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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show notes:
Apple Watch with David Woodbridge | davidwoodbr.podbean.com/
WWDC Puts Accessibility On The Radar For Developers http://buff.ly/1LhvZ85
Recap of WWDC 2015 | AppleVis http://buff.ly/1LhvOJP
App: Care Sync www.BridgingApps.org
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DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Hi, my name is David Woodbridge. I’m a senior assistive technology consultant at Vision Australia and an adaptive technology Apple ambassador for Apple Australia, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 212 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on June 19 of 2015.
Folks, we have sort of an Apple day today. With WWDC coming out recently and the Apple Watch taking the world by storm, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about Apple today. We will have a recap of some of the accessibility implications that came out at the World Wide Developers’ Conference, but my main interview today is with David Woodbridge who is kind of an Apple accessibility luminary from Australia, and today he and I are going to drill down a little bit and talk specifically about accessibility as it relates to Apple Watch and his experience as somebody who is a Voiceover user and how Apple Watch has kind of become part of his daily workflow.
We hope you’ll check out our website which is www.eastersealstech.com. We hope you’ll shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject, or give us some feedback, questions and comments. We love to have them on our listener line. That number is 317-721-7124.
Just like week, a lot of the Apple fans in the world and developers gathered in California for WWDC 2015. That’s when Apple gets together and talks with developers and tells the world what’s on the horizon, what’s coming. One of the things that happened which I found interesting was Steve Aquino has an article here in TechCrunch about how at WWDC, there was an emphasis on accessibility. There’s a great article, and I’ll pop a link in the show notes over to it, where he talks about how Tim Cook made a point to talk about accessibility. And then Steve had the opportunity to go into some sessions where developers were talking about accessibility, and he gained more insight into what Apple does to make sure that apps that come out are as accessible as possible. They also talk about some specific apps like Workflow, one of the automation systems for iOS, and how it has been built in an accessible way. They also included some interviews with the folks over at Assistiveware, the makers of Proloquo2Go and Proloquo4Text, some folks who have been on our show as well. I’ll stick a link in the TechCrunch article so that you can see what Steve had to say about accessibility.
And then the other thing is that there were some general announcements made at WWDC about some of the things that are coming. The quick synopsis is that El Capitan, which is going to be the new version of Mac OS X, have more stability, better gesture support, and easier window management. There will be an iOS 9 coming out that’s going to be more contextually aware, be able to do better searching and have some better performance, better life, that kind of stuff. The other things that kind of happened involved Apple Pay and how that’s going to be coming to the UK; an upgrade to Apple Watch and the Apple Watch operating system version 2 that will include more support for different kinds of apps; and then the biggest announcement, the “and one more thing” announcement, was about Apple Music. Apple is releasing a $10 a month, or $15 a month for a family, service that will give you access to tons of streaming music on Apple.
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on WWDC because there’s a lot out there. I’m going to put links over to TechCrunch where you can learn about the accessibility for developers. And I’m also going to put a link over to a blog post on AppleVis’s website, and they have a really great recap of what happened at WW juice. So if you want some of those details and you don’t want to wait for them to roll out to the Apple stores and the Apple distribution channels, check these show notes. I’ll have some links there.
Each week, one of our partners tells us what’s happening in the ever-changing world of apps, so here’s an app worth mentioning.
AMY BARRY: This is Amy Barry with BridgingApps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s app is called Care Sync. A centralized area that stores and organizes health and medical information for you and your family members is a critical component of household management. When that task can be streamlined, digitally stored, easily accessed, shared when needed, and with complete portability, then you have one of the best rationales for owning a mobile phone or tablet device. Thinking even bigger, add the capability to collect and store copies of one’s actual own medical records onto this mobile device, and you are at the forefront of a new age of healthcare.
An app called Care Sync brings these powerful capabilities to a mobile device. It functions as a personal or a family health and medical information organization system. The Care Sync app is free for as many family and care team members as you wish. Enter the information yourself, and use the handy visit tools to create engaging communication with your healthcare providers and care teams. With an optional upgrade called “Care Sync Plus”, a service steps in to collect and store within your own web-based and mobile device Care Sync account, all of your actual medical records and lab paperwork. A daunting, time consuming, and even expensive and sometimes impossible task for the average person is outsourced to the Care Sync team. The end result is a true opportunity for participatory healthcare with individuals and families empowered through ownership of and easy access to their medical information.
The Care Plan, a part of the app, is a summary section with a daily synopsis of the current day’s medication, schedule, appointments, and any tasks or goals. The Care Manager section serves to store all past and future appointment information. The Health Profile area serves to hold many piece of medical information including a provider list, a list with both ongoing and resolved health conditions, current and past medications and dispensing schedule, an allergy profile, and a log section to track a variety of different measurements. The Personal Info section holds information such as emergency contacts, address, date of birth, blood type, and health insurance ID numbers.
Three separate families trialed Care Sync for the BridgingApps review. All were very pleased about their experiences with and the unique capabilities of Care Sync. BridgingApps highly regards the Care Sync app as a powerful tool for all families, but especially for families with medically involved loved ones. The organization potential alone makes Care Sync a real management asset, but the opportunity for personal ownership of one’s medical records is a huge step towards empowering families to consistently be the best advocates for their own health. The Care Sync app is a free download on the iTunes and Google Play stores with upgrade options available. This app can be used on both iOS and Android devices. For more information on this app and others like it, visit BridgingApps.org.
WADE WINGLER: There’s a whole lot of buzz in the industry these days about Apple Watch. I don’t have one yet. I want one, but I just haven’t taken the plunge. And I’m starting to see some things related to accessibility as it relates to the Apple Watch, and I couldn’t think of a better person to bring on the show today than David Woodbridge from Australia to talk about Apple Watch and accessibility. So I’m so excited to have joining me via the Internet today David Woodbridge. David, are you still there?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Hi, yes, I am. Thanks for having me on your show.
WADE WINGLER: David, thank you much. Thank you for dealing with the time shift differential for the recording. I know this is a fairly early morning for me and a late night for you, and I appreciate you doing that.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: No problem at all.
WADE WINGLER: First of all, for folks who might not be familiar with your work, David, you are someone who has worked in the field of assistive technology for many years. You are a podcaster yourself — and we’ll get to that — but can you tell folks a little bit about you and why are you so passionate about the accessibility of Apple products?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: My main job at Vision Australia, and I have quite a few of them these days, is as a help desk person for a wide range of assistive technology products. My second job is then to support staff in supporting clients out in the field, and then I also do a radio program at vision Australia, and I evaluate upcoming and current technologies for blind and low vision, and then I also have what’s called my invested role at Apple Australia where I support Apple Australia in looking at assistive technology as far as it goes for Apple products.
I think my main think about Apple disability is that throughout the whole product line, it really is out-of-the-box accessibility. You pull a Mac out, you pull an Apple TV out, you pull an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad out, and now of course the Apple Watch, and it really is truly accessible right out of the box, no need to fiddle around and do magical dances and install third-party software. It just works, and that’s what I love about it.
WADE WINGLER: Yeah, and you and I have both worked in the field of assistive technology for a long time, and the advent of Apple including accessibility at that level I think really has been one of the major shifts in the industry and in the last several years.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Yes, I agree.
WADE WINGLER: I saw in the news on the web here recently that you were featured at an Apple Store there in Australia recently. Tell me a little bit about what was going on with that.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: That’s right. So this was part of a global access celebration to praise accessibility and to show the places where accessibility needs to improve. What we had at the Sydney Apple flagship store was basically a talk across augmentative communication, people who are deaf, and then I was doing people who are blind and low vision, and it was just to point out not only about the cross accessibility of the Apple Watch but where Apple is going in leading the front on saying, well, look guys, if we can make our products accessible, why can’t other industry leaders make their products accessible as well. For me, it was just a great time to celebrate Apple accessibility, I guess without having to say, well, there’s also these other products. I just like sometimes when you’ve got that space to say I’m going to celebrate these particular products because I think they are really fantastic.
WADE WINGLER: That’s good. I’m sure there was a really unique opportunity to have.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: It was lovely.
WADE WINGLER: I don’t have an Apple Watch yet. I’m working under the assumption that you probably have one of those. Let’s get into some of the accessibility details about the Apple Watch. Tell me about it.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Sure. I accidentally have three.
WADE WINGLER: Accidentally?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: A sort of bought two for myself, one for my wife. For some reason the buy button got pushed three times. I don’t quite know how that actually worked. I’ve got two Apple Watches. I’ve got a 42-millimeter one, a 38-millimeter one, and I’ve got a Sport 38-millimeter one. The accessibility in a nutshell really goes along the same lines as the accessibility you find in the iPhone and iPod touch and iPad. That’s Voiceover, the screen reader, Zoom, the screen magnifier, and then some general low vision options such as bolder text, grayscale, reduced motion, reduced contrast, and for some hearing impairment type stuff we also have the fact that you’ve got mono audio which is putting a stereo channel into one channel so you can hear better. Overall, the fact that you can adjust those accessibility settings from both the Watch itself and from the Apple Watch app running on your iPhone means that you’ve got a little bit more flexibility. So if you find it hard to adjust or turn on and off settings on the Apple Watch, you can also do it on the iPhone as well. I particularly like the fact that — I guess we can call it triple click or accessibility shortcut on the Watch — it’s actually the digital crown that you press three times. But you can set that up to turn Voiceover on and off on the screen magnifier on and off as well if you wish.
WADE WINGLER: Because I haven’t been in front of one and had a chance to get my hands on it and play with it, it’s still a little bit challenging for me to kind of envision some of these accessibility features. But I guess what you’re saying is it’s a lot like the stuff built into iOS. Is there sort of a parody from the user perspective? So that way you might use Voiceover in an email, for example, on an iOS device is the same or similar on the Watch?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: I would say it is. It’s really funny, because I said at the workshop I was doing at the Apple Store the other week, for me as a Voiceover user, my experience using the Apple Watch must be so much easier than a sighted person using the Watch because when I come from the clock face, which is where you have time and date and calendar and so on, and I go to the main home screen of the Watch, I can do two things: I can either drag my finger around which means I get to that honeycomb pattern where the icons are all of the place with the clock icon in the middle, or I can just flick left and right to go to the previous/next icon like to do with an iPhone with Voiceover. When I hear the icon I want, I just one-finger double tap it. The app runs. When I’m finished using the app, I can press the digital crown to return to that home screen which lands me back on the app I started. If I press the digital crown again, I’m back on the middle icon again, the clock. And if I press it one more time, I’m back at the clock face. So for me, it’s a very linear process. I go from clock face to home screen to app, back into the clock icon in the middle and back to the clock face. So it’s a very sequential, linear process whereas I guess other people are saying I don’t know where to go, I’ve got to scroll around. It’s like, well, if you turn Voiceover on, you might find it easier.
WADE WINGLER: Flip it. That’s great.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: That’s it. You’re exactly right.
WADE WINGLER: So we’ve talked a little bit about vision, and you kind of mentioned some other sorts of accessibility things. Can we dive a little bit deeper in terms of how folks with mobility challenges or intellectual and cognitive challenges might benefit from the accessibility in the Apple Watch?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Absolutely. Well, one of the major things you can do — and this is just generally doing it with the Watch — is that you can actually arrange the icons that you want to look at clustered around that middle icon. If you want to focus on, say, music or the mail app or the time app or that sort of stuff, you can use the Apple Watch app running on your iPhone to cluster those icons that you use all the time around that middle icon. So you don’t have to hunt for them. So that’s number one. The second one you can do is you can turn on bolder text. Now, I’ve had lots of people say I don’t know why this is on the accessibility, because I guess some people confuse the fact that if you don’t need accessibility, somehow you’re not supposed to be using it. I find it really should be called something else. I prefer it to be called personalized settings or something like that rather than accessibility. But bolder text really does make it easier for anyone to see the icons on the screen. By making them slightly bigger, you’re making them easier to use.
One particular feature I love about Zoom is when you have it on for screen magnification, rather than dragging your finger around the screen which also covers up the screen, you can actually use the digital crown to scroll that magnification row by row. So it goes across the row, down to the next row, back to the left, across the row, so you can literally scroll the screen row by row to get to the icon that you want to get to. So for me, again, because it’s got a small screen, using that precise way of navigating makes it much easier.
Using Siri to make things a lot simpler because it doesn’t have a keyboard so you dictate, but also using Siri to launch applications. So you can say the magic word “Hey Siri” and it will run the application and you don’t need to find it. Again that makes it a lot easier to do that particular functionality.
WADE WINGLER: That’s all really good stuff. A quick practical question. Has using the Watch changed your daily workflow for things like email and setting appointments and that kind of stuff? Are you still using the phone a lot, some the Watch, are you switching back and forth? How has that showed up in your day-to-day activity?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: I would have to say it’s reduced the use of my iPhone quite a lot. I’m not getting it out as much. I tend to check when I get a Twitter message coming in or I get an iMessage or I get an email, I can basically tap on the Watch screen, read the actual notification, and then decide whether I’m going to respond to it if it’s urgent or not. Whereas before I would find myself getting out my iPhone, well, I’ve gotten this far to get my iPhone out, I might as well respond to it right then and there even though it’s not totally necessary. So I do find myself being in some ways a lot more productive because I find the Watch so convenient to do quick things. There are certain apps that I use that makes it a lot easier on the Watch rather than using the iPhone. I probably get less distracted with having the Watch on my wrist all the time than I did getting distracted by the iPhone, because you always say, oh, hang on, I just checked my Twitter feed. While I’m here I’ll just check Skype and Facebook and mail. By the time you know it, you’ve just wasted an hour.
WADE WINGLER: That’s interesting because a lot of the popular theory is if it’s on your wrist, you’ll be more distracted and less productive so it’s interesting that you’re having an experience that’s different than that.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: The other thing that I find is really fantastic is the fact that if I get a phone call, I can quickly answer it on my wrist or I can check if I want to talk to the person or not. So that’s another great ability. The one absolutely outstanding thing that I love is the fact that you’ve got this ping function. So if I put my iPhone down in the house somewhere, and I’ve forgotten where it is, I can just use this ping function on the Apple Watch to find where I put the iPhone. It’s absolutely brilliant.
WADE WINGLER: That’s great. You mentioned that there are some apps that you think work particularly well on the Watch. Tell me, what are your favorites in terms of accessible apps on the Watch? And maybe some things that are apps that you would like to see on the Watch but just aren’t there yet.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Probably my first good one, and this is a Sydney-based one in Australia, is called Trip View Sydney. What it is, it’s basically a timetable application for bus, trains, and ferries. So if I’m on my way to the bus stop and I want to check the next buss, I can just quickly bring up the glance on the Apple Watch, and it’s time relevant so it’ll tell me when the next bus is due. Rather than having to go to the whole process of getting out the iPhone and launching the app and doing exactly the same thing, I can just quickly go to that glance on the Apple Watch and do it very rapidly.
The same with Never Gone, which is a GPS that you can get different maps from around the world, you can do your favorite trips. So I’ve got trips already favorated so that without having to go through the rigmarole of starting the app on the iPhone, I can do it from the glance and just launch it when I need access to it.
I think for me, the particular app that I’d love to see on the Apple Watch is probably — which doesn’t even exist yet — is FaceTime. I know it doesn’t have a camera at the moment, but I find sometimes doing Skype audio or VoIP audio, whatever you call it, FaceTime audio, it’s a lot clearer than doing a telephone call. The fact that we’ve got FaceTime audio on the iPhone, I can’t see why that can’t be on the Watch. Probably the other thing about apps in general that I’d love to see is the fact that eventually Apple will allow applications to be on the Apple Watch. I get a little bit tired sometimes of launching an app and it says loading image, loading image, loading image, because it’s getting the data from the iPhone. It’s like, will you just hurry up and get on with it?
WADE WINGLER: So it’s not made you more patient?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: No. It definitely has not made me more patient. It used to be using a screen reader on your computer, and you say things like oh, will you shut up, and people say are you grumpy today. It’s like, no, that’s the set up command for the computer. That’s where I press the control key to stop the talking. Because it is talking, you just tell it to be quiet. I’m not grumpy at all.
WADE WINGLER: Just not now. It’s not time for that.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: Now, correct.
WADE WINGLER: Good. We’re getting a little close on time, but I have a couple of things I want to cover. Do you think that, in terms of tech adoption, the wait until version two theory of tech adoption applies to the Apple Watch, do you think people should jump in there and try it now? Do you think they should wait? What does your gut say about that?
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: It’s really hard because I think you really have a good think about how you would use of technology in your daily life. For me, I’ve always wanted a smart Watch that was accessible, so to me there was no question about getting it. But if you have certain expectations on what you think the Watch can do, then most likely it’s not going to do it. So I’m probably suggesting to most people that unless you’ve had a good play with one, I certainly wouldn’t jump into one this time. I would probably wait for the second round. If you are a person that doesn’t mind jumping in and having a play with brand-new technology, then certainly go for it. There’s no drawback.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. That makes a lot of sense. So we have just a little bit of time left. David, tell folks how they can connect with you, learn more about your podcast. Tell them a little bit about your I See podcast and how they can stay in touch with you.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: I have a podcast called I See. It’s basically learning about primarily Apple technology and other technologies that come across. The easiest way is to go to iTunes and stick in my name, David Woodbridge. In there you’ll find my podcast, I See, and you’ll also find my I See book which basically is using all the Apple products from a blind person’s perspective. I was just about to start updating that for the Apple Watch in the next couple of weeks or so. If you want to have a look at my technology blog, which my talking tech radio program which comes out once a week is also based on, that’s on the blog website DavidWoodbridge.blogspot.com. That’s my two main mechanisms, my blog and my podcast. If you just stick to Google, you get all of my links anyway. If you want to follow me on twitter, it’s @DWoodbridge. You can follow my tweets when I retreat interesting bits and pieces about interesting technology.
WADE WINGLER: David Woodbridge joining us from Australia is an expert when it comes to Apple products and accessibility, a podcaster, and somebody who really knows a lot about the Apple Watch. David, thank you much for being on our show today.
DAVID WOODBRIDGE: It’s my pleasure.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.