Blind user of the iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Blind user of the iPhone

behindthecurtain.us

177 pointsflapjack36 comments

I created the Color ID app described by the user.

It's very rewarding to see that someone has found our app useful. The app was, in fact, originally intended for the (color) blind. It grew out of SS12: Code for a Cause ( http://ss12.info/ ), a coding competition where the goal is to create software for the disabled.

The whimsical color names made me think that the app would be less useful for the colorblind, as most people don't understand colors like "Cosmic" and "Hippie Green." So I thought the app would be mostly used as a toy; a fun way to see what the "color" of your friend's face is ("Tacao"!). But this blog post makes me realize that what started almost as an accident, actually ends up being pretty awesome ("a very psychedelic experience").

BTW, the app's name in the App Store is "Color Identifier". It appears as "Color ID" on your home screen. I'm certain he's talking about my app because mine is the only one (AFAICT) that reads color names aloud, and also contains all of the color names that he mentions in the blog post.

For those interested in the app, here's an affiliate link to see it in iTunes: http://bit.ly/CIDHaN (it's 99¢)

Let me know what you think. I love hearing from users of my apps :)

Wow, if speaking names of colors is such a huge deal to him, imagine how he'd feel about an app that could read text aloud using the camera!

I wonder if you could also make an app that would generate sounds from the camera in a way that would allow a blind person to "see" with their ears. What if you took a line across the image and used the intensities as input to an inverse FFT, what would that sound like?

Ok, startup idea:

Inspired by the lovely scene from the movie Amélie where the titular character takes a blind man by the hand and describes in detail how the town square looks.

Imagine an app. Blind user uses app to take a photo and instantly send an image to a mechanical Turk service which describes the photo and returns an audio file.

This could even be done without smartphones (albeit less seamlessly). Blind user takes a photo with a cameraphone and sends it to an MMS number. User then receives a call from a call center where an agent describes the photo.

Wow, that is awesome. I'm doing it. Starting now. When it's done, it'll be free - if I can afford it.

Thanks for the brilliant idea I hope I do it justice.

That's brilliant, nice one mortenjorck and sahillavingia.

sahillavingia, I'd love to help, I'm sending you an email now.

That's fantastic! If you need any design advice, just get in touch.

A followup: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/862869303/an-iphone-app-...

already exists, see http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jbigham/vizwiz/video/

That looks very promising. Is it more than a proof-of-concept yet, though?

Take a look at vOICe for Android (http://www.seeingwithsound.com/android.htm, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lmSYP7OcM) - sounds very similar to what you're describing.

Blindsight have been working on this for some time. Blindsight was co-founded by, Mark Nitzberg, friend and ex-colleague of Paul Graham, they worked together at Viaweb.

http://blindsight.com/

Fantastic story and a great reminder to developers to be mindful of accessibility issues. I've worked on a project for the VA (Veteran Affairs) in Los Angeles and I had to consciously keep asking myself "How would a visually impaired user interact with this? How would somebody with limited mobility use this?". It really makes you think about your design and your markup (in the case of a web app).

For developers interested in accessibility issues and the various requirements, check out http://www.section508.gov

Yes it's the extremely interesting article by a blind Linux user who writes:

"I have seen a lot of technology for the blind, and I can safely say that the iPhone represents the most revolutionary thing to happen to the blind for at least the last ten years."

What we developers should note is

"Applications have the same issues with accessibility as with any graphical environment. Apple has done a good thing by making guidelines available for app developers, which I passionately urge them to follow. Any blind computer user has run up against these problems in Windows, Mac, or in Gnome. These include unlabeled buttons and fields, unreachable controls except through annoying means, or in extreme cases complete inaccessibility."

Oddly enough, I had a blind customer call me to ask something about my service BitBuffet. She sold music online through us and took a minute after I solved her problem to tell me how great my site was for the blind.

I had no idea! I just follow most best practices for the web, but it really made my day to know I helped her do something she always wanted to do! Warm fuzzies indeed.

I had to do some accessibility QA for a large shrink-wrapped software application, and it's quite the ordeal. I liken it to trying to operate an application through a telephone interface. When you're digging through menus, you need to listen to every. single. menu. entry. before deciding which one you want, and I found it far too easy to get distracted and forget where I was.

I suppose users who are used to dealing with accessibility software are used to this kind of interface, but I think it requires a level of patience that sighted users are not accustomed to (at least when dealing with their desktop software).

SS12: Code for a Cause, the contest that spawned the Color ID app mentioned in the article, is also held in Los Angeles. Here's their site: http://ss12.info/

Also, let me know if you happen to have suggestions for the Color ID app in particular; I'm the lead developer on that app.

By the way, he solved his major complaint in the article, iTunes. He simply switched to mac a week ago: http://behindthecurtain.us/2010/09/11/rejoining-the-apple-fa...

Beautiful article, very touching.

"Then I remembered that you actually need light to see, and it probably couldn’t see much at night."

:) This story made me smile. Good for the author!

That's quite a touching account. On a whim, I enabled VoiceOver on my iPhone (I'm sighted), and I must say I'm quite blown away.

I recommend you try it if you aren't aware of this feature. It's easily enabled in the system Settings app (look for Accessibility). Just remember that when VoiceOver is active icons/buttons will require double taps instead of single taps, and you need to use triple-touch to scroll in menus or between home screens.

I'm sure that as a sighted person with no context I'm completely missing any nuance in the way this feature is implemented, but even handicapped so, it is quite impressive.

Video, demonstrating how blind iPhone users interact with the device.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_TFHqIHBqM

Anyone else seeing the sad irony of YouTube comments pointing out out-of-focus video for a clip of a blind man's demo?

also, google employs one of the most innovative eyes-free developers on the planet, t.v. raman, to do work on android. check out the results of his work (and of his collaborator charles chen) at http://code.google.com/p/eyes-free/, demos at http://www.youtube.com/user/EyesFreeAndroid.

Cool mention at the end of the article about "augmented reality", by using an app that identifies color via the phone's built-in camera.

Reminds me of the compass belt... http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/technology_01.h...

Anyone have experience with android's accessability UI?

A blind friend showed it to me, and it seemed fairly impressive but with the major failing that the web browser was not accessible.

Of course, the benefit of using android would be getting a phone with a physical keyboard, and a d-pad.

>Amazingly, it even renders stock charts, something the blind have never had access to. Sold.

Can someone explain this to me? How can a chart be "rendered" for a blind person?

You move your finger over the stock chart, and it reads out the X and Y values to you. Eg: "May 28 10, 256.17" (i.e, on May 28 2010, the stock was trading at $256.17). You can scan the chart with your finger to get the whole thing described.

Voiceover is really impressive. I'm sighted, but I keep the shortcut to turn it on (triple click home button) enabled so I can use it quickly when I want to.

I use it to read and type short text messages when I'm driving without taking my eyes off the road. Other times I use the screen reader to read websites to me while driving.

So to the other developers out there, remember, accessibility helps the sighted users as well as the blind.

Typing this on my iPad with my eyes closed

Wow that was brutal. Took me maybe 20 minutes to get from the accessibility screen to submitting that, all without looking. Still, it's amazing that I could do it at all.

The touch keyboard has gotta be a deal breaker for blind people though. You have to poke around and listen for the letter you want, then double tap it. You can jump to the start and end of a field but I didn't find any way to move around in the text. I assume they can generally type full speed on a physical keyboard and I couldn't imagine getting a phone without one if I was blind.

Google cache for the article, since the site seems to be down http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z3Hq_TK...

amazing article,

slightly out of context, are there any 3rd party accessibility testing and consulting companies who specialize in web applications?

I occasionally do this as a freelancer if it's a larger project. If it's something small, I don't mind answering a few questions for free. I'm visually impaired, as are my father and daughter. I have an interest in making the web more accessible. In fact I'll be writing an article about this for the next PragPub magazine. Feel free to contact me if I can help.

Amazing...

The link is giving me a database error, but printful mirrored the text before it went down. Check http://printful.com/VZQA

Disclaimer: printful is a side project of mine

Sexy, do you run readability on it first?

Not really. I got the initial idea from readability, but I developed my own algorithm for text and image extraction using Python and lxml.

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