Geek Pop Quiz: consumer products edition!
Aug. 18th, 2008 08:06 amReally quick easy one for today: Does anyone know of a commercial MP3 player with a blind-accessible interface?
And no, a Shuffle doesn't count, because it's a real pain putting those songs onto the player and because not being able to even select a song is a *bad* thing. Besides, blind users often like audiobooks, which rely on you being able to play a number of tracks, in order, remembering your position in each one. Shuffle-devices can't do that.
But: Does anyone know of a player with an audio menu? Maybe one that does TTS on the song artist and title? Or even just that *reads* the menu options to you?
I realise open source projects are traditionally terrible about catering to people with disabilities, but maybe some version of something like RockBox has this as an option someone decided was cool?
(Obviously, the first thing we're going to do is trash everything by Apple from consideration, since their interfaces *can't* be used by a blind person and they have no options for customisation. If we can find third-party firmware that replaces the Apple stuff an iPod *might* work - all we'd really need to do is add a physical "home row" touch-nubby-thing to the center button so the user can find it. However, I'd rather an actual product with actual support, rather than a hack on a closed system whose manufacturer would rather brick your device than allow you to make changes)
And no, a Shuffle doesn't count, because it's a real pain putting those songs onto the player and because not being able to even select a song is a *bad* thing. Besides, blind users often like audiobooks, which rely on you being able to play a number of tracks, in order, remembering your position in each one. Shuffle-devices can't do that.
But: Does anyone know of a player with an audio menu? Maybe one that does TTS on the song artist and title? Or even just that *reads* the menu options to you?
I realise open source projects are traditionally terrible about catering to people with disabilities, but maybe some version of something like RockBox has this as an option someone decided was cool?
(Obviously, the first thing we're going to do is trash everything by Apple from consideration, since their interfaces *can't* be used by a blind person and they have no options for customisation. If we can find third-party firmware that replaces the Apple stuff an iPod *might* work - all we'd really need to do is add a physical "home row" touch-nubby-thing to the center button so the user can find it. However, I'd rather an actual product with actual support, rather than a hack on a closed system whose manufacturer would rather brick your device than allow you to make changes)
