EnjoyTech

  Apple's newly released mobile operating system includes a new accessibility feature called Magnifier. The feature uses the device's built-in camera to enlarge objects placed in front of the camera.  This can be helpful for people with visual disabilities who need to read small print. The feature can be enabled by navigating to Settings > General > Accessibility > Magnifier. Once enabled, Magnifier can be accessed by triple clicking the home button. Magnifier's interface looks very similar to the camera apps interface with a few notable changes. One change is that Magnifier has a freeze frame button rather than a shutter button. Pressing this button freezes the image instead of taking a picture.  Magnifier also has a zoom slider that is large and always visible on screen. The zoom slider allows users to zoom in further than is possible with the camera app.  Magnifier allows users to zoom in up to 15x compared to 5x with the camera app...

Apple's updated mobile operating system, iOS 10, includes many new accessibility features. One of these features is Software TTY calling. TTY calling allows people who are deaf and people with hearing disabilities who cannot communicate using voice calling to communicate with people by using voice calling through relay services. The TTY user with a hearing impairment types a message and a relay operator reads that message aloud to the person on the other end of the phone call, who does not have a hearing impairment. When the person on the other end of the phone call speaks the relay operator types what is spoken and the text then appears on the TTY device. Previously, this communication method required a physical TTY machine such as the one pictured above. These machines are large and much less convient to carry around than an iPhone. With iOS 10, Apple is building the functionality of a TTY machine into the iPhone. This eliminates the need for people who rely on TTY c...

All journeys, no matter how fruitful, come to an end. After a little over nine and half years I decided to leave SAP last week. What a journey this has been! Making Design Thinking real I was hired into a multidisciplinary corporate strategy team, set up by Hasso Plattner, the chairman of SAP's supervisory board, and the only co-founder still with the company, whose mission was to help SAP embrace “design thinking” in how it built products and processes as well as how it worked with customers. It was the best multidisciplinary team one could imagine to be part of. We were multidisciplinary to a fault where I used to joke that my team members and I had nothing in common. I am proud to be part of this journey and the impact we helped achieve. Over the years we managed to take the double quotes out of design thinking making it a default mindset and philosophy in all parts of SAP. It was a testament to the fact that any bold and audacious mission starts with a few simple steps and can ...

No, I didn’t say this, but 56,033 developers in 173 countries who responded to recent Stack Overflow's developer survey did.  I have always enjoyed going through these surveys to validate my several hypotheses and learn new things. I would strongly encourage you to go through the results from the most recent survey here . Here are some interesting insights: Occupation "Full stack developer" is the most identified developer occupation. More and more developers are gravitating towards this occupation where they are simultaneously working on 5 to 6 programming languages or frameworks at time. Rise of new languages and frameworks don’t mean developer fragmentation, but more developers picking up more and more languages. It’s not about SQL or Angular; it’s SQL and Angular. Ninjas: 10% of respondents self-identified as Ninjas! Yeah. So, yes, watch out. Age The millennial: The highest percentage of developers, 28.4%, are in the age group 24-29, followed by 23.6% in the age group...

Microsoft recently made a new add-on available for its OneNote software which aims to help students with dyslexia. The add-on works within Microsoft's note taking software and is currently available to download as a beta. Once installed, a new tab appears which gives users the option to read content using text-to-speech or dictate using speech-to-text. While both of the features have been available before it is nice to have a free option that can be used directly within OneNote: an application that many schools and parents already have installed as part of the Microsoft Office suite. The text-to-speech reader mode is called "immersive reading mode" and includes some handy features. When activated the reader fills the entire screen with text from your OneNote notebook. While reading text is highlighted as it is read aloud. Users have the option to change the background color and text size in order to create a more comfortable reading experience. The add-on also includes ...

"A Pretty Package Can’t Sell A Poor Product” - Bill Walsh I am a big fan of Bill Walsh and his management philosophy. Following is an excerpt from his book The Score Takes Care Of Itself . To promote sales of season tickets, I came up with an ambitious (and time-consuming) plan called “Pick-a-Seat Day” in which we put bright red ribbons on all available season ticket seats and invited the public to buy their favorites. And that’s not all.  On the big promotion day we offered balloons, free donkey rides, ethnic foods, and clowns for the kiddies. Also, free popcorn, soft drinks and hot dogs, jugglers, a Dixieland band, and magicians. It was really a great family event for the thousands of folks who came out to Candlestick Park. The next morning I arrived at the office early to see what the results of my “Pick-a-Seat Day” promotion were. Or, more accurately, weren’t. Total season tickets sold: seven. (I bought three more myself on the fifty-yard line, just so I could report that we’d...

AXS Map is an app available for iOS and Android that allows users to rank the accessibility of local businesses. Using the location of the device users can search for nearby businesses and rank the accessibility of the location in very basic terms. More detailed accessibility information and information for people with a wider range of disabilities would improve the app. While accessibility standards established by the government are exact and technical, AXS Map uses a star rating system. For example, a businesses that is easily accessible to people with disabilities would earn a five star ranking. The app also allows users to rank a business based on the noise level, which can be helpful for people with hearing impairments, and by light which can be helpful for people with visual impairments. I was recently involved in a "Mapathon" were a group of people used the app to map parts of the city. This experience helped me understand the value of the app, as some businesses had s...