Using Dropbox - iOS8
iFocus Program
Tips on Using the
Vision Accessibility Features in iOS:
Using Dropbox - iOS8
Presented by
Douglas Walker
The Hadley School for the Blind presents iFocus: Tips on Using the Vision Accessibility Features in iOS. In today’s installment, we’ll look at using Dropbox. Hello, my name is Douglas Walker and I am an instructor of Assistive Technology here at the Hadley School for the Blind. Today we are going to be looking at using Dropbox and we will be using the iPhone 6Plus for today’s demonstration.
Now Dropbox is an app that I find myself using almost every day. Now Dropbox is all part of this whole cloud computing world that we’re hearing so much about these days. And of course the thing that I love most about it is that it is free. Dropbox is simply just a way of storing all of our files. Now all of our files are stored off of our computer or device and they are stored on a server or a hard drive if you like out there on the internet. The fact that they’re stored on the internet and not locally on our device means that we’re able to access our files from any computer or from any mobile device.
And of course in our case, the device is our iPhone or iPad or our iPod Touch. It also means that if our computer or our device happens to crash that we won’t lose all of our files, and that is really nice. Now I said that Dropbox is free and it is. However, we’ll be limited to 2 GB of free storage which has been plenty for me because I limit my Dropbox to storing just text type documents. Now if we’ll be using our Dropbox for storing things like videos, photos or maybe larger music files, then we’ll probably want to upgrade our account to a paid account. And right now, we can upgrade to a terabyte which is 1000 GB for $9.99 a month. And that’s a lot of storage.
Now if we feel like we need even more storage than that, Dropbox is offering unlimited storage for $15 a month. So with that, of course, we would never run out. But like I said earlier, I just use the free Dropbox service that gives 2 GB in storage and so far I haven’t needed to upgrade to any additional storage. Now a couple of things that I really like about using Dropbox is the fact that of course all of my files are available across all of my devices and I also like the fact that I have the ability to share files with anyone right from my Dropbox app, and that’s pretty great.
So we can see why I really like this app. Most everyone knows that I’m all about productivity, right. And of course we all love free. You just can’t beat that. Okay, before we actually begin using our Dropbox app, we need to talk about how to set up an account. Now the easiest way to set up an account is right when we first launch our Dropbox app. Setting it up from our app is going to be much more accessible than trying to set up an account on our computer.
So how about we look at how to set up an account. First things first. We first need to go to the app store and of course download the Dropbox app. Now if you aren’t yet familiar with how to use the Apple App Store, it’s your lucky day because we have an iFocus video called Searching and Downloading from the App Store that will help you quickly get familiar with how to use the app store. Okay, for today’s video, we have already downloaded the Dropbox app and it is right here on our desktop. So how about we just flick to it to get started. So we’ll just flick to it.
iPhone Audio
Dropbox. Double tap to open.
Douglas Walker
And we will just single-finger double tap to activate it or to open it. So we’ll just single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
Dropbox. Welcome.
Douglas Walker
Alright, when we first launch our Dropbox app, we’ll be given four pages that we can flick through. Now these pages are designed to give us just a little information about Dropbox. Now we have an adjustable bar at the bottom of our screen here, at the bottom of our page that we can use to navigate through these screens or we can use our three-finger flick to the left or flick to the right to move between these pages. Okay, so let’s just move through these pages to get started. Now we’ve already been placed on the welcome text on our first page. So let’s just right-flick through our screen. So we’ll just right-flick.
iPhone Audio
Swipe to learn more about Dropbox. Swipe from right to left.
Douglas Walker
Okay, and it’s saying we can swipe from right to left to learn more about Dropbox. Okay, so we’ll flick to the right.
iPhone Audio
Already have an account?
Douglas Walker
And we’ll flick again.
iPhone Audio
Sign in button.
Douglas Walker
So we can already sign and if we already have an account. But we haven’t set up an account yet so we’ll flick to the right again.
iPhone Audio
Page one of four adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.
Douglas Walker
We’ll wait for all these hints. So here we are on our adjustable bar so we will just flick up to move to our next or second screen here. And we’ll just flick up.
iPhone Audio
Page two of four.
Douglas Walker
Alright, so here we are on our second page and really all we have on our second and our third pages is just one line of text in the center of our screen and of course we’ll have our adjustable bar at the bottom of our screen. So how about we just drag our finger
down from the top of our screen to find this text. And we’ll just drag our finger down the screen here, so we’ll just drag down.
iPhone Audio
When you take photos, Dropbox keeps them safe for you.
Douglas Walker
Okay, there’s our text and we’re told that we can store of course our photos on Dropbox, and that’s great. Alright, how about we just right-flick from here. So we’ll flick to the right.
iPhone Audio
Page two of four adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.
Douglas Walker
Okay, and there’s our adjustable bar again so let’s just flick up to move to page three. So we’ll just flick up.
iPhone Audio
Page three of four.
Douglas Walker
Alright, let’s just drag our finger down our screen again to find our text. So we’ll just drag our finger down the screen.
iPhone Audio
Access docs from your computer when on the go.
Douglas Walker
Alright, great. And this just tells us that we can also install Dropbox on our computer. I tell you, it really is just so handy to be able to get to all of our files from all of our devices. Of course, that’s why we love Dropbox. Alright, so let’s just right-flick to our adjustable bar down here. So we’ll just right-flick.
iPhone Audio
Page three of four adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.
Douglas Walker
Okay, and we’ll just flick up to find our last information page here. So we’ll just flick up.
iPhone Audio
Page four of four.
Douglas Walker
Okay. Let’s just drag our finger down our screen again to find our text. So we’ll just drag.
iPhone Audio
Your stuff anywhere.
Douglas Walker
Alright, and there’s our text, and of course like we’ve said our Dropbox app allows us to get to all of our files from anywhere. Of course, this is our fourth and last page so we’ll just right-flick through it to see what we have here. So we’ll just right-flick.
iPhone Audio
Sign up button.
Douglas Walker
Okay, and there’s our sign up button here. Let’s just continue to flick down to the bottom to make sure we’ve covered everything on the page. So we’ll flick.
iPhone Audio
Already have an account?
Douglas Walker
Alright, we’ll flick again.
iPhone Audio
Sign in button.
Douglas Walker
And there’s another sign in button here so we’ll flick to the right one last time.
iPhone Audio
Page four of four adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.
Douglas Walker
Alright, and here we are on our adjustable bar of course at the bottom of our screen again. So let’s just left-flick until we get back to our sign up button here. So we’ll just left-flick and will do that.
iPhone Audio
Sign in button.
Douglas Walker
We’ll keep flicking here.
iPhone Audio
Already have an account?
Douglas Walker
And we’ll flick one more time to our sign up button here.
iPhone Audio
Sign up button.
Douglas Walker
Alright, so here we are on our sign up button so let’s go ahead and single-finger double tap to sign up for our new account. So we’ll just single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
Sign up button.
Douglas Walker
We’ll single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
First name text field is editing John.
Douglas Walker
Okay, so we’re now on our sign up screen and we’ve been given for edit fields here at the top of our screen for entering all of our sign of information. Now we’re currently in our first name edit field at the top of our screen and we have been given a standard QWERTY keyboard down here at the bottom of our screen and we use this for entering our text of course. Now there are a couple of other buttons that we need to be aware of and this is a welcome back button in the top left corner of our screen.
Now of course activating this is going to take us back to our welcome screen. And we also have a create button in the top right-hand corner of our screen. Of course we’ll activate this once we’ve finished entering in our information in these for edit fields here. So let’s get started filling them out. Alright, like we said earlier, we are in our first name edit field at the top of our screen here so we just need to type in our first name and we’ll just type Douglas here. So we’ll type Douglas.
iPhone Audio
Capital-D-O-U-G-L-A-S.
Douglas Walker
Okay, now we could just drag our finger up the screen to find our next edit field up here. However, our keyboard actually has a next button now in the bottom right-hand corner of our screen, and that next button is going to of course move us to our next edit field. So we’ll just touch our next button here so let’s just touch our next button.
iPhone Audio
Next.
Douglas Walker
And now we’ll just single-finger double tap, so we’ll do that.
iPhone Audio
Last name, text field is editing, Appleseed.
Douglas Walker
Okay, here we are in our last name edit field so we’ll just enter our last name. And we’ll just type Walker here.
iPhone Audio
Capital-W-A-L-K-E-R.
Douglas Walker
Great, now we’ll just find our next button again down at the bottom right-hand corner of our screen. So we’ll just touch.
iPhone Audio
Next.
Douglas Walker
And we’ll single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
Email. Text field is editing email address.
Douglas Walker
Okay, and we will just need to type our email address in here. Now it’s good to know that this email is going to be our username for our account. So we will just type in our email here. Let’s go ahead and type this.
iPhone Audio
D-O-U-G-L-A-S-@-H-A-D-L-E-Y.E-D-U.
Douglas Walker
Alright, and there it is, . So we’ll find our next button again since we have our email address in there. Our next button here….
iPhone Audio
Next.
Douglas Walker
And of course we we’ll single-finger double tap again.
iPhone Audio
Password secure. Text field is editing. Required.
Douglas Walker
Right, so here we are in our last edit field and we’re on our password edit field. Now it’s really a good idea to come up with a really secure password. I try to make mine at least eight characters long, and I also like to use a combination of letters and numbers. So let’s just type in our password. Now through the magic of video and to protect my privacy, we will just fade out to enter our password and we’ll be right back.
Okay, we are back and we’ve entered our password. Alright, since we’ve entered text into all of our edit fields, we now have a go button instead of having that next button in the bottom right-hand corner of our keyboard. And you know we could either activate our go button or we could find our create button in the top right corner of our screen and activate it. Alright, so let’s go ahead and find that create button. So we’ll just touch in the top right corner of our screen here.
iPhone Audio
Create button.
Douglas Walker
And we will single-finger double tap to finish creating our account. So let’s just single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
Alert. Password, eight characters. Secure text field. Before you can complete your registration, you must accept the Dropbox terms of service.
iPhone Audio
Alright, we’ve now been presented with a dialog box at the bottom of our screen for accepting our Dropbox terms and conditions. And we’ll need to find the agreement button to be able to finalize the acceptance of our new account. So we will just flick to the right to find our I agree button. So we’ll just right-flick.
iPhone Audio
I agree button.
Douglas Walker
Okay. There’s our agreement button. Now we do have two more buttons in this dialog box. We have a view terms button and of course a cancel button. However, we’re already on our I agree button so we’ll just single-finger double tap to agree to our Dropbox terms and to finalize our new account. So let’s just single-finger double tap.
iPhone Audio
Dropbox. More actions menu button.
Douglas Walker
Alright, our Dropbox is now all setup and we are ready to begin using it. Okay, right now we don’t have any files or folders within the app or in the cloud so to speak. So we are going to first explore our Dropbox interface here. Then we’ll look at how to import and export files with our Dropbox app. Okay, when our app first opens, we’re usually placed on a more actions button, and this button is at the top right corner of our screen.