1. 44 NEW STRAITS TIMES LIFE & TIMES THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2005
W
HEN Apple unveiled its new iPod
shuffle MP3 player, it sparked a
controversy. The reason: the player
comes without a display. But what is seen as a
design flaw by detractors may just win Apple
a new set of fans from a group often wrongly
perceived as technologically backward — the
visually impaired.
When first introduced to the iPod shuffle,
visually impaired Moses Choo Siew Cheong
joked: “Now everybody can shuffle like the
blind too!”
Choo is the assistant executive director of
the National Council for the Blind Malaysia. His
job includes making decisions on technology
matters for the organisation.
The iPod shuffle that was put in his hands is
an all-white electronic device about the size of
a pack of gum. It more resembles a USB thumb
drive than an MP3 player.
The front of the unit is dominated by a large
circular button that allows the user to perform
five functions — play/pause, volume up, volume
down, next track and previous track.
The back of the unit features a slider that
enables the user to toggle between off, shuffle
and play songs in order.
With a storage capacity of 512 megabytes,
the iPod shuffle allows a user to fit about 120
songs or eight hours of music by hooking it up
to a computer’s USB port.
The iPod shuffle has no display to indicate
what song is playing. Instead, Apple has
designed it to rely heavily on a function
commonly used by iPod users called “shuffle”.
The idea is that when you have hundreds of
songs in such a tiny device, you don’t want to
go through the torture of selecting a song to
listen to, you just want to let the iPod do it for
you in random order, or shuffle. Don’t like a
chosen track? Just skip to the next one.
It is highly unlikely that when Apple’s
engineers designed the iPod shuffle they
had the visually impaired in mind. But by
employing such a minimalistic approach to
user interface, the engineers have unwittingly
enabled even a person who is visually impaired
such as Choo to use it too.
Choo proved to be a quick learner. I only
needed to guide him once on how to operate
the player. In fact, he even discovered a
function I did not even know was there.
“If you press and hold next or previous,
you can scroll through a track. We call this
function ‘queue and review’. It’s good for the
blind as it allows us to listen to long audio files
such as a radio programme,” he said, adding
that he regularly visited sites such as bbc.
com, acbradio.com and audio-read.com.au to
download radio programmes in MP3 format.
He rattled off another tip, saying that 512MB
is enough for 25 hours of MP3 files, provided
they are encoded at 64 kilobits per second
(Kbps). The figure quoted by Apple is for the
company’s 128Kbps AAC music format.
Listening to Choo spew technical jargon may
amaze some people but the fact is, the 48-year-
old is no newbie when it comes to gadgets. He
has been using the PC since the days of DOS.
“One common misconception people have
about the blind is that we need special
equipment to do our job. We don’t. For the
most part, we are comfortable with a PC that
looks a lot like what the sighted are using,” he
said.
“If you think about it, a lot of things people
do don’t require seeing. When you drive, you
don’t look at the gear knob or the pedal.
When you type, you don’t have to look at the
keyboard.”
Apple’s new iPod shuffle MP3 player is user-friendly, even for the visually impaired. RIDZWAN A. RAHIM finds out why.
shuffleNow all can shuffle
WORTH BUYING: Choo listening to the iPod shuffle

2. NEW STRAITS TIMES LIFE & TIMES THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2005 PAGE 5
EASY APPLICATION: Choo trying
out Apple’s iTunes digital jukebox
software on his office PC
But how do they “see” what is on the
computer’s screen? To help them find their way
around Windows, Choo said, the visually impaired
relied on a screen reader programme called Jaws
which reads out the text on the screen.
This works well most of the time. Still,
occasionally, things just get too difficult and that’s
when it helps to have sighted friends around.
So, of course Choo likes it that the iPod shuffle
lacks a screen. “We are also human beings. We
like music. We have mastered the skills to rip
and mix our favourite tunes and burn them to
CDs.”
So what would make MP3 players of even
greater benefit to the visually impaired?
“One feature I would really like to see in the
iPod is a built-in speech engine to read text files,
in addition to playing MP3. This is something like
an audio book and will greatly help us in our
learning,” said Choo.
Price is another crucial factor and he
appreciates it that the current crop of MP3
players is getting cheaper. The iPod shuffle, for
example, is priced at RM499.
It compares favourably against the Pulse Data
BrailleNote portable computer that he’s using,
which reads his text files and plays his MP3 at a
cost of RM15,000!
n The writer can be contacted at
ridzwanr@nst.com.my
SMALL WONDERS: Apple Asia Pacific
director of product marketing Tony Li
at the launch of iPod shuffle in Kuala
Lumpur. In his left hand is a Mac mini,
Apple’s new fully-functional small form
factor personal computer
THIS IS GOOD!: Choo (left) and Chok Siew
Lee, executive secretary of Society of the Blind
Malaysia, checking out the iPod shuffle