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Fleksyy has had a number of changes since it's release. Some of these changes have been positive, and for some of us, the changes have been confusing. Now that Fleksy has opened it's SDK to other app developers, they want to make sure that the app is consistent and easy to use for it's users. For this reason, they've just released a new version of the app called Fleksy VO. According to the Fleksy blog: here are some of the changes that you'll notice in Fleksy VO. You can now tap and hold the top of the screen to bring back the menu, manual typing has been fixed, and you can use long presses for punctuation. In addition, your dictionary from other versions of Fleksy will be ported over, and it will always be free.

Google is expanding it's horizons once again. They've just announced that they plan to design a contact lens that will measure a person's glucose level using their tears. This is an important issue to our community since Diabetic Retinopathy is one of the leading causes of blindness in the US today. As it stands right now, people have to check their blood throughout the day using needles and glucose monitors. This process can be quite challenging when you can not see. Also, using a contact lens instead of a needle would remove the painful aspect of the process. Finally, since the plan is for readings to be taken every second, diabetics would likely know sooner that their blood sugar is dropping, hopefully preventing blood sugar crashes that can lead to serious medical consequences.

The Matilda Ziegler publishing company was founded in 1907 to provide a monthly magazine in braille to the blind. Over the past 107 years, the magazine has been distributed to thousands of people around the world. In 2009, the board of directors decided to change the magazine to a weekly publication. They also stopped production of the magazine in braille and audio, and decided to offer the articles exclusively online. After 4 years of running the magazine exclusively online, the board of directors is now stopped production of the magazine all together while they decide what they want the future of the magazine to be.

I was brought onto the writing team of the magazine in June of 2010. Over the past three and a half years, it has been my privilege to write for the magazine and to share it with people who don't know about it. I think that our team of writers is passionate and knowledgeable, and that the content that we provide is a valuable resource for our community.

If you are a fan of the Matilda Ziegler magazine and you feel like the board of directors would be making a mistake if they shut the magazine down, please send them your feedback. You can write to them at editor@matildaziegler.com or you can submit comments by visiting the contact section of the Matilda Ziegler website.

Last year's announcement from AOL that WinAmp was going away was unwelcome news from users who really like the software. For the blind community, WinAmp was a favorite app to use while hosting online radio programs or as an accessible alternative to iTunes or Windows Media Player. These users may be in luck though. WinAmp has just been acquired by a company in Belgium called Radionomy . According to the press release, Radionomy plans to bring Winamp back and to offer it on more platforms including mobile.

For those who are not familiar with Radionomy, it's a place where people can design their own radio stations and share them world wide. Since they offer a mobile app, I decided to check out the iOS version. I'm happy to report that the app is very VoiceOver friendly, and it is my hope that their radio station design tools will be just as friendly.

the team at Serotek wants to reward it's customers just for buying their products. Today they announced that people who have a SamNet subscription or one of the Accessibility Anywhere packages will be entered to win prizes each month. This month, they're giving away copies of the book "Out of the Whirlpool" by Sue Martin. Visit the <a href="http://www.serotek.com" Serotek website to learn more.

Access to transportation is a critical issue for the blind and visually impaired. When we don't have access to efficient transportation, our independence can be severely impacted. Researchers at Mississippi State University are studying the transportation issues that the blind and visually impaired face in their daily lives. According to the survey website, the information gained from the survey will be used to help policy makers and other groups that serve our community better serve our transportation needs. Those who complete the survey will have the option to be entered to win 1 of 4 $100 gift certificates.

The University of Nevada Reno is conducting a survey on the challenges that the blind face when dealing with social interactions. A team of researchers is currently developing a device that will recognize faces and give the user information about the faces. They hope that the results from the survey will help them determine what information the device should give to the user. The survey is 12 questions long and should take between 10 and 25 minutes to complete.

For a number of years, WebAiM has collected data on the types of screen readers that people are using. This information is very helpful for website developers. The survey will be open until Jan. 15, 2014.

BrailleNote and VoiceNote users now have a new version of KeySoft. The main highlight of this upgrade is that users can write in Nemeth code and have it translated into print. This will make doing math much easier for users of these products. Students can write out their math using the Nemeth code and than provide it to their teachers in a printed format. The upgrade also comes with a tutorial for the Nemeth code for those who need a refresher or for those that are just learning it. The other major improvement in this upgrade is the ability to open and read Power Point 2007 or 2010 files. The upgrade is free and available now for download.

Sendero continues to make changes to their Seeing Eye GPS app, and the third update should be coming out soon. This update comes with many features that users have been asking for since it's release. Some of the highlights include the ability to run the app in the background or with the screen locked, the ability to play music and still get turn by turn updates, getting warmer routes no longer requiring a cell connection, and reduced calls to the server which uses less data and should improve battery life. The app will now also have a $9.95 monthly subscription option for those who want to test out the app, or for those who are unable to pay the larger up front cost of the yearly subscription.

A team in Italy hopes to make accessing email on the web a much better experience for the visually impaired. As it stands now, many email providers do not offer a quality experience for screen reader users when accessing their mail on the web. Some providers offer simplified options like basic html, but this strips out some if not many of the features that are available to sighted users. To solve this issue, the team has created "Voice My Mail", a web ad on that gives blind users a more feature rich experience when accessing email on the web. Since it's not a stand alone program, the idea is for it to work with any email provider website.

The team has created a working demo for people to try out, but according to the Indiegogo page, they won't be able to make the project global without extra funding. Users of JAWS and NVDA can test out the demo in the Firefox browser. Let us know in the comments what the experience is like and if you would use the app if it was available.

I am always on the look out for finding more ways to get access to books, in fact, I think I have more book apps on my iPhone than is really necessary. Well now I've added one more. Audio Books HQ is an app that provides access to almost 8000 free audio books. This app was previously not usable to Voiceover users, but now I can say with pleasure that the app is easy to use.

The app currently has access to books from LibriVox, PodioBooks, and the Globe Radio Repertory. Each of these three catalogs is easy to search through. Finding books can be done in a number of ways including: looking by genre, title, author, most downloaded, or in order of when books were posted. There is also an option to preview the book before choosing to download it. For me, I really appreciate this feature because it means I get to hear the narrator and decide if I like their voice before I download the book.

There are a number of features when playing books that you've downloaded. You can adjust the playback speed to be slow or very fast, add a bookmark, skip forward and backward by time or by chapter, and even start a sleep timer.

Just as a final note, the app itself is $1.99 but all of the books available in the app are free.

In November of last year, the Braille Authority of North America (BANA), decided to adopt the Unified English Braille code (UEB). After a year of discussions which included a forum in October of this year, BANA voted at their annual meeting to make January 4, 2016 the date that UEB will be fully implemented in the U.S. What this means for braille readers in the U.S. is that our braille code is going to change. Some of the changes are minor, and some will
feel very strange to those of us who have been reading braille for years. BANA has put together a list of many of the changes to the literary code. The most significant of these changes is the removal of nine contractions and no longer joining and, for, of, the, and with.

There are likely those who are still wondering why BANA made this decision since it's going to be disruptive for braille readers and transcribers. In effect, children who are learning braille now will have to know both the literary braille code and the UEB code because they are likely to encounter both. According to BANA's website, there are a number of reasons why they decided to make this change. The primary reason was to allow for more braille books to be sent across borders. The U.S. was the only English speaking country that still was not using UEB which made it challenging to provide braille materials to other English speaking countries. It will also mean that braille readers who go to other countries will not have any problem reading braille produced in those nations.

Odin Mobile is a new carrier that is only selling phones that would be accessible to people with vision impairments. The first three phones that Odin offered were either very simple, or modified Android phones. They are now offering a mainstream option with the Nexus 4. The phone costs $299, and comes with no contract. According to the Odin Mobile website, when you purchase a Nexus 4, the phone will come with Android 4.4 KitKat preinstalled, and a custom desktop with apps that will help visually impaired users access the features of the phone. Purchasing the Nexus 4 also comes with an instructional package which includes one on one training with a blind Android user and access to a help line for the first month.

It is encouraging to see that Odin Mobile is choosing to sell more feature rich phones and that they're hiring blind Android users to teach new customers how to use their new devices.

One of the reasons people often choose not to try new assistive technology is cost. The team at Serotek wants the blind community to have a chance to try out all of their products for free. So, from now until December 11, feel free to download and use any of their products for no cost.

Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do if they want the visually impaired community to start using their smart phones. Nokia is hoping that their Nokia Create contest will encourage developers to make more apps for the Windows Phone platform. There are eight categories for apps, and one of them is to make apps that are accessible to the visually impaired. According to the Microsoft Accessibility blog, developers can submit apps that are as basic as adding vibration to the compass, or as complex as using the built in camera for image recognition. There are ten categories of apps that Nokia is looking for. These include "Image and Photo, Near Field Communication, Maps and Places, Music, Cross-8,
Fun and Games, Work Life,Freestyle, Nokia Lumia Devices, and Remote Device Access." Developers have until December 15 to submit their apps.

It will be interesting to see how effective the contest is at adding to the accessible app options. Having choice is the best way to encourage innovation. It is my hope that at some point, Microsoft can add their name to the list of smart phones that the visually impaired community will want to use because it meets their needs and improves independence.

If you're a premium subscriber to Spotify and have trouble accessing Spotify content on your PC, you now have a solution. A new app called Blindspot has been released. The app gives screen reader users access to their Spotify account and more. The app can be used in five languages including English, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish. The app uses a set of hot keys for navigation which users can learn about by visiting the documentation section of the website. At this time, the app only works with premium accounts, but the developer hopes that at some point, people who only want to use the free features in Spotify will be able to use Blindspot. Spotify currently only allows the use of their API for premium accounts, thus the limitation. Spotify Premium costs $9.95 a month and also gives you offline playlists and full access to their mobile apps.

Back in my PC days, Winamp was definitely my favorite music player. It was simple to use, and worked well with screen readers. I know there are still people who do internet radio shows using Winamp playlists. Sadly though, the times have changed, and the developers of Winamp have decided to bring this chapter to a close. There will be no new updates for the software, and you will only have until December 20 to download the application because after that day, it won't be available anymore. Tell us about your experience with Winamp in the comments. Will you find a new media player or just hold on forever?

I personally am a big fan of descriptive audio. Every time I watch a film that has a descriptive audio track, I get more out of the experience and I don't feel like I'm missing out on important parts of the film. It's great to see that many film studios are including descriptive audio, but you can only access the track if you watch the film on DVD or in the theater. Verizon has just announced that they will be the first streaming video provider to offer described films on their On Demand Service. According to the Verizon website, these are the first films that Verizon Fios users can access that have the descriptive audio track, "Wreck It Ralph, The Hangover III, Gangster Squad, The Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3 and Monsters University." Hopefully, more films will be added to the service, and maybe other service providers like Netflix and Hulu will follow their lead.

. As a huge fan of twitter and the connections that it's brought me over the years, I feel like more of the blind community need to be informed about how easy twitter is to use, and how it can connect you to those who can answer questions, provide you information, and make you feel like you're part of a community. When I joined twitter I knew almost no one in the blind community, but by reaching out and searching for people who had my same interests I've been able to get employment thanks to my social media skills and even be asked to cohost a podcast.

If you are someone who has been holding off on joining twitter because either you don't know how it works or you don't know how accessible it is, then the new book from Jonathan Mosen called Tweeting Blind may be for you. The book can bee purchased in many different formats including braille and BRF from the National Braille Press, or you can get the book in PDF or RTF from the Jonathan Mosen Consulting website for $19.95.

According to the NBP website, the book is quite comprehensive. Readers will learn what twitter is, how to sign up for a twitter account, how to follow, mention, direct message, and block users, and how to access twitter on multiple platforms including windows, mac, iOS, and Android.