Apple premiered their Keynote yesterday with a video highlighting their brand new Accessibility website. I was immensely touched by this, not only because I have a disability myself but I have dear friends and family, as many of us do, with disabilities and anything that technology can do to help us all feel and be more involved within this world, is a truly wonderful thing.
This morning, I have spent some time with my audiologist, I have moderate to profound hearing loss and wear hearing aids full time. These are a life line but they do present problems for me, in certain situations. When using the telephone, I receive a lot of feedback. Unfortunately the digital hearing aids, that I do have (my dear husband purchased these for me two years ago – prior to that it was difficult from birth, although I am an expert at lip-reading), are not ‘Made for iPhone’ and I really hoped they might be. This feature would allow me to manage audio levels from my iPhone and help me when using the telephone, or recording podcasts for example in my work. Both of these are incredibly trying for me to manage. I do have a remote control with various settings and I can reduce background noises in loud places but if I were and I am not in a position to and if you are and you need them, then I would strongly recommend looking for ‘Made for iPhone’ hearing aids. The features are incredible, it is even possible to check the battery status for each aid, these always seem to go at the most inconvenient of times.
I will post some of the features below, the new Accessibility website is truly wonderful. We have a Photo and Accessibility section within TheAppWhisperer and we have a wonderful writer, Luis Perez. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator whose work focuses on accessibility and inclusive design. He received his doctorate in special education from the University of South Florida in 2013 and is the author of Mobile Learning for All from Corwin Press. His work has appeared in THE Journal, The Loop Magazine, and the New York Times Bits Blog. You can read more about Luis here.
Of course, the audiology section is only one part of Apple’s Accessibility website and we will be looking at each section in turn. There really is so much help, for example with autism (I further studied Autism in Children at University), as well as Switch Control, Workout videos and more!
