They cost consumers $3 billion a year in lost time alone, the agency says.
Source: CNET
From dark mode in iOS 13 to a redesigned user interface in tvOS to the dismantling of iTunes to the coming of iPadOS, Apple made a slew of announcements at its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday in San Jose. And accessibility was there in full force.
Accessibility, as it always does, plays a significant role in not only the conference itself — the sessions, labs and get-togethers all are mainstays of the week — but also in the software Apple shows off. Of particular interest this year is Apple’s Voice Control feature, available for macOS Catalina and iOS 13 devices, which allows users to control their Macs and iPhones using only the sound of their voices. In fact, it’s so compelling Apple decided to make it a banner feature worthy of precious slide space during Craig Federighi’s onstage presentation.
After the keynote concluded, I had an opportunity to sit down with Sarah Herrlinger, director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives at Apple, to talk more in-depth about Voice Control, as well as some other notable accessibility features coming to Apple’s platforms in 2019.
“One of the things that’s been really cool this year is the [accessibility] team has been firing on [all] cylinders across the board,“ Herrlinger said. “There’s something in each operating system and things for a lot of different types of use cases.”
Although much of the conversation around what Apple announced revolves around iPadOS and Project Catalyst, based on what I’m hearing on podcasts and seeing in my Twitter timeline, Voice Control definitely is a crown jewel too. Nearly everyone has praised not only the engineering that went into developing it, but also the fact that Apple continues to lead the industry at making accessibility a first-class citizen. Myke Hurley said it best on the Upgrade podcast following the event, the weekly show he co-hosts with Jason Snell, when he said Voice Control is something Apple doesn’t have to do. They do it, he said, because it’s the right thing to do for every user. Put another way, Apple works so tirelessly on accessibility not for “the bloody ROI,” to paraphrase Tim Cook.
Sarah Herrlinger, director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives
Herrlinger demoed Voice Control to me, and it works as advertised despite our setting containing a lot of ambient noise. The gist of it is simple enough: You give your MacBook or iMac commands, such as “Open Mail” or “Tell Mary ‘Happy Birthday’ ” in Messages. Beyond the basic syntax, however, there are elements of Voice Control that make dictating to your Mac (or iOS device) easier. For example, Herrlinger explained how you can say “show numbers” in Safari’s Favorites view and little numbers, corresponding to the number of favorites you have, show up beside a website’s favicon. Say TechCrunch is No. 2 in your list of favorites. If the glyph is hard to make out visually, saying “open 2” will prompt Voice Control to launch TechCrunch’s page. Likewise, you can say “show grid” and a grid will appear so you perform actions such as clicking, tapping or pinching-and-zooming.
For many disabled people, the floodgates just opened. It’s a big deal.
Herrlinger told me Voice Control, while conceptually fairly straightforward, is designed in such a way to be deep and customizable. Furthermore, Herrlinger added that Apple has put in a ton of work to improve the speech detection system so that it can more adeptly parse users with different types of speech, such as those who stutter. Over time, Voice Control should improve at this.
Of course, the reason for all the excitement over Voice Control is the way it makes computing more accessible. Which is to say, Apple has reached an inflection point with its assistive technologies where someone who can’t physically interact with their computers now has an outlet. To use only your voice to do this used to be the stuff of science fiction, but now it’s more or less reality. There are other tools, like Apple’s own Switch Control, that are in the ballpark, but Voice Control takes it to a whole other level. Apple is putting a stake in the ground — if you can’t touch your computer, just talk to it. For many disabled people, the floodgates just opened. It’s a big deal.
I’ve made my affection for iOS’s Dynamic Type feature known countless times. By the same token, I’ve made my displeasure of its absence on macOS known just as often. Apple heard me.
Another feature Herrlinger was keen to show me was something Apple is calling Hover Text, on macOS. A subset of the already present Zoom functionality, Hover Text sort of reminds me of tooltips in Windows. The “Hover” name stems from the function: place your mouse pointer over a selection of text and you get a bubble with said text enlarged.
Herrlinger told me the feature works system-wide, even in places like the menu bar. And yes, Hover Text is indeed customizable; users have access to a wide variety of fonts and colors to make Hover Text’s “bubbles” their own. Text size can be enlarged up to 128pt, Herrlinger said. What this means is users can play with different permutations of the feature to find which label(s) work best — say, a yellow background with dark blue text set in Helvetica for the highest contrast. The possibilities are virtually endless, a testament to how rich the feature is despite its simplicity.
At a high level, Hover Text strikes me as very much the spirit animal of my beloved Dynamic Type. They’re clearly different features, with clearly defined purposes, but both strive to achieve the same goal in their own ways. Herrlinger told me Apple strives to create software solutions that make sense for the respective platform and the company’s accessibility group believes Hover Text is a shining example. They could’ve, she told me, ported Dynamic Type to the Mac, but found Hover Text accomplished the same goal (enlarging text) in a manner that felt uniquely suited to the operating system.
As first spotted by the ever-intrepid, master spelunker Steve Troughton-Smith, iOS 13 includes pointer support — as an accessibility feature.
Mouse support lives in the AssistiveTouch menu, the suite of options designed for users with physical motor delays who can’t easily interact with the touchscreen itself. Apple says it works with both USB and Bluetooth mice, although the company doesn’t yet have an official compatibility list. It’s telling how mouse functionality is purposely included as an accessibility feature — meaning, Apple obviously sees its primary value as a discrete assistive tool. Of course, accessibility features have far greater relevance than simply bespoke tools for disabled people. Just look at Troughton-Smith’s tweet for proof.
Still, in my conversation with Herrlinger, she emphasized the point that Apple built pointer support into AssistiveTouch as a feature designed and developed with accessibility in mind. In other words, support for mice and external pointing devices are intended expressly for accessibility’s sake. As usual with Apple products, Herrlinger told me the foundational parts of pointer support date back “a couple years.” This is something they’ve been working on for some time.
Accessibility features can benefit more than the original community they were designed to support.
To Apple, Herrlinger said, pointer support — which is supported on both iOS 13 and iPadOS — is a feature they felt needed to exist because the accessibility team recognized the need for it. There’s a whole class of users, she told me, who literally cannot access their devices without some other device, like a mouse or joystick. Hence, the team embarked on their mission to accommodate those users. When I asked why build pointer support into a touch-based operating system, Herrlinger was unequivocal in her answer: it serves a need in the accessibility community. “This is not your old desktop cursor as the primary input method,” she said.
The reality is, it’s not your secondary choice, either. The bottom line is that, while Apple loves the idea of accessibility features being adopted by the mainstream, pointer support in iOS 13 and iPadOS really isn’t the conventional PC input mechanism at all. In this case, it’s a niche feature that should suit a niche use case; it’s not supposed to represent the milestone of iPad’s productivity growth that many think it could be. Maybe that changes over time, but for now, it’s the new Mac Pro of software: not for everyone, not even for most people.
That said, a crucial point should be made here: people without disabilities will use this feature, regardless of its actual intended utility, and Apple recognizes that. No one will stop you from plugging a mouse into your iPad Pro. It’s no different from someone using Magnifier to get up close on a finely printed restaurant menu or using Type to Siri in order to quietly give commands in a Messages-like environment.
“Accessibility features can benefit more than the original community they were designed to support,” Herrlinger said. “For example, many people find value in closed captions. Our goal is to engineer for specific use cases so that we continue to bring the power of our devices to more people.”
It’s important, though, to take this feature in context. Users should be cognizant of the fact this implementation of pointer support is not meant to drastically alter the primary user input landscape of iPad in any way. That is the broader point Apple is trying to make here, and it’s a good one.
Source: TechCrunch
Learn how to change the time in Windows 10 with our quick guide. A few tweaks to your settings, and you can be fully in control of what time and date your Windows computer displays! We’ll show you just what to do.
Source: Digital trends
Gracias a sensores musculares conectados a su sistema y a la visión artificial, RoboRaise colabora con una persona para ir aprendiendo poco a poco a moverse y a trabajar en equipo y de forma segura y eficaz
Source: MIT
La edición que recibieron en el gen ‘CCR5’ y que aspiraba a proteger a las gemelas del VIH también está relacionada con una muerte prematura asociada a una mayor susceptibilidad a infecciones, según una nueva investigación
Source: MIT
Todavía no se conoce ningún microprocesador sin fallos, y aunque el proceso por hacerlos más seguros y repararlos lo antes posible mejora cada día, estas cuatro medidas podrían acelerar el proceso y reducir los riesgos ante los hackers
Source: MIT
The Mac Pro and the iPad were in the spotlight this year at WWDC 2019. Why? Well, the two products paint an interesting picture about the future of both platforms and where Apple is headed with them.
Source: Digital trends
Talks of a compromise come days after a nude protest over rules that restrict nudity on the site.
Source: CNET
Why is an adtech startup going after the flooring industry?
That was my big question when I got on the phone with AdHawk CEO Todd Saunders and COO Dan Pratt. The company announced earlier this week that it’s raised a $13 million Series B round of funding in conjunction with the launch of a new website, FlooringStores.
“We look at AdHawk as the umbrella company,” Saunders explained. “Our core is a digital marketing company that’s built very strong machine learning. Now FloorForce is the brand we’re using to go after with the flooring vertical.”
FloorForce is actually a recent AdHawk acquisition, offering a variety of digital services for flooring companies — not just AdHawk’s specialty of Facebook and Google advertising, but also website building, reputation management and chatbots. FlooringStores, meanwhile, is the consumer-facing side of the business, a website where homeowners looking for flooring services can browse different providers
Saunders said FloorForce’s potential customer base includes the 20,000 independent flooring companies in the United states, all in an industry that, in his words, “hasn’t been touched by technology.”
Pratt added, “The vast majority of these retailers need to be convinced why … websites are important — or if they have one, it was built in 1997, which is obviously a really bad experience for consumers. In the same conversation where we’re pitching these websites for our retailers, we’re talking to them about other opportunities, like chatbots, and the universe of what is possible for these folks is magnified by 10x.”
Ultimately, Saunders and Pratt said they’re hoping to take a similar approach and expand into other home service verticals, all while taking advantage of the consumer data gathered through AdHawk and FloorForce.
AdHawk’s Series B was led by Entrée Capital, with participation from Table Management, Accomplice and others. The startup has now raised a total of $17.7 million, and Pratt said it’s been growing quickly — going from 30 employees a year ago to more than 100 currently, with the aim of approaching a headcount of 200 by the end of the year.
Source: TechCrunch
Uber (NYSE: UBER) closed up 5% Wednesday at $45 per share, trading for the first time since its May 10 debut at its initial public offering price.
The boost comes one day after the quiet period for the dozens of investment banks that underwrote Uber’s IPO came to an end. Which is to say, Uber’s stock price is trading up now that several buy ratings and positive analyst reports were released this week.
Uber raised $8.1 billion in its early May float, achieving an initial market cap of roughly $70 billion. Uber’s IPO was deemed a failure by many, after its share price failed to pop on its first day of trading, opening at a meager $42 apiece. Uber was previously valued at $72 billion by venture capitalists after raising billions of dollars in a 10-year period.
In the last four weeks, Uber’s stock price has remained relatively stable, however, hovering between $40 and $43 per share.
In his first analyst note on the company, Raymond James analyst Justin Patterson wrote that Uber would be a leader in the “offline era,” and gave it a $50 price target.
“In contrast to traditional Internet companies, Uber is a digital app powering offline behavior,” Patterson said, per CNBC. “This elevates cost in the early years, but arguably creates a more defensible long-term position.”
Uber, additionally, released its first-ever earnings report last week, disclosing losses of $1 billion in the first quarter of 2019 on revenue of $3.1 billion. The numbers came in as expected, with analysts anticipating an adjusted net loss per share of 76 cents on earnings of about $3.1 billion.
“Earlier this month we took the important step of becoming a public company, and we are now focused on executing our strategy to become a one-stop shop for local transportation and commerce,” Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement regarding the company’s earnings. “In the first quarter, engagement across our platform was higher than ever, with an average of 17 million trips per day and an annualized gross bookings run-rate of $59 billion.”
Source: TechCrunch