iPhone Magnifier and Voice over

What people said

macNchz · 2021-09 · Strong recommendation

Thanks for the link, super interesting to watch. Over the years as a programmer I've picked up knowledge about web accessibility from a mechanical, standards/implementation focused point of view, but this video is helping me realize that my understanding has been lacking a level of depth and empathy for the real people using these tools. Looking through some of her other videos I found this demonstration of camera-to-speech in the iPhone pretty awesome–I had no idea that this was a feature: [VIDEO]

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aasasd · 2022-08 · Recommendation

I'll one-up this a bit: a blind woman called Kristy Viers demonstrates on YouTube how she uses various things, among them iPhone with the onscreen six-finger Braille keyboard. But also she uses the ‘magnifier’ app to tell her what is there around her, i.e. what the camera sees: [VIDEO] (The videos are filmed by her boyfriend, in case someone has to wonder.) I realize that the vid is not too informative to a blind person, other than a vague demo. IDK where to find more info on the setup, since I'm not a user of iPhones myself. Comments on YouTube say that the magnifier app is in the accessibility options, that it adds a home screen app when enabled, and that it works at least on iPhone 10 since that's what Kristy uses. I would also guess that such usage requires persistent mobile connection and consumes considerable traffic and battery—but again, with modern tech magic I won't bet against it working locally on the phone. On Android, the feature called ‘Lens’ in the Google's camera app can describe some things, more useful to seeing people IMO: e.g. the model of a car—basically the same as Google's image search does, these days. Also purportedly can read and translate text signs. But IDK how far that goes, never heard of it doing stuff like those descriptions by the iPhone magnifier.

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mimischi · 2021-05 · Recommendation

The YouTube channel by Kristy Viers has been helpful in understanding how they use an iPhone and other devices. Here’s a video on VoiceOver in the Camera app: [VIDEO]

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