{"id":2537,"date":"2011-10-30T17:48:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T01:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/wordpress\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2024-12-14T21:28:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T05:28:39","slug":"336-blindfolded-scotutor-for-lion-award-wallet-diffmerge-autumnal-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/336-blindfolded-scotutor-for-lion-award-wallet-diffmerge-autumnal-cleaning\/","title":{"rendered":"#336 Blindfolded, SCOtutor for Lion, Award Wallet, DiffMerge, Autumnal Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m speaking at Macworld | iWorld on blind accessibility – calling my speech Blindfolded! Week one of my VoiceOver learning experience. SCOtutor for Lion from Don McAllister from the Mac App Store<\/a>. Rod Simmons reviews Award Wallet free in iTunes<\/a> and the Android Marketplace<\/a>. He also dedicates the Backyardigans Castaways<\/a> song to the NosillaCastaways. George from Tulsa tells us about the free, cross-platform application DiffMerge from Sourcegear.com<\/a>. In Chit Chat Across the Pond Bart goes through his “Autumnal Cleaning” computer style.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp3?http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/nosillacast\/NC_2011_10_30A.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\"itunes\"<\/a>
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Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday October 30, 2011 and this is show number 336.<\/p>\n

Week One – VoiceOver<\/h3>\n

For years I’ve tried to get in as a speaker at Macworld, and I’m thrilled to announce that this year I was accepted! I’m sooo excited about this, because the paper they excited is really risky – the name of my presentation is Blindfolded! Yes, I’m going to do my entire presentation blindfolded, demonstrating the VoiceOver accessibility features of iOS and OSX. I did this to force myself to learn how to do it. I’ve played around a bit from time to time but quickly I turn it off because it drives me nuts. I’ve decided to approach this like learning a language, you can try to take a class once a week to learn Spanish, or you can live in Spain for the summer – immersion is the only way to go. so I have 2 months to learn to be at least moderately proficient at navigating iOS and OSX.<\/p>\n

I thought I’d keep a running diary of what I’m learning and talk a little bit about the learning process. If by some miracle I get good at it quickly I won’t’ do weekly updates, but for now it looks like this might be a torturous trail.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the iPhone. If you’d like to play along with our home game while you’re listening, try this. Open Settings, go to General, and then down to Accessibility. There’s more than just accessibility for the blind in here, but for now just turn on VoiceOver. Two things happen when you do this. First the phone starts to speak to you, but it also oddly gives you visual clues showing you what’s active on screen by drawing a box around the item. Now this is SUPER handy for me to figure out when I’m botching things up, but I don’t really know why it’s there for the visually impaired.<\/p>\n

the hardest thing to get used to in VoiceOver on iOS is that you don’t tap items to select them, you double tap. Makes sense because you have to touch it first with your finger to figure out what it is, so a single tap wouldn’t work. I’m getting reasonably good at remembering to double tap but my accuracy appears to be pretty bad, I often have to double tap 2-3 times before I get it right.<\/p>\n

I’m working really hard at learning to type, which is quite a challenge. I’m a touch typist, running around 60 words per minute. Oddly, this appears to be a disadvantage because it turns out my brain doesn’t actually knows where the keys are, each finger knows where the keys are it’s supposed to push. So on a keyboard my right ring finger knows where the “o” is, but when I’m using my index finger on an iPhone, my brain has only a vague recollection of where the “o” is. I was shocked by this and fascinated by the way the brain works. <\/p>\n

There’s three ways to type in VoiceOver. When you drag your finger over a key, the nice lady says “o”. then if you hang out there for a bit, she says the military call name for it, Oscar. Kind of cool if you didn’t catch it at first. Then to type the key you can double tap, but we already discussed my reliability at double tapping in the same location. Here’s the really odd way, you can hold your finger down on the o key so you don’t lose your place, and then tap with any other finger on screen to select it. I’m still getting the hang of which fingers to use, but this works maybe closer to 80% for me now. Oh, and remember the nice lady tells you the key you’re on? A completely different lady tells you when you’ve actually successfully selected the key. When you hit the space bar after spelling out a word, the second nice lady reads the word allowed to you, but often reason she tells me the word and then tells me I’ve misspelled it! <\/p>\n

As of week one of my journey, it takes me about 12 minutes to post a one line tweet or email, and I have to open my eyes to fix things about 5 times. I’m hoping I get better than this in the next 8 weeks!<\/p>\n

Sadly, iOS is MUCH more successful for me than OSX. I’m discouraged right now about OSX, but I’m still confident I’ll get there. They have a 23 page tutorial that lets you practice each thing you learn which is awesome. The bad news is there’s SOOOO much to learn! They have what they call the VO keys, control-option. So when they tell you how to navigate, the instructions will say vo-right arrow. That’s not too bad. But I can’t remember when to use the right arrow vs. the down arrow and I keep getting it wrong. Then there’s selecting controls – you have to use vo-shift and arrows. Try right now on your keyboard to hold down command-control-shift. With one hand. Yeah, you have to kinda mash all three buttons with your thumb or risk dislocating your ring finger as you reach around. <\/p>\n

I also studied some videos that explained this mysterious thing they call the rotor. For the longest time I couldn’t find it, and not being able to find it I couldn’t figure out what the heck it even was. I finally found it in a PDF document on accessibility and watched a video explaining it. You hold down the vo keys, then on the trackpad rotate two fingers to turn on the rotor. Still don’t know what the rotor IS though. Once it’s on, you rotate two fingers on the trackpad WITHOUT the vo keys held down, and now you get a visual indication on screen of a radio-like dial. As you rotate your fingers, it will change from links to headings to forms and more. Ok, still don’t know that that means. More studying reveals that once you set the rotor to say, headings when you’re on a web page, you use a two fingered swipe on the trackpad to move down the page jumping from heading to heading. Does your head hurt yet? Mine sure does! I thought learning all of the Lion gestures was hard, this is the graduate study course in gestures!<\/p>\n

I absolutely do not have the hang of this yet, but I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, it’s only been about 4 days so far. It’s good to know that I have friends like Slau, Darrell, Shane and the Tech Doctor to help me when I get stuck! Stay tuned, hopefully on next week’s installment of Blindfolded! you’ll hear me say, “wow, can’t believe I thought this was so hard!”. Hopefully.<\/p>\n

SCOtutor for Lion<\/h3>\n

\"scotutor<\/a>
\nI’m sure you all know Don McAllister and his fabulous training series, Screencasts Online, right? If you haven’t checked them out, go over to screencastsonline.com<\/a> and check them out after the show. He gives one free session a month and then 2 or 3 paid for sessions via a subscription service. His instruction is over the top fantastic. The thing that amazes me most is that even though I consider myself quite accomplished on the Mac, I’m CONSTANTLY learning from Don. He sees things in the menu that simply escape me, and I don’t know how he does it.<\/p>\n

Recently he did several segments in a row all about Lion and the changes to some of the core apps like Safari and Preview along with changes in the Finder, like Quicklook, versioning, how auto save works, Launchpad and Mission Control. As I was watching and learning I thought of my friends Diane and Bill who just recently switched back to the Mac after about a 15 year hiatus, and I was trying to think how to get them to see Don’s instructions. Not sure they’d be consistent subscribers but I knew they’d get a lot out of this particular piece.<\/p>\n

Then I took a look at the next session he posted, and it was all about the Mac app he’s had created called SCOtutor for Lion. He’s packed up all of the sessions about (more than two hours of content) into a video player application. It’s got chapter markers so you can jump right the the part you want to learn (or re-learn) and it even has subtitles in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese, and more languages on the way.<\/p>\n

This is the perfect app for my friends, and you get all this Don McAllister goodness or only $4 on the Mac App Store. I put an affiliate link in the shownotes<\/a> so you can go check it out. If you like it, and I’m 100% certain you will, be sure to leave Don a comment and rating. Heck, it’s the number one paid app in Barbados, it’s GOT to be good!<\/p>\n

Rod Simmons on Award Wallet<\/h3>\n

Award wallet is a Frequent flyer miles, hotel, credit card, and Gift certificate tracking program. The service will track you rewards and let you know before they expire. The iOS app give you all your award point information in the palm of your hand including account numbers you are frequently asked for.<\/p>\n

Most important It can alert you prior to points expiring. I forgot to mention it can also upcoming trips as it is linked into your accounts. I love this service. Again it solves a problem you have that you don’t really know you have. <\/p>\n

The iOS app is basic but I have note with all my account travel numbers. This gives me the same thing but with more value<\/p>\n

Rod’s full written review on Simple Mobile Review<\/a>, Award Wallet on iTunes<\/a> and on Android<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks, Rod – this sounds great! Just today I was booking a hotel room and had to go fetch Steve to find his Starwood hotel number. I have to ask one question though\u2026did you say you have a rewards card for the Bass Pro Shop? Really? If you get enough points do you get free worms? Well in any case, I thought the listeners should get to enjoy just a little bit of the Backyardigans song, “Castaways”:<\/p>\n

===========play song===========<\/p>\n