SITE e-Newsletter November 2011 Issue 31 Welcome to the latest issue of the eNewsletter which includes information on recent news, how you can help us at SITE and news of our AGM. Take care and have a good month. The Editor. In this issue: 01. News Update 02. Books, Games and Apps 03. Technology 04 Events Diary + 01 News Update ++Fundraising for SITE SITE supporters can now help to raise much needed funds through the easyfundraising and easy search websites. Basically, if you buy anything on line from one of hundreds of major retailers, you simply visit your chosen retailer’s website via the easyfundraising site and for each purchase SITE will receive a donation, which varies according to the retailer. You can find out more and register [free] to support SITE Scotland at www.easyfundraising.org.uk Another easy way to raise funds is by using www.easysearch.org.uk as your search engine, instead of google or whatever you currently use. Each time you search you will earn a tiny amount of money for SITE, but every little helps and it is pretty painless if you make the easysearch website your homepage. ++Apple Accessibility Online Survey Following the recent survey on accessibility of Apple products and our intention to provide training we are currently evaluating the responses. We had a fantastic response to the survey and we at SITE would like to thank all who participated. Unfortunately the intended event at the Apple Store in Glasgow has had to be postponed until early in the New Year but the survey findings suggest that many people would welcome events delivered by SITE - so you never know what is just around the corner! We will keep you posted when we have more information to relate. ++Walt Disney inaccessibleWebsites There is a US class action against the Walt DisneyCompany for the alleged inaccessibility of its websites. Three blind women can proceed with a class action against Disney alleging the company’s websites unlawfully include information which is visible to sighted users but not to screen reader programs, as well as options which are inaccessible to blind people such as the ability to make reservations and download electronic tickets. Web accessibility is just one of five main areas of complaint being brought in the case, with others including issues in the theme parks themselves such as a lack of Braille maps. The plaintiffs are not seeking money damages, simply an injunction requiring Disney to comply with the Americans withDisabilities Act by making its services accessible. ++Descriptive Guidance A guide to describing TV programmes and films for vision-impaired people has been published by Canadian non-profit body Media Access Canada. The first of six chapters that are planned to build into an ‘Accessible content best practices guide for digital environments’, the descriptive video production and presentation guide is ‘open source’, and will be updated regularly based on comments received. Further chapters will cover issues including closed captioning techniques. http://www.mediac.ca/proj-ACBPG.asp ++Last CSIP Open Day The last in the series of Open Days at the CSIP, Glasgow will take place on Thursday 10 November from 3PM until 8PM. If you have not attended any of the previous Open Days this is your last chance to see what is on offer at the newly refurbished Centre. A band will be playing from 6-8PM and finish the celebrations, so come along and make a night of it! ++Disability Living Allowance(DLA) News There have been significant changes to the Motability scheme, including a £2,000 limit on the maximum advance payment, which will limit the range of cars available, and changes to who can be a nominated driver. This follows utterly misleading articles in the Daily Mail claiming that the families of thousands of children with ADHD were getting free cars and also alleging that many claimants were using Motability to acquire top of the range BMWs.  The Daily Mail did provide a correction to one article in its new page two correction column.  But this was only after much pressure was applied, and many will see the correction as utterly pointless. There have also been minor changes to the disability living allowance claim form, primarily to the page dealing with giving consent to allow the DWP to share information with other agencies. ++Choroideremia Over 100,000 people worldwide are affected by choroideremia. It is an inherited condition that generally affects males only. Diagnosis is usually made in childhood and leads to blindness in men by their forties. To date there has been no treatment for the condition. A clinical trial that has just begun at the Oxford Eye Hospital, represents the world's first ever attempt to treat choroideremia and the first time that gene therapy has been directed towards the light sensitive photoreceptor cells of the human retina. Patients in the trial will have a virus injected into their eye which has been genetically engineered to carry a missing gene. The virus has been modified to enable it to infect the light sensitive cells known as photoreceptors that line the back of the eye. There are 12 patients enrolled in the trial who will undergo gene surgery treatment to one eye. It is estimated to take a further 24 months to know whether or not the degeneration has been stopped completely by the gene therapy treatment. This is the first time these cells have been targeted using gene therapy and it paves the way for the treatment of other genetic causes of blindness such as retinitis pigmentosa. +02. Books, Games and Apps ++Accessible computer Games for Children Some major strides have been made in making mainstream games – whether educational or otherwise – more available and accessible to blind and sight-impaired children and youths but there is a great deal more that needs to be done.  Blind and sight-impaired kids need to be able to access more mainstream technology. In short, they need to have equal access to whatever game or learning tool is out there for the mainstream child and youth. Some strides have been made in the area of ball games; a beeping baseball or hockey puck, a beeping ball for lawn tennis, and look how Goalball has been developed for blind people. Try out Spoonbill Software, run by programmerIan Humphreys in Albany, WesternAustralia, which offers some 18 free computer games for sighted, vision-impaired and blind players. The Spoonbill’s newest accessible game, BG Codebreaker, substitutes all the letters of the alphabet with numbers and then invites you to decode words. You can browse all 18 game descriptions here: http://www.spoonbillsoftware.com.au/blindgamers.htm ++Read2Go This is a DAISY reader app for Bookshare that works on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. If you haven't heard of the site before, Bookshare is an initiative aiming to increase the opportunity for blind and partially sighted people to access a wide range of printed materials at the same time as everyone else. You can read more about the Bookshare mission on their website. With Read2Go, users and schools supporting students can search, download and read Bookshare books and periodicals and manage their books in a bookshelf. Download Read2Go from the iTunes App Store Price: £13.99 Bookshare is a subscription based service. It's actually based in the United States but it's open to international members as well. For an individual membership, the cost is $75 in the first year (which includes a one off setup fee of $25) and $50 per year after that. At the time of writing, that works out at about £45 for the first year and £30 for each year after that. The Bookshare website has more details about signing up as a UK individual. Bookshare has a wide variety of books available to UK users. By default, when you become a member, Bookshare will only show you books that you can download as a resident of the UK. Some of the publishers that books are available from include: Scholastic (children's titles Harper Collins (fiction and nonfiction Baen Books (science fiction and fantasy) O'Reilly Media (technical / computer) Orient BlackSwan Pvt. Ltd. (educational and fiction) Perseus (fiction and nonfiction) Seasons Publishing (children's titles) East West Publications (fiction and nonfiction) ++VizWiz Sounds like a funky app! And you'd be right. It certainly is a funky app! VizWiz is an app for the iPhone that allows blind and partially sighted users to get answers to questions about their surroundings by taking a photo. But we already have apps that do that right? Apps such as oMoby. We do, but VizWiz has something special up its sleeve that sets it apart from other similar apps and it is free. VizWiz differs from apps such as oMoby in that it uses a combination of techniques (some automatic and some human-powered) to answer the user's question. Like oMoby, you can use automatic image processing but with VizWiz you can also use something called anonymous web workers or members of your social network to have a human answer your question. This is great for when you're taking an image of something you might think is particularly obscure that automatic image processing may struggle to identify. This combination of options lets VizWiz get fast and accurate answers when answering questions. ++New VoiceOver Features in iOS 5 The best thing about the iPhone and the iOS devices is that blind and visually impaired people can do almost everything as a fully sighted person can – without help. Now you don’t even need sighted assistance for setting up the device! Or even take a photo. Setup When starting up the device before there was a screen telling you to connect to iTunes. Now it says welcome and start the set-up. From here just press the Home Button 3 times to start VoiceOver or even tap 3 times with 3 fingers to Zoom. You can also use Apple’s keyboard dock but no bluetooth keyboards or braille displays. Tip: By turning VO on then off and then Zoom, you can now toggle them with triple press Home. Camera The Camera App has been updated with a feature for iOS devices that got the ”A5” processor (iPad 2 and iPhone 4S), that now announces if one or more faces is in the shot. For example VoiceOver says ”small face centre”, so you can take those holiday family picture, again without assistance from sighted family members. You can also use the volume up button to take a photo so you don’t have to hear or record VO. This also works with headset buttons. Also, you now need to double tap to change focus and exposure. New Ways to Navigate. Now it’s even easier to find what you are looking for, wether on the home screen, an app or in Safari. Item Chooser and Search This is a feature that has been on the mac and now comes to iOS. What it does is to bring up a pop-up with a complete list of all items on the screen and puts them in alphabetic order. When selecting an item it even says where on the screen it’s located. The list also contains a search field for an even easier way to find that app, folder or button you were looking for. To activate the Item Chooser tap 3 times with 2 fingers or with a keyboard VO + I. You can also search directly from a keyboard with VO + F then enter the search query and pressing Enter You can move between matching queries with VO + G for next and hold Shift for previous. Tip: Search works very well in Safari as well as everywhere else. Other Nifty Improvements There is like always with a new OS many minor enhancements and fixes here’s some. ▪ It’s now possible to change the VoiceOver volume with rotor. (Enable in settings) ▪ When in a text field you can always use swipe up/down to move by character. ▪ 3 finger swipe down in many apps pull down and refresh content. ▪ Taping with 3 fingers now also announce where on the screen the item is. ▪ Calendar icon now says current date. ▪ Folders now lets you know how many items it contain. ▪ You can now touch the bar above the dock to go between pages by swiping up/down. ▪ It’s easier to move icons on the home screen. ▪ Calculator tells if your in advance (landscape) or simple (portrait) mode on change. ▪ You can now use lock button to end calls. (when holding to ear) ▪ VO stays on the device when using AirPlay. ▪ Fixed the issue where "screen dimmed" was announced during a call. ▪ iOS now supports .BRF files to read digital braille. ▪ More support for braille displays and bug fixes. +04 Events Diary 10 November Centre for Sensory Impaired People, 17 Gullane Street, Partick, Glasgow Open Day 15.00-20.00Contact Hazel McFarlane, Centre Manager on 0141 276 5250 or eMail: Hazel.McFarlane@sw.glasgow.gov.uk for further information. 16 December SITE AGM LTCAS Offices, 349 Bath Street, Glasgow. Commences 12 noon. Contact John Turley on 07770 236 2105 or email johnturley@sitescotland.org to confirm attendance. download the newsletter, including back issues, podcasts and join the website forum by visiting www.sitescotland.org. SITE is a charity registered in Scotland. Charity No. SC 036056. Registered address: Centre for Sensory Impaired people, 17 Gullane Street, Glasgow G11 6AH. Subscribe If you wish to subscribe to the SITE newsletter please send an e-mail to info@sitescotland.org with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject header. Unsubscribe If you wish to unsubscribe to this newsletter please send an e-mail to info@sitescotland.org and include the word 'Unsubscribe' in the subject header. Working together to develop opportunities for the visually impaired community ++Newsletter ends