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Touchscreens are great for lots of things, but often it is less efficient to type using one, despite a variety of available accessories. A company called Tactus Technology is working to solve this dilemma and has announced a new product called Phorm, which will provide a tactile keyboard experience for the iPad Mini. The $99 accessory uses a lever that when pressed, exposes a physical keyboard on the iPad's screen. This is done using microfluidic technology to raise and lower buttons on demand. The product is targeted for a summer release, with iPhone and other models to follow.

Valentine's day is right around the corner, as in this Saturday. And if you haven't found a gift yet, you better get to it! Looking for a last minute Valentine's day gift to let your sweetheart know just how you feel about them? Satisfy your lover's sweet tooth with some yummy chocolate goodies! Here are our favorite picks of the finest Valentine's day chocolate gifts that can be ordered from Amazon and shipped straight to your door within a matter of days.

Another week and another round of wild rumor and barely sourced speculation awaits you in this week's Rundown. Let us begin with the stories that may, or may not, have anything to do with that strange camera-laden car mentioned last week.

Having affordable and reliable transportation can be a very liberating experience. Though ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft still have some accessibility challenges to overcome, we've found a lot of creative ways to use the services. Here's five potential uses you may not have thought of. And if you're new to Uber, you can sign up and get a free ride, which is up to $30 as of the time of this post.

The American Printing House for the Blind is researching the possibility of bringing its Nearby Explorer GPS software to iOS devices including the iPhone. This detail is one of many included in its annual report, published to its website each fiscal year. In addition to this possibility, the release of a demo version and international expansion are also on the roadmap. Nearby Explorer is currently available for Android devices for $99 and is also included on the BraillePlus 18 notetaker. We've linked to the entire annual report which includes info on this and many other APH projects.

MIPsoft, the company behind the popular Blindsquare GPS app for the iPhone, Comcast, and Odin Mobile were among this year's winners for the American Foundation for the Blind's Access Awards. The AFB the Blind annually recognizes companies, organizations, and people who have broken down barriers to accessibility in extraordinary ways.

Users of the free NVDA screen reader now have another option for obtaining enhanced voices. Acapela Group is now offering two voice packages, which both include a variety of voice styles and languages and work on up to three computers.

Cambium Learning Group has released version 14 of its popular Kurzweil 1000 OCR program. The popular Windows-based scanning and optical character recognition tool now can create PDF files from extracted images and includes a host of additional improvements which we've listed below. Upgrades from any previous version remain at $125 and are available now.

A team of researchers has recently raised over $10,000 to create an alpha prototype for BLITAB, a full-page braille display project which has been in development for three years. The claim on the project's page as the "world's first tablet for blind people" is perhaps a bit misleading, but the project itself has some lofty goals. The BLITAB would include braille translation features as well as a GPS and support for obtaining information from NFC tags.

Welcome back everyone to the news that was, and wasn't in some cases, for that little 'ol company that has most of the money on the planet. More on that in a moment.

It may be at least 2018 until regulations governing sounds made by quiet cars takes effect. According to Green Car Reports The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has delayed their rulemaking procedures on the issue until the end of 2015, which also has the effect of delaying implementation of the rule. IN 2011, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act became law, a bill which required quiet cars to emit a sound to alert pedestrians including the blind. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated over 11 million vehicles which use alternative fuels were on the road as of 2011, though not all of these vehicles would be considered quiet cars. Check the source link for more details.

A new ultraportable braille display was the biggest news at the Hims booth during the recent Assistive Technology Industry Association conference in Orlando. Named the Smart Beetle for its connection options, it can simultaneously connect to up to 6 devices at once, 5 Bluetooth and one USB 2.0. Beetles have 6 legs, thus the use of the nature-inspired name.

The wildly successful adult party game Cards Against Humanity is now accessible to the blind, thanks to a kit from 64 Oz. Games. The company specializes in making kits which make card and board games accessible, often accomplished by using plastic overlay sleeves. To achieve this, you would purchase the Cards Against Humanity game and then the accessibility kit. It'll be necessary to find a way to read the printed cards so they can be matched with their corresponding braille overlays. Once this is done, you'll have a completely accessible version of one of the most popular games in the world.

Hims is adding another model to its line of Blaze portable DAISY players. The Blaze ET will include additional features including a dictionary, calculator, and other applications. A redesigned layout is also a possibility, given some of the features and requests from users of the original Booksense models. This presentation outline from this week's ATIA conference gives some additional information. No pricing info has been released. We'll be sure to post more about this as our ATIA coverage unfolds. Update: Earlier we reported the inclusion of a Skype application, based on the above link. Hims has now said this feature will not be included, at least for now.

Microsoft stole most of the week's news with their announcement of Windows 10, Office 16 and those Holo Lens thingies. However, we still have some interesting reads this week regardless.

Good things usually come in threes. However, this week sees the release of four new apps for your iDevice of choice.

The field for crowdsourced helper applications is growing rather quickly, and the latest entrant to this category, Specular, is now looking for beta testers. Specular takes elements of some existing services and adds some new twists, allowing blind users to take a picture of something and ask a question via audio. From the description, the app seems a bit more conversational, allowing the sighted or blind user to ask for clarifying information or a better picture. Since the company is looking for beta testers, go ahead and check the link on this post and apply to join the free program for yourself. Both iPhone and Android apps are promised. Only time will tell if all of these new services will survive, but the landscape is certainly becoming interesting.

The Be My Eyes app has become one of the most talked-about app launches for the blind in recent memory, receiving a whirlwind of mainstream attention not seen since the early days of Fleksy. Media sources and users have been weighing in, giving both user testimonials and prognostications of the future's viability.

HumanWare has posted a new version of the software for the New Generation Victor Stream without much fanfare. Version 4.4.12 doesn't include a changelog as of this post but does seem to include some speed improvements and support for FLAC audio files. One Twitter user reports speed improvements when transferring files from the main memory to the SD card. A bug that caused some users to lose their list of podcast feeds also appears to be squashed. Updates for the stream can be downloaded wirelessly, directly from the unit or from this HumanWare page. If you notice other improvements or changes, post them in the comments.

En-Vision America has released a free update to the software for the I.D. Mate Quest Bar Code Scanner which includes some new social features and bug fixes. Users can now share bar code results with the company to help improve the database. In addition, a history mode can be enabled that allows one to listen to the last 30 scanned items. The entire changelog is posted below.