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Old 03-14-2009, 08:15 PM   #13
JeffAlan66
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My only hope is that the makers of the Blackberry take something like this determine in future models how to take the development the rest of the way on their own toward true Accessibility. I happen to know they are working behind the scenes to improve their R&D in this area. Accessibility can be complicated, as there are so many different combinations of disabilities. What I did here though is not unlike the mainstream accessibility features you will find in Microsoft Windows, under Accessibility Wizard where you can set black/yellow | black/white contrast with custom font sizes. The Bold almost goes there, but features do not apply to all areas of the phone natively. It's like they had the idea and started down that path, but they probably came upon a release date and decided to not finish it. This theme takes it further, but then there are still issues as a result of the product not being built from the ground up for accessibility. At least this is my perception, since for example you can ask for a larger font but then not find it enlarged on the dial-connect screen. Or, you pick reverse contrast to make things white on black, but then so many screens that are natively black are then blaring at you in white when RC is turned on. Not good for those of us with photo phobia.

Thanks for the encouragement. I hope that RIM finds value in this exercise for future releases. Actaully, I should direct some of that toward AT&T, since it is the carrier that determines what themes are distributed.

Both AT&T / RIM do have this now in case anyone else asks for it, as I found prior to this that they had no solution to our problem. gscroll posted this origianlly in January and received no response. Unfortunately, low vision is often a low priority in various markets, at least in what you experience in the foreground. It's better than it used to be, but they've got a long way to go.

Not to ramble on here, but pardon my soap box for one more thought here. Continuing to develop and release technologies inaccessible WHILE hardware / software is perfectly capable of handling the task, requiring customers such as I and gscroll to hunt down or develop custom solutions, is sort of like asking someone in a wheel chair to drag around his/her own bricks & boards in the event that a public building lacks a ramp at the entrance. ... or maybe I'm just a bit idealistic.

Ok, I'm off the soap box now.

Jeff
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