Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 27, 2014 - Volume 446
The Week's News in Access Technology

A Flying Blind, LLC Publication
http://www.flying-blind.com/

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Greetings,

1A) Lunar Tabs is An Intelligent Accessible Guitar Tab Reader for Android and Windows:
http://tandonp.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/lunar-tabs-an-intelligent-accessible-guitar-tab-reader/

2) Lifehacker shares with us "Everything You Didn't Know You Could Do with Google's Voice Commands," especially useful for Android but also very useful with the Google iOS App:
http://lifehacker.com/everything-you-didnt-know-you-could-do-with-google-voi-512727229

3) Marco from Mozilla presents "Accessibility in Firefox for Android: Some more technical background, Part II," and there is a link to Part 1 in the article if you missed it:
http://www.marcozehe.de/2014/02/23/accessibility-in-firefox-for-android-some-more-technical-background-part-ii/

4A) Tin Star is a text adventure game for AndroiD and iOS. The first three chapters are free, the rest is available to buy now for $3.99, with the price going up on 10 March:
https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/tin-star/#utm_medium=web&utm_source=redirectmailchimp

4B) And learn about text adventure games, both those we can still play from the past, and new ones, on the CAVICast coming up on GMT Monday, 3 March at 01:00, via TeamTalk at:
http://tt.cucat.org

5) Here is the VoiceOver guide for the iPhone in handy HTML format:
http://help.apple.com/iphone/5/voiceover/en/iph3e2e4218.html

6) Fedora Outlier, LLC offers the Follow Friday Interview Series, and the latest one features an interview with John Panarese of MacForTheBlind. This is a written transcript:
http://www.fedoraoutlier.com/follow-friday-with-john-panarese-of-macfortheblind/

7) From the NVDA Community page, here is a post entitled, "Switching from JAWS to NVDA", which gives clear instructions:
http://community.nvda-project.org/wiki/SwitchingFromJawsToNVDA

8) Chris Hofstader finishes his rather unflattering assessment of Android accessibility in the article "Testing Android Accessibility: The Programmers' Perspective":
http://chrishofstader.com/testing-android-accessibility-the-programmers-perspective/

9) Meanwhile, Aaron, the blind podcaster, teaches how to droid email:
http://blindpodcaster.com/how-i-droid-email/

10) YouDescribe is a new tool that allows volunteers to add audio description to YouTube videos for free:
http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/general/new-tool-adds-audio-description-to-youtube-videos

11) The listing of accessible iOS and Android Apps from How to be Blind doesn't claim to be complete, as at this stage, completeness would likely be impossible, but it is quite extensive:
http://htb2.com/apps/

12) Hear about the accessibility efforts of the Carroll Centre for the Blind on Tek Talk on GMT Tuesday, 4 March at 01:00:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

13) The article "Ten Tips for Braille Users of iDevices" is quite thorough. As always, when reading these posts on web forums, it is good to look at the comments that often follow:
http://www.applevis.com/blog/accessories/ten-tips-braille-users-idevices

14A) The Accessible Image Sample Book is a free online resource developed to show some of the many options for creating accessible versions of digital images, especially those found in instructional materials like digital textbooks:
http://diagramcenter.org/standards-and-practices/accessible-image-sample-book.html

14B) Learn more from the webinar presented by its authors:
http://diagramcenter.org/webinars.html

15) The Swiss National Association of and for the Blind (SNAB), offers VIP PDF-Reader, a free program which it claims is "The first PDF reader for visually impaired people." It reformats documents for easier viewing and allows for easy adjustment of fonts among other features:
http://www.szb.ch/en/PDF-Reader.html

16) Link removed.

17) EASI offers a $225 four-part series, Online Accessibility for Students with Disabilities:
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

18) An upgrade to Mavericks has recently appeared. Learn about the OSX Mavericks v10.9.2 Update including VoiceOver fixes:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6114?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

19) NVDA 2014.1rc2 has been released. This is a release candidate, meaning that unless serious flaws are found, it will be identical to the official final version of this first update for 2014. It includes support for PowerPoint 2013, and various improvements for Windows Mail, Google Chrome, Excel, and ARIA web applications:
http://community.nvda-project.org/blog/NVDA2014.1rc2Released

20A) The results from WebAim's fifth screen reader survey are now in:
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/

20B) A summary of the results are here:
http://webaim.org/blog/survey-5-results/

21 A-K) And as we often do, we end with this week's audio:

A) Triple Click Home #27 is out for iOS enthusiasts:
http://tripleclickhome.com/2014/02/26/triple-click-home-episode-27-will-you-be-my-family/

B) The iPhoid Podcast, which has three available episodes already, bills itself as "A podcast that will take the good and the bad from both Android and iPhone, and bring it all to you in a fair setting."
http://www.jjhof.com/IPhoid/

C) Serotalk Podcast 188 has been out for a week or so. Even if you aren't going to listen to the podcast, a look at the show notes gives a good summary of the week's technology happenings, and the mailba offers interesting perspectives:
http://serotalk.com/2014/02/20/serotalk-podcast-188-cattle-car-airways/

D) The Tech Doctor podcast is back with an interview with Rosemary Mahoney, author of "For the Benefit of Those Who See":
http://www.dr-carter.com

E) Eyes on Success 1409 focuses on Image for Windows, an Accessible Program for Backing up Your Computer:
http://www.eyesonsuccess.net/

Nuggets from AppleVis include:

F) Digitize Your Vinyl Records With Amadeus Pro for the Mac:
http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/digitize-your-vinyl-records-amadeus-pro-mac

G) Using iTunes Radio on the Apple TV with VoiceOver:
http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/using-itunes-radio-apple-tv-voiceover

H) How to Access and Use the Ringtones Created or Downloaded by Third Party iOS Apps:
http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/how-access-and-use-ringtones-created-or-downloaded-third-party-ios-apps

Finally, from BGZ come:

I) Podcast regarding Facebook for iOS:
http://www.blind-geek-zone.net/podcast-regarding-facebook-for-ios/

J) Podcast regarding Zello for iOS:
http://www.blind-geek-zone.net/podcast-regarding-zello-for-ios/

K) Audacity Loopback P1:
http://www.blind-geek-zone.net/audacity-loopback-p1/

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