Echobatix 1.0 for iOS (dev story 1.0.1)
Echobatix, my company’s app, is available in the App Store as of today. Hurray!
If you or someone you know is blind or low vision, please check out Echobatix 1.0. Here’s the App Store link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echobatix/id1552392882
More features to come!
In this post I’ll briefly mention a few online resources that helped with release. And since it’s the Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. I won’t keep you long.
The final stages of prep are freshest in my mind, so I’ll cover those first.
AppScreens.com for Screenshots
My very last task before submitting Echobatix 1.0 for review was to generate screenshots for the app. It was getting late, I was tired, and so I was quite pleased to find so many positive recommendations for appscreens.com.
It’s free! And it generates screenshots in all the required sizes.
AppScreens.com is where I’ll create the screenshots for the next release of the Echobatix app, too.
TermsFeed.com for the Privacy Policy
We have a good group of lawyers for all our corporate needs, but for a sized-to-fit privacy policy, why not use an online service?
It’s free! And termsfeed.com will host your privacy policy, too.
Medium posts
Special thanks to Rob Whitaker for his post “iOS Attributed Accessibility Labels.” I needed to make some last-minute tweaks to accessibility labels. To get VoiceOver to announce the Echobatix app name’s correctly I ended up implementing phonetic spelling, but Whitaker’s post is a handy reference.
Software development and release was helped in part by other Medium posts about Swift, iOS, and the App Store — including posts I was reading the night of submission to the App Store. Thanks!
On the business side, a recent read of mine was the 2019 post “Investing in disability tech startups” by Rohan Silva. Silva was posting about assistive tech startups in Europe, but his message applies globally:
According to the World Health Organisation, about 15% of the world’s population is disabled — and here in Europe, over 70 million adults are living with a disability.*
But sadly — while new technologies, smart materials and digital tools have swept through so many industries — the products and services available for disabled people simply haven’t kept pace.
At Echobatix we’re trying to address the gaps for people who are blind or visually impaired, and who have print disabilities such as dyslexia. At present our app is available only in English, but we’ll be adding support for other languages.
More to come in the next post!
