Money Reader iOS App For Blind And Visually Impaired (Video)

Looktel's Money Reader is a revolutionary augmented reality app for the iPhone, iPod Touch (with camera) and iPad (with camera) for the visually impaired that counts US dollar bills ($1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills). As soon as the app detects the bills, it starts counting. There is no need to place the bills in front of the phone camera in a certain orientation. The app detects the bill artwork and immediately recognizes the denomination.

Money Reader does not require an internet connection which makes it usable everywhere. This app is available for $1.99 (app description here).

A quick note about iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch fourth generation (from Money Reader's description on iTunes):

"Note: If you are using an iPhone 3GS or 4th Generation iPod, LookTel Money Reader requires an environment with plenty of light."

Check out the video for a very impressive demo!



Source: Looktel via Engadget

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Accessibility Video Tutorials For Websites

Think Vitamin Membership recently made all its accessibility tutorial videos free. Think Vitamin is a website for web developers, and has many video tutorials on the latest technology that web designers and developers need to know in order to design websites. The videos are available in different resolutions (including HD), and their tutorials are very easy to understand.

There is actually a membership cost to access their videos, but recently they made their accessibility tutorial videos available to everyone for free. The tutorial consists of  21 very easy to understand lessons. It starts with the fundamentals - some basic things to keep in mind while designing pages for people with not just low/no vision and hearing impairment, but also for those who have impaired mobility (e.g., make pages keyboard accessible). The videos are around 5 - 7 minutes long.


Here is the video that discusses designing web pages for people with impaired mobility (video 5/21):



Video #6 is about screen readers. This lesson is a quick primer on screen readers and how they tend to navigate and read content on a web page. They show a quick demo of a free and open source screen reader called NVDA (Windows only), and put emphasis on a very important point - screen readers read content based on markup, not visual presentation.

The rest of the videos show how to include accessibility features in forms, tables, dynamic elements, and graphs and charts.

Here are all the accessibility videos.

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