 I believe this is the best timing history to be blind, but to have any kind of disability. The accessibility features built into Apple's mobile devices provide us with a level of opportunity that has never before been seen in history. These accessibility features also allow us, as people with disabilities, to find our voice and our creative expression. I believe everyone has the right to be creative. I find my creativity through photography. Here are a few photos that I've made with my iPhone. Madeira Beach in Florida. Aerial view of Salt Lake City, Utah. Panorama of Mexico City. Columns in front of Truman Hall at University of Missouri, Columbia. Riverwalk in San Antonio with downtown buildings in the background. Face of alien toy hidden behind balloons. Sunset at Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Self-portrait of my shadow showing my white cane. I believe that you don't have to see to have a vision. My vision is a world where everyone can use technology to express their creativity. Luis Perez here coming to you from beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. I hope you enjoyed my opening video and I want to welcome you to this presentation. As an independent consultant, speaker, and author, my work focuses on accessibility and inclusive design. So why you may ask, am I doing a presentation on photography? Well, photography is a big part of my life and these days the only way that I can make photos is through the use of my mobile devices, especially my iPhone. Because I have a visual impairment, I find it difficult to use a traditional camera. Using the accessibility features of my iPhone, however, I have been able to continue to express myself and find my creativity through photography. Since photography has been such a big part of my life, I want to make sure that every student, even if they have a disability, has a similar opportunity. For the next 15 minutes or so, I will share with you a number of tips for getting the most out of the camera on your mobile phone or tablet, as well as some ideas for integrating photography into classroom activities in a way that includes all learners. So without further delay, let's get started. I consider myself an iPhoneographer and throughout this presentation, I will use the term iPhoneography to refer to the use of mobile devices for photography. However, please remember that you can use any mobile phone or any tablet that has a camera to participate in mobile photography. I'm just using the term iPhoneography for convenience and simplicity. So what is iPhoneography? It is a mobile device photography workflow. You capture, edit and share your photos right from your phone or tablet, so you don't transfer them to a computer to edit and share. You can do this right from your mobile device. The idea here is that you capture the moment, you capture what's happening around you almost in real time. This idea is captured in this quote by photographer Chase Jarvis, when he says that the best camera is the one you have with you. Well we almost always have our phones on us and tablets have become commonplace in many classrooms. So why not leverage these technologies that many students already own or can access in the classroom to make learning more engaging by giving students an outlet for their creativity and self-expression. Let's take a look at some ways in which you can integrate photography into your classroom activity. Scavenger hunts or photo walks can be a great way to get young children engaged as they explore the environment around them and learn their letters, words and numbers. They can also learn their shapes by finding matching objects in their environment. And your own photos can be a great way to explore important mathematical concepts such as angles. For social studies students can take photos of important landmarks that trace the history and development of their communities. Here's a great example of that hidden history that's all around us. This is a park near my house that I have passed by many times without really knowing the history that took place there. Well one day I finally stopped and noticed this plaque which informed me that this was the place where Exploration of North America started. In science class students could use a special accessory known as the eyelow clip lens attachment for the iPhone which has a wide angle lens as well as a macro lens which can be used to capture images of small objects. Here's an example of a couple of images that I've captured with the eyelow clip that show some of the small creatures that live near my house. If you want to learn more about how to use the eyelow clip to promote learning in the sciences I highly encourage you to check out the book Calling Nature by my good friend Bee Cantor and this is available in the iBook store as a free download. Of course there are many other ways in which you can use photography in the curriculum and I don't have time to go over all of them. But some of them are you can use photography in digital storytelling projects, you can also incorporate it into project-based learning, you can document the steps of an experiment in science projects and more. I would love to hear your own ideas in the comments if you would like to add them. Now that we've looked at some classroom applications let's take a look at some top tips for getting the most out of your iPhone or iPad's camera. There's nothing worse than capturing a great moment in a photo only to realize later that the photo is not sharp. One way to avoid camera shake and thus blurry images is to use your Apple headphones as a remote cable release for taking your photo. All you have to do is press the volume button on your headphones and that will take the photo. Another trick is to use the grid to improve your composition. In iOS 6 this grid is found under the options inside the camera app itself but in iOS 7 you have to go into the settings and then look for it under photos and camera. Using the grid will not only help you keep your horizons straight but it will also help you practice a rule of thirds and basically this is where you move your subject away from the center of the frame to the spot where the lines in the grid meet resulting in a much more interesting composition than if you were to put the subject right in the middle. Finally, make sure you work the scene and what I mean by this is that you should look for interesting angles by getting low to your students level if you were shooting in the classroom or if you are out in the environment find a high spot and see if you can get an interesting photo from there like this panorama that I made while I was in Mexico City. My philosophy for mobile photography is to keep things simple. Keep as simple as the bottle I go by and the reason for this is number one it helps me learn the few apps that I use really well and number two by not having a lot of apps I can save space on my device so that I can take more photos. I do most of my photography work on my iPhone with just three apps the stock camera app that's included in iOS camera plus and Instagram which is free. So let's go through a typical workflow for me as you can see here I just have just a few apps that I use for capturing and editing photos I've already taken a photo with my camera app just the one that comes included in iOS so there's the camera app and what I'm going to do is go into camera plus which is my favorite editing app and then inside camera plus there's a light box I'm going to tap on the plus in the upper right choose the photo that I'm going to edit this is a photo I took the other evening while I was out at the beach and import that into the light box I'll double tap on it to edit it and we'll perform just a few edits here to make that image really pop I'm gonna tap on edit and then one of my favorite things in camera plus is the clarity filter it's actually found on their scenes but when I tap on that it just add a lot of contrast to that image making more interesting I can also go in and crop it I know I'm gonna upload this to Instagram so I'm gonna choose the square crop factor and just move that square until I get the composition that I want I can apply an effect and a really nice one here is the overlay for this image really adds a lot of blue there I can tap on the option there to customize how much of that effect I want to apply and generally I'll only add about 15-20% because I want the effect to be subtle I'll tap the check mark to apply the effect then tap done and save and that's it I've added that image in just a few seconds now I will go over to Instagram tap on the camera icon choose that last image from my library and since I've already cropped it I can just tap on crop next and then I can add a nice caption and other information that will make it easier for people to find this image other apps that I like are Hipstamatic which is a great app for trying out different lens and film combinations really opening up that creativity Snapseed which is a free app from Google I love the feature that it has for selective adjusts basically you can tap on an area of the image and adjust the brightness contrast and other settings around just that point and then I also like handy photo which is great for removing unwanted objects from your photos along with my aloclip 3-in-1 lens system one of my favorite accessories is their quick flip case with this case I can easily attach my aloclip lens system while still keeping my iPhone protected other accessories that I included my camera bag are a small tabletop tripod with flexible legs known as a Joby Gorillapod and to attach my iPhone when it has a case on it I use an attachment called the iStabilizer I also sometimes will use my diff case that's the IFF if I'm shooting outside it has a built-in shade and then I never go out to shoot without my external battery I use batteries from a company called Mofi and there's nothing worse than going out to shoot and then finding out that you've run out of battery because you forgot to charge your phone so the Mofi battery will solve that problem for my iPad my favorite accessory is the Iogrefer case this is a case that allows me to mount the iPad on a tripod I truly believe every student should be able to enjoy photography and thanks to the accessibility features that are now built into mobile devices such as the iPhone and the iPad they can do just that so let's take a look at accessible photography using the iPad and here we're going to look at how a student who is blind can use the voiceover screen reader receive helpful information about the surrounding environment that will help him or her compose and take a good photo and the way voiceover works is that you move your finger around on the screen and then it will describe what's underneath your finger using synthesized speech then to launch an app or activate a control you'll double tap on the screen with one finger you're visually impaired you can use the camera app along with voiceover to make photography accessible for you so here I've selected the camera app which is in my dock and I've also already enabled voiceover I'm gonna open the app by double tapping anywhere on the screen with one finger and for this tutorial we're lucky enough to have a guest star at this point I'm ready to take my picture and there as I said a number of ways that you can do that you could select the take picture button and then double tap anywhere on the screen but they're faster ways to do it you can double tap on the screen with two fingers you could press the volume up button or if you have a set of Apple headphones that have a microphone you can just press the volume up button on those and I will also take the picture now right before taking the photo I'll go ahead and just tap anywhere on the screen and I can double tap and a lot of focus for me and then I can take my picture now if you're taking photos of people voiceover will give you some additional information when it auto focuses it'll let you know how many people are in the frame the relative location in the frame and the size of the faces so this is some great information if you're visually impaired you can't see very well it's nice to have that information so let's take a look at that in action once I've taken my photo I can go into the photo and video viewer and then I can choose share on the next screen and from there I have a number of sharing options some students with motor and cognitive difficulties need switch access in order to interact with a touchscreen devices in iOS 7 Apple has included built-in switch access through a technology called switch control let's take a look at how this works for photography so the first thing I'm going to do is enable switch control which I'm going to do by triple-clicking the home button this is also known as the accessibility shortcut so I'll enable switch control I've set it up to do auto scanning and then I'm going to wait for the scanning to get to the camera app and select that once I open the camera app I can change modes so I'm going to show you that really quick I'm going to wait for the modes option to be selected so I'm going to wait for the cursor to come back around then I'm going to choose gestures then flick and flick up and that will change my mode to square which is great if you're sharing your photo on Instagram the next thing is I will wait for the cursor to get to the take picture button and then I'll be able to snap my photo and there's my photo now the beautiful thing about this is I've done all this just one finger by pressing a single button on my switch interface in addition to the built-in accessibility features there are two other apps that I like because they provide access to students who have motor difficulties the first of these apps with pro camera which is a great photography app on its own but one of the great features that I like about it is that it has a full screen shutter option for a student who has a motor challenge and who might struggle to tap on that small button at the bottom of the interface this provides another option for triggering the camera as he or she can just tap anywhere on the screen with sound snap you don't even have to tap the screen all you have to do is snap your fingers and the app will take the picture for you it's that easy I'm a big believer in photography for people with disabilities because I believe that it can help us create a more affirmative model of disability too often we focus on the medical model of disability where we see it as something that needs to be fixed the more affirmative model looks at disability as something that is a natural aspect of the human condition and something that should be celebrated and I believe that by taking our own photos weekend as people with disabilities tell our own stories and celebrate who we are by sharing our photos on sites such as Instagram and Flickr you can show that we can lead rich full interesting lives and challenge a narrative that disability is a tragedy that has happened to us you can find me on Instagram where my username is LFP1211 Instagram is also a great place to learn by looking at photos from people that are really good at their craft these are just a few of the people that I've had a pleasure of learning from on Instagram everybody we've reached the end of our presentation here I hope you've enjoyed it and you've learned a lot from the tips and tricks that I've shared with you and I hope that it will improve your iPhone and iPad photography and remember with all the accessibility features that we have available now photography truly is for everybody so anyone even if they have a disability can enjoy this wonderful hobby remember you can follow me on Twitter at underscore Luis F Perez I also have a website at www.luisperesonline.com and you can also find me on YouTube my username is LF Perez 72 Here are a few of my recent iPhone photos that I've taken