How to enable Guided Access in iOS

By Lory Gil on May 10, 2013

My nephew loves to play with my iPad. I have a special folder with kid’s books just for him. He loves flipping through the pages of Wreck-it-Ralph, Wheels on the Bus HD, and all of the Dr. Seuss apps. He is autistic, so buttons, tabs, and anything he can tap on easily distract him. If I am not totally vigilant, he will be out of his book and into my Facebook app before I even realize it.

Apple added a helpful feature for making sure that hands don’t accidentally (or purposefully) tap something that they should not have. It is called Guided Access and it disables the touch screen in designated areas or the entire screen of your iOS device. We’ve got a tutorial to show you how it works… Read More

 

How to turn on vision accessibility features in iOS

By Lory Gil on May 7, 2013

Touch screen devices like Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, are not particularly usable for visually impaired people. If you are blind, or simply have a difficult time seeing the small images and texts on the screen, iOS devices are effectively useless.

Apple has worked to make their touch screen products usable for those with impaired vision. Apple’s accessibility features offer a variety of options for vision including VoiceOver, zoom, inverted colors, and more. We have a basic tutorial for activating these features, plus an explanation of what each one does… Read More

 

Amazon updates Kindle app with new accessibility features

By Cody Lee on May 1, 2013

Amazon today announced a nice little update for its Kindle iOS app, bringing the title to version 3.7. The update includes a handful of bug fixes and improvements, but the biggest change has to be the new VoiceOver support.

Tapping iOS’ Accessibility features, Amazon has made it much easier for blind and visually impaired users to navigate their way around the Kindle app through the use of VoiceOver. More details and full change log after the fold… Read More

 

Samsung’s outrageous VoiceOver suit against Apple stayed in Germany

By Cody Lee on Feb 22, 2013

Samsung has taken another hit in its patent war with Apple today.A Mannheim Regional Court in Germany ordered a stay of its infringement suit against the Cupertino company, pending a validity challenge on the patent-in-suit.

On the surface, this case looks just like any other Apple-Samsung court battle. But it’s grabbing a significant amount of attention this morning due to Samsung’s patent in question, as it’s used in the iPhone’s VoiceOver feature… Read More

 

How to Use New Text-to-Speech Accessibility Feature in iOS 5

By Oliver Haslam on Oct 23, 2011

When iOS 5 was released alongside the iPhone 4S, much of the talk was about Siri and other voice-related technology built right into the operating system. The option to speak into your iPhone and have it either translate that speech to text, or act upon your instruction is obviously super cool, but there’s one speech-related feature that’s slipped under the radar.

iOS 5 has a new accessibility option that allows iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users to have their text read back to them… Read More

 

ActiveAccess for Activator: Enable Zoom, VoiceOver, and Invert Colors From Anywhere

By Jeff Benjamin on Oct 2, 2011

The awkwardly named ActiveAccess for Activator, is a jailbreak tweak, which allows you to assign various accessibility options to Activator actions.

Accessibility options consist of features like Invert Colors, VoiceOver and Zooming — options that are great for the visually impaired.

Thanks to this tweak, there’s an even easier way to invoke these features by assigning one or all of them to an Activator action… Read More