Ifocus OS7-Bard Moble APP

iFocus OS7-Bard Moble APP

Seminars@Hadley

iFocus OS7 – Bard Mobile App

Presented by

Douglas Walker

Host

The Hadley School for the Blind presents “iFocus – Tips on Using the Vision Accessibility Features in iOS.” In this installment we’ll look at using the Bard Mobile App.

Douglas Walker

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker and I am an instructor of Assistive Technology here at The Hadley School for the Blind. Today we are going to be using the Bard Mobile App. We’re using the iPhone 5S for this demonstration and we’re running software version iOS 7.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about today’s video. We’ve waited a long time for the release of the Bard Mobile App and I am enjoying it just as much as I thought I would. I really am using it every single day. Really is a great app and I can’t wait to share with you today, so let’s go ahead and get started.

So I’m going to go ahead and flick to the Bard Mobile App. We’ll go ahead and single-finger double-tap to launch it. Alright, so when the app launches for the very first time, you are prompted to enter your user name and password. Now this is the very same user name and password that you use for logging into the Bard website. So once you enter your user name and password and hit okay, you’ll go right into your Bard app and you shouldn’t have to enter it anymore unless you log out.

So we’re ready to get started. We’re going to just start by doing an app overview and we’ll do that before we start downloading any content. So let’s go ahead and explore. We have four tabs along the bottom edge of our screen down here. Now activating any of these tabs totally changes our screen layout. It’s like having four apps in one; it’s like going to four different places. So we’re going to start by exploring each one and then we’ll come back to them after we go through them.

So we’ll start on the bottom left-hand corner down here. So this is the “book shelf” – this is where all of our books are going to be stored. Now you can think of it just like a book shelf in your home where you keep all of your books and your magazines. We’ll come back here, like I said, once we’ve looked at these tabs.

So I’m going to flick to the right and that will land us on our next tab down here on the bottom. And this is the “get books” tab – this is where we’ll go to download all of our books and magazines that are going to end up on the book shelf over here.

So let me flick to the right to our third tab down here. And this is the “settings” tab. This is where you can personalize the app to really work best for you. Now we’re not going to spend any time in the settings tab. You guys will need to explore that on your own. There’s just so many settings there but you can really make it work best for you. It has audio settings and visual settings in there and then your user account settings, so that’s our settings tab there.

Now I’ll flick one more time and we’ll land on our fourth tab down here at the bottom. So I’ll flick to the right. Now this “now reading” tab is a really nice tab. It takes you right back to the book that you’re currently reading and that’s really a great feature because it gives us the ability to browse for more books or to check out our book shelf and then be able to quickly double-tap on that to move back to our player. So those are our four tabs so we’re going to explore each one of those as we progress through the app today.

So let’s begin by getting some books. So let’s get into finding some content by moving to our “get books” tab and I’ll flick to the right. I’m on our “book shelf” tab down here, so I’m going to flick to the right to move over to our “get books” tab. Now we’re at the very end there so let me flick to the left and get there. And there is our “get books” tab and I’ll go ahead and single-finger double-tap to activate that.

Alright now we’re placed on our “get books” heading at the top of the page. There are several ways to get content on your app. Now we’re going to talk about a couple but we’re going to concentrate on those that keep you within the app. But I did want to mention one way that doesn’t involve doing it in the app.

One way by doing it is going to the Bard Mobile App on your PC and once you’ve – if you’re familiar with doing that – once you perform a book search and you’ve found the title that you want, you can activate that title to see more details about the book. Now on that details page there’s going to be a link there that’s called the “add to wish list” link. Now if you want that title, on your Bard Mobile App you can always activate that link on your PC and it will add it to your “wish list” tab directly in the app. Now once it’s been added to the wish list, it is going to show up in your app for download and so that’s one way to do it if you’re on the PC sort of browsing the site and you think, “You know, maybe I’d like this on my Bard Mobile App later.” That’s one way to do it.

But we’re going to go ahead and look at ways to do it directly from within the apps. So let’s go ahead and sort of explore the “get books” tab here. Now I think we’re on the heading up at the top of the screen so I’ll flick to the right from there and we’ll move through this page here.

Now this is in a list view so you could drag your finger down this but I’m going to flick through this list view here so I’ll flick to the right. So the very first item in this list is the “wish list” tab. We’ll come back to this once we have searched for some books and added into our wish list. But this is where they’ll show up so that we’re able to download them. I mentioned earlier about adding to the wish list on your PC; well this is where they’ll show up. But we’ll come back up to this.

We’ll continue to flick down this list here. Alright so this is a heading and this is a “recently-added titles” heading. There are four different areas under our “recently-added titles” and this is exactly the same area that you’ll find on the Bard website. Bard adds new titles just about every day or every other day it seems and this is where you can find what’s recently been added. And there are four different areas to do that. I’m going to flick down through these different areas and then we’ll come back to each one of them in a bit.

So I’ll flick to the right and if I were to double-tap on that, it would give us a listing of all the recently-added audio books that I could download, so I’ll flick to the right again. And again, if I did that, it would do just as it said – there’d be a list of all the recently-added magazines. Alright and I can get Braille books from Bard as well. So I’ll flick to the right and I’ll keep flicking down this page.

So we’re on a Bard website heading. I’m going to flick to the button underneath this and we’ll talk about this one. Okay so this is the “browse Bard” button. Now activating this will bring up the Bard website and this is the other way that we’re able to add books to our wish list just like I talked about earlier. So we’re going to start here and go look for a book to add to our wish list up here so I’ll go ahead and single-finger double-tap to activate that.

Okay so you’re presented with the Bard website that we’ve all come to know and love. Now here you’re able to browse for Bard books and magazines and add them to your wish list like I said just a minute ago. So let’s do just that and I’ll show you how easy it is to do.

We’re going to start by flicking through the navigation tools at the very top of the page here. We’ve already been placed on the back button to take us back to that previous page but I’m going to start flicking through this list here or through the toolbar to begin with so let me go ahead and flick to the right.

And that’s our Bard heading. We’ve been placed on the top of the page. I’ll flick to the right again. Now this is our “back” button; this acts like that back button in any other web browser and it will take us back to the previous page so if we’ve traveled several web pages, we could always travel back to the page by activating that “back” button there.

So I’ll flick to the right again to our last toolbar item up here in the top right. And this is our “forward” button and it’s the companion to the “back” button there. So if we had traveled back and page and wanted to go forward to the page that we were on, we could always activate that and it works just like a browser as I said.

So when I flick again we’re going to be placed within the Bard website here. So I’ll flick to the right. Now I am a patron of the Tennessee Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped so that’s the page that’s going to come up because that’s where I’m logged in.

So now we’re able to use the standard voiceover gestures to navigate the Bard website; however, I’m just going to continue flicking to the right to move through the website. Now where I’m headed is I’m headed down to the search field down here so that’s where I’m going to head and we’re going to do an author search. But I’m going to flick to the right – that’s just like pressing the down arrow on your PC, so I’ll start flicking to the right here.

That’s just a heading there. I’ll flick to the right again. Alright so this is recently added books and magazines, just like we saw on the previous page. You can go there instead of having to come on the website and add them to a wish list. You can bring up a list there. We’ll look at that in just a minute. I’m going to keep flicking down until I find that search field here. And that’s just our hint for that past and previous one.

Now this is a link that I really like and it’s “most popular books” and these are the most popular books that the Bard patrons are downloading. So if you don’t have something in mind that you’re wanting to listen to, this is a great place to go and explore all the books that the Bard members are enjoying. So I’m going to flick past this.

I’ll keep flicking down the page. There’s our “find books” heading. Now I am looking for the search field here. There it is. Now I am going to double-tap to edit here. Okay and we’re going to do an author search. And if you’re not familiar or very comfortable doing searches, you can always go back and listen to a previous seminar. We did an iFocus seminar just this past year – I believe it’s the very first iFocus seminar. You can head to the Hadley past seminar page to listen to that. We went more in-depth on how to touch-type. So you might want to go there if you’re not comfortable touch-typing on the iPhone; maybe that can help you out.

So I’m going to go ahead and search for J.K. Rowling. There’s a movie that’s being produced right now on a book of hers and so I’m going to go look for that book so that we can download it. So I’m going to go ahead and type in her name. Alright, so you notice I did the last name first. That’s how books are listed on the Bard website – it’s the last name first and then a comma and then the first name. So I’m not going to place those initials in her name; I’m just going to do the last name and the comma there and that will really help to narrow down our search.

And then there’s a “search” button in the bottom right-hand corner of our keyboard there and I can just double-tap to start our search here. Alright, so I’m going to go ahead and move to the top of the search results page and touch to see if we have our search results here. Alright, so that’s great. We’ve had our search performed here and we’re ready to start searching down here for the book that I’m looking for.

Now I’m going to use the rotor to move by headings. Now if you’re not familiar with using the rotor, we do have another Hadley YouTube instructional video, iFocus video, on how to use the rotor, and it’s actually called Using the Rotor so you might want to go check that out if you’re kind of sketchy on using the rotor. The video does a pretty good job of explaining how to navigate using the rotor.

So I’m going to activate my rotor so we can move by headings; I’m going to choose headings from this. And there it is. Make sure we’re on that. So there we are on headings and now I should be at the top of the page; I’ll touch there to make sure. Alright, so I’m going to start flicking down the page. Now as I flick down it will only move me through headings down the page. So I’ll start flicking down.

Now the reason I’m doing this is because all of our book titles are labeled as headings down this page so I know that this will take me only through the book titles and I can skip all of the descriptors and stuff; I don’t have to listen to all of that. So I’m going to keep flicking until I find the book I’m looking for. Okay so we didn’t do a title search; we did an author search so I’ll keep flicking. Good so there’s 18 audio books under J.K. Rowling here so I’ll keep flicking down.

Alright, so Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. So this is a 2001 book I believe but they’re just now doing a movie on this so there’s a lot of buzz about this book. So I’m going to flick down now to the right. I’m going to stop flicking by headings and start flicking like I’m hitting the arrow key to the right and we’re going to listen to the descriptors cause I’m looking for the “add to wish list” button here.

Keep flicking. I’ll keep flicking. Keep flicking. And a couple more times. Descriptor here. Alright so I’m going to flick one more time and we should be placed on that add to wish list link. Alright, so I’m going to go ahead and single-finger double-tap now and that should be added to our wish list here. Alright so you are now placed on a page that tells that the book has been added to your wish list here. We’ll flick through a couple of things on this page just to let you know what’s here. And that told us it’s successfully added there. I’ll flick to a couple of items on this page here.