Thanks to Eva, Matteo, Gwenaël, Jon and others, the Tecla Acces app for Android is now available in your language! That is, of course, if your language is any of English, French, Spanish, Italian, German or Swedish. But even if your mother tongue is not in the list, there is still hope, because translating Tecla Access to any language is dead easy. Just create a free account on crowdin.net and visit the Tecla Access translation page to get started. Chances are you won’t have to do a lot of work since crowdin has amazing translation tools and many languages are already almost done (like Dutch).

Seriously, we can’t think of any better way to meet your karma quota of the day than finishing a translation for the Tecla Access app for Android!

 

Komodo OpenLab has been working tirelessly with the Inclusive Design Research Centre in the development of a full switch access solution to iOS devices. As a result, we are excited to announce that The Tecla Shield, which until now has provided unprecedented switch access to Android devices, will soon be also available for iPhone and iPad! Take a look at the video demonstrating the first-ever single-switch solution providing access to the entire iDevice, not just a few apps!

We are very proud to announce that after a very productive year collaborating with amazing users, caregivers and clinicians across the globe, we finally completed the first shipment of the first commercial version of the Tecla Shield (codenamed ‘UNO’)!

This represents the most significant milestone since the beginning of our operations and will hopefully mark the beginning of a new era in accessibility, where beautiful and affordable assistive devices are the norm, rather than the exception.

If you pre-ordered your Tecla Shield, it is now travelling in its cozy box right to your hands, so you will have it in no time. If you don’t have one yet and would like to order it now, head over to the Komodo OpenLab store were you can also get a wide range of accessories for your Shield, like the very sleek battery pack that will last over 48 hours of continuous use and the versatile Tecla Wheelchair Mount (which you can peek at here: http://ow.ly/i/rFGA) for a full end-to-end solution.

The Tecla Access development team over at the Inclusive Design Research Centre has unveiled a new localization site for the Tecla Access app. This site makes it easy for anyone to contribute translations, which is great because we constantly get offers of help from people all around the world and translating is one of the easiest ways to make a contribution. So, if localization was the only thing stopping your from using Tecla for yourself or for your clients, now you have a chance to submit your very own translations in your native language. To get started, just head over to the Tecla localization page at: http://crowdin.net/project/tecla-access and select the language you would like to work on, just note that you will need to sign-up if you don’t already have an account on the site, and if you don’t see the language you would like to do a translation for, please let us know, we’ll add it just for you.

Tecla Access 0.6 (beta) for Android has been released. Now with auto-hide timeout, it is a lot less intrusive and will let you read that last line in your e-Book pages. This version also enables alternative character selection for non-english languages. As always, all of this is available via external switches when using the Tecla Shield!

Please install the Tecla Access app today, and feel free to reply with your feedback so we can keep improving it. Remember that Tecla is an on-screen keyboard for everyone, so you can try it out even if you don’t need any of the switch access features!

The Google TechTalk by Jorge Silva, Technical Lead at Komodo OpenLab, is finally up online. If you are technically inclined and feel like watching an hour-long rant on how Android could be soooo much more amazing than it is now, you are welcome to watch.

A big thank you to the accessibility team at Google for hosting us at their campus in Mountain View, we still talk about the amazing lunch and the free ice cream!