After much research I ended up getting an iPhone 3Gs. I was immediately overwhelmed with new features and tools. While the phone has a wonderful TTS (Text-to-Speech) engine it is not always intuitive. Ironically the best guide to use the tool, primarily a tool for those lacking functional sight, is a video on Apple’s website. The Zoom feature is profoundly useful but of coarse it takes a while to get use to it. It all boils down to functionality. If I have to tap the screen 20 times to get to a contact then is it really useful?
Since the iPhone allows me to see my screen or listen to text messages something I haven’t been able to do for ten years I’m grateful for the oppertunity to use such a tool. So below I plan to walk you through what I’ve learned in the past few days.
Namely Apps are the big thing you need to know about as a Low Vision User and unfortunately there’s not a lot to say. But it could be a problem of “filter” failure. That’s to say with tens of thousands of apps it is possible for the accessibility apps to get lost. And there is really no functional catagory for such apps.
Anyhow I came from a phone that used a T9 keyboard just numbers and function keys. In the old days I just punch the address book button, an then hit the appropriate T9 keys. ( “1″ for example is linked to “ABC” hence with that one key I could get to those names beginning with those letters). There are T9 applications on the iTunes store but I couldn’t seem to find one that had big text although it could be variable. For the the pocket change it costs to buy and app it might be worth just trying it out.
Address book and Zoom. While the Zoom works with the built in Address book i find it time consuming and you can navigate to a specific letter quickly. There is a alphabeta on one side but I find it too troublesome to use. Its a lot of dragging and its hard to explain it takes a lot of time.
Good news is there’s an App called “BigNames”. Its a dollar or two but so far worth it. It blows the address book names up to a manageable size (Probably about 5 names per page). It can work in lanscape and functions the same as the default contacts in skimming the contacts. What’s really great is you can tap and hold and drag (along the right side) to go through every letter to quickly navigate you contacts. Downsides it doesn’t allow you to add/edit contacts and it doesn’t allow you to alter the font size, color, etc. But its something and thank goodness.
I’ll let you know about another great app soon. Thanks for reading.
