Apple unveils powerful accessibility features coming later this year
39 points by fireborn
39 points by fireborn
I’m about to never zoom a PDF on my phone again.
I ctrl-f’ed for PDF and found nothing on the linked article.
(Cue the classic discussion about how many PDFs suffer from pagination, never to be printed.)
edit: In the video, they use an iPhone as a camera for a Macbook, and they use that to follow what’s being shown on a projector in a class; there’s some OCR that turns the slides into text, so it can be reflowed.
I wonder if iOS supporting braille via external devices will lead to lower-cost braille terminals. They’re currently ludicrously expensive. Tens of thousands of dollars for something that costs tens of dollars to make in quantity because the volumes are so low.
I wonder if iOS supporting braille via external devices will lead to lower-cost braille terminals.
iOS has supported external Braille devices for years – they are just bringing enhancements to it.
I guess that’s a ‘no’ then. Shame, I’d like to learn braille. It would make eBooks a lot more interesting if I could read and rest my eyes at the same time.
I think it’s still worthwhile to learn a little bit- braille lines are very expensive, but printed materials are easy to get, and learning the basics is fun. (I lacked the motivation to read by tact, but I learned a bit to read visually.)
Depending on where you are, second hand might be an option. Depending on what you want to read, you may have enough with relatively few cells.
(I also have my doubts about whether mass production of braille lines would make them affordable.)
(I also have my doubts about whether mass production of braille lines would make them affordable.)
There was a hobbyist project posted here a while ago that made one for about $50 in bill-of-materials cost. I’d expect mass production of higher quality should easily be able to hit a $100-200 price point with a healthy profit,
You mean https://hackaday.io/project/191181-electromechanical-refreshable-braille-module/https://lobste.rs/s/inn0rh/electromechanical_refreshable_braille?
That looks interesting, but I’m a bit of a pessimist in general. But I’m only observing from the sidelines.
I was really impressed by this DIY Braille cell https://hackaday.io/project/191181-electromechanical-refreshable-braille-module (3 comments)
The designer explains that commercial Braille cells are expensive, like $100 each, owing to being complicated electromechanical parts. Their design uses less fancy pieces (small solenoids instead of piezoelectric actuators) but I wonder how much that would be offset by manufacturing costs.
Dunno if they are turning it into a product or what. Nothing new on their YouTube channel…