One of the first posts on this weblog was about iPhone accessibility, and touch screen accessibility in general, which is been something I’ve had on the back burner for a long time. At the start of this year I was thinking about what my priorities should be in 2009 (wedding clearly being number one!) in attempt to get more done and, by coincidence, the Royal Institution Christmas lectures included a demo of the Dasher project which I think could be quite useful: reading most likely letters first rather than showing them in bigger boxes for example. A circular gesture to cycle through the letters in order of probability might work quite well.
Not everyone can see the point of considering this kind of thing on what, to the sighted, is a very visual device. I think that’s a pretty limited view of what is also a powerful, connected, personal computing device with a very flexible input device. Fortunately other people see it this way as well and are investigating ideas to make devices like the iPhone accessible.
I also found a site dedicated to mobile accessibility, via Tim’s blog, so perhaps a little momentum is building at last. One of my colleagues even twittered about accessibility of touch screen phones while I was writing this post!
Maybe I should get Andy to mock something up now he’s a pro at iPhone apps…
Notes from a small field 