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iPhone Automation for the Visually Impaired
Apple's VoiceOver feature helps visually impaired users navigate through a home automation system with special gesture controls and voice feedback on the iPhone and iPad.
Press the screen once to initiate voice feedback. Press twice anywhere on the screen to select the recited button (highlighted for the benefit of sighted users)
Touchscreen-based controllers can be challenging for the visually impaired. No hard buttons? How do they know what they’re pressing?
Built into newer iPhones, the iPad and Mac OS X computers is a feature called VoiceOver, which makes it relatively easy to navigate through menus without seeing them.
Apple has adjusted the touchscreen (and mouse) gestures and added voice feedback so users can simply tap the screen once to initiate reading, and tap twice – anywhere on the surface -- to activate the button just recited by the virtual help-mate.
Users can tap, flick and dial (via a virtual rotor) their way through an application using one, two or three fingers depending on the function.
Posting on the HAI Facebook fan page, Dave from Oregon suggests VoiceOver is a perfect application for home automation. Imagine a friendly voice reciting your options for audio, lighting control and security.
Thanks to Dave’s suggestion, “HAI is looking into making an updated version of our [Snap-Link Mobile] app even easier to use for the visually impaired,” says HAI associate marketing director Greg Rhoades.
He tells CE Pro, "We have some items that are abbreviated (scenes in lighting as “SCN” for instance). So we hope to make the app even easier by being as clear as possible with our verbiage."
Like the HAI system, VoiceOver speaks multiple languages.
Built into newer iPhones, the iPad and Mac OS X computers is a feature called VoiceOver, which makes it relatively easy to navigate through menus without seeing them.
Apple has adjusted the touchscreen (and mouse) gestures and added voice feedback so users can simply tap the screen once to initiate reading, and tap twice – anywhere on the surface -- to activate the button just recited by the virtual help-mate.
Users can tap, flick and dial (via a virtual rotor) their way through an application using one, two or three fingers depending on the function.
Posting on the HAI Facebook fan page, Dave from Oregon suggests VoiceOver is a perfect application for home automation. Imagine a friendly voice reciting your options for audio, lighting control and security.
Thanks to Dave’s suggestion, “HAI is looking into making an updated version of our [Snap-Link Mobile] app even easier to use for the visually impaired,” says HAI associate marketing director Greg Rhoades.
He tells CE Pro, "We have some items that are abbreviated (scenes in lighting as “SCN” for instance). So we hope to make the app even easier by being as clear as possible with our verbiage."
Like the HAI system, VoiceOver speaks multiple languages.
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Article Topics
News · Product News · Home Automation and Control · Home Health · Ipad · Home Health · Hai · Iphone · Voiceover · Visually Impaired · Voice Feedback ·About the Author
Julie Jacobson, Editor-at-large, CE Pro
Julie Jacobson is co-founder of EH Publishing and currently spends most of her time writing for CE Pro, mostly in the areas of home automation, networked A/V and the business of home systems integration. She majored in Economics at the University of Michigan, earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and has never taken a journalism class in her life. Julie is a washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player with the scars to prove it. Follow her on Twitter @juliejacobson.
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