Geek Pop Quiz: consumer products edition!

[theweaselking]

Really 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)

Comments

[zastrazzi.livejournal.com]

This is your idea of a quick easy one?! Can we go back to the tricksy Apache mod_* questions please?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This is an easy one because either the product exists or it doesn't.

[zastrazzi.livejournal.com]

True, but you could get skewed results if the product exists but noone has heard of it ;)

A wee bit of googling however would imply something is out there - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080616.wgtvision0616/BNStory/Technology/home

Just did a search for - Canadian Institute for the Blind mp3 player

There is likely something either on the CNIB site or the American equivalent.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

lawnchair's classmate used a cell phone with Windows Mobile and software that did voice prompts (doesn't remember which software).

[jerril]

If you find something like this, please tell me.

My Grandmother is currently using a portable CD player that saves the state when she powers it down (which track, and the position in the track) but I don't think it notifies you which track you're on when you seek back and forth.

And of course, audiobooks are like tenbillion CDs each, so the work required to keep the cds in order, and the amount of swapping back and forth, is just irritating.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's actually just something that Charlie mentioned to me a couple of months ago, and I was looking for. Her laptop is full of audiobooks, but inconvenient because it's a LAPTOP. She's got an iPod, but it doesn't do her any good because she can't put the books onto the iPod and she can't play them back if someone else does it for her.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

You really want to make a phone call to the CNIB. They're professionally on top of this stuff.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

why can't she upload audiobooks? It's just a matter of adding them to your iTunes library and synching with the iPod. Make a playlist called audiobooks and you're set.

Also the wheel on iPods click each time it goes to a new selection, so with some braille for a temp reference and some memory work, she'd be able to navigate the menu by listening to the device. The only time I could see it being a problem is in noisy areas like the subway where you have no chance of hearing the clicks.

Oh, and the Shuffle can play straight through, not just on shuffle. I don't get why I keep having to tell people this.. I don't even own a Shuffle! But it says right on the packaging! You can even see the switch on this website:

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/features.html

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

why can't she upload audiobooks? It's just a matter of adding them to your iTunes library and synching with the iPod. Make a playlist called audiobooks and you're set.

#1: iTunes does not play well with screen readers.
#2: No, you're not set, because it doesn't remember the location in the playlist between charges/syncs/resets.

Also the wheel on iPods click each time it goes to a new selection, so with some braille for a temp reference and some memory work, she'd be able to navigate the menu by listening to the device. The only time I could see it being a problem is in noisy areas like the subway where you have no chance of hearing the clicks.

It clicks, but the clicks are all identical. You can't tell what you're on, and hitting "menu" has different behaviours depending on what screen you're on and what menu you left it on before. And you can't rely on knowing where you are by retreating to the top each time, because the Menu button doesn't *stop* clicking when you reach the top. At least the scrollwheel doesn't wrap on the 5th gens - at least you can tell when you're at the start or end of the menu.

As well, the clicks are identical between: volume change (default while playing), skip forward/back (hit center button while playing), and navigate menu. Worse, leave it alone for a few seconds in Menu or scan mode and it will change menus... silently.

So, you can't tell where you are, you can't tell what you're doing (skip and volume are obvious, but since the buttons change meaning with a SILENT, VISUAL cue when you're doing those, it's hard to convince it to stop doing them reliably), and the audio cues are all identical no matter what you're doing - oh, and there's no "home row" indicator on the buttons, meaning you're looking for unremarkable touch-sensitive features on your undifferentiated device. You need to locate up and down by the switch and the headphone jack, then remember approximately where the buttons are to press them. You can find them easily by pressing them, but the first press of a button does *different things based on what mode the player is in when you do it* - and you can see what those things are, with, say it with me, SILENT, VISUAL CUES.

iPods are not accessible devices. You need to be able to see in order to use one for anything more complicated that "shuffle all songs". And, as I said, the trick is that the user wants to play audiobooks and use some of the slightly more advanced features.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

PS: The best way to play an audiobook on an iPod is to create a smartplaylist, with a rule that adds just the one book ("Title contains X" or "album=X") and a rule that includes only tracks where play_count=0. Set the smartplaylist to liveupdate. That way, you can select the playlist from your Playlists menu, and it will remember your position. Of course, you have to have Shuffle on for all playlists or none...

PPS: I can use iTunes to filter based on Genre, Artist, or Album, or any combination thereof. Why can't I filter based on anything else? No, if I want to filter on anything else, I have to make a SmartPlaylist.... and if I'm looking at a song list in a playlist, *I can't delete it from the library*. I have to use playlists to filter, then locate the song in the main library because they didn't feel it would be right to let me select something, hit "delete", and have it deleted - or even a popup asking me if I wanted to delete it.

I hate Apple products. Their interfaces are deliberately, actively stupid.

[hel]

You could look at text to speech stuff for a windows mobile device, PDA or whatnot. I've had windows mobile PDAs, and currently have a windows mobile PDA/phone. I don't use text to speech on it, but I've seen the software in searching for other software. And text to speech works pretty well on windows, it might work well on windows mobile too.
Also, a windows mobile PDA would likely have an SD or CF slot. And there are SD&CF cards available up to 32GB. (In fact, I think there are 64GB CF cards!) So the user could likely get quite a lot of storage space. Also, every windows mobile PDA or phone I've ever used had quite accepable sound quality for use as a portable audio player. I've used every one I had as exactly that in fact.
So, can't say a specific device, but can suggest the area to look into.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

From what I can find, the product does not currently exist for no decent reason. The suggestion I had heard was that Rockbox _can_ do a moderate approximation, but that's about it.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Well, there *is* a decent reason why it doesn't exist: Because demand for it is tiny. Blind people are a small population, and not all of them will need this product, therefore developing for them is expensive and relatively unrewarding.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Unless I am mistaken, there are no technical limitations and you can easily have a device which is blind enabled and with the capability of disabling the accessibility features. You could have a guaranteed audience with no competition and when you consider the state of the ipod clones....

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Adding accessibility features is, itself, difficult and expensive and requires a great deal of QA. It also adds non-default features and UI options, meaning it is completely against the Apple design ethos, and it is something only a niche market needs, meaning open source support will be crappy and companies like Sony will simply do a cost/benefit and determine it's not worthwhile.

Eventually, it always happens.

But that's EVENTUALLY.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

What Jagash said - Rockbox, but that more or less requires someone who is sighted to build the device.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, Rockbox didn't have audio menus.

Has that changed?

[jagash.livejournal.com]

What I read has indicated that they do. http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BlindFAQ

[elffin.livejournal.com]

The build I pulled down one month ago to look into installing on a firstgen iPod mentions Voice UI in the manual,

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceHowto

which describes the how-to of it.

[quotation.livejournal.com]

For a hospitalized 90-yr-old, we settled on a Sansa Shaker, available at Loblaws. Uses AAA battery, and accepts SD cards for expansion. No screen, and easy-to-mash controls. Ruggedized. Cheap.

This is the lazy solution, of course. No voice prompted navigation, but should do for sequential audiobooks.

The basic professional solution will be something like the "Milestone 311 Daisy" http://www.bones.ch/pages/eng/products/milestone311daisy.html

The poweruser professional solution would be the Canadian-made http://www.humanware.com/en-canada/products/dtb_players/compact_models/_details/id_81/victorreader_stream.html

(Also note the "Products" list at http://www.daisy.org/)

[jerril]

AUGH DAISY.

Sorry.

We actually generate DAISY files for some of our customers. Well, the guy upstairs in the little booth does. It terrifies me.

[quotation.livejournal.com]

Well, you don't really have to use the DAISY file format if you don't want to. The things play MP3s, with voice prompts and TTS for the file & directory names. I don't think they'll TTS the ID3 tags, though.

I would think that blind people would prefer MP3 audiobooks over DAISY audiobooks since their blindness makes it easy to wear two pirate eyepatches simultaneously.

Windows Mobile

[lawnchair.livejournal.com]

As affreca mentioned above, I have a blind classmate who my office consults for accessibility issues. I asked her particulars. She uses a Samsung Blackjack II phone, with "Mobile Speak for Windows Mobile" ($300 software... not insane in that niche market). But, she gets an *amazing* amount out of it. Phone, e-mail (having a physical keyboard instead of virtual), voice recording, GPS, and audio player.

[kamagurka.livejournal.com]

This can be done with rockbox:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceHowto

I hope this helps. I didn't really read the article, but after a quick scan it looks like pretty much what you're looking for.
BTW, rockbox can be put on iPods.

[kamagurka.livejournal.com]

Woops, seems I came too late to the party.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

About a month!

But that's cool. Thanks for the advice, anyway.