With the influx of smart phone technology showing no signs of slowing down, universal accessibility has become a concern, and is often times a flaw of smart phone design. Fortunately, the Apple iPhone is one product on the market that has made accessibility a priority.
The VoiceOver program is a screen reader for iPhone that first achieved popularity on the Mac. This technology is now a standard feature on iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. Users can manipulate the VoiceOver screen reader with “gestures” that allow them to physcially activate items when it may be difficult to see the screen. A simple touch allows you to hear a description of the item under your finger, and a double-tap, drag, or a flick on the screen will allow you to control the phone.
VoiceOver works with the iPhone’s touchscreen to allow direct interaction with objects on the screen and it audibly helps users understand an object’s location and context. In other words, if you tap an item in a specific area of the screen, VoiceOver will dictate what is in that particular region. For example, if you touch the bottom-right corner of the screen, you will hear what program is located in the bottom-right corner of the screen. This allows people who are visually impaired to have a sense of how things appear on the screen. In addition, there are descriptions for every item on the screen including, battery level, Wi-Fi and cellular connection signal levels, the time of day, etc.
VoiceOver for the iPhone is very easy to use and gives the user full control. You can adjust the volume and speed of the speech to accommodate your listening ability. Furthermore, when the VoiceOver feature is talking, the volume of background noise is lowered, allowing the user to hear clearly and maintain full functionality of the program. The program offers other features such as Text-to-Voice technology that reads out each character as it is typed. In the spirit of full accessibility, VoiceOver includes built-in voices that speak 21 different languages.
For more information visit the Accessibility Page on apple.com and see the below video for a brief tutorial.