The New iPad: Thoughts From an Assistive Technology Prospective

The New iPad is out with a new high-resolution display, improved rear facing camera, dictation and more, but what does it mean for people with disabilities?

Camera - The New iPad has a much improved 5 megapixel rear facing camera. The new camera will enable assistive technology users to capture documents with more clarity. With the new improved camera, apps such as Prizmo, JotNot, ZoomReader, Scanner Pro and TurboScan will work much better.

Dictation - The New iPad also includes voice dictation which allows you to to talk instead of needing to type. The dictation feature works well and is very similar to voice dictation on the iPhone 4S. The new iPad does not have Siri support so it cannot answer your questions.

The New iPad adds some nice new features and remains accessible with VoiceOver. The iPad 2 remains on sale for $399.

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PaperPort Notes App for iPad: Notetaking with Dictation

Paperport Notes is a free app for the iPad. The app is made by Nuance the maker of Dragon Dictation. The app allows users to take notes by typing, writing with a stylist or by dictation. Paperport Notes also allows users to import pictures and web pages into notes as visual reminders. Another useful feature allows users to record audio notes of a class or meeting while they are typing or writing notes. The audio notes will allow you to go back and review the class or meeting if you missed an important part. Once you have completed your note you can save in as a PDF or use cloud services such as Dropbox.

Click read more below to view more images of Paperport Notes.

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How To Cut, Copy and Paste While Using VoiceOver

Cut, copy and paste is an important feature in iOS. It can be a little tricky for VoiceOver users to use cut copy and paste if you are not familiar with the process. Because it is a little tricky I will walk you through the process step by step.

1. Select the words you want to cut or copy with the VoiceOver cursor by touching the line or flicking left or right.
2. Rotate the VoiceOver rotor to either "words" or "lines." To rotate the VoiceOver rotor place two fingers on the screen and turn them left or right. If you select "lines" you will select one lines at a time and if you select "words" you will select one word at a time.
3. Pinch out with two fingers to begin to select the words you want to cut or copy. VoiceOver will speak which words have been selected.
4. Rotate the rotor to "edit" mode and then swipe up or down to hear all of the options. It will give you options such as cut, copy, paste, define and more depending on which app you are using.
5. When you hear the option you want, double tap anywhere on the screen. Now you have copied the text.
6. To paste the text navigate to a text box and then double tap and hold. Then swipe to navigate to the paste button and then double tap anywhere on the screen to paste the text.

Apple says the following about cut, copy and past with VoiceOver.

"Cut, copy, and paste comes to iPod touch. To bring up cut, copy, and paste options, use the rotor and choose Edit. Flick up or down to choose between the Select and Select All functions, then double tap. If you choose Select, the word closest to the insertion point is selected when you double tap. Pinch to increase or decrease the selection. If you choose Select All, the entire text is selected. When text is selected, cut, copy, and paste options appear on the screen. If you want to undo something, just give iPod touch a shake. You can also flick left or right to choose the undo action, then double tap." 

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Apple To Unveil iPad 3 and Possibly More on March 7th

Today, Apple announced an event to unveil the iPad 3 and possibly more. The event will take place at 10 am pacific time on March 7th. Apple is rumored to release a new iPad with a better camera, faster processor, Siri and more. Along with the iPad 3 Apple may release the iOS 5.1 update for iPad, iPhone and iPad Touch. As with all Apple event nothing is known for sure until the official release on March 7th. Stay tuned to the Assistive Technology Blog to see what Apple has up its sleeve.

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Is the Remarks App Remarkable?

Remarks is a note taking and PDF annotation app for the iPad. It allows users to take notes with a stylist or finger. The app also allows users to edit PDFs by adding handwriting, drawings, text or pictures. The app has very elegant navigation options including viewing all the pages in a document and quick page selection.

There is not a search feature that allows you to find a word within the document. From the main screen users can arrange their documents into folders. There is an option to to search for documents from the main screen.You can also change the paper type to graph, dotted, isometric and more. Once you have completed you can email the note as a PDF or save it to the app.

When creating a new note you can add hand writing, text with the keyboard or add images. A cool feature allows you to rest your wrist on the iPad screen while you use your finger or a stylist to write. Users can also draw shapes such as arrows, lines, circles and squares. You can also add images from your camera. When multitasking gestures are enabled you cannot rest your wrist on the screen without unknowingly changing apps.

To annotate a PDF users can use the "open in" button from Safari, Mail and many other apps. When annotating PDFs you can add all of the available elements while making a note.

Remarks costs $4.99 in the App Store.

Click read more below to see more images and videos about Remarks.

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Scanner Pro Review

Scanner Pro is an app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It works best with the iPhone because it has a higher quality camera. Scanner Pro allows you to take a picture of a multi-page document and then convert the images into a PDF file. Images can be taken with the camera or imported from the camera roll. When using the camera to capture an image there is an option to have the picture taken when the camera is perfectly still for better image quality.

Scanner Pro allows you to take pictures of multiple pages before saving them to a PDF which speeds up the process of scanning multiple pages. Once you have taken the pictures of the document you can change the contrast and brightness. Scanner Pro can automatically detect the edges of a document but it does do not do as good of a job at detecting edges as other scanner apps such as TurboScan and JotNot.

The app struggles even more if the document is on a light background. The inability of Scanner Pro to consistently detect the edges is a major downside. If Scanner Pro does not recognize the edges of the document automatically you can adjust the edges manually but this takes time and slows down the process considerably. Once you adjust the edges Scanner Pro has great features to manage and share your document. You can send documents by email, iDisk, WebDAV services, Evernote, Google Docs and Dropbox. The app allows you to share you documents over Wi-Fi as well. Another cool feature allows you to password protect the entire app or individual documents. Scanner Pro costs $6.99 in the App Store.

Scanner Pro is a well done app but the problems detecting edges really slows things down. Because of this one problem I would recommend JotNot or TurboScan instead. If Readdle, the maker of the app, fixes the edge detection problem it would be a different story.

Click read more below to view screen shots of Scanner Pro in action.

       

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Read PDF Files Aloud with vBooks PDF Voice Reader

vBooks PDF Voice Reader is an app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that reads PDFs aloud using text-to-speech. The app has a similar interface to iBook. vBooks PDF Voice Reader comes with a male and female text-to-speech voice included with app. The included text-to-speech voices sound good and are easy to understand. To read a PDF simply tap on the front page of the PDF from the bookshelf and then press the red play button on the bottom of the screen. The text can be read at speeds of 100 words per minute all the way up to 240 words per minute. The app has a cursor that highlights the word being read and you can drag the cursor around to start reading a different part of the PDF. The app also has navigation features such as search, thumbnails and sliders. PDFs can be imported into vBooks PDF Voice Reader by using the "open in" feature from apps such as mail or iTunes sync. vBookz does not have OCR capabilities so images with text will not be compatible. Another downside is that there is no bookmarking feature and the app will not remember where you left off so you will have to find where you left off each time. To learn more about OCR click here. vBookz PDF Voice Reader costs $4.99 in the App Store.

vBookz requested the following be included in the review,

"We're open for requests and suggestions. Not everything can be implemented, but it is important for us to improve our products as much as we can".

For more information about zBookz click read more below.

App provided complimentary to reviewer

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iOS 5 Tip: Look Up Any Word

A new feature in iOS 5 allows you to get a definition of any word from any app. To get a definition of a word simply select the word by holding down on it for a couple of seconds and then tap define. A dictionary will appear with that word defined. When you are done tap done to return to your app.

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