I got a reader question today from a hearing-impaired reader:

I have the iPhone 4S and would like to use the earphones with remote & mic but I wear in-the-ear hearing aids.

Does Apple have an alternate version for folks like me - that would go around the ear or a headset version?

Apple itself doesn't offer alternate versions, they only provide the white earbuds, but luckily plenty of other manufacturers have filled this important gap.

There are four types of solutions I can think of:

1. Buy an adapter which offers the inline controls and microphone and lets you plug in whatever headset you like.
2. Buy a pair of headphones or a headset which includes the inline remote in a single unit.
3. Use bluetooth headphones which have inbuilt controls.
4. Use a hearing-aid specific Bluetooth adapter, if your hearing aid supports this.

All these solutions have different plusses and minuses, unsurprisingly.

Buy an Inline Control Adapter

These are some examples of an adapter with the inline controls and microphone which plug into any regular pair of headphones:

• iLuv iEA15BLK Remote with 3rd-Party Headphone Adapter
• Belkin Headphone Adapter with Remote
• Griffin Technology Auxiliary Audio Cable with Inline Remote Control
• Scosche Control Adapter
• Headset Hands Free 3.5mm Adapter + Microphone
• Monster iSoniTalk Microphone Headphone Adapter - Microphone with Headphone Jack

In the past I have tried several of these type of "inline" adapters with my existing headphones, including the Belkin and Griffin remotes and several "no-name" brands. In general I found none of them lasted beyond about 6 months of daily use, which disappointed me. The amazon.com reviews seem to suggest that other customers have had a similar experience with the adapters not lasting a huge amount of time. On the other hand they are generally fairly cheap so buying a new one every six months or so isn't a huge hardship, it's just annoying.

The other issue I found is that different types add different amounts of length to your headphones - this can be annoying if your headphone cable is already longer than you want it to be, as long cords get tangled more easily.

If you are an iPhone user you will need to check that the device you purchase puts the microphone where you need. The Apple earbuds (and most others with inbuilt remotes) have the microphone section positioned so it will hang close to your mouth for easy and mostly-hands-free use - but if you purchase an inline remote you'll have to hold the microphone up near your mouth to use it.

Purchase Headphones With An Inbuilt Remote

These are some examples of around-the-ear headphones/headsets which have built in remote controls and microphones:

• iLuv iHP615 Mega Bass Pro Headphones with Remote
• NoiseHush NX26-11778 3.5mm Stereo Headphones with Neodymium Magnet Drivers Medium
• Sennheiser HD 218i Supra-Aural Headphones
• AirDrives INA099210 for iPhone (these have been recommended on the Inky Ed blog as their "Best Ever Headphones")
• Sennheiser PX 100-II i Light Weight Supra-Aural Headset

These headsets have built in controls for iPod and iPhone, which tends to leave the microphone in a more convenient place and saves you from over-long cords.

Since most iPod/iPhone users apparently prefer in-ear headsets, it can be annoyingly tricky to find these over-the-ear type by searching online. I found these by searching on amazon.com for variations on the phrase "wired stereo headphones" and then scrolling through many pages of results to find the ones that weren't in-ear types and did have remotes - a fairly slow process. Another method is to find a dedicated headphone site and search for headphones with apple controls.

Use Bluetooth Headphones

Bluetooth headphones are wireless headphones which are (generally) compatible with the iPhone and iPod's wireless controls. There are tons of them available, just a few include:

• Kinivo BTH220 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones
• ARCTIC Sound ORACO-ERM28-GBA01 Headphones P311
• Motorola Black MOTOROKR S305 Wireless Stereo Headphones
• GOgroove AirBand Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Headset with Microphone (I have no idea how well they work but these look really cool!)
• GOgroove SolaceAIR Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Headset w/ Microphone + Extended 15 hr Battery

Again, I have no specific experience with the headphones in this list - I found them by searching for "Bluetooth stereo headsets" on Amazon and slowly grovelling through the results to find ones that weren't in-ear models.

I've used over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones with my iPhone and I really adored them for listening to music! Not having to worry about a cord is very freeing, but these tend to position the microphone a fair way from your mouth so they're a lot less useful for making phone calls. I found that with the cheap "no name" bluetooth headphones I purchased that people had trouble hearing my voice because the microphone was on the edge of the headphone and consequently a long distance from my mouth. It's something worth checking out if you want to make phone calls with them. For listening to music though, this is definitely my top choice.

Hearing-aid Specific Bluetooth Adapter

While researching for this article I discovered that some hearing aids have specific adapters which make them bluetooth-compatible. This seems to mostly apply to more modern and "up-market" hearing aids, and each type is specific to the hearing-aid manufacturer.

The devices are generally small pendant-type things worn around the neck which connect wirelessly to your existing hearing aids and pipe the sound directly into the aids. For those with compatible hearing aids this is definitely the solution which will give you the clearest sound quality!

One device mentioned to me specifically by a happy user was the Phonak iCom, for those with Phonak hearing aids. Oticon offers the Oticon ConnectLine Mobile. There are even Bluetooth options for Cochlear Implant users. I'm sure that most other hearing aid manufacturers have their own bluetooth adapters too - check the website for your hearing aid manufacturer, and have a chat to your audiologist if you aren't sure.

Caveats 'n Other Things

Some of these remote controls offer one button control only, which lets you play/pause audio but doesn't let you change the volume, others have the full 3-button controls which lets you change the volume. Also, different controls will have buttons of different sizes and shapes and sensitivities, and placed in different places, so make sure the buttons are usable to you before you purchase them.

When you are buying anything, most importantly make sure to check that they are compatible with the device that you want to use them with - not all of the controls work with all Apple devices! The description for each item should clearly state which device they work with. I suggest also reading reviews for each device on Amazon.com or similar, as there is a lot of really useful user feedback there which can help you choose the best device for your needs.

My current earphones of choice are an in-ear model, the Etymotic Research MC3 noise-cancelling earbuds which have in-line iPhone controls and a microphone. The regular Apple earbuds don't fit in my tiny ears but these ones fit just right and I'm really happy with them.

Which headphones, earphones, or audio adapter do you use and does it meet your needs well? Leave a comment below!

- Ricky Buchanan

[disclaim]

MovieCaptioner keeps repeating a segment of the movie until you are done typing what you hear. Just hit the Return key and it will save your caption and automatically advance to the next few seconds of the movie, allowing you to zip through your captioning tasks in no time flat.

You don't need to be a QuickTime guru, either. The caption track is added automatically with the click of a button. And exporting Transcripts compiles all the captions into one concise text file, with or without timecode.

I've written about MovieCaptioner before - it used to be called MovCaptioner - but there have been significant improvements in both the interface and in the type of captions MovieCaptioner can read and create. The website now lists all these types of imports and exports:

• QT Text
• QT Unicode (export only)
• QT SMIL (export only)
• Flash DFXP
• JW Player
• CLF Player (Canada)
• Adobe Encore
• Sonic Scenarist SCC (for Final Cut Pro, line 21 close captions and iPod/iPad captions)
• Spruce (STL)
• SubRip (SRT)
• SubViewer (SUB)
• Windows Media (SAMI, export only)
• Text Transcripts
• HTML Transcripts (export only)
• YouTube SBV (import only)

I think the creation of Flash captions is especially exciting, given the number of uncaptioned Flash movies out there on the internet. Now that Flash supports simple captioning, and programs like MovieCaptioner let captioning be done for such a low price, there's absolutely no reason not to caption Flash movies and tutorials you make for your website.

MovieCaptioner will also import YouTube's auto-caption files so you can correct them and then re-upload them to YouTube for efficient and accurate YouTube captioning.

SynchriMedia offer several video tutorials for MovieCaptioner including a nifty one for how to use MovieCaptioner and [msd] together so you can caption your film quickly without even needing to type!

- Ricky Buchanan

There was a special Apple event in Cupertino on the 20th of October entitled "Back To The Mac". We were treated to a plethora of Mac-related announcements which have plenty of fantastic accessibility implications. I'm going to briefly run down what each announcement was, and why it matters for Mac accessibility.

State Of The Mac

Firstly Apple's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Tim Cook told us how the Mac was faring as a platform and the news is very good. There are more Mac users and Mac developers than ever before, and Apple is making plenty of money off all of us. The full information is available in MacLife's article: State of the Mac: "The Momentum Has Never Been More".

Why does this matter for accessibility: Firstly, there's no danger that Macs and OS X will be going away which is of course good! The iDevices and iOS are great but they don't do everything that everybody needs and it wouldn't be good if OS X disappeared at this point.

The fact that Apple as a company is making plenty of profit, despite the world economy, is good news for accessibility because unfortunately accessibility progress is often one of those not-very-visible things which tends to be cut back if a company hurting. This is obviously not something that Apple users need to be worrying about just now!

iLife '11

The newest edition of the iLife suite (including iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand) will be iLife '11, and is available immediately. Improvements to the iLife suite include full screen modes for iPhoto, more ways to create iPhoto slideshows, audio filters and a 'movie trailer' mode for iMovie. GarageBand will sport some timing "fixer" technology knows as GrooveMatching and Flex Time, as well as new amplifiers and instrument lessons for aspiring piano and guitar players.

It wasn't announced on the day of the event, but Maccessibility reports that iLife '11 also sports significant accessibility improvements, especially accessibility improvements in GarageBand. They don't cite their sources but Maccessibility are known for generally being accurate.

iLife '11 requires that you use the Snow Leopard operating system, and is available now for US$49 for an individual installation and US$79 for a family pack.

FaceTime Now Available For Mac

FaceTime, the video phoning application available on the iPhone 4 and newest iPod Touch, is now available for the Mac computer also. The downloadable version is still in beta so it may have a few problems, but it has been reported by members of the MacVoiceover list to be fully accessible to VoiceOver users.

Because FaceTime can be used to call people via a regular mobile phone number as well as via an email address, and is available on the very portable iPhone 4, it has been eagerly used by the Deaf community for video phoning. Having the service available on the Mac will be a huge bonus to Deaf users who don't have access to an iPhone 4 but know people who do, as well as to others who have family and friends with iPhone 4 or the new iPod Touch which also uses FaceTime.

FaceTime is free for Mac users and you can download it right now!

OS X 10.7 Lion Preview

After OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will be OS X 10.7 Lion, expected to be available in mid 2011.

Lion will import some of iOS's good features back into OS X, including more multitouch gestures, a new Mac App Store, app home screens, full-screen apps with no menu bar at the top, auto save and apps that resume where they left off when relaunched.

Some of these things have accessibility potential for those with neurological impairment: things like auto-save and resuming where you left off when you launch an app make memory problems less of a problem. The simplicity of getting apps via a Mac App Store which takes care of downloading and installing for you means there's one less infrequently-done task to learn and remember, a bonus for those new to the Mac as well as an accessibility boon.

Multi-touch gestures that match those used on the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone will be great for some users - I use the mouse extensively myself and find gestures are fantastic. Unfortunately these require a high level of fine motor control in multiple fingers, so multi-touch is generally not very accessible to several groups including those who must use a stylus or a mouth stick, and are completely out for those who can't use a trackpad but need an alternative pointing device such as a joystick or trackball. Hopefully all multi-touch gestures will be implemented with keyboard equivalents so that users aren't left out in the cold.

The Mac App Store could also make it easier to spread the news about accessible apps and apps to aid accessibility, as has happened with the existing App Store. This would undoubtedly be a good thing, but I am concerned that app developers may be the losers in this new scenario - several things about the iOS App Store are very difficult for developers to manage and I wouldn't like to see developers give up on their accessibility apps for the OS X platform because of App Store issues. Hopefully this will not be an issue, but it does concern me. We won't have to wait long to find out: The Mac App Store will be launching for Snow Leopard within 90 days!

Also new to OS X Lion will be Launch Pad: a new way to launch apps from your desktop, similar to how it's already done on the iPad. This means that users can keep commonly used apps right in front of them without cluttering up the dock - another win for easy usability which also helps those with neurological issues.

A final new feature called Mission Control was also described but I can't tell you how easy it is to use because I didn't understand it! It has elements of Spaces, Expos and the Dashboard all mixed together, and I hope it's useful.

New MacBook Air Models

Two new Macbook Air laptops were announced, one 13.3 inch model and one 11.6 inch model. These don't have touch screens but were described by Steve Jobs as what happens when "an iPod hooks up with a MacBook"!

The 13 inch model is a tiny 2.9 pounds, and it shares many great features with the iPad: the ability to instantly start up, offering great battery life (7 hours of use has been quoted), amazing standby time, solid state storage with no optical or hard drives, and it's thinner and lighter than ever. The 11.6 inch model is pretty much the same, but with more of the "smaller and lighter" at only 2.5 pounds, and with a bit less battery life because there's less battery fitting in there.

For those who find the iPad is not accessible due to their disabilities, or those who just don't like typing on an iPad, these new laptops look to be a fantastic option. With instant start-up they will be great for taking notes in class, for use as communication devices, and other situations where waiting a few minutes for your laptop to boot just isn't sensible.

Having only solid state storage ("flash memory" like your iPhone, iPad, or camera has) and no hard drive or CD/DVD drive means the laptops are small and light but also that they have very few moving parts except the keyboard itself - Apple hasn't said so but I strongly suspect they will be more robust because of this. We've seen how much an iPod Touch or iPad can survive being dropped or otherwise battered around in daily use - imagine a laptop that would probably be OK if knocked off a desk or wheelchair tray! And of course smaller and lighter laptops mean less mounting equipment is needed for those with special positioning requirements.

I think that these new laptops will be "the iPad for switch users", and others who need non-standard input devices that the iPads don't cope with yet. I still hope, of course, that the iPad will grow into coping with a wider variety of input devices but these new MacBook Air devices are a "mid point" between the regular MacBooks and the iPads in terms of size and weight. You can get a glimpse of it in MacLife's First Look at the 11.6" MacBook Air article.

The 11.6-inch MacBook Air starts at US$999 with 64GB (US$1199 for 128GB) while the 13.3-inch model starts at US$1299 with 128GB and is also available with 256GB for US$1599. Both models are shipping now.

And so...

All in all, these announcements are a huge win for accessibility for Macs and Mac users in multiple ways. I am thrilled to see that Apple's commitment to accessibility continues unabated, and that their passion for Universal Design rubs off in the direction of accessibility so very often.

Which announcement are you most excited about? I really really wish I could get myself one of those teeny tiny laptops, but in the absence of a spare thousand dollars I'm most excited about OS X 10.7 Lion and the new iLife '11. Those are things I can actually use, and use soon.

Here's to the future!

- Ricky Buchanan

For our USA readers: This video describes how to set up your iPhone 4 or iPod Touch with the ZVRS app and use it to call the ZVRS ASL (American Sign Language) video relay service.

Video is in ASL with closed captions and transcript available.

[embed width="640" height="385]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2e8NojHjT4[/embed]

- Ricky Buchanan

There have been a lot of articles on a lot of websites about accessibility and the iPad since the specifications were first released. Now that our USA readers and bloggers have begun to get their hands on the devices there are even more articles being written, and I'm sure more will follow as the 3G enabled devices are released in the USA and both models become available in other countries starting on May 28th. As an assistive technology enthusiast and disabled blogger, it's fantastic to see so much interest in the non-mainstream uses of these devices!

The iPad And Vision Impaired Users

The "Booked" blog from mainstream Forbes.com has written Apple's iPad Brings Easy Reading to the Blind which may help explain to able-bodied people who so many blind users are excited about the iPad.

Mac-cessibility has written about the iPad's use for those who will use its VoiceOver screen reader in a series of articles entitled "A First Look At The iPad":

• A First Look At The iPad: Overview
• A First Look At The iPad: Mail
• A First Look At The iPad: Safari
• A First Look At The iPad: iBooks

AccessWorld, a publication of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), has published a great article by Bradley Hodges about his first 24 Hours with the iPad.

The Mac-cessibility round table podcast special episode #5 discusses the iPad.

UNC's Brian Payst, in the Stuff blog has written about the iPad for blind users, particularly thinking of students, in The iPad And Accessibility and The iPad And Accessibility, Round 2.

The RNIB in the UK published first impressions of the iPad's accessibility (curiously, only available as a Word document) by a partially sighted user and a blind user.

The iPad and Deaf Users

The deafmac.org blog (which, by the way, has a new layout and a new editor) has published several posts about the iPad too:

• Thoughts on the iPad announcement, about why the iPad is both mind-blowing and disappointing for Deaf users.
• The iPad, Reviewed, by new editor Ryan Layton

The iPad And Mobility Impaired Users

Jane Vincent from Access On Main St (I think this is a cool blog name!) has written about the iPad as environmental control unit, and about possible problems with multi-fingure or multi-hand gestures in iPad Gives Users More Than One Finger.

The iPad And Communication Impaired Users

Kati, a frequent commenter here, has just pre-ordered her iPad. She plans to use The iPad As An Affordable AAC Solution for herself, as an adult with Ataxia.

Glenda from Do It Myself Blog has just bought herself an iPad while on a trip to America for a blogging conference. She reported:

My friend Hope was having trouble figuring out what I was saying and she asked, "Where's your iPad?" In that moment, I felt a sense of normalcy and acceptance. Using an iPad, which could become as commonplace as the Blackberry and iPhone, is not yet another thing that makes me different. I wasn't using a strange, unfamiliar device to communicate with this group. People were drawn to it because it was a 'recognized' or 'known' piece of technology rather than being standoff-ish with an unknown communication device.

How fantastic! You can read her excellent review here: The iPad as an Affordable Communicator: Initial Review.

Other iPad Information

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox released their First Findings From iPad Usability User Testing. Their findings are preliminary but disappointing:

iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.

Hopefully iPad app developers will take these findings into account when developing future apps.

Glenn Fleischman at TIDBits reported that the iPad Camera Connection Kit's USB adapter works with USB headphones and headsets. At almost the same time, TUAW noted that at least some USB keyboards work on the iPad via the USB adapter too, although keyboards only work after displaying an error message. Since neither of these functions are officially supported by Apple they may stop working with any iPad upgrade, but for the moment they seem to be fine.

If you're willing to jailbreak your iPad (and thus void your warranty), you can also enable iPad voice commands and use a Magic Mouse with your iPad which have major accessibility implications. Unfortunately, Jailbreaking has been known to break devices in un-fixable ways though, so any of these things are definitely "at your own risk".

iPad Assistive Technology Accessories

It's also worth noting that as well as the huge range of general-audience cases, speakers, mounts, and stands for the iPad there are some specifically chosen for their accessibility potential. RJ Cooper has made available a great set of accessibility-friendly accessibilities for iPad users:

• iPad Stand suitable for desks, wheelchair trays, etc.
• Several iPad Wheelchair Mounting Solutions
• Super protective iPad Bumper Case
• Wireless iPad Speaker suitable for AAC users

Apple themselves have a keyboard dock available for the iPad and its keyboard has some keys that interact with the iPad specifically, as described in iLounge's iPad Keyboard Dock Review, but there is no full keyboard control or anything near it but The Apple Blog has a complete list of known iPad hardware keyboard commands which work with the bluetooth keyboard and are better than nothing.

Other Commentary

Suzanne from Abled Body pointed out the lack of accessibility about the iPad's keynote announcement and other accessibility deficiencies about the launch which really are inexcusable. If Apple's going to be promoting accessibility of its devices then accessibility of its web pages really is important too.

Have you read, or written, other articles about the iPad and how it could be used for a person with a disability? Contact me or leave a comment and I'll add your article to the list!

- Ricky Buchanan