A free communication app based on voice messages is proving popular with blind and visually impaired users, and has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help expand its community.
Users of the Vorail app communicate by recording questions or thoughts as short voice messages, which are available for other users to listen to and reply. Users just need to set up a basic profile, without any photos or images.
A free smartphone app that can help disabled and other diverse communities find and connect with people from within their own and other groups, and request social support, has been launched in the UK.
MiFinder combines elements of social networking platforms with GPS satellite location, allowing users to engage and potentially meet with people nearby them who share similar interests. The app has a range of potential uses – including dating – but is unusual in promoting its use for social support, its owner says.
Research and investment priorities for the digital economy and development of internet services and mobile devices must reflect the needs of disabled and elderly people, a telecommunications expert has warned.
In a video address to a London event on the future of accessible ICT research( bit.ly/T0SkH2 ), Dr Mike Short, vice president of Telefónica Europe and former president of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said customer demand for more accessible services has risen over the past ten years. Accordingly, mobile network providers need to think about different groups of users when planning for future growth, including the benefits that universal design can offer to everybody, Short said.
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By Dan Jellinek.
This has been a busy year for Diane Mulligan.
At the start of 2010 Mulligan was awarded an OBE for services to disabled people and equal opportunities. Last week, she was back at Buckingham Palace for a reception held by the Queen for the Diplomatic Corps. In-between, she has been spearheading a campaign to improve the rights of disabled people in developing countries, in her role as Global Disability Advisor for international charity Sightsavers.
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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Twitter is a ‘microblogging’ system that allows people to supply a feed of very short messages, or ‘tweets’ – just 140 characters long, to whoever subscribes to their feed. Subscribers can then reply openly with their own messages, or use the system to send private messages in reply. However, despite the fact that it is such a simple concept (and leaving aside for the moment the question of who has time to use it), the service raises various accessibility issues. Here, blogger Gez Lemon offers one innovative solution.]
Considering the standard Twitter website is so basic, it’s surprising it is so inaccessible.
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