on Twitter

Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter

Thanks for listening!

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Listen to Triple-click Home Episode 30: The Secret Slide

Welcome to the aftermath of Apple’s WWDC keynote address, otherwise known as Triple-click Home Episode 30. This month, the team pokes a bit of fun at some Twitter feedback while discussing the rather momentous news from this year’s WWDC event.

Monday at WWDC: Apple delivers big surprises as most predictions ended up wrong

Everything Apple Tried to Kill Today at WWDC

Summary of Announcements from WWDC 2014 Keynote | AppleVis

OS X Yosemite Set To Be Released This Fall As A Free Download

How to create a test partition for the OS X Yosemite beta

iOS 8 Release Scheduled for Fall

iOS 8 First Look: Features & Images

Fleksy keyboard coming to iOS 8

32 Hidden Features in Apple iOS 8

How to downgrade back to iOS 7 from the iOS 8 beta

Farewell iPhone 4: No iOS 8 upgrade for you

With iOS 8, Apple Shows Android a Thing or Two

Why Coders Are Going Nuts Over Apple’s New Programming Language

Apple posts stream & download of WWDC 2014 video

The Apple-Beats Deal: A 10-Year Affair Ends in Marriage

WWDC and iOS 8 hints point straight to an Apple iWatch

Mailbag

From Pam Francis:

Hello folks, Thank you for another quite informative addition of triple click home. I agree with your assessment of the entitlement mentality. I think it truly begins at home when a blind person is young and attempting to integrate with the family. If the family is ignorant of whatever resources they can access to help their blind family member, it’s easier to wait on them, do for them, make them feel entitled, ultimately giving them a pass at life. I know from personal experience how once family can make one feel like a sore thumb, sticking out with and family activities, children’s games etc. by the grace of the living God, I had an advocate from the time I was in preschool through early adulthood. She was my preschool teacher in a blind preschool here in Kansas City. Her advocacy along with my extroverted personality helped me escape the shelter of my family and grow into myself. I think it is also imperative for anyone with any kind of a disability to develop networking skills within their community. As for the division between the blind organizations, I think it has done more harm than good. We all have a common goal as all of you stressed on your Podcast. I understand there are different ways to get there, however there’s no reason for all of the backbiting between the various organizations and their splinter groups. That in itself helps to create the negative image we, who are functioning members of society have to live down. I don’t belong to either group. I don’t feel better than anyone, yet I don’t want to deal with all of the infighting that comes with group membership. I have done things and Been places within my life that the majority of my family members dream about. I’m not afraid to go anywhere. I also heard you make mention of looking at restaurant menus. Not sure if you’re familiar with the allmenus app. I’m enclosing a link to the app within the body of this email. It is completely accessible. The link I have is to the iOS app. I don’t know if It is available on android. In closing, I hope in this era of technology the division between the blind organizations and blind people in general has been mitigated by the use of technology and the need to learn. Thanks again, keep up the good work. Sincerely, Pam francis

Allmenus by Dotmenu

From Jenine Stanley:

Thanks Lisa for verifying my thought about the new Fleksy. I kept thinking the keyboard was smaller and I actually like it now that I got that idea into my head and am using it as such rather than the old way. I still want an easier way to do numbers and symbols but I’ll use the VO app if I really want that. Nice that both still work.

As for us as a community, the divide as I see it is those who want to be just people who happen to not do things visually versus those who want to be considered special because of that fact. These divides are present within both national groups of blind people so it’s not an ACB versus NFB thing so much as a focus on what you can do versus what you can’t.

I just see so much of the attitude that “We can’t because we are blind and we need this or that special thing, service or price break.” versus “OK, if you could add this, I’d have an even better experience with your product or service than I already do.”

Now if we can get Fleksy into Status Report I’ll be a very happy camper.

Jenine Stanley

Another from Jenine:

Not to be a curmudgeon about this one but though the UK has more audio description, is it as good? Is some info, even when grossly incorrect, better than no info?

OK, I’ll admit to being a spoiled purist when it comes to audio description. I cut my teeth on the proliferation of live audio description done by really quality describers that has been available in Columbus, Ohio since the ’80’s. Wow, looking back, that’s a long time.

The height of this experience was seeing Titanic described live. Sorry James Cameron and Angie Dickenson, our live describer had you both beat hands down.

So I do enjoy grabbing TV series and such from places like Blind Mice Mart but recently I was very frustrated with my experiences with one.

I am a giant Game of Thrones fan and actually read all of the books before gobbling up the TV series. I know the plot, the characters, all that good stuff and there are a ton of characters in this story. I recommended the HBO series to a friend in part because of the stunning audio that comes with HBO production. Great but she was so confused by the audio description getting the names wrong or giving minimal or sometimes incorrect descriptions of things that she gave up or had me translate.

That got me wondering about other shows with such description. I gave up on Downton Abbey in part because the description frustrated me.

so be careful what you wish for.

Jenine Stanley

What’s Apple Really Up To? Keeping You in Apple World.

Team Picks

Buddy Brannan is getting fit and having fun at the same time with the popular iOS game Zombies, Run!

Listen to Alena’s interview with the game developer in episode 23.

Alena Roberts is enjoying good food with Yelp and planning travel with Transit Times Plus.

Finally, John Panarese is being a good uncle and getting into baseball this season with the MLB At Bat app.

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:

Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter

Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter

Follow John Panarese on Twitter

Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter

Thanks for listening!

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Listen to Triple-click Home Episode 25: Welcome Back to the Present

It’s hard to believe that we have arrived at the end of another year. This month, the Triple-click Home team takes a look at the top Apple stories of 2013. Also, Lisa Salinger brings us a review of the Dropbox app for iOS.

This Year in Apple News

One year, four departed execs, and a lot to be determined for Apple
So, what is Apple’s next big thing going to be?

Insiders “now confident” Apple will launch lower-priced, lightweight iPhone as early as June

Apple beefs up iCloud, Apple ID security with two-step verification

Jony Ive Leaves His Mark As Skeuomorphism Concept Vanishes From One App

Apple announces WWDC 2013 details, promises new iOS and OSX builds

Tim Cook issues an apology to Apple’s Chinese customers

Apple reveals details of 50 billionth App Store download

SeroTalk Podcast 153 Discusses the Accessibility of the Kindle App

WWDC 2013, A Lot of Announcements | MacForTheBlind

Apple posts OS X Mavericks preview page

Nobody Has Tried The Real iOS 7

Voice Dream Interview by Alena Roberts

An App For All Creatures Great and Small — Zoomed In

Seeing Eye GPS: a Turn-by-Turn GPS application for the iPhone Developed Specifically for the Blind

Apple’s cheaper and not so cheap iPhone explained

Why a Gold iPhone 5S Actually Makes Sense

Apple announces the multicolor iPhone 5C, $99 for 16GB

Apple announces iPhone 5S: What you need to know

Blind Bargains: A Review of the BARD Mobile App

Mailbag

Hello,
This is for the Triple Click Home team.
Perhaps you guys can cover this in the mail bag for the next podcast.
For those of you that are using Mail in standard view, with organize by conversation
enabled, in messages that contain original messages part of a reply, and it says
“see more from sender”. When you activate the link with Control+Option+Space, have
you guys found Voice Over does not do anything when you press the up and down arrow
keys after expanding the rest of the conversation?
Thank you,

Ali Moosa

Hello there!
As always, I was looking forward to the new episode, and, as always, you did not
disappoint me. It was a pleasure to listen to it! 🙂
• I have got very little problems with TouchID on my new 5S. Actually, when I first
set it up, I didn|t have much time to listen to all the instructions and saved one
finger print with three different fingers / right thumb and index finger when holding
iPhone in left hand and left thumb when holding iPhone in right hand. this worked
although I saved it as one finger print.
I did delete it in the meantime and saved the three digits in three finger prints.
😉
• A few days ago, you retweeted a review of Open Office – was it a CNet article_
I think it was.
Has anybody tested Open Office for its accessibility recently? I remember that this
wasn’t too good a while back. Have there been improvements? I am in the middle of
writing my PhD and don’t have much time to play around with office suites. It was
time-consuming and therefore annoying enough that I had to convert a few work-in-progress
documents from RTF to docx. Aaargh!
• quite a large number of people are looking forward to getting RTF back in Pages.
Me too! However, is there a risk that the navigability of tables in Pages is going
to go again, at least in RTF format?
• One last question for now to you and your listeners, a question for which I have
not yet got an answer from Apple nor from an Apple accessibility mailing list in
which I am active:
For links in emails and on websites we can adjust in the VoiceOver settings how they
are announced. That’s fine. Nonetheless, when there is a link in an email and I arrow-key
my way into it, VoiceOver says: “web url detected” – with a voice as if she was breathing
through a helium balloon. There must be a separate setting for this as the verbosity
settings in the VoiceOver Utility don’t seem to have an effect on this phenomenon.
any ideas?
That’s it from me. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season.

Greetings from Ireland,

Markus

Hi, it’s me again!
I want to share this with you, but the other email would have got too long, so I
post it here.
I reported the accessibility issues in the file export menu in Pages to Apple Accessibility
and got the following…personal!…response, not the standard template. 😉
In the meantime we can explain the dialog box to allow you to complete the process.
In the Pages File Menu, if you selected Word, then Word is automatically selected
in the export dialog.
If, at that point, you press Enter, then you will be taken to the Save as Dialog
box to choose where you want to save the exported file. The file will export as a
word doc with the default settings of
a) No password required to open the file and
b) Using the .docx format instead of the older .doc ( Word 1997-2003) compatible
format.
If instead you chose PDF in the Export Menu, then the dialog box will default to
PDF as the exported filed type. Pressing Enter will again then take you to the Save
as dialog box with the pre-determined
settings of Good Image quality and no password required to open the file.
If you choose to move within the dialog box, there are 5 tabbed areas: PDF, Word,
Plain Text, ePub, and Pages ’09. These are the 5 Unknown labels you are hearing.
Each has some further text or options associated with each option:
Under PDF, the text reads;
“To Change PDF layout settings, Choose File > Print.”
The PDF options are;
Image Quality: with a pull down menu for Good, Better, or Best. The default is good.
And a check box for Require password to open. The default is unchecked.
Under Word, the options are;
Require password to open check box
and a disclosure triangle revealing the format options pull down menu of .docx or
.doc
.docx is the default choice.
Under Plain Text there is only the text;
Create a plain text document that includes only body text without formatting.
Under ePub, the options are;
Three text boxes including Title, Author and Primary Category
and a disclosure triangle revealing an additional text box for Language
as well as a check box for Use the first page as the book cover image. The default
is unchecked.
Under Pages ’09;
The only option is the Require password to open check box.
The default is an unchecked check box.

Markus Böttner

Wrapping Up

From iPad Air to Mac Pro: everything you need to know about Apple’s fall event

My Review of the iPhone 5S | MacForTheBlind

Apple promises to bring back missing iWork for Mac features in six months

All The Changes In iOS 7.1 Beta You’ll Actually Notice

Joe Steinkamp interviews the developers of the MovieReading app in SeroTalk Podcast 179

Apple to Usher in New Age of In-Store Shopping With iBeacon Rollout

The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

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Listen to Triple-click Home Episode 23: Earth to iTunes

Apple gave us so much to talk about this month that it was hard to know where to start. That said, the Triple-click Home team along with special guest Justin Romack gave it their best shot. There is one other very special guest who appears briefly in this podcast. We’ll give you a hint—think That Android Show and it isn’t Joe Steinkamp. Finally, Alena Roberts visits with Alex McMillan, who was the original lead developer of the very popular iOS game Zombies, Run!

Stories covered in this episode include:

From iPad Air to Mac Pro: everything you need to know about Apple’s fall event

Flybridge

About the security content of OS X Mavericks v10.9

My Review of the iPhone 5S | MacForTheBlind

Apple Launches iPhone Tips and Tricks Guides

Why I Hacked Apple’s TouchID, And Still Think It Is Awesome.

iOS 7 nabs more than 50 percent of Apple users in first week

What’s New in iOS 7?

A low vision user’s view of iOS 7

Apple releases iOS 7.0.3: iCloud Keychain, iMessage fixes, sensor fixes, Touch ID improvements

Ahrendts Hire Emphasizes Apple’s Focus on High End

Gold iPhone 5s Sells for $10K on eBay

iPhone Map Leads To The Tarmac At Fairbanks Airport

Martha Stewart Angers Apple With Broken iPad Tweets

Meet the woman behind the voice of Siri

After 30 years, lost ‘Steve Jobs Time Capsule’ finally recovered

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

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Listen to Triple-click Home Episode 19: A Stickler for Sequence

This month, Joshua Loya joins the Triple-click Home team to talk about all things related to Apples WWDC Keynote. Stories discussed in this podcast include:

What Apple revealed at WWDC 2013

Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote video now live

WWDC 2013, A Lot of Announcements | MacForTheBlind

David Woodbridge Technology Blog: Talking Tech for June 11 – Apple WWDC 2013 Keynote – my notes

Which Macs, iPads and iPhones will get Apple’s new goodies?

Apple posts OS X Mavericks preview page

iOS 7 tells Apple users to ‘get excited’ again, says analyst

Apple’s new products won’t cheer investors, says analyst

Hands-on with the new Apple iOS 7

Fleksy keyboard page seems to indicate that Apple will allow third party software keyboards in iOS 7?

iOS App Store will update apps automatically, offer location and age categories

Passbook for iOS 7 to support scanning QR codes

The iPhone finally gets call-blocking in iOS 7

Lawmakers are cautiously optimistic about iOS 7’s ‘Activation Lock’ feature

Apple announces ad based iTunes Radio, ad free for iTunes Match subscribers

Apple’s latest creation is a woman named Mieko Haire

For Apple, an inflection point

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them: Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter Follow John Panarese on Twitter Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter Thanks for listening!

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