Assistance in teaching Blind Person

I am assisting a blind person with some limited vision, in his computer skills and would like your assistance in one area in particular.
He has several electronic tools [such as his Hearing Aid - Neck Loopset & Mobile phone & Laptop PC] all using blue tooth technology. Unfortunately all the Instruction Manuals are in small print [font] size. To be able to read them I have had to scan the book into my computer as follows;
1. Scan pages into computer
2. Convert picture into a "Negative" document [ ie black page with white text]
3. Convert negative images into a PDF document using Adobe Acrobat
4. Save the resultant PDF book file and transfer it onto his computer so that he can view the document using Adobe Reader and zoom the text etc so that he can read it using his laptops "blind software".
Does anyone know how to convert an existing pdf document [ie a downloaded version of his equipments User Manuals] into a "Negative" type pdf document?
I have tried using the Adobe help system so far without success.
Any assistance to this matter would be appreciated.
witelite

Most laptops and mobile phones have PDF instructions available on the website of the manufacturer.
Perhaps you could identify the specific model and serial numbers of the devices to facilitate a web search to find them.
With those in hand, something might be done.
Also, what, specifically, is the "blind software" application used?
Be well...

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DUPLICATE (Ignore) - Are tooltips readable by software for the blind?

So SORRY, my internet is messed up. Please don't bother with this duplicate post.
==================================================
I have attached/created tooltips containing field descriptions to some item titles in my APEX forms.
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Edited by: mjhamilton on Oct 6, 2009 4:23 PM

The whole point of the application page this tooltip is on is to give the user an awareness of the definitions for items that will be encountered throughout the application.I guess I'm struggling with the concept here...So this isn't on an actual form in the application?
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Are tooltips readable by software for the blind?

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The whole point of the application page this tooltip is on is to give the user an awareness of the definitions for items that will be encountered throughout the application.I guess I'm struggling with the concept here...So this isn't on an actual form in the application?
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Personal iPads in the enterprise - keeping work/personal apps separate

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I work in IT for a school district. Recently, we got a grant for iPad training. As part of that training, every teacher that attended the classes was given an iPad. The problem is, that because of the way the grant was structured, the iPads ended up belonging to the teachers personally instead of belonging to the school district. Since all these teachers now own their own iPads, we do not want to spend the money to buy them a second "work" iPad.
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Hi gyrhead,
Thanks for the information. I understand that the teachers will not be able to transfer app purchases from the school Apple ID to their personal Apple ID. The concern we have is this: what do we do when a teacher with a personal iPad with school software on it leaves the district? I know we can re-download the software purchased with the school Apple ID onto a new iPad, but how do we get the school software off the teachers iPad?
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Accessibility of iTunes and iPod for Blind users

In any of the updates to Itunes or Ipod has the ability to use the product by the Blind been considered? Being a Low-Vision/Blind user I think accessibilty has gotten worse instead of better. This is not just an Itunes on Windows Issue. Itunes on the Mac barily works with VoiceOver
In 7.0.X here are a few things that broke.
1. The Album flipping view mode cause Screen Magnifiers to have problems with Overlay and the Album art is not magnified.
2. No way to navigate the Itunes store if you are totally blind. Why not just let us browse it in Internet Explorer or Firefox and then download afterwords into Itunes.
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Now onto the Ipod 3g 4g 5g and the Nano 1g and 2g, These devices with some practice can be used by a blind person if they are setup correctly by someone sighted. Thats all well and good except if you just went out and bought a shinny new 80gb Ipod and now don't know how to navigate it. Well the solution to this is actually very easy. Durring startup it could play a quick set of clicks to let a blind user know it is doing something. Then once it is up and running the menu system could playback via the headphones recorded speech files stored in directory already on the shinny new Ipod. Something like "Main Menu" "Music", the user slides their finger around the wheel one spot to the right and "AudioBooks" and so on. Now your question comes to artists and genra's and Album titles. This could be a feature of the new ITunes 7.1.x where when you are syncing your Ipod it goes to the iTunes store and gets the appropiate audio files needed. or using the Very Nice Apple TTS makes the files on the fly and stores them. You say this would use up space on the Ipod, well yes it would and you could make so a sighted user could turn it off until the iPod resets or they if they are really cramped for space could remove the directory with the sounds in it, but restoring the iPod would put these features back in place. These features have more use then just for the blind, who are highest population for buying audio content be it Unabridged audio books, CD's, or from online sources. Once these features are out in the general public and touted as be available you will have the busy business traveler to the jogger using them, epecially when it is not appropriate to take your eyes from something else, like driving. A driver could just reach down and touch the iPod and press the menu key and here "Music Menu", "PlayLists". Now we click the center button and our drivers heres "Gym Workout" clicks the wheel around to the right and heres "Peaceful Drive". He/She press the play button and heres "Playing, Peaceful Drive, 15 items in list" now this next part whould need to be toggleable on and off, while the iPod is cueing up the song it could say the song name and artist but this could be distracting.
Now if you really got brave with this project you could just add the TTS (Text to Speech) program into the Ipod. It would probably only take as much space as the new games you are selling for the 4g 5g and nano's. I know the Ipod has enough processer power. If it can play compressed video it could be executing a speech synthesizer in the background. With the dropping cost of the iPod I can see you may have to make this an add-on. That would be fine but include like a ten-day trial period with each new firmware update and have it on by default. This way allowing the user base to have time to see what it can do for them. If this is the choice then it should be a very inexpensive addon. Like in the $40 range. With the very extinsive userbase of Ipod's out there the Return on Investment should be very quick. if just 10% of the 300,000 blind people in the USA bought it, that equals 30,000 times $40 equals $120,000. This is not including the Learning Disabled, general poplulation, and people in foriegn countries who would love to have the stuff read it them. Now back to the blind, currently the devices made for the blind that are "accessible" cost from $400 and up that can play digital content not burned to a CD. So, if this was made for the Nano 2g a blind person could spend $200 on the device and $40 on the speech after the ten-days are up or they are coming close. The are still ahead by $160. Now if the person is a eclectic listener like my self then I would buy the 80gb unit at $350 and add the speech for $40 and have all the space I needed for my music, books, and my recordings I do with the Belkin recorder.
Another feature that should be looked into is the ability to play Daisy Content from Recordings for the Blind and Dislexic http://www.rfbd.org This is the new style of releasing text books to those you can not read regular print. They are stored on a CD in mp3 format with a encryped index. Now this type of thing is not a problem since you already have support for your own and Audible's digital rights management in iTunes and adding another method would not be that hard. An iPod Nano 4gb could hold 6 to 8 books for a Grade School, Middle School, High School, or College student. That would be greate, one small device to play content and no worrrying about what Cd the chapter is on or where you put the CD's, and not having to carry around a CD player just for the books. Also an iPod has become common place enough to not be notices.
Shawn,
This will be cross posted to my blog and to the Ipod Forum here. My Blog is located at http://wizardwlf.spaces.live.com

My goal is not to directly influience Apple. I am trying to influiece you the customer to write feedback to Apple, if not on your own behalf, for your family member who is blind/low vision, a blind co-worker at your office, a friend of a friend even. Apple will see my one comment in feedback and say he is just an extremist and being it is just one comment just ignore it becuase their are much cuter things some marketing person wants them to do. They may just respond with use the Shuffle it doesn't have a screen. Why should the blind be limited to 1GB of space?
So here is your chance. Talk to your friends who use the Ipod/Itunes, talk to the manager at your local Apple store, tell them all to think about what they could do with a talking iPod, let alone the accessibility this would give the blind.
The Mimico Kid wrote this in the iTunes Windows Forum
Shawn,
I did a quick search of the Apple web site and found a fair bit of information on accessibility issues for the Mac OS X operating system in general (you might want to have a look here if you're interested) but couldn't find anything relating to iTunes for Windows in particular.
Since Apple has set up these forums for users to help one other with their problems, there isn't much we can do as far as acting on your suggestions. You might want to submit your comments directly to Apple by filling out the forum on this page: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html .
All the best!
I wrote back:
Yes that is a pretty advertisement page for the Tiger Accessibility and for the accessibilty of the hardware.
But what is missing is the same page for iTunes and iPod. Those two products which right now are Apple's Hot market. They do not even train the sales staff in the Apple Stores to use and demonstrate these features to a parent / spouse/ child of someone with a disability.
VoiceOver is great in the finder and terminal and mostly works in Safarie and Mail. It mostly works in system dialog boxes but forget AppleWorks, GarageBand, Microsoft Office. The ProTools folks are actually working on making that program work with VoiceOver even better.
My best recommendation to anyone on this forum who is a Mac User. Use SearchLight to find VoiceOver. Now read some of the documentation to get the gist of how it works. Once you have done this, Start VoiceOver and turn off your screen. Try using the keybard commands you just learned or even the ones you think you know in iTunes. You will find it extremely hard to navigate.
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Office 2013 "Working Elsewhere" not viewable in Scheduling Assistant

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Help for blind users

Hello fellow music lovers!
Can you imagine what use a blind person might have for a computer?
RIGHT! Listening to music.
Apple has done a brilliant job with producing an audio and keyboard interface (not a "screen reader") for TIger. It's called VoiceOver and it's superb.
But, would you believe it? The application more blind users want to use than any other, iTunes, is not accessible to VoiceOver.
Please help! Contact Apple in any way you can think of, to ask them to make our favourite music program on our favourite platform accessible through VoiceOver!
Thanks in advance
Archie
iBook G4 12" 1.2 GHz, G4 Sawtooth 400 MHz, PowerBook G4 17" 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

I have let the Hosts know of your post so that maybe they can pass your feedback on.

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show how to manage my back up assistance on my fone
>> Personal information removed to comply with the Verizon Wireless Terms of Service <<
Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

I'm not sure what you mean by "back up assisstant"... YOu can just use iTunes to perform full backups of your iDevice, no new apps required just iTunes! http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766 Open the section iTunes>How to backup
Hope this helps!

Assistance in teaching Blind Person

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