Curious how to quickly access your Accessibility option on your brand new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and wondering if your Home button can help out? We all know a single press of the home button will take you back to your apps, and a double-click will launch the Fast App Switcher. But did you know you can set up a triple-click to give you quick access to Accessibility?

1. Go into Settings and then General.



2. Scroll down to Accessibility.



3. Scroll all the way to the bottom again and select Triple-Click Home



4. From here you can set it to toggle a few different options - VoiceOver, White on Black, Zoom, AssistiveTouch, or to ask you each time which of the above you want it to do.

And that's it! Now your Accessibility options are only even a triple-click away!

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Curious how to enable iOS 5's Assistive Touch accessibility feature? Whether you have trouble using the physical controls on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, or the controls themselves have simply stopped working properly, Assistive Touch can give you a great, software-based alternative.

1. Launch the Settings app.
2. Tap General.
3. Tap Accessibility.
4. Scroll all the way down and tap AssistiveTouch then toggle it on. (You'll know its working, when you see a floating button appear on your screen.)

Turning on AssistiveTouch causes a semi-transparent button to appear. Tapping this button gives you access to the same functions as the hardware buttons, such as volume up or down, as well as several gesture types, like pinch to zoom. You can even set custom gestures.

BONUS: If you don't wish to constantly have AssistiveTouch on your screen, you can set AssistiveTouch to your "Triple Click Home" function and call upon it when required.

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@imore.com.

Just switch over to iPhone from BlackBerry or Android and wondering how to get an LED notification for new messages? While it's not quite the same things, with iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S or iPhone 4, you can take advantage of your camera flash as an indicator. If you find yourself missing messages due to not hearing the sounds, or would rather skip the noises and just see a light, check out a few simple steps to get yourself going.

1. Open your settings and scroll down to Accessibility.
2. Scroll to the middle and look for LED Flash for Alerts, and switch to on.

Just like that you can now take advantage of utilizing your LED from your camera as a message indicator for new incoming messages. Luckily you can easily switch the options off and on easily while on the go, so if you want to turn it off at any point you can without an issue.

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Apple has posted up a great tip on how to find closed caption TV shows and movies on iTunes.

Closed captioning for the hearing impaired is now available in iTunes for new TV episodes as well as thousands of movies and iTunes U video episodes. As you browse the store you can determine whether the particular content you're looking at has closed caption support by looking for the small cc icon in the info on the left side of their pages. The cc icon also appears in lists of TV episodes and in iTunes U offerings with multiple episodes (e.g. Developing Apps for iOS, from Stanford). To find all the content with closed captioning in Movies, TV or iTunes U, click the Power Search link in Quick LInks in the iTunes store, select the category you want to search within from the Results popup, and check the option to search only for closed captioning before you use the Search button.

On iPhone and iPod touch, Select iPod in General Settings and scroll down to the Video section. On iPad look for the switch in Video in General Settings.

Apple does an amazing job with their accessibility features and hopefully even more TV shows and movies will be made available with closed captioning soon.

If you have any other TV, movie, or accessibility tips for iPhone and iPad, let us know!

Source: Inside iTunes

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

iOS 5 beta 3 has an interesting new addition -- Accessibility has been augmented with a gesture based control panel inside “AssistiveTouch” that can reproduce all the functionality of the existing hardware buttons, and much more.

Once turned on in Settings, the control panel can be activated by tapping the overlay on screen. It pops up with a menu containing Gestures, Favorites, Devices, and Home. Gestures has a sub menu for 2, 3, 4, and 5 finger gestures, and once you choose a quantity, blue circles in the appropriate amount appear on screen. Favorites contains defaults like Pinch and Swipe, and any custom gestures you've created. Device replicates the hardware features such as Rotate Screen, Lock Screen, Mute/Unmute, Volume Up/Volume Up, and Shake.

While some may think this heralds Apple ditching hardware buttons, remember, you would still need a way to reset your device if it locks up, to turn off the ringer or change volume if it's in your pocket or purse, and to keep iOS accessible for children and people form whom complex UI and gestures are a barrier to entry.

Still, this could turn out to be a very interesting addition to iOS 5, especially for advanced users who want to have a software-based interface. Most importantly, it shows that Apple -- who is already incredibly far ahead of the competition when it comes to accessibility -- is not slowing down.

[Thanks @kyledziekan]

Trying to read an iBook or Kindle eBook at night and curious how to switch to white text on a black background so as not to strain your eyes or keep others awake from the glare? Luckily iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad have this feature built right in. We'll show you how to enable it after the break!

Because "White on Black" is considered a system-wide feature, so all we need to do is head into Settings.

• Open Settings
• Tap General
• Select Accessibility
• Switch "White on Black" to "ON"
• Exit settings, launch iBooks or Kindle, and enjoy!

Bonus tip: If you want to have white on black as a quick option then place it on your triple click home button.

• Settings
• General
• Accessibility
• Triple click home
• White on Black

There you have it! Now can read your books (or web pages, or email, or anything really) as "White on Black" for those lighting situations that require it. If you have an questions, let us know in the comments below.

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you'd like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it's especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we'll even give ya a reward...)

VoiceOver is part of Apple's accessibility features, a gesture-based way to have your iPhone speak what is written on your screen. First available on the Mac, Apple brought it to the iPhone with iOS 3 and improved it again in iOS 4. It doesn't get the attention of copy/paste or multitasking, but that might simple be because people do not know much about it or how to use it.

For an overview of VoiceOver and the various ways it can be used, stay with us after the break.

What VoiceOver can tell you

VoiceOver can give you the description of all the items on the screen, battery level, status, cell network signals time of day and even let you know if the orientation of your iPhone has changed.

VoiceOver Controls

• Single tap to hear a description of what you have tapped
• Double tap to activate
• Swipe to adjust a slider
• Flick to the left or right to move to the next item on screen.
• Three fingers to scroll

VoiceOver will also deliver contextual information, such as the location of objects on the screen or tell you about adjoining objects. Since you are directly touching the part of the screen you want to have read out loud to you it is much easier to get the information you want faster than with other voice applications.

When you enter text on VoiceOver the letter you press is spoken to you when you touch it and then repeated again when you enter it. This is quite a tedious process but you can have VoiceOver speak the whole word instead. Flicking up and down will move the cursor to the left and right within the text for editing.

VoiceOver will try and predict the word you are typing to make the typing experience less stressful. I find this process very arduous and would rather use a dictation app like Dragon instead.

It uses sound effects to alert you when certain apps are open and can also lower the background music so that you can hear VoiceOver more clearly. When you select something a black rectangle shows on that item.

VoiceOver Adjustments

There are a variety of adjustments you can make to VoiceOver so that it is customized to your needs. You can adjust the speaking rate so it is as slow or quick as you like.

Languages offered

VoiceOver comes in 21 languages: Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Dutch, English (US), English (UK), English (Australian), Finnish, French (Canada), French (France), German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish.

Compatible Apps

• iTunes
• Safari
• Maps
• Mail
• A few others as well

If you're a developer, Apple offers the Accessibility Programming Guide for iOS [developer.apple.com link] to help you add VoiceOver and other accessibility features to your app. If you're not a developer but you have an app you'd really like to see the feature added to, send them that link!

The Rotor

Place two fingers on the iPhone and turn them and you get a dial-like set of options for VoiceOver. This allows you to flick up or down to move through only the text you desire.

The Rotor is especially useful for navigating through a webpage, and options include:

• Lines
• Heading
• Links
• Form Controls
• Tables
• Characters
• Words

Do you ever use VoiceOver and if so how does it work for you? Let me know in the comments below.

[Apple]

TiPb's been saying Apple's accessibility technology is thumbs up for a while now, but the New York Times and legendary film critic Roger Ebert are giving real-world examples of just how good -- and inexpensive -- these new offerings are.

The NYT tells us Kara Lynn was given a deliberately crippled PC for $8,000 for text-to-speech, but instead she bought her own iPhone 3G and a $15 text-to-speech app, that was both less expensive but also provided greater mobility and functionality. (iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 include built-in VoiceOver and other accessibility features).

Ebert wrote in saying he likewise ditched the $8,000 PC after giving it a test drive, and instead went with his own MacBook, which again provided greater features and flexibility.

Again, kudos to Apple for emphasizing accessibility.

[Via AppleInsider]

Speaking of iPhone 3GS accessibility features, it looks like Apple is improving them in iPhone 3.1 Beta 2 by adding a new "triple click" option to the home button to toggle VoiceOver, Toggle White on Black, and Ask (which then will pop up a menu offering Turn VoiceOver On, Turn Zoom On, Turn White on Black On).

Kudos to Apple for not only doing a great job implementing the various accessibility features in iPhone 3GS, but for continuing to improve them via forthcoming firmware.

According to David Pogue in the New York Times, the accessibility features like VoiceOver introduced with the iPhone 3GS make it one of the easiest smartphones for the blind and visually impaired:

First, you tap something to hear it. You can tap icons, words, even the tiny status icons at the top of the screen. As you go, the voice tells you what you’re tapping. “Messages.” “Calendar.” “Mail — 14 new items.” “45 percent battery power.”

Once enabled in the settings, Pogue details how new gestures like double-tap to launch, two-finger upward flick to read, three finger flick to scroll or go to next/previous screen, and three finger triple tap to turn the screen off and save power.

You can also use "the rotor", a two finger circle, to change the way other gestures work -- proofreading text character by character rather than word by word, for example.

Supported languages included Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Dutch, English (US), English (UK), English (Australian), Finnish, French (Canada), French (France), German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish.

For more on VoiceOver, see Apple's overview.