New iPhone releases: better choices for blind users?

Transcript

29 September 2013

Roberta: Today we have Dr Scott Hollier, accessibility expert and Project Manager at Media Access Australia, and he is here to talk to us about the latest iPhones from Apple including the new low-cost iPhone. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Thanks, Roberta, great to be back again.

Roberta: Now, Apple released some new phones recently. What are the features?

Scott: Well, the two phones that they released is the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s and it’s a little unusual for Apple because normally they just release the one phone. So to release the two has been really interesting. The main differences between the two is that the 5S, which is the more expensive one, has a fingerprint scanner. So if you’re wanting to do some secure things, instead of having a lock screen it actually can identify that you’re the user through the fingerprint scanner and it has a faster processor and a few other little bits and pieces. While the 5c is a little a bit older technology, more aligned with the current iPhone 5, but it comes in five different colours and is a little bit cheaper.

Roberta: So it seems as though colours are important then.

Scott: Yes, five fashion colours.

Roberta: But are they accessible?

Scott: Well, happily, they are. Apple has done a lot of work since its iPhone 3GS back in 2009 and the progress of Apple over the years has been really good. So these phones come with the new version of the operating system, called iOS 7, and there’s lots of accessibility. There’s the voiceover screen readers. There’s the zoom. There’s colour contrast that you can change the colours. It is terrific to see that while the changes are probably a little more incremental these days, they’re not the big leaps that the earlier products were, it is nice that the accessibility features are still improving.

Roberta: So why is Apple looking at the budget space and will there be budget here in Australia?

Scott: Well, this is a really good question and unfortunately I don’t have good news. The iPhone 5C was believed to be the budget phone and the idea was that people and analysts thought that Apple was going to try to help bridge the gap as people, and particularly young people, moved from an iPod Touch to an actual iPhone. They thought that they would then try to reduce the price quite significantly to reach that market. While the idea of having lots of different colours and things, it does seem to be that they’re aiming for that market, it’s not really budget here. In Australia, the starting price for the iPhone 5C is still $739. So in my opinion there’s not much budget about that. It is $100 cheaper than the iPhone 5S but when you consider Android phones, which have now caught up a lot with accessibility, some of the cheaper, generic brand ones start at just a couple of hundred dollars. Then even the Samsung Galaxy S4, which is the really popular Android phone, is still $100 to $150 cheaper than the Apple equivalent. So it’s a little bit disappointing that there was all this hype and suggestion that Apple were going down the budget path. While they have released a cheaper phone, the 5C has a plastic shell and things like that, so it is a cheaper product, yeah, it just doesn’t seem to be cheaper here.

Roberta: Well, Apple has often been thought of as the most accessible phones. Are there other options?

Scott: Well, this is the thing. I mean, to be honest, Apple is still the leader when it comes to accessible phones. All this assistive technology that’s built in and it’s there out of the box is a terrific thing. So to be honest, Apple would still be considered the best phone in terms of accessibility but Android has caught up a lot and the great thing about Android, in the recent versions, is that they do have the talkback screen reader. They do have a zoom feature. You can put on different themes and there’s a lot of really interesting, innovative apps just starting to pop up now. So the only downside to Android is that you’re never a hundred percent sure when you buy an android phone what’s already preinstalled. So the talkback screen reader, for example, it might already be on the phone. So if you buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 you’ve already got all that technology built in but for other models you might actually have to go to the Play Store, or maybe need help getting to the Play Store, to download those tools initially. So it’s a little bit more finicky on the Android side, so from that point of view Apple is a better product, but given that Android phones are so much cheaper than Apple, and the accessibility has improved so much, it’s great that there’s more competition and more choice for people who are blind and vision impaired.

Roberta: That’s a bit of good news, anyway. Now, you can find more information about accessible technologies on the Media Access Australia Website, www.mediaaccess.org.au. Thank you for all of that, Scott, and I will be talking about more technology soon.

Scott: Thank you.

Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, accessibility expert and Project Manager at Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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