I'd like to increase the appeal of my app wit accessibility support for the blind and visually impaired. Are there any plans for that?
What do you have in mind Royce?
Two existing components should already help individuals develop an app helping develop something like this: TextToSpeech component to make your app speak and SpreechRecognizer, so the app can be controlled with vocal commands.
This is not a tutorial in helping the visually impaired but it could be adapted.: HOW TO: Program the native SpeechRecognizer for Continuous Dictation and to do things
Here are some resources to help you learn to use the AI2 tools. A very good way to learn App Inventor is to read the free Inventor's Manual here in the AI2 free online eBook http://www.appinventor.org/book2 ... the links are at the bottom of the Web page. The book 'teaches' users how to program with AI2 blocks.
There is a free programming course here http://www.appinventor.org/content/CourseInABox/Intro and the aia files for the projects in the book are here: http://www.appinventor.org/bookFiles
How to do a lot of basic things with App Inventor are described here: http://www.appinventor.org/content/howDoYou/eventHandling .
Also look here http://kio4.com/appinventor/index.htm and here http://www.imagnity.com/tutorial-index/ for more tutorials.
Learn about components http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/reference/components/
and visit the Library http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/library Help>Library on the MENU
Share your ideas.
This was posted on the Kodular community.
I think maybe this could become a GSOC project.
Like i said in the linked topic there was a proof of concept for the visually impaired presented during the blockly summit.
Interesting. This is similar to the App Inventor TAIL (TextualAppInventorLanguage); a Project that is languishing somewhere
A student at Wellesley College was once developing a scripting language for App Inventor 2 in about 2015 called TAIL( Textual App Inventor Language ) . It is probable the development of TAIL may have stopped. Perhaps @ewpatton knows whether anyone is still attempting that Project.
A scripting tool would be a huge enhancement, especially when working with the Math blocks and would have potential application for the visually impaired.
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To the poster's original point, there is this PR that was recently merged that is the culmination of an M.Eng. project:
That will be part of the next release. It includes the ability to programmatically enable high contrast and large font modes, and to provide accessible labels for images.
The posts that @Peter linked to are more focused on the usability of App Inventor (Kodular) itself as a platform for learning. That is still an open question as to how it is best approached. We've been following Stephanie Ludi's work, the work by the Bootstrap group, and Blockly's progress as well and have engaged with some researchers in the blind community to learn more about the biggest challenges.
This is correct. There is now a different language in the works called Venbrace that also provides a textual interface for App Inventor blocks. The challenge with all of these approaches though is that it only addresses the coding part, not the design and navigation of the UI. There are many aspects to this problem that need to be thought through and we're hoping to incorporate the things we are learning through our relationships with other groups as we engage in our UI refresh over the next two years.
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Perhaps a more physical approach? - plastic components & blocks, produced via 3d printing, distributed as STL files, with Braille moulded-in and QR or Bar Code identifiers (sticky labels). These could be dragged into place on a magnetic board and be scanned into App Inventor........
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