Apple iPad

Apple’s new iPad has had me doing some thinking about its potential impact fro the visually impaired, particularly for blind photographers. Reading an article today (thanks, Dad) about a new e-book reader software, Blio, soon to be put out by a company run by Ray Kurzweil, prompted me to consider a new issue, accessible photography books (and magazines). I rarely read books about photography. The font is universally too small, the books too heavy and there are no audio editions. The iPad has the possibility of changing this.

Blio is supposedly designed to enrich the e-reading experience with audio, video and web content. On a device like the iPad, with its large, high-resolution color screen, we could see the release of more photography-related media. With text-to-speech, we could even see the advent of accessible photography books and magazines.I can imagine looking at full-screen images while listening to the accompanying text. Not only would this a be a great format for re-releasing books by the masters, but this would also be a great format for every photographer with a story to tell. Scott Bourne has already expounded about the iPad’s potential as a digital portolio. On his Photofocus blog post, What the Apple Tablet Will Mean to Photographers, Bournes writes that “(t)he portable portfolio will get an amazing jump-start because of the new tablet, and all the competition that follows it.” The next step is for photographers to publish e-books, through sites like Blurb, for the iPad and the tablet platform in general.

Tim O’Brien is a regular columnist on Blind Photographers. Legally blind, Tim writes about accessibility, photography and, occasionally, both together. You can find out more about Tim on his blog or by following him on twitter.

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This time last year I was bemoaning the general state of accessibility and new technology and grieving for the accessible camera that might never be (accessibility vaporware) But now, you get a fully accessible camera and you get a great smartphone to go with it, the iPhone 3GS. Reading the flood of blog posts since it introduction it seemed that most missed the revolutionary thing Apple has done: produce a mainstream, cool device that is accessible right out of the box. And they made a touchscreen device accessible to boot. The viphone email list has been positively buzzing since the iPhone went on sale, on june 19th. It is interesting to see how liberating this is. No longer is it necessary to use expensive after market solutions to make a device like a nokia smartphone accessible. I own a nokia E71 + Talks and Wayfinder Access, a combination which set me back 1200 euro and kind of works but not quite. Now that the iPhone is accessible many things I could only dream of having at my disposal suddenly are. To have a camera, albeit a toy camera, that is fully accessible, that I can control, is an unexpected gift. Now if there are photo apps like ezimba, or camerabag and the flickr uploader that are voiceover compliant, I could control my entire workflow again, from capture to post processing to upload. I already wrote to Peter Meijer, who has developed vOICe, which I use as a sonified viewfinder on the Nokia to ask him whether he could port to iPhone. He does have an Android version available, but even with the eyesfree initiative gathering traction, Android is far from an accessible operating system. But I could imagine having an app that adds a sonified overlay to the camera and so acts as a viewfinder if you drag your finger on the screen. I can imagine all kinds of possibilities.

One of the things I considered was how I would be able to use the iPhone as a note taker if it could pair with the Apple Blue Tooth keyboard. This is not possible at the moment without jailbreaking and hacking the iPhone to load a bluetooth keyboard driver. But it should be possible now that a new group of users is starting to use the iPhone. It is remarkable what Apple’s move has unleashed. One thing is that the blind/visually impaired device market may possibly implode. Pricing in that market is aimed at subsidizing government bodies, not at individual users. But who needs the KNFB reader when someone can code an accessible ocr app that reads the text it scans with the camera? I’d pay $0.99 for that, instead of $1200. Heck, I’d pay $75 for that! A number of viphone regulars have already indicated that they’d take up coding for the iPhone, and I’ve been tempted too. It would be great if a community of blind iPhone users were to develop their own apps. In that sense, the current iPhone is an immensely empowering device and Apple cannot be praised enough for its efforts. But now I must wait for my iPhone to arrive. I’m on a waiting list.

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This section of the website looks at four very different historic photographs from the V&A’s collection. Each photograph is reproduced in colour and is accompanied by an explanation of the photographic process, the historical context of the image and a vivid description of the photograph to help blind or visually impaired visitors imagine what the image is like.

What we need is a grass roots effort to do this for all museum objects. An online, downloadable WikiArtDescription service. Just show download the collection for a particular museum onto your iPhone or other smartphone. ID the relevant piece and, voila, here’s your description. Like your typical museum $5 audioguide, but free, universal, ubiquitous and user-driven.

This would make a great iPhone app!

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