Author: aghorner

About this article

The Doro 7030 is a simple-to-use mobile phone. While it’s initially aimed at older people, it can be used by anyone who does not want the complexity of a smartphone or prefers real buttons to a touch screen.

In this video, we will show you how to set up and use the Doro 7030. How to change the display to make it easier for people with low vision to see and demonstrate the emergency function.

Watch our tutorial on setting up and using the Doro 7030

Topics covered in this video

00:00 – Start
01:14 – Installing the Battery and Sim Card
02:05 – Removing the Back Cover
02:28 – Installing the SIM Card
03:51 – Installing the Battery
04:13 – Replace the Back Cover
04:39 – Turning on
05:13 – Charging the phone
05:54 – Orientation
11:11 – Turning the Phone on for the First Time
13:05 – Customising the Display
13:17 – Increasing the Font Size
14:39 – Increase Display Contrast
15:47 – High Contrasting Wallpaper
18:09 – Setting Menu to a List View
19:35 – Customising Sounds
20:25 – Increase Ringtone Volume
21:31 – Setting up the phone Hearing Loss
22:31 – Changing the Ringtone
24:14 – Adding Contacts
25:14 – Turn off predictive text
27:20 – Adding a Contact
28:29 – Calling a Contact
29:17 – Adding a contact to Speed Dial
31:12 – Assign Ringtone to Contact
33:04 – Missed Calls
34:12 – Emergency Button
41:37 – Doro Response

Introduction

If you don’t normally need VoiceOver but sometimes would like to have text read out to you, then you can use the speak screen/selection feature. In this article and video, we will show you how to activate the speak screen/selection feature and use it to read Kindle Books.

Watch our tutorial on Making your iPad read Kindle Books to you using the speak screen/selection.

Difference between speak screen/selection and VoiceOver

Speak selection/screen is designed to read small blocks of text, and relies on you being able to see enough to choose the block of text you want to see. It does not affect the way in which your apps or gestures work. Whereas VoiceOver is designed to allow you to navigate your iPad without sight and requires that you use additional gestures.

Speak Screen/Selection is ideal for people who can see enough to move around their iPad but sometimes need a little help. VoiceOver is for people who don’t have enough sight to operate their iPad.

To switch on speak screen/selection

1. Go Settings and choose accessibility
2. Choose spoken content
3. Ensure that speak selection and speak screen are turned on.
4. Also turn on speech controller. This gives you a menu that allows you to access functions of speak screen from anywhere.

Using speak selection to read your book

1. Press and hold the speech controller button. Speak selection will start reading from the top of the page. And it won’t stop until you ask it to. Alternatively, tap the speech controller button to bring up the speech controller menu. Then, touching the hand button and touching the page will read just that page.
2. During reading, you can use the next and previous buttons in the speech controller to move between the next and previous pages. You can also pause reading and change the speed. 

For more customisation of voices and reading speed, choose Spoken Content from the Accessibility menu.

Limitations of Speak Selection

• There is limited navigation, but there is no way of reading just one line or paragraph. So its good for books that you read a page at a time, not so good for reference books where you may want to read a line word for word or even character by character if you’re learning computer code.
• The speech controller menu sometimes gets in the way and sometimes is not very easy to see against the background.

In this article, we’ll look at some things you can do to make the Kindle App on the iPad easier to see.

Watch our tutorial on making the iPad Kindle App Easier to see

Increase the font size

When adjusting the font size, don’t simply put it to the maximum. Instead, you want to strike a balance between a large font and enough words on one line to make reading comfortable.

Change the typeface

Many visually impaired people find reading sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica or Amazon Ember Bold easier than serif fonts. The serif refers to the little tail on letters such as T or a.

Change the theme

Many people find that there is too much glare when reading black text on a white background. The Kindle App for iPad has four themes, black on white, brown on sepia, black on mint green and white on black. Many people with Macular Degeneration find reading white text on a black background more comfortable. You can also adjust the brightness of the kindle screen independently of the rest of the ipad to help reduce glare.

Change text alignment to left aligned

Because of unequal spacing between words, many visually impaired people find fully justified text (text where both margins are straight) difficult to read. Once you reach the end of one line, it is harder to find the following line. Changing the text to left aligned gives a jagged right margin, making it easier to locate the following line.

Increase line spacing

Increasing the line spacing makes it easier for the reader to stay on the line they are currently reading without drifting on the line above or below.

Increase the size of the margins.

Many people find reading shorter lines more comfortable than reading long lines of text.

Use the Screen Ruler

The screen ruler helps the reader focus on the line they are currently reading. It also acts as place holder allowing the user to quickly locate their place on the page if they look away from the iPad. However, it does not remember the location on the page between reading sessions.

To access the screen ruler, tap anywhere on the screen, choose Aa and tap on the more tab, then select reading ruler and switch on the reading ruler. There are several ruler styles, so you can experiment to find which best suits you.

Watch our instructional video on using Siri Shortcuts to read Barcodes

Meet Mary

Mary has Macular Degeneration and enjoys listing to her CD collection however she struggles to read the titles of her CDs. The only way she knows that she’s got the right disk is by putting it into her CD player and playing the first track.

In this article, we’ll show how Mary can use her iPhone, Siri and Seeing AI to tell her what CD she is holding.

What is Seeing AI

Seeing AI is an app developed by Microsoft that uses artificial intelligence to recognise text, currency, faces and products and speaks the result.

Installing Seeing AI

If you don’t already have seeing AI, download it from the Apple App Store. VoiceOver will announce it as “Seeing AI talking camera for the blind” the app is free.

Setting up Siri Short Cuts

1. In Seeing AI, navigate to the menu button in the top left-hand corner. VoiceOver will announce “Menu – Button“
2. Swipe right with one finger until VoiceOver announces “settings – button“, then double tap
3. Swipe right until VoiceOver says Configure “Siri Short Cuts Button”, then double tap
4. We want to recognise a product so swipe right with one finger until you hear “recognise product“
5. A dialogue box will now appear on the screen and VoiceOver will say “edit in short cuts”, if VoiceOver doesn’t announce it, place your finger in the middle of the screen until you hear VoiceOver say “Hey Siri“.
6. The default phrase is “Hey Siri, Recognise Product” – You can change this to your own phrase by swiping right until you hear “change voice phrase”, the double tap and say the phrase you want to use, you will then hear a beep and voice over will say “inserted” followed by your phrase, if you’re happy with this swipe right until you reach done.
7. Your Siri short cut is now set up. Double tap on the back button to return to the main seeing AI screen.

Now all you have to do is say “Hey Siri, Recognise Product”, when Seeing AI sees the barcode it will announce the product name.

Conclusion

So now Mary can use the barcode reader on Seeing AI to tell her what CD she has in her hand. If the CD didn’t exist in the database she could also use the short text feature to read the title, or the document feature to read the track listing.

Mary can also use this to identify other products in her house, such as items in Kitchen cupboards. Or even when she’s out shopping, for Seeing AI to work though you do need an internet connection.

Having correctly structured HTML headings in documents is essential for helping people using accessibility technologies find their way around your webpage. But what are headings, and why are they so important.

Video explaining HTML Headings

What are HTML Headings

HTML has six heading levels labelled <h1>..<h6> with <h1> being the most important heading and <h6> being the least important.

The <h1> heading is only used once per page and represents the main heading of the page. The remaining levels can be used as many times as needed but must be used in order.

How to write Headings in HTML

The code for HTML headings is as follows:-

<h1>Main Heading Text</h1>
	<h2>Section Heading Text</h2>
		<h3>Subheading Text</h3>

Why you should use headings

When a sighted person looks at a webpage, they use factors such as the size, colours, fonts and position of the text to get clues to how the page is structured.

In this example, the main heading <h1> is the largest, centred and bold. In addition, the section headings <h2> are bold and have an underline, and the subheadings <h3> for each section are bold.

This is what the HTML code looks like for the heading structure in this document.

<h1>Maine Coon</h1>
    <h2>History</h2>
        <h3>Origin</h3>
        <h3>Cat Shows</h3>
    <h2>Description</h2>
        <h3>Markings</h3>
        <h3>Habits</h3>
        <h3>Personality</h3>
        <h3>Size</h3>
        <h3>Diet</h3>
    <h2>Health</h2>

When a person uses a screen reader, they have access to none of these navigational clues. Screen readers read text on the screen; they have no way of knowing what is and is not important. So we have to tell them the structure of the document, one of the ways of doing this is by using HTML headings. The screen reader user can then use navigation tools built into their screen reader to move around the page more efficiently.

Using headings correctly will also help search engines to know what is important on the page. There are several tutorials available on YouTube about headings and search engine optimisation.

Common mistakes with headings

Using formatted text instead of headings

In this example, the document on the left appears to use headings; however, the text has been formatted to look like headings. This means to a screen reader, it has no structural information and looks like a mass of text on the right.

Using headings for things that arn’t headings

It’s quite common on web pages for the first paragraph of an article to be in a larger font, and bolder than the rest of the body text. However, in this case, <h2> level heading has been used to achieve this. If you need to format a paragraph, then this should be done with the stylesheet for the web page

Using Headings out of Order

The headings should be in a hierarchical order but in this case, we can see that <h4> comes after <h1>, we’ve got <h2>, but then <h3> is missing.

Ways to check your headings

• Headings Map for Firefox – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/headingsmap
• WAVE Accessibility Extension – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessibility-tool/
• NVDA screen reader – Windows – https://www.nvaccess.org/download/
• VoiceOver screen reader for mac – Available from system preferences > accessibility > VoiceOver