Darren Burton

Tech Notes Since its founding in 1921, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) has worked to address the most pressing needs of individuals with vision loss and their families, and over the past 20 years, it is obvious that there has been an increasing digital divide created by rapidly developing technology. For those of us with disabilities, accessible and usable websites and apps are crucial for us to independently work, learn, and play in the digital universe. They allow us to fully…

Tech Notes Did you know that your TV can talk to you? No, I am not talking about the characters in the shows and commercials. I am talking about powerful screen reader technology that allows a person who is blind to access and use all the onscreen programming and features available on today’s TV systems. Screen readers are built into nearly all of today’s Smart televisions, cable and satellite broadcast systems, as well as streaming systems like Apple TV, ChromeCast, and Roku. I am old…

iOS 7.1 is experiencing an issue that affects all VoiceOver users who are using a Bluetooth QWERTY keyboard. Apple is aware of the issue, and is presumably working on a bug fix. The problem stems from using the control key. After pressing the control key, it acts as if the control key is “sticking,” and all subsequent keyboard actions act as if the control key is being held down. This has a significantly detrimental effect on all iOS apps, but particularly impacts AccessNote users. If you are…

Readers of AccessWorld know that I have written several articles over the years condemning the lack of accessibility found in Amazon's Kindle devices. A couple of their devices have had some half-baked solutions for accessibility, and their mobile apps have never been accessible or usable at all. However, on May 1 we learned that Amazon's new update for the Kindle app for Apple's iOS mobile platform has improved accessibility for people with vision loss. We took a quick look at it on an…

There has certainly been a lot of buzz surrounding Apple's event last week announcing their iTextbooks initiative, which includes iBooks version 2, enhancements to iTunes U, and a new iBooks Author software aimed at making it easier for authors to create iBooks. Unveiling iBooks 2 on the iPad, Apple demonstrated exciting new interactive elements that can be included in a textbook, such as videos, slide presentations, animations, quizzes, and interactive images that can be rotated, zoomed and…

I have written several articles in AFB's AccessWorld Magazine chronicling the lack of accessibility of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reading devices as they have evolved over the last few years. The original Kindle was completely inaccessible to blind people, and our community protested loudly and clearly. Amazon responded by adding some text-to-speech functionality to the second and third versions. Although that still did not lead to what I would call an accessible Kindle, the incremental…

[Editor's note: the following post is co-authored by Darren Burton and Ricky Kirkendall.] Given AccessWorld's mission of keeping readers up to date on the latest in accessible technology, we are proud to announce that you can now download the AccessWorld app on your iPhone! This FREE app allows you to browse and read the entire AccessWorld collection up to the latest issue – it's like having 10 years' worth of AccessWorld at your fingertips! The app also allows you to locate the contact…