Category: Geeks r Us
Hi Guys,
My sightie friend has an Ipod, and I'm really jealous lol. I know there's other stuff out there simlar to Ipods, but Ipods seem to be the most popular. I gather, from past experience, that Apple stuff isn't very blind accessible. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. From the way my friend describes it, it sounds kind of inaccessible. Have any of you blind peoples out there used or owned ipods? If so, how did it work? If not, what have you used or heard of that has similar technology and capacity of Ipods, and is accessible?
Thansk a lot for any feedback you have!
Caitlin
Negative on the Ipods, they're verry inaccessible, your best bet is to go with the Iriver mp3 player, and you can get them in ither a twenty gig moddle, or a forty gigger, and those are quite accessible, no software to install, you can just put files on to it like you would any harddrive, because that's what these harddrive baced players are.
Hmmm. Sounds cool. How much is it, or do you know? And I assume you just hook it up to a PC via a cable, like a USB or whatever, right?
Thanks.
Caitlin
Moved to the Geek board.
That's right, you do connect the Iriver via a USB port, and I don't have the exact url, but you can do a google search for the Iriver mp3 player.
Iriver's H340 which is the 40gb mp3 player is $430 USD according to their website. Now I hope my parents didn't invest in an iPod for my birthday or I have two words for them... trade-in!
Okay great! Thanks guys. I'll look into this Iriver thingy!
Caitlin
Still, though, if anyone else has any other thoughts, I'd be willing to hear them. I'm looking for something accessible, hopefully not toooooo horribly expensive. Preferably, I'd like something with a built-in flash cardish thing, like the Ipod has, where it's permanent and it saves a certain number of songs. If you get what I mean. I'm not quite looking for an MP3 player with removable flash stick things, but I don't want a hard drive thing with movable parts. Okay I think I'm making exactly zero since. Sorry.
Caitlin
I looked on Iriver's website and they do have a flash mp3 player. I forget what it is, but when I googled Iriver, it was right there below the google news stuff.
Okay. Yeah I went on www.iriver.com, led there by Google, and found it. Is the flash MP3 player what I want? Where it has internal memory and all?
Caitlin
That's right, but the only drawback is that the cheeper models only go up to 128mb, and that's not a heck of alot, and I'm speeking from experience.
But if you still want a good amount of storage capability for songs without going harddrive baced units, mp3cd's can help, provided you can get a discman with mp3 playback capability.
If anyone is interested in a harddrive based mp3 player, the archos jukebox is accessible for the blind. ACB radio featured it on a main menu program a year and a half ago. Although the storage has increased, the controls are exactly the same. They sell 20 gig models that are priced at much less than an Ipod. This player requires no software, and you can just copy files on to it like another harddrive. Hope that helps!
Ooh this sounds cool too! I'll try and find the review of it, and the web site, and see if I can get a price on it. Sounds nice.
Thanks for all your guys' ideas!
Take care.
Caitlin
Hi Caitlin
I assume you have Winamp or some other mp3 player on your computer. If you do, just copy this address into the player. It is the main menu show from 2001, in which they talk about the archos jukebox. You may need to skip a few tracks.
http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm058.m3u
I got mine in 2003, and I absolutely love it!
The company website is www.archos.com, but last I looked JAWS did not work so well with it. Hope this helps. Good luck finding a player you like.
Okay thanks. I'll be sure to check that out and let you know what i think!
Caitlin
ipods are rather inaccessible, but I have gotten mine to work. My cousin bought me one when he was in America, so I couldn't really say no to it. I do not recommend buying one. Stick with those other mp3 players.
IPods are accessible with Rockbox, a free opensource firmware After installing it, download the .voice file for your language and put it in the lang folder in your playerrockbox. You can get these files from the daily builds section. Sorry to bring this back but...
The Creative Zen Stone 1gb mp3 player is accessible, and only approx. $35.00.
But I see this is a very old topic, and I admit that I don't know a lot about this subject. I did recently get my Zen, and it's easy to use with no vision, so thought I'd add it to this list.
Omg where do you get the Zen? Sounds like a fabulous deal. And does it work like another drive when you plug it in, where you just paste songs onto it?
I have a Muvo from Creative Labs and love it, but it's only 512 MB. I should get the 1-GB one...one of my friends has it and it's accessible, even though I think he said it has a wheel.
I have a shuffle, and it works fine, this ipod has no screen, so theres no problem with it being accessible. Big D is right Rockbox will work with the nanos and other models that do have screens. Ipods r fine to use, u just have to know what model u want, how much space u want, and if u want rockbox or not.
I have an mp3 player from Phillips and it is accessible, as long as you don't need to access the menu. When I turn it on, my mp3 player starts playing the song I was listening to. I press rewind and fast forward to switch between songs. I can put new songs on by plugging the player into my computer and copying/pasting.
What is Rockbox? Does it work on all mp3 players, or just those made by Apple?
Hi, would email you privately but figured other people would wonder too. Anyway, Rockbox is a free, openSource firmware for mp3 players that, among other things, has voice support. It works on some versions of the IPod, some from sandisk and several others, for a complete list see the site.
Enjoy!
rockbox well... rocks!
I've installed it on to my h10 iriver 20gb 6 months ago and never looked back.
Ipods can use rockbox, however, it does not support the classic ones.
go to www.rockbox.org and read up on it.
Once you get your player of choice, email me and I will walk you through installing and configuring. Rockbox doesn't read your list of songs efficient in the beginning. You also need another file to create sound clips that essentially reads your songs out for you.
skpoet711 @ gmail.com
my husband and I both have the thirty gig video i pod. and we use it just fine. He has rock box installed on his and I don't. I use it just fine. Once you know the buttons and the menu you can figure it out. I will however install rock box on it at some time, so it will make it even more accessible. you just have to take the time to learn how to use it. I love my ipod it's awesome.
Keep in mind that your iPod will no longer work with iTunes once Rockbox is installed, so that may represent a big disadvantage there. Otherwise, well, for a great all-around book reader and MP3 player, there's now nothing better than HumanWare's Victor Reader Stream!
hmmm, all I have to say about the vs is that, well, its greatly limited in capacity. No stock memory, all external cards... *shrug* I guess I just don't like to carry multiple cards with me, its almost like carrying multiple cds with me when I had a diskman.
install rockbox on the 80 gig ipod. nothing better indeed.
Buy the 80GB iPod, don't install Rockbox, and love every minute of it. It's just as accessible as any other mainstream player, no matter what you may have heard. iTunes works best with the Mac, but you can get it working with a PC as well, and there are 3rd party aps that negate the need for iTunes if you're using a PC.
Yup! going with Jesse on this for sure!!! I gotta say this: To be accessible a device does not need to talk. Folks, really! please!!! give a look at two excellent features the IPOD offeres that make it easy to learn. one is the fact that the audible clicks when moving through the menus can be heard either in the ipods microscopic speaker, through the head phones or both. Also, the menus do not rap enabling a person to know when they are at the begining or end. I use an 8 gig nano and love it and have absolutely no problem with it. give it a try you'll love it. Yes Itunes works best on the mac but there are scripts call J-Tunes from http://www.tandt-consultancy.com/j-tunes.html These scripts are about $50 or more but work with ITunes and Jaws versions. They do have to be authorized for your specific version of Jaws. There are other softwares as well: Anapod explorer is from redchairsoftware.com and is available for about $30. There are a variety of places to purchase downloaded unproteccted music. Walmart.com, amazon.com and for the "people in the house" dancetracksdigital.com which I have also used. So, enjoy your ipod, download some great mp3 music, transfer at will and gain victory over the IPod that lovely instrument of entertainment that has brought joy and delight to many over the years.. Woof returns to his rug in the corner for a nap..
i put rockbox on mine for vorbis support.
thanks willy. I was gonna also suggest, if u don't wanna use jtunes, get X-play. U can get a 30 day trial of it, but the u have to purchase it to continue using it.