OS X Mavericks Includes Switch Control Similar To iOS 7

Apple's new and free Mac operating system called OS X Mavericks includes a new accessibility feature called Switch Control. Switch Control allows switch users to navigate and use their Macs. Switch Control allows switch users to interact and control their Macs. Switch users are users who are only able to activate a few large buttons and who don’t have the ability to interact with the complexities of a keyboard or mouse. For example, a quadriplegic may be able to activate switches mounted on their wheelchair with their head. Switches come in all different sizes and configurations but they give users who are unable to interact with the keyboard or mouse the ability to control their computers. It is exciting to see Apple continuing to improve OS X accessibility as well as iOS accessibility. Switch Control on the Mac is similar to other switch interfaces and very similar to Switch Control on iOS 7. Click here to read about Switch Control for iOS 7.

Watch the above video to learn more about Switch Control on OS X Mavericks. Click here to download OS X Mavericks.

NaviDys Browser for iPad Makes Reading the Web Easier

NaviDys is a web browser for the iPad. The app allows full customization of a website's font, line spacing, letter spacing, and text size. Currently it is only available on the iPad not the iPhone or iPod Touch. While it feels very much like the built in Safari browser that comes with the iPad, NaviDys has features that make it easier to read the web. For people with low vision the ability to enlarge fonts and increase spacing is beneficial. Also, for dyslexics NaviDys includes the Dyslexie font. But using a third party browser does not come without trade offs. You cannot open links from other apps directly into NaviDys. Unlike Safari NaviDys does not include a reader mode to remove distractions from web pages. NaviDys costs $2.99 from the App Store.

Click read more below to view screenshots of NaviDys.

New iTunes U App: Perfect for Students and Educators

Today, Apple announce a new iTunes U App for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. To download the free app click here. The app allows students view classes, slide shows, documents and more from their classes. iTunes U also allows teachers to post assignments, video or audio of classes, slide shows, documents and more for uses by their students. iTunes U allows users to participate in classes from top university and organizations regardless of if the users attends the school. iTunes U can now be used by K-12 schools as well as universities. All classes are free to the public on iTunes U. iTunes U allows students to view and check off assignments, take notes and review missed classes. Apple describes the app as,

"Whether you’re taking a European history course in your spare time, learning Spanish in high school, or majoring in molecular biology at a university, you now have a powerful tool to help you get the most out of your classes. The new iTunes U app expands the classroom experience by putting all the materials for a course — audio and video, new iBooks Textbooks for iPad and other books, a syllabus and class assignments, posts from the instructor, PDFs, presentations, and more — just a tap away on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch."

Apple also says how iTunes you keeps you current, 

"When you take an iTunes U course, you’ll always have the most current information at your fingertips. With a tap, you can listen again to the most recent lecture or review the latest presentation to make sure you got all the details. Stay on top of your assignments and check them off as you complete them. And when an instructor sends a message or creates a new assignment, you’ll receive a push notification with the new information."

Click read more below to view additional pictures of the new iTunes U app.

 

Apple to Hold Education Focused Media Event Next Week in New York

Today, Apple sent out invitations to the media for an education focused media event to be held on Thursday, January 19 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The invitation reads, "Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple." Rumors have suggested that the announcement will focus on iBooks, iTunes U and digital textbooks. We will find out for sure next week. Check back here as the event approaches to find out what Apple has in store for education and what it means for assistive technology.

Prizmo: Fast, Accurate, Full Featured OCR App for iPhone Review

Prizmo is the best optical character recognition (OCR) app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that I have used. Because of  iPhone's superior camera you will have the best results while using Prizmo on the iPhone. Prizmo allows you to take a picture of text, business cards and more and then process them into useful electronic documents. When taking a picture of a business card, Prizmo makes a contact that you can quickly add to your contact list. Prizmo really shines when recognizing text. Simply take a picture then crop it to only include the text that you want to have read and then click "next" to begin the OCR. Prizmo has a very nice feature that allows you to say "take picture" to snap a picture of the document to eliminate shaking as you go to press the shutter button. Prizmo will quickly recognize the text and put it into a text document. Then you can edit any mistakes that Prizmo may have made. One of the only down sides of Prizmo is that it does not allow you to OCR multiple pages into the same text document.

After the text has been recognized you can read the text with a built in reader, VoiceOver or Speak Selection. You can also translate, email or save it to a number of cloud services including Dropbox and Evernote. In order to use the built in reader you must buy a text-to-speech voice for an additional $2.99. The reader allows you to control play back speed, but does not highlight the words as they are being read allowed. It does place a white dot next to the line that is currently being read. Prizmo is great for saving documents in an electronic format or for people who struggle to read and are helped by having text read aloud. Prizmo works faster and more accurately than ZoomReader, TextGrabber and SayText. Prizmo is $9.99 in the iTunes app store. Click here to download or view Prizmo in the App Store. Click read more below to see screen shots and more videos of Prizmo.

Picture of Newspaper Article taken with iPhone 4S

Text Extracted From Image 

Economic Slide Took A Detour at Capitol Hill From Page A1 group.

congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.

But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent.

The wealth gap may go largely unnoticed in good times. "But with the American public feeling all this economic pain, people just resent it more," said Alan J. Ziobrowski, a professor at Georgia State who studied lawmakers' stock investments.

There is broad debate about just why the wealth gap appears to be growing. For starters, the prohibitive costs of political campaigning may discourage the less affluent from even considering a candidacy. Beyond that, loose ethics controls, shrewd stock picks, profitable land deals, favorable tax laws, inheritances and even marriages to wealthy spouses are all cited as possible explanations for the rising fortunes on Capitol Hill.

What is clear is that members of Congress are getting richer compared not only with the average American worker, but also with other very rich Americans.

While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent from 2004 to 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody's Analytics.

Going back further, the median wealth of House members grew some two and a half times between 1984 and 2009 in inflation.

adjusted dollars, while the wealth of the average American family has actually declined slightly ha that same time period, according Emmar/e Huetteman and Derek Willis t'ontrihutPd rvrmrtino to data cited by The Washington Post in an article published Monday on its Web site.

With millionaire status now the norm, the rarefied air in the Capitol these days is $100 million.

That lofty level appears to have been surpassed by at least 10 members, led by Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and former auto alarm magnate who is worth somewhere between $195 million and $700 million. (Because federal law requires lawmakers to disclose their assets only in broad dollar nranges, more precise estimates are impossible.)

Their wealth has created occasional political problems for Congress's richest.

Mr. Issa, for instance, has faced outside scrutiny because of the overlap of his Congressional work and outside interests, including extensive investments with Wall Street firms like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, as well as land holdings in his San Diego district. In one case, he obtained some $800,000 in federal earmarks for a road-widening project running along his commercial property.

Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is married to Teresa Heinz Kerry, set off an uproar last year when it was disclosed that he had docked his $7 million, 76-foot yacht not in his home state but in neighboring Rhode Island, which has no sales or use tax on pleasure boats. (Mr.

Kerry, worth at least $181 million, voluntarily paid $400,000 in Massachusetts taxes after criticism.) Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, was challenged about her wealth, as much as $196 million, by a member of her own party a few weeks ago. Representative Laura Richardson, a California Democrat who is among the poorest members of Congress with as much as $464,000 in debt, attacked Ms. Pelosi at a closeddoor Democratic caucus meeting for endorsing a Congressional pay freeze, according to a report in Politico that was confirmed by other members.

Ms. Richardson angrily told 'lkd[o If'~^l^~: .L _~

Article from New York Times for demonstration purposes

Prizmo was provided complimentary to the reviewer.