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iFocus 11 Vision Accessibility Features in iOS

Seminars@Hadley

iFocus 11: Tips for Using Vision Accessibility Features in iOS

Presented byDouglas Walker

Moderated byLarry Muffett

You're listening to Seminars@Hadley. This seminar is iFocus 11: Tips for Using Vision Accessibility Features in iOS presented by Douglas Walker, moderated by Larry Muffett.

Larry MuffettWelcome to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett. I'm a member of Hadley Seminars team and I also work in Curricular Affairs. Today's seminar topic is iFocus 11: Tips for Using the Vision Accessibility Features in iOS. Our presenter today is Hadley technology instructor and tech guru Douglas Walker. Today, Douglas will be presenting the 11th in our quarterly series of using iOS devices. So I'm going to welcome back Douglas and we'll get right under way. Welcome, Douglas.

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind of 49


Douglas WalkerAlright, we are back for our quarterly iFocus 11 seminar. And as usual, we have a ton of stuff to cover. Today's seminar will actually have two segments. In our first segment, we’ll focus on our old friend, Siri, and some of the really great ways that Siri can help to make our lives so much easier. In our second segment, we will take a look at two of my favorite features, and these are the dictation feature and Safari Reader. Now, we will take a break in the middle in at the end of today's seminar so that we have plenty of time to answer all of your questions. Okay, so let's go ahead and get started.

Now, I am finding myself using Siri more and more to complete tons of different tasks. And Siri has become so much more reliable and responsive since it first found its way onto our iDevices. Now, Apple likes to call Siri our iPhone's personal assistant. And with Siri, we’re able to do things like setup reminders, get walking directions, we are able to place a phone call, and even send a text message. And today, of course, we will be using Siri to accomplish all of those tasks. So how about we go ahead and jump right in.

I tell you, one of my favorite features in iOS is reminders. It is something that I use pretty much every single day to help me to keep track of all of



those little tasks that I just can't seem to keep in my head anymore. Now, I like to think of reminders as my little sticky notes. Instead of having sticky notes posted everywhere, I have my Reminders app on my iPhone, and that really does help to keep me to remember pretty much just about everything.

Now, we aren't going to be totally exploring the Reminders app today because we are going to be looking at how to use Siri to set up our reminders. And we'll also take a look at how to use Siri to check all of our upcoming reminders as well. Now, Siri is super easy to use. All we need to do to activate Siri is to just hold down our Home button which is a small round button at the bottom center of our screen. So how about we take a look at exactly how all this works.

Okay, I have my iPhone right here in front of me, and as I said our Home button is located right here in the bottom center of our screen. So all we need to do to activate Siri is to just hold down our Home button until we hear two tones. Now, after we hear these two tones, we can then just lift our finger off of our Home button and then just speak a reminder. We can say something like, remind me to pick up my laundry today at 3:00. Now, when we stop talking, Siri will confirm our reminder by saying, okay, I'll remind you.



Now, a reminder confirmation will be presented to us on our screen that time, and we can just walk right flick through our screen to check out our reminder.

Okay, so it sounds pretty easy, right. Well, it really is. So how about we gave it a try. We will just hold down our Home button to activate Siri, and we’ll set up our reminder to pick up our laundry today at 3:00. So let’s just hold down our Home button here. Remind me to pick up my laundry today at 3:00.

SiriOkay, I’ll remind you.

Douglas Walker Great. Siri announced that we will be reminded, and our reminder is now presented to us here on our screen. So how about we just right flick through our screen to see what we have. We’ll just first touch near the top of our screen to get us oriented. So we’ll just touch.

SiriRemind me to pick up my laundry today at 3:00. Tab to edit button.



Douglas Walker Okay, and here’s what Siri heard us say. Now, it can be quite interesting at times as to what Siri thinks we have said. However, in this case Siri has been pretty accurate. This is exactly what we want. So we’ll just right flick from here. So we’ll just right flick.

SiriOkay, I’ll remind you.

Douglas Walker Great. And this is our confirmation from Siri that we heard earlier, so we’ll just right flick from here.

SiriReminder, Monday, August 24, 2015. Heading.

Douglas Walker And this is the date of our reminder, and this looks right for me. So we’ll just right flick from here.

SiriPick up my laundry 3:00 PM.

Douglas Walker Great, and here we find the title and the time of our reminder. And again, it is just what we want. So we’ll just right flick one more time. So we’ll just right flick.



SiriRemove button.

Douglas Walker Okay, here we find a remove button. And if we want, we can just single finger double tap to cancel this reminder. Now, we are not going to delete this reminder. However, if we were to activate this remove button, we would be presented with a confirmation screen to make sure that we really do want to delete it. But we want to keep this reminder. So we can just tap our Home button to close this confirmation screen. And we’ll just tap our Home button here. Alright, our reminder has been set and it can be found in our Reminders app.

Now, we mentioned earlier that we’re not going to be exploring our Reminders app. However, we are going to check out how to use Siri to see our upcoming reminders. But first, let’s take a look and one of my favorite reminder features. And this is how to set up a reminder for when we arrive at or when we believe a location. We can set up a reminder by saying something like, remind me when I leave here to call my wife, or we can say, remind me when I get home to feed of the chinchilla. That was kind of awkward but anyway, you get the idea. So how about we go ahead



and set up this kind of a reminder. We will set up a reminder to call my wife when I leave this location so how about we do it. We’ll just hold and release our Home button again, remind me to call my wife when I leave here.

SiriOne sec, I’ll remind you when you leave here.

Douglas Walker There you go. Siri has confirmed our reminder, and I’ll get an alert when I leave this location to call my wife. So how cool is that? Okay, so the last thing we’re going to look at is how to confirm or to use Siri to check our reminders for us, and it is super easy. All we need to do is hold down our Home button to activate Siri. And then we’ll just ask Siri to check our reminders. Okay, let’s give it a try. We will just hold down our Home button to activate Siri here, check my reminders.

SiriHere they are. The first one is pick up my laundry, and then call my wife. Those are all the reminders you have.



Douglas Walker Alright. And there you go. Siri of course read all of our upcoming reminders and it is as easy as that. I really did like this reminders feature. It makes it just so much easy to keep up with everything on my to-do list. Okay, so the next thing that we will have Siri help us do is to get walking directions to a destination. Now, I am so happy that we’re covering this topic because it has been one of our most requested topics ever. And this one is all about how to take advantage of the Apple Maps to get walking directions to a landmark or an address.

Okay, we’ll look at just how easy it is to get walking directions and we’ll get our directions again by using Siri. Now, we’re going to activate Siri in exactly the same way. We’ll just hold down our Home button until we hear our two tones. And then we’ll just say the destination for where we would like to get our walking directions. We’ll say something like, give me walking directions to McDonald’s. Now, once we stop talking, Siri will perform a search for our destination. In this case, of course, we’re looking for McDonald’s, so our Maps app will open and we will be presented with a map with our walking directions to McDonald’s. So how about we give it a try. We’ll just hold down our Home button to activate Siri and we’ll get directions to McDonald’s. So let’s just do it. We’ll hold down this



Home button, give me walking directions to McDonald’s.

SiriGetting walking directions to McDonald’s. Map’s current location, 130…

Douglas Walker Alright, we paused it there. So our Maps app has opened, and we have been presented with a map that displays our walking directions or our route to McDonald’s here. That’s pretty great. Now, we aren’t going to have time, of course, in today’s seminar to totally explore our Maps app. However, we are going to take a look at a couple of really handy features in the Maps app before we actually start our navigation. Now, we’ll need to begin our walking the directions by activating our Start button, and our Start button is located in the bottom center of our map app here. So let’s go ahead and just touch the bottom center of our screen to find our Start button, and we’ll just touch.

SiriStart button.



Douglas Walker Now, we will activate this button in just a bit. However, let’s just left flick a couple of times until we find our View as List button. So we’ll just left flick.

SiriTracking Off button. Change tracking options.

Douglas Walker Okay, here’s our Tracking button. Now, our Tracking button is not currently activated. However, if it were activated, we would periodically be given our current location as we walk which could be really handy. So this is something that we’ll just kind of need to play around with to see if it’s something that we want to use in the future. Okay, so how about we just left flick again. So we’ll just left flick.

SiriView as List button.

Douglas Walker Alright, here’s our View as List button. Now, activating this button will bring up a step-by-step list of our walking directions to our destination. Now, we aren’t going to have time to explore our View as List feature, but I tell you, this can be a great way to review or to help get comfortable with the route before we actually



walk it, and that’s pretty cool. How about we go ahead and began our navigation to our destination. So we’ll just need to again find that Start button down here. We know it’s located in the bottom center of our screen here. So we will just touch our Start button.

SiriStart button.

Douglas Walker And you guessed it, we will just single finger double tap to activate this this Start button. So we’ll go ahead and single finger double tap.

SiriStarting walking directions to McDonald’s. Proceed to Birdsaw Street. Then in 150 feet, take a left on 13th Street.

Douglas Walker Alright, so our directions have started. And if we were to begin walking down Birdsaw Street, as soon as we reached 13th Street like we heard, we would be told the direction that we need to turn. And we would then be given the distance to our next to turn. And it really is as easy as that. Now, remember we will still need to have good orientation and mobility skills while we travel. And our Maps app is not meant to take the



place of common sense here. However, our navigation can really help to give us more information about our route and really help to give us more confidence as we travel.

Now of course we will not be walking this route today, and if we don’t turn off our walking directions or navigation, we will keep getting prompted for our walking directions to McDonald’s, and that can get to be a bit annoying. So it’s really easy to stop or turn off our navigation, and we will once again use Siri to do this. All we have to do is just hold down our Home button again until we hear our two tones. Then we’ll ask Siri to stop our navigation. So how about we do just that. We will just hold down our Home button here, stop navigation.

SiriOkay, I’ve stopped navigating.

Douglas Walker And there you go. Our navigation has been stopped. It really is just so handy to be able to get walking directions by using Siri and really great to be able to explore our route before we actually walk it. Okay, so the next thing that Siri is going to help us do today is to send a text message. Now, we should have the whole Siri routine down by now. So to send a text



message by using Siri, we will again hold down our Home button until we hear our two tones. And then we can simply say the word text along with the name of the person that we want to text.

Now, we could say the person’s phone number if we’d like. However, it is easiest to text a person that we already have in our Contacts app. That way, we can just speak the person’s name. Now, if you aren’t familiar with how to add a person to your Contacts app, it’s your lucky day because we have an iFocus video called Adding a New Contact. So you might want to check out that video, and we’ll talk a little about where you’re able to find all of our iFocus videos in just a bit.

Okay, just to recap, after week press and hold our Home button, we’ll hear our two tones. And if I’m wanting to maybe text my wife, I will just need to say text Kim Walker. Now, after we finish speaking, Siri will confirm by saying, okay, what do you want to say to Kim Walker. Now, it is a good idea to know what you want to say before you actually activate Siri. Otherwise, you might find yourself stumbling over your words or getting a bit tongue tied. Now, after Siri says, okay, what do you want to say to Kim Walker, we will hear two tones. And then we can just speak our message. So how about we just say, this is a test.



I know, kind of boring. But anyway, after we speak our message, Siri will say your message to Kim Walker says this is a test. And then, Siri will say do you want me to send it.

Now, we can either send it by saying yes, or if we change our mind and decide not to send it for some reason, we I could just say cancel. And of course Siri won’t not send it, and our text message, of course, will be canceled. So how about we go ahead and give it a try. We will just hold down our Home button to activate Siri, and we’ll send my wife a text. So let’s go ahead and do it, text Kim Walker.

SiriOkay. What do you want to say to Kim Walker?

Douglas Walker This is a test.

SiriYour message to Kim Walker says, this is a test. Ready to send it?

Douglas Walker Yes.



SiriI’ll send it.

Douglas Walker Alright. We heard Siri announce, okay, I’ll send it. Then we heard that all familiar sending tone that lets us know that our text has been sent. It is as easy as that to send a text message by using Siri. For me, it really is the easiest way to send a text message. Okay, we’re down to our last a Siri topic for today. And, of course, this is one of the most common tasks we will actually do with our phone. And we will be using Siri to help us place a phone call. Now, we’ll again hold our Home button to activate Siri. And after we here our two tones, we can either speak the phone number that we want to call, or if the person we’re calling is in our contacts list, we can’t just simply speak the person’s name.

Again, if I’m calling my wife, I would just need to say call Kim Walker. Now, after we finish speaking, Siri will confirm by saying calling Kim Walker. And then our phone app is going to open, and our phone will call Kim Walker. So how about we give it a try. We’ll just hold down our Home button to activate Siri here. Now, since we’ve already bugged my wife by sending her a rather meaningless text, how about we just call my work number instead. This is pretty sad, I’ll be



calling myself. Anyway, just for demonstration purposes, how about we give it a try. So let’s just hold down our Home button here, call Douglas Walker.

SiriCalling Douglas Walker.

Douglas Walker And it should roll to voicemail here – Hello, you’ve reached the number of Douglas Walker, the Access Technology Information Specialist here at Hadley. Please leave your name, number and the time zone from which you’re calling, and I will call you back as soon as possible. Thanks. Please leave a message at the tone. When finished, you may hang up or press pound for an additional options – Okay, so now I’m leaving myself a voicemail. Apparently, I must be busy at the moment.

So, of course, to end or hang up our call now, all we need to do is perform our two finger double tap. How about we do just that because I don’t need to leave myself this long a voice message here so I’ll just do a two finger double tap. Alright, so our phone call has ended and it really is just that easy. You know, if we really take advantage of all that Siri can do, it really can help to make so many tasks so much easier. And the ability to send reminders or set reminders and get



walking directions, send text messages and place phone calls really are some of the things that Siri does best. So that pretty much does it for our Siri segment here, so how about we open things up for a few questions. So I’ll go ahead and just hand the microphone over.

Larry MuffettThanks, Douglass. That was great. I have a question before we get started. I’m going to turn my microphone over in a minute here for others, but I’m just curious whether your chinchilla ever got fed and how in the world is it doing.

Douglas WalkerActually, there is a chinchilla with me at this moment in the corner of the room over here. It’s not mine. My daughter has a chinchilla. Doing quite well and happy to be a part of the seminar today. So Chi-Chi the chinchilla is very happy.

Larry MuffettOutstanding. I’m going to release the microphone here for people that want to get queued up and ask Douglas a question. Also, if you want to ask questions, you can type them into the text box and I’ll relay them on. But at this point, I’m going to release the microphone and have at it.



ManGreat presentation, Douglas. I just want to add when you’re using Siri to dictate, please dictate dictation. I know in the example you didn’t give a period at the end of your text and it’s a little off putting to get a lot of dictated messages on lists and stuff like that, whether you’re emailing or what have you, without dictation. And one other comment, you used Siri to stop your Apple Maps. I also assume you could have started App Switcher and just that down Apple Maps from within it to turn off the navigation as well.

Douglas WalkerYeah, and you know I’m glad that you mentioned the fact that you can actually add punctuation. And you can do that through Siri. But it just so happens that in our next segment that’s coming up, we will actually be using the dictation feature itself. And dictation and Siri are actually two different entities on the iPhone, and dictation will be much more accurate. But when I’m sending just short messages and stuff, I don’t always add the punctuation or the emoji’s and stuff like that, so kind of hard to do with Siri. And you had another thing that you were asking as well if you could remind me of that.



ManI just said when you stopped navigating in your other example, you told Siri just to stop navigating. But I assume you could also have just shut down Apple Maps from within the App Switcher itself.

Douglas WalkerYeah, you know how it is. Whether you’re using iOS devices or if you’re using a PC or a Mac or whatever, there are always two or three different ways to do something. This segment is all about Siri, so why not shut it down using Siri. Another way that you could have stopped the navigation is by left flicking until you hear the end navigation or End button, and then you could have activated that. And the construction workers have finally made it outside my office, so you might hear some – hopefully, that’s not the chinchilla – but you might hear some construction going on in the background.

ArmandoHi, this is Armando from Florida. When using your Siri on your walking directions, and you have no Wi-Fi, you lose your Wi-Fi, is there going to be any problem getting to your destination, or will your phone still work?



Douglas WalkerWell, it won’t be going across the Wi-Fi hopefully when you’re walking. Your cellular data will be what you’re using whenever you’re traveling. But it’s also going to be looking at the GPS towers so you should be okay even if you lose some cellular connectivity. It’s just more accurate if you have them both going on at the same time.

Larry MuffettQuestion in the text box, do you have to set your address as home before you can tell Siri to remind you when you get home?

Douglas WalkerWhat Siri is going to do – whenever you set up your iPhone it’s going to set you up as your home. But if it doesn’t, you will really want to go into your contacts and add yourself and put your home address in there. That way, it won’t have any difficulty finding it. But, yeah, it’s going to set you up and your address as your home address whenever you hopefully set it all up

Helena ShortThis is Helena Short from Canada, and I know this is going to sound a little silly but I’m not very familiar with the iPhone. When you tell Siri to stop navigating,



does it automatically turn off the app or do you have to turn off the app separately, or when she says stop navigation, does it just go off?

Douglas WalkerI will say over and over, there are absolutely no silly questions. So all questions are wonderful, and that’s a great question. It will stop the app from navigating, but the app is still going to be present on your phone. And if you just tap the Home button, that’s how you close or shut down any application that you have open on your home screen. So it just stops the navigating. So the app is still open to you. But to fully shut that app down, you’ll need to tap the Home button to shut it down.

Helena ShortOh, thank you because I would have left a list of whole heap of raging wandering apps all over my phone if I hadn’t found that out.

Larry MuffettOther questions for Douglas? Hearing none, we’ll move onto the next section then.

ManDouglas, how is the power consumption if you are walking?



Douglas WalkerWell, anytime you’re using any navigation type app, it’s going to have a significant power drain. So as you’re walking your route, you’re going to be consuming more power as you do that. The one thing that I really like and use is I have an external power pack that I can actually charge my iPhone from and get as many as six charges off of it. And I’ll actually type that into the text chat area later on. Zag is where I got mine, but there are tons of different ones out there. Yeah, it can consume your battery as you’re walking. But hopefully it’s not too far. But you would have to be using it a really long time. But these external battery packs are really, really handy to have. And if you’re going to be using your phone to do a lot of navigation, I would suggest that you consider maybe purchasing one of these battery packs.

ManI have a question please. I’m using Siri for about two years now I think, and I found version seven of iOS more accurate than the latest version. I don’t know why at this time when I’m asking something, it’s returning funny answers to me. Is there any way to train Siri to understand better what you’re asking about? It probably is my accent, but, well I think mine is not so bad. Thank you.



Douglas WalkerHey, I totally understand when you’re talking about accents. My southern accent I think at times gives me some interesting results from Siri. My daughter loves to search out funny things that Siri will say. Ask Siri sometimes what zero divided by zero is and you get quite an interesting answer there. But it could be the accent. But Siri is supposed to really learn you and your voice. And I have been beta testing the iOS 9 that’s about to come out, and Siri goes even further with iOS 9. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the huge advancement is Siri. So I maybe having to update my videos and all of the things that Siri can do. But it’s a much more intuitive, and it almost predicts things that you’re going to do and stuff like that. So Siri is going to help us or invade our lives even more in the future.

WomanI have had a problem with Siri. In the middle of the night, I’ll sometimes get up and check my email. And when I tap my Home key, Siri will take over. And then when I touch the screen, it’ll say dialing whoever it is, a contact. And I’m calling somebody late at night.

Douglas WalkerOh no, we don’t want that. I’ll tell you one thing that was added new with Siri is when you have it plugged



in, you do have the option of the Hey Siri command, and I have known people that have had it plugged in on their night stand and said something that sounds like Hey Siri. And Siri will activate and ask you what text you’re wanting or assume that you’re wanting a task. But you can turn that off under your settings menu. So that might be what’s happening. And you might be saying something, and it may assume that you want to call someone. But if you go to your general, and then Siri, you can turn off the Hey Siri feature if you don’t want that on at night. But the idea is that you can have your iPhone or iPad plugged in maybe next to your bed and just be able to say, Hey Siri, what time is it. I hope mine doesn’t go off right now but it will tell you the time or the weather or whatever you ask Siri. But you might want to try to turn it off there and see if that helps.

WomanI did have mine plugged, but I didn't say anything because there's nobody here but me so I'm not talking to anybody. And I wondered what in the world. There I am double tapping trying to stop the phone call.

ManDoug can you give us a quick sneak peek of what's coming up in iPhone 9 if it's not too much off the subject.



Douglas WalkerWell, and to follow up with the first one, I have no clue why Siri would be activating all by itself. So that is interesting. You might give Apple support a call to see what's going on there. But that is strange. So far as iOS 9 and what's coming up, not as many features are changing with iOS 9 for visually impaired. But a lot of new accessibility features for people with motor difficulties or physical impairments. They’re adding a whole lot to there. So there won't be as many changes for us in the vision world, but making it more robust I think or more accurate, they've definitely done that. But we probably in November with our next iFocus, we'll have a whole segment on what's new in iOS 9 once it’s actually released. It's supposed to be released next month I believe.

Larry MuffettWhy don't we move on to the next section, and then we’ll have additional time for questions and answers after that section.

Douglas WalkerAlright, our first segment was all about of course using Siri. And in this segment, we will be covering two of my favorite features. And these are the dictation feature and our Safari Reader. So let's go



ahead and jump right in. Alright, the dictation feature is a way to write that allows us to be hands-free. Now, we refer to this way of writing as speech to text. And that means that our device is going to turn what we’re speaking into written text. Now this is a feature that we can use in just about any text area on our device. And it really can help to speed up our text input, especially if we're having any difficulties using our on screen keyboard.

Now there are a few things to keep in mind when using our dictation feature. And probably the most important is to beware of environmental noises because if we’re in a noisy place, then our device’s microphone is going to have a much more difficult time picking up what we're saying. And our text will end up not being as accurate as we would like for it to be. Now, one thing that will help with this is to use ear buds with an in-line microphone. And if you're using an iPhone, the ear buds that came with your phone actually have a microphone built right into its cord. This is what we refer to as an in-line microphone. Now you don't have to have an in-line microphone to be able to use your dictation feature, but it really does help to cut down on some of the background noises that might be a bit distracting to our device when we're dictating.



Okay, so another thing to be aware of is that we have the ability to add punctuation as we dictate. Now, this can be a bit awkward at first because it really takes some practice to really speak all this punctuation. Now, this might not matter if were just using dictation to take simple notes for our self such as maybe a grocery list or just a short reminder. However, if we’re using it to send an email to a colleague, we will really want for the punctuation to be accurate.

Okay, we'll demonstrate how to add the punctuation as we dictate in just a bit. So let's go ahead and start dictating. Now we mentioned earlier that we’re able to dictate pretty much anywhere that we have a text area, and examples of this would be when we're doing things like sending a text message or sending an email. Maybe if we were writing in a word processing program such as Pages or my new favorite word processing app Voicestream Writer.

Dictation would even work if we're filling out a form on the Internet. Now one of the places that I use dictation most is when I'm using my Notes app. So how about we go ahead and open our Notes app to see how this work. Okay, so our Notes app is right here on our desktop, so we will just flick to it.



SiriPass lock, double tap to open.

Douglas Walker We'll flick one more time.

SiriNotes, double tap to open.

Douglas Walker And we'll just single finger double tap to activate it here.

SiriNotes new button.

Douglas Walker Great, our Notes app has opened right in our notes list, and we have it placed on our new button in the top right-hand corner of our screen. So we'll just single finger double tap here to begin a new note. So we just single finger double tap.

SiriNote, text field is editing.



Douglas Walker Alright, so a new note has opened, and we heard voice over announce that we’re in our text field and that it is editing. And this means that we’re ready to begin typing or of course in our case we will be dictating. Now there are a couple of ways that we can approach this. And one is by activating our dictate button, which is just to the left of our spacebar on our on screen keyboard. Now since we are in edit mode, we do have our standard QWERTY keyboard at the bottom of our screen. So let's look to see where we can find our dictate button. And then of course once we find it, we will listen for voice over to give us some hints on how it's going to work. Okay so we'll just touch our spacebar at the bottom of our screen and then we’ll just slide to the left here. So we’ll touch…

SiriSpace.

Douglas Walker And slide to the left.

SiriDictate. Double tap to start dictation. Two finger double tap when finished.



Douglas Walker Okay, we've now of course have lifted our finger, and voice over has given us some really great hints. We were told that we could single finger double tap to start dictation, and then we were told that we could perform a two finger double tap when we have finished dictating. And so this is really great.However, let's look at a much faster way to begin our dictation without having to search for this dictate button.

Now when our new note first opened, we were placed right in our it edit field for typing. And this is really nice because this is where we really want to be. So let's go ahead and touch back in this edit field. So we'll touch near the center of our screen to get us there.

SiriNote. Text field is editing.

Douglas Walker Okay, now we’re right where we were when our new note first opened. And instead of having to go search for this dictate button, we have the ability to just perform a two finger double tap to begin dictating. And again, when we have finished our dictating, we just perform another two finger double tap to stop it. And it really is as easy as that.



Okay, so we’re in our edit field and we’re ready to begin dictating. And like we said earlier, this might take just a little bit of practice, so how about we start simple and look at writing maybe a short grocery list. So when we begin our dictation, we’ll give our list a title by saying grocery list. And then saying the words new line is going to be like pressing our return key. So we'll just say new line after placing each of our items in our grocery list.

Okay, so how about we give it a try. We will just begin our dictation of course by performing our two finger double tap. Now, we will hear a tone that lets us know that our dictation has started and then remember, we’ll perform that same two finger double tap to stop it again. Okay, so let's try it. We'll just do a two finger double tap here. Grocery list. New line. Milk. New line. Eggs. New line. Bread. New line.

SiriInserted grocery list: milk, eggs, bread. Inserted grocery list: milk, eggs bread.

Douglas Walker Great. Of course I performed the two finger double tap to stop after I stopped my dictation. And as we heard, voice over read our speech that was converted



into text, and how great is that? It even gets better because we’re able to add additional text to this edit field if we'd like. And we can do this by simply just performing our two finger double tap gesture again. So how about we do just that, only this time we are going to add some punctuation.

Now, we’re currently in our grocery list and we could add some more grocery items here if we’d like. However, we're going to now pretend that we’re in our Email app and that we’re composing an email message. Now, remember we first need to have of course an idea of what we want to say, and we need to also remember that we'll be speaking all of our punctuations. So let's go ahead and give it a try. Okay, we'll just perform our two finger double tap to start and then of course we'll perform a two finger double tap to stop it again.

Alright, so how about we give it a shot. We'll just two finger double tap here. Hi Kim. Comma. New line. I hope that all is great with you today. Period. How is the weather there? Question mark. Let me know when you would like to get together again. Period. New line. Take care. Comma. New line. Douglas.



SiriInserted: Hi Kim, I hope that all is great with you today. How is the weather there? Let me know when you would like to get together again. Take care, Douglas. Inserted: Hi Kim, I hope that all is great with you today. How is the weather there? Let me know when you would like to get together again. Take care, Douglas.

Douglas Walker Okay, for some reason it said it twice, but anyway that's great. Gives us a chance to check it. Okay, so we did perform our two finger double tap to stop our dictation there. And like you heard, all of our text was of course confirmed and read to us. Now, saying all of our punctuation aloud really does sound a bit strange. And it can take a bit to get used to doing that, but with just a little practice, I tell you, dictation can really help to be a huge time saver.

Okay, so we've already covered a lot of ground today. And that brings us to our last topic. We will be checking out our Safari Reader. Now, the reader feature is available when we're using our Safari app. And Safari of course is Apple's web browser. Alright, the reader feature really is one of those lesser known features that can really help make reading an article on the internet so much easier. Now, it does this by



eliminating all of the ads and all of the additional clutter on the webpage, and that means that we're only presented with the article that we want to read, and that can be really nice because it can be very frustrating at times to have to listen to all those redundant links and advertisements on the page, when all we really want to do is to listen to our article.

Okay, so let's take a look at exactly how this reader feature works, and we’ll do this by launching our Safari app. At first we’ll need to close our Notes app here, so we’ll just tap our Home button.

SiriWriter. Double tap to open.

Douglas Walker And we'll just flick to our Safari app here, so we'll flick.

SiriSettings. Double tap to open.

Douglas Walker And we'll flick again.

SiriPage one of two. Adjustable.



Douglas Walker Flick again.

SiriStop phone. Mail. Five unread emails. Safari. Double tap to open.

Douglas Walker Okay, and we'll just single finger double tap of course to launch Safari here.

SiriNFB news line dot… Safari. Safari slash visited link landmark.

Douglas Walker Okay, so our web page is loaded here, and we're all open and we are currently on the CNN news website.Now before we’re able to begin using our reader, we will first need to find of course an article that we want to read, so how about we find one. Okay, now I've used the CNN website before, and the articles on this website are laid out by headings. So we'll just activate our rotor to make sure that we're moving by headings here. Now, if you are not yet familiar with how to use the rotor, we do have a Hadley YouTube video called using the rotor. It does a pretty good job of getting you familiar with exactly how our rotor works. So you



might want to check it out of course once today's seminar is over.

Okay, so let's find an article to read. So let's go ahead and activate our rotor. Make sure we have headings here so we'll activate.

SiriLinks. Form links. Headings. 41 headings.

Douglas Walker Okay, super. There are 41 headings here and we’re ready to find an article. And since we’ve selected headings, we will just begin flicking down to move by headings, at least until we find an article that we want to read. Okay, so we'll just flick down from here.

SiriStrap in for a Brutal Day. Heading level two. Visited link. Massive Global Stock Sell-off is Accelerating. Heading level three. Visit top stories. Heading level three. List start.

Douglas Walker Look at our first top story here, we’ll flick down again.



SiriIsis Blows up Ancient Temple. Heading level three. Visited link.

Douglas Walker Alright, well for the sake of time, we'll go ahead and open this one up and see what it has to say. We'll give it a try. Now, to open this we would just single finger double tap to open it. But before we do, let's talk a little bit about what we're looking for. Now, once we single finger double tap, our article of course is going to open or load. And if our reader feature is available, we will hear voice over announce reader available. And that sounds pretty easy, right? So how about let's give it a try. We will just single finger double tap top open this article. And we'll go ahead and single finger double tap.

SiriReader available. Our terms of service and privacy policy have changed.

Douglas Walker Alright, so we heard it say reader available. So that means that in the very top left-hand corner of our screen, well, it’s actually just below our status bar in the tap left corner of our app here, we will find our



reader button. So how about we just touch there and look for it. So we’ll just touch there.

SiriReader button, shows or hide Safari reader.

Douglas Walker Great, so Safari told us that this is our reader button. And we were told that activating our reader but will show or hide our safari reader. And this is exactly what we want, so how about we just single finger double tap to go ahead and activate our reader and make it visible here. So we'll just single finger double tap.

SiriDecrease text size button.

Douglas Walker Alright, our Safari reader has opened and all of our links and all of our advertisements and all the other clutter that we had on the screen is now gone. And this is great because we’re presented with only our article here. So all we need to do now to read it is to just of course flick down with two fingers to perform our continuous reading gesture. So how about we go ahead and try it. We'll just flick down our screen with two fingers and we'll do that.



SiriDecrease text size button, increase text size button. Story highlights. CNN, the already burgeoning list of appalling acts by ISIS appears to have grown even longer. The Islamic extremists group has reportedly blown up a nearly 2000 year old temple in the historic ruins of [Inaudible 00:49:36] in Syria.

Douglas Walker We'll stop that. Kind of a depressing article, sorry about that. And we just stopped our speech, of course, with our two finger single tap. And how great is that? I mean, it really is nice to have all of our clutter out of the way when we want to read an article. Now, it's important to know that our Safari reader is not going to be available for every single article that we encounter. But remember, we'll always hear Safari announce reader available whenever it’s there and we can use it.

Okay, so our reader is still open, and we can close it in one of two ways. We can either perform our scrub gesture, or we can just go back up to our reader button in the top left corner of our screen and activate it again. So let's just touch this reader button in the top left hand corner of our screen. We’ll just touch.



SiriSelected reader button. Shows or hides Safari reader.

Douglas Walker And there it is. So we'll just single finger double tap to close our reader. We’ll just single finger double tap.

SiriOur terms of services and privacy policy have changed.

Douglas Walker Okay so our reader has closed and we are right back in our article our webpage there. Okay, so using our Safari reader is just as easy as that. I'll tell you, it really is a handy tool. And it really does make reading articles in Safari so much more enjoyable.

Okay so we've covered a ton of stuff today, and I am quite sure that you all have a few questions for us. So let's go ahead and get right to it, and I’ll go ahead and hand the microphone back over.

Helena ShortThis is Helena Short again. Your dictation was perfect, but what happens if it isn’t? What happens if voice over mispronounces a word or something? How do you correct that?



Douglas WalkerWell you will actually have to go right into the text itself, navigate through the text and correct it. And we have a video, I have an iFocus video called using the Notes app. And it explains how to use the rotor. You might want to check out using the rotor is well. And I think Larry put up the YouTube link within the text chat area already. Using those two videos together will really give you a good sense of how to navigate through text and how to be able to navigate by character and by word to find out any misspellings or mistakes that you have there. So you’ll need to navigate through the text to make any corrections to it.

And like I said, using the dictation, it does have its drawbacks because it will cause you to have some errors in there. However, I tend to use dictation more if I'm doing like simple lists and stuff like that more so than I do while sending emails or something much longer than that. But you'll have to navigate through it. Another thing is, we have the link for the YouTube site up there, but we also now have all of our iFocus videos right on our Hadley website. And I'll go ahead and give that address right now. It's www – and Larry you might want to type this in the text edit field as well www.hadley.edu/instructionalvideos.asp. So


http://www.hadley.edu/instructionalvideos.asp


www.hadley.edu/instructionalvideos dot A as in alpha, S as in Sam, and P as in Paul. So you'll find all of the instructional videos there as well. And you know how quirky YouTube can sometimes be. Well, I think you'll find it much easier to navigate and play on our Hadley website if you go there.

Helena ShortAnd I agree, thank you very much.

ManDouglas, I know you just mentioned about the quality, my next question is this, is it to a standard where you could dictate, say, a short paper or something, and expect it to be accurate spacing, such as period and two spaces after it or one space after? What's the deal with that?

Douglas WalkerYeah, I think that you can as long as you speak clearly. Like I said, dictation and Siri tend to learn you and how you speak and stuff, or it's supposed to be more intuitive. And I think when you start using iOS 9 that you'll see even a more robust Siri and a more robust dictation. So you'll see the dictation feature even get more accurate. Yeah, all the periods and punctuation will be in place. But you have to remember that it’s not always going to be accurate,


http://www.hadley.edu/instructionalvideos


and actually backgrounds noises like the now drilling or whatever is going on in the background here, would be very distracting to the device. So using that in-line mic or even an external mic plugged into your iPhone is going to be a huge boost into how accurate the Siri or the dictation is going to be. So you're really going to want to consider that.

Now, you’ll do new line, will actually bring you to the next line to start your next like there, but you can say new paragraph if you wanted to begin a new paragraph, and it's going to put two spaces like you would if you wanted to start a new paragraph. So there’s a lot to dictation, and I just scratched the surface today. But it can really be a huge help and a huge tool for helping. And I mentioned someone might want to consider calling Apple support. Let me do this, and I've given this out before and this has been a huge help for a lot of people.

Apple actually has a direct line for accessibility support and for voiceover support, and there are people there that really know voice over inside out. So if we can't answer something here or if it goes beyond what we can get in the scope of our seminar today, you might want to call Apple support if your phone is doing something really quirky. And that number is 877-204-3930. That's 877-204-3930. And they're


tel:877-204-3930

tel:877-204-3930


super helpful there, and like I said, that is just for accessibility support there so they should be able to help you.

ManCan you tell me if there’s any keystroke available on Bluetooth keyboards for activating Siri?

Douglas WalkerSomebody else in the room might be able to help with that one. I don't have the keystrokes at hand. I'm quite sure that there probably are, but I don't have that in front of me. So if anybody out there is a Siri user with the Bluetooth keyboard, you might want to chime in here. Sorry about that one.

Larry MuffettYeah, I just got dumped out of the room, so I’m back. I know we had some questions in the text box, but I believe we lost those. One of them I do remember is there was a question about volume control in the dictation area as far as the iPhone portion of it. Not the person making the dictation, but the notification on the voice over – is there a volume control for that?

Douglas WalkerOkay, there are separate volumes. There’s your system volume that can usually be controlled by your



volume buttons on the side of your phone. If it gets glitchy and you can't make the volume buttons control like the tone that activates dictation or that you hear when dictation’s activated or even Siri's tones or those other familiar tones that you're hearing that your device should make separate from voice over, you can always go to your settings to adjust that as well.

And you can find that under your settings menu, and it will actually be about three or four down from the general button in your settings menu, and it will say sounds. And there’s a volume slider there that you can activate and actually force your volume up or down. So if you're having trouble with your side buttons controlling your volume for your device, you'll want to go there to control the volume.

Larry MuffettI have to apologize. There were a couple of really good questions in the text box that I was going to go ahead to give to Douglas. And when I just got dumped off and logged back in, my chat box area is completely blank now. So I apologize if I don't ask your question, but if you don't get it asked, we’ve still got a few minutes for questions. So I'm going to turn loose the microphone and hopefully we have some more. Other questions for Douglas?



ManI’ve got a question. It’s maybe a little bit off the chart. Is the new iOS 9 update coming out in the near future going to be free or are we going to have to pay for that?

Douglas WalkerHere goes the banging in the room. Yeah, Apple’s really great about giving us free updates. So it will be a free update, and they not only do it for the iOS or all of their iPhones and iPods and iPads and stuff, but now they make all of their software for the Mac free updates as well. So iOS 9 should be coming out mid-September, I don't have the exact date for that, and it will be free. So if your device runs iOS 8.4.1, which is the current version, it should run iOS 9. So that's great.

AlanDouglas, with dictation, what if you want to actually put the words in your document, but don't want to go to a new line? How do you do that or can you do that?

Douglas WalkerYou know, that's really interesting. I’m going to sic the chinchilla on you, Alan. So, you know, I haven't thought of that. I haven't tried that even, so you may



have to go back and actually physically type that in there. So leave it to Alan to bring that up.

Larry Muffett Time for one more question. Okay, hearing none, I want to let everyone know that this seminar like all of our seminars will be archived on our website and available for your use anytime around the clock.

Also, each Hadley seminar is made available as a podcast, which you can download to your computer or mobile device. If today's seminar has you interested in this or related technology topics, please check out the seminar archives. We've got 10 others of these iFocus seminars, Hadley's course list, and as we mentioned today, Hadley's YouTube channel.

Douglas and I both thank you for your participation. Some really great questions really add a lot to the value of the seminar. Hadley values your feedback. Please let us know what you thought about today's seminar and please give us suggestions for future topics. One way you can do that is by dropping us an email to [email protected]. That's F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K, the at sign, H-A-D-L-E-Y dot E-D-U.Another way to share is by completing a short on screen survey I'm going to post right when we conclude today. So at this point, I'm going to turn the



microphone back over to Douglas for any closing comments he might have. Douglas?

Douglas WalkerYou know, we always have such a great crowd in our seminar room, and I appreciate all of you being here today. And I've looked down the list and I thank you guys, you returning people, thank you so much for coming back, and I hope you got a lot of useful information. And also, some of my former students. I no longer teach coursework, I just do the iFocus stuff. But I see some really familiar names, some former students in here. Thank you guys as well. And I would really be remiss if I didn't say thank you, Larry.

Larry Muffett always does such a fantastic job at keeping everything going. And even when he gets booted out of the room by the software, he's always so calm when he comes back in the room. So nothing rattles Larry, I think he's seen it all. So thank you, Larry, for moderating today. And the next iFocus seminar will be in November, so keep an eye out for that. And check out the videos. We’re adding videos. We'll add a couple in the next month, and we’ll keep them coming to you. So take care and I'll see you next time



Larry MuffettThank you, Douglas. I want to personally thank Douglas for those kind words, and I can't express enough what a fantastic job he does for Hadley. If you haven't seen the videos, I highly, highly recommend them to you. And I want to personally thank all of you for taking time to be part of this seminar. Feel free to drop us a line at [email protected] with your questions or comments or suggestions. I certainly want to thank you for participating today, and just let you know that we look forward to our very next seminar. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.


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