Transcripts of Living Blindfully are made possible by Pneuma Solutions, a global leader in accessible cloud technologies. On the web at http://PneumaSolutions.com.
You can read the full transcript below, download the transcript in Microsoft Word format, or download the transcript as an accessible PDF file.
Contents
Some Recognition at a Special Time.. 3
Bonnie and Jonathan’s NFB Convention 2024 Audio Diary. 31
NFB Day 4, Including a Mini Review of the Helptech Activator Pro 80-cell Braille Display. 47
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Final Thoughts. 58
Welcome to 291
[music]
Voiceover: From Wellington, New Zealand, to the world, it’s Living Blindfully – living your best life with blindness or low vision. Here is your host, Jonathan Mosen.
Hello!
It’s been a special week of celebration and recognition as I approach the 25th anniversary of my first internet-based interview for the blind community. We speak with that first guest once again, Doug Geoffray of Microsoft, and Bonnie and I publish another NFB convention audio diary.
It’s episode 291 this week. And as I mentioned in 290, there’s no area codes in the North American Numbering Plan starting with 29-anything.
So we’re moving right along, and we’re going to the country code 291, which belongs to Eritrea. I must admit, I don’t know a lot about it, so I thought we’d ask the GP.
Hey, GP, how you doing?
GP: I’m doing well. Thanks for asking. How about you, Jonathan? Anything exciting happening today?
Jonathan: Mate, you would not believe it. And you are talking once again on the Living Blindfully podcast, being beamed out to 113 countries.
GP: That’s fantastic, Jonathan. It’s amazing to see how far your podcast has reached. What’s the topic for this episode?
Jonathan: I’ll tell you in a bit. But right now, I’m more interested in some facts about Eritrea, which is country code 291. What can you tell us about Eritrea, GP?
GP: Eritrea is a country located in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti to the southeast. Its eastern and northeastern borders are along the Red Sea, giving it significant strategic importance.
Here are some key facts about Eritrea:
Capital – Asmara, known for its Italian colonial buildings and Art Deco architecture.
Population – approximately 6 million people.
Languages – The official languages are Tigrinya, Arabic, and English. There are also several local languages spoken including Tigre, Kunama, and Saho.
Independence – Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, after a 30-year war.
Economy – Eritrea’s economy is based on agriculture, mining (especially gold and copper), and some manufacturing. The country also has significant potential for tourism due to its rich history and beautiful coastline along the Red Sea.
Culture – Eritrea has a diverse cultural heritage, influenced by its various ethnic groups and history of colonization by Italy. Traditional music, dance, and festivals play an important role in Eritrean culture.
Challenges – Eritrea faces several challenges including political repression, limited press freedom, and economic difficulties. Many Eritreans have fled the country due to compulsory military service and lack of political freedoms. Eritrea is a fascinating country with a complex history and rich cultural diversity.
Jonathan: That was most informative as always, GP. I appreciate it. You have an awesome day.
GP: I’m glad you found it informative, Jonathan. Have a fantastic day yourself.
[music]
Advertisement: I am very grateful to Pneuma Solutions who continue to sponsor the all-important transcripts of Living Blindfully.
When I was at the NFB convention, not only did Mike Calvo buy me lunch (so he’s a good man for doing that. Thank you, Mike.), I also met a lot of people who said, “Sometimes, I just don’t have time to listen to the podcast, but I always check out the transcript.”
And that’s yet another example of where accessibility benefits all of us. We do the transcripts predominantly to make sure that the deaf-blind community are not left out of what we’re talking about, but it benefits us all. So thank you to Pneuma Solutions.
Aira had a big convention, and I’ve no doubt that we will be talking to Troy Otillio from Aira about that in due course.
But the big announcement for RIM fans is that Aira is going to be supporting RIM. So when you call Aira and you ask for remote assistance on your computer, you will shortly be able to use Remote Incident Manager.
Those of us who use this on a daily basis know that it is by far the easiest, the most accessible remote incident solution. So it’s going to be great. I know that I will use Aira a lot more for computer-related tasks once I’ll be able to use RIM.
If you’re an Aira user but you’ve not used RIM before, now’s the time to check it out because I think you’ll be very impressed by how accessible it is. And you get RIM by going to GetRIM.app, and be prepared for the Aira juggernaut. That’s G-E-T-R-I-M.app.
Some Recognition at a Special Time
Well, we’re back in the freezing winter of Wellington, New Zealand after being in the hot humidity of Florida with a lot of great recordings. The Zoom H6 Essential performed very well, and you’ll hear that in action over the next few weeks and months. We will stagger what was recorded at NFB because there are current events that come up and they will take precedence, but I’m sure that you’ll enjoy some of the interesting people that I got to sit down and talk with.
This episode of the podcast is a bit unusual because it’s celebrating quite a bit. It’s celebrating a couple of great milestones that I’ve had the privilege of experiencing over the last week. And also, it’s celebrating an important 25th anniversary.
Anybody remember this?
[music]
Even if you do remember that, that’s probably the first time you’ve heard it in stereo. That is the Music to Blind Line, the very first global call-in show for the blind community which I began 25 years ago on the 17th of July. Hard to believe 25 years have passed. And we’ll be talking a bit more about that with the first ever guest on Blind Line a little bit later.
Later in the year, it’ll also be 25 years since ACB Radio started.
It was particularly special to receive some recognition this week, the first for Living Blindfully, and the second for the contributions that I’ve been able to make over the years.
On Monday, the 8th of July, at the National Federation of the Blind’s convention in Orlando in Florida, it was my great honor to be one of the recipients of this year’s Jacob Bolotin Awards.
Jacob Bolotin lived between 1888 and 1924, so he did not have a long life. He was a pioneering blind physician in the United States, and he was recognized for his remarkable achievements in medicine.
He also happened to be blind. He was born in Chicago to immigrant parents, and he faced significant challenges and skepticism because of his blindness.
But Dr. Bolotin did not allow the tyranny of low expectations to hold him back. He excelled academically. He excelled in everything he did.
His journey began with his studies at the Illinois School for the Blind; and later, at the Chicago College of Medicine. He graduated with honors in 1912, becoming one of the first blind physicians in the world. He specialised, by the way, in diseases of the heart and lungs, and was known for his exceptional diagnostic abilities and bedside manner.
In addition to his medical practice, Dr. Bolotin was a passionate advocate for the blind community. He gave lectures and speeches highlighting the capabilities of blind individuals and advocating for their integration into society. His work helps to challenge and change public perceptions of blindness and disabilities in general.
As you can appreciate, Dr. Bolotin is someone I admire very much. That admiration is shared by the National Federation of the Blind who established the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards, which recognize individuals and organizations that significantly contribute to the advancement of the blind community.
Looking through the individuals and organizations who’ve received the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards from the National Federation of the Blind, I am incredibly honored that Living Blindfully was the recipient of an award this year. And I was honored to sit with my fellow recipients and frankly, pretty much be in awe that I was up there with them.
What I’d like to do is play from the National Federation of the Blind’s general session recording, the presentation of the video, which tells you about all the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award winners this year. And then, we’ll cut to the comments and my acceptance of the award on behalf of the Living Blindfully community, which, since you’re listening, includes you.
[start of NFB general session recording]
[music]
Voiceover: During the following presentation, names and logos of organizations appear on screen as they are mentioned, and pictures of individuals appear as they speak.
Federationists and guests, the National Federation of the Blind is proud to introduce the recipients of our 17th Annual Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards, made possible in part by the generous support of the Alfred and Rosalind Perlman Trust and the Santa Barbara Foundation.
These individuals and organizations have broken down barriers faced by blind people in innovative ways, changed negative perceptions of blindness and blind people, and pushed past existing boundaries to motivate blind people to achieve new heights. The 2 individual winners are:
- Deborah Kendrick – a blind writer whose body of work is informed and represented the blind and people with disabilities, including a syndicated newspaper column.
Deborah: The purpose of it, as the purpose of probably all of the writing that I’ve done in one way or another, is to connect people to people and let people understand in a visceral way that those of us who are blind or have other disabilities are more the same than we are different from others. The only real condition that matters is the human condition.
Voiceover: • Donna Posont, who leads the innovative Blind Birding and Beyond Program at the Environmental Interpretive Center of the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Donna: When I started out, I wanted to learn nature as a blind person. And then, I wanted to learn it in a way so that I could understand how to share it with other blind people.
And through that, I see how much it helps improve skills of blindness, like when children or adults learn how to identify a bird by hearing their sound, they get excited and they gain confidence. And when we go through the woods, and we walk the trails, and we show them that they don’t have to use sighted guide. They can follow the edge of the trail, and they can hear the sound in the wind, they can hear where the birds are, and they gain a lot of confidence from that. Because they often don’t have that opportunity to walk trails and walk in the woods. And it makes it better when they’re walking out on the sidewalks in the city because they gain that level of confidence for using their cane.
Voiceover: Our 2 organizational winners are:
- Handid Braille Services, for providing quality Braille transcription in multiple languages. Here’s founder, Don Winiecki.
Don: The company as a non-profit has grown quite a bit. And without really planning for it, I’ve become a provider of non-English Braille, as well as Unified English Braille. And I specialize in Braille for languages that don’t use the Latin symbol system in their print alphabet, So like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Farsi, and on and on. And I do a bunch of that stuff now, as well as the more common non-English languages like Spanish, French, and German.
We hear over and over again, nothing about us without us, and I’m very sensitive to that idea. I don’t want to claim that I’m doing things for other people in a sense that I’m trying to take care of them. No, I’m doing things for people so that they can achieve more. And being a background part of that is such a rewarding thought, and the acknowledgement that the NFB provides is just for the ratification of that.
Voiceover: • Living Blindfully – a global podcast about living your best life with blindness and low vision. Here’s producer and host, Jonathan Mosen.
Jonathan: I interview a lot of movers and shakers for the podcast. I take a long time before each interview to do my research, and I ask the questions that I think listeners want me to ask. So I aim to be fair, but also fearless.
Another element of the show is that we have listeners who contribute from all over the world. And I’m proud that in an era where people do a lot of yelling at each other online, we have maintained a climate of respectful but robust debate.
To convey just how much receiving a Bolotin Award means to me, I have to be a bit vulnerable. Growing up as a blind teenager in New Zealand back in the 80s, I had so many big dreams, and I was confident that they were realistic dreams.
But I quickly discovered that my biggest problem wasn’t my blindness, it was other people’s limiting perceptions of it. I actually became very depressed about this.
When I was 17 (so that’s in 1986), I got a 1200 baud modem, and I started logging on to bulletin boards using technology called FidoNet. And ultimately, I got on to an online service called the CompuServe Information Service.
It was from being online that I learned about the Federation, and it changed my life. Actually, if I’m being absolutely honest, I think knowing that there were other people out there who felt about blindness the way I feel about blindness saved my life.
So to be recognized by the Federation with one of its most prestigious awards means more to me than I have the words to express, and it’s an honor I never expected.
Voiceover: These winners each will receive a trophy, and a monetary prize to advance their work to help blind people live the lives we want.
Now, the National Federation of the Blind proudly presents them with their Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards.
[end of video]
Everette Bacon: Alright, we have one last award to give. Last but certainly not least, our last or second organizational award, I’m excited to give to Living Blindfully, Jonathan Mosen.
[applause]
An example of the podcast remaining true to its values is that Living Blindfully boasts a commitment that everyone working on the podcast will be blind. The podcast now employs a transcriber and an audio editor, both of whom are blind themselves.
[applause]
Living Blindfully is clear about its audience. It is not seeking to explain blindness to sighted people, or to hold back on the important issues. Living blindfully is unashamedly our place, our issues.
I’m excited to give an award of $15,000 to my friend, Jonathan Mosen, Living Blindfully.
[applause]
Jonathan: So at this point, I’m waiting to wake up [laughs], like I’ve been dreaming this.
This is incredibly special, so thank you so much to the Bolotin Committee and the National Federation of the Blind in general for this award.
[applause]
You know, media usually ignores us. And when it doesn’t, we often wish it did…
[laughter]
because it frequently underestimates us, it misrepresents us, and far too often, it would have people believe that you mustn’t say that dreaded “b” word, “blind”. [laughter]
I was observing yesterday. Living visually impairedly just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? [laughter] So Living Blindfully seeks to give you an oasis from all that.
Now, in humbly accepting this award on behalf of the members of our Living Blindfully team, I want to mention them by name. It includes Hannah Mae Aldeza who produces our transcripts so that in particular, deaf-blind people aren’t excluded from the conversation. Because so often, deaf-blind people are excluded from the conversation, and it’s not right.
[applause]
And accessibility has benefits because it means that we also, in that process, build an extensive searchable repository of information and opinion on the issues of the day.
And also, Derek Lane, a gifted and brilliant audio…
[yeah! from a female audience]
Got some Derek fans out there? Okay, yeah. [laughs]
Our gifted and brilliant audio engineer who speeds up the production of the show by editing some of the interviews.
And of course, my wife Bonnie, who is here with us today to see Living Blindfully get this award. I love you so much!
[applause]
And finally, I accept it on behalf of our listeners in over 113 countries now.
[applause]
Yup, good to know some of you are out there. And some of you share your thoughts on the issues that we cover, and the things that matter to us.
So thank you so much again for recognizing Living Blindfully.
And I’ll conclude my acceptance with the way I conclude every episode. Remember that when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
[applause]
Everette: You know, congratulations to all of these winners!
President Ricco pointed out when I said my friend, “He’s everybody’s friend.”, and that’s for sure.
[applause]
Jonathan Mosen is everyone’s friend. I’m just lucky to be one of them.
So well, let’s do one big round of applause for all of these winners. Let’s do it.
[applause]
[end of NFB general session recording]
Jonathan: The voice of Everette Bacon, the chairman of the Bolotin Committee. And he’s also now beginning his tenure as second vice president of the National Federation of the Blind. So congratulations for that, Everette, as well.
You can imagine my surprise and delight when I found out that not only was I receiving a Bolotin Award from the National Federation of the Blind on behalf of Living Blindfully, but that I had been nominated individually to receive the American Council of the Blind’s Robert S. Bray Award.
Now, back when I was running ACB Radio in 2001, they did present me with the Vernon Henley Media Award. And I have that plaque here in my office. It’s something that I cherish.
And it was an honor to learn that I was being bestowed with this award in 2024. The award is named after Robert S. Bray. He was the first director of the Library of Congress’s National Library Service, and this award can be given to an individual or an organization that has made a significant contribution to improving library services, information technology, or communication access. The award was presented at the banquet of ACB on the 11th of July, and here’s how it happened.
[start of ACB banquet recording]
Female speaker 1: Now, it’s the Robert S. Bray Award.
This individual’s presence on the World Wide Web is ever-present. And in fact, it would be hard to find many blind or low vision people who cannot point to this individual with gratitude as the person who introduced them to various assistive technology.
This person first helped ACB enter the arena of internet radio with programming on ACB Radio, and has favorably expanded and enhanced ACB’s reputation across the world.
This individual has been making life better for people who are blind by informing us, entertaining us, encouraging us to share what we love, know, what we read, how we feel, and why we celebrate with one another.
This person’s blog post is widely read, and many of us can point to the things we have learned that have changed our lives for the better. The information this individual has provided is especially important to people with dual sensory loss. This individual has launched a podcast that provides 2 hours of thoroughly relevant information for people who are blind every week.
And no matter where they live, what organization they do or don’t belong to, and wherever they are in their blindness journey, this person truly delegates his life to working with, and for people who are blind. This person has made a real difference in many of our lives.
Congratulations to Jonathan Mosen!
[applause]
Do we have him on Zoom, I believe?
Female speaker 2: Yes, he is.
Female speaker 1: And we’ll have Sharon read the plaque.
Sharon: Robert S. Bray Award, presented to Jonathan Mosen, in recognition of his many years of improving the accessibility of technology for blind people throughout the world. Jacksonville, Florida, July 11th, 2024.
[applause]
Jonathan: Thank you so much!
Good evening again, ACB!
Thank you very much to the American Council of the Blind for this award, which I’m honored to accept with gratitude.
There is, of course, a difference between awards and rewards. Awards like this are very special and not very frequent. But I’m fortunate to be rewarded by the work that I’ve done every day, particularly through internet radio projects I’ve established, or tutorials that I’ve put together, or things that I’ve said or written that have made people think. I think my greatest reward is seeing other blind people thriving, perhaps doing things that they always wanted to do, but weren’t sure that they could. Playing a role in helping someone live their best life is a privilege.
It’s particularly special to me to receive such a prestigious award in this of all years because next Wednesday will be the 20th anniversary of the first episode of the first ever global call-in show for the blind community, Blind Line. Doug Geoffray, then of GW Micro was my first guest, and man, was I nervous.
[laughter]
And on the 1st of December of this year, It will be the 25th anniversary of me pressing the button that launched ACB Radio.
[applause]
That was a special time because it was devising the playbook, building the infrastructure, and figuring out what global blindness media should be like. ACB can be rightly proud of the world-leading role that it played in developing blindness media for the internet age. It was exciting, it was frenetic, innovative, and a special time, and it raised ACB’s global profile significantly. I have many fond memories of the people that I worked with and the conventions that I covered.
No one is an island. So in accepting this award, I do so with thanks for the many people that I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years. In particular, I want to thank the ACB Radio broadcasters during my tenure, the amazing dedicated team of fun guys at Mushroom FM, and our little Living Blindfully team who produce content that is now heard in 113 countries.
[applause]
You don’t do these things with any expectation that you’ll receive an award like this one. At least, I don’t. But when they happen, being acknowledged by your peers in this way is incredibly special, and it means a great deal to me. It strengthens my determination to ensure that every blind person feels empowered to assert their worth with confidence, and has the tools and high expectations to live their best life. So thank you very much once again.
[applause]
[end of ACB banquet recording]
Oh, I can’t believe in the heat of the live moment there that I said it was the 20th anniversary of Blind Line. Of course, it is the 25th, as we’re about to find out.
So thank you once again to the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind.
Awards like this are not why we do what we do. But when they happen, it really is pretty sweet.
Advertisement: Living Blindfully is brought to you in part by Turtleback, the original manufacturer of leather cases for notetakers since 2003.
Now back then, I was managing blindness products at Pulse Data International, working with Russell Smith. And we never regretted choosing Turtleback because the name’s synonymous with quality manufacturing, quality service.
There’s a wide range of leather cases available for the products you use every day.
Check them out. TurtlebackLV.com. That’s all one word. TurtlebackLV.com, and be sure to use the coupon code LB12. That’s LB for Living Blindfully, and the number 12, and you’ll get 12% off at checkout.
If you prefer, give their friendly team a call at 855-915-0005. That’s 855-915-0005.
That coupon code again, LB12, for 12% off at checkout at TurtlebackLV.com.
Doug Geoffray, 25 Years After That First Blind Line Interview, Talks About Accessibility and AI at Microsoft
25 years ago, in mid-1999, I started the first global call-in show exclusively for the blind community. It was called Blind Line, and it was hosted on my radio station which I started as a hobby on low-power FM in Wellington, and then took global on the internet.
The station was called MBS FM. Now, MBS stood, rather pretentiously, for the Mosen Broadcasting System, which was quite a grand name for a radio station coming out of a Pentium computer with 15 gigabytes of disk space (that was a lot of disk space back then) and a low-power FM antenna on the roof.
Initially, if you wanted to call into Blind Line, you just called a New Zealand number on your phone. Long distance calls to New Zealand weren’t cheap back then, but people did call in large number to participate in the first ever global radio conversation for the blind community.
Well, after running Blind Line as a free-for-all call-in show for a few weeks, I decided to take it up a notch and start having featured guests. For my first guest, I wanted a real mover and shaker, someone everyone in the blind community knew. So after quite a bit of procrastination and hesitation, I finally plucked up the courage to press send on an email to Doug Geoffray of GW Micro, asking if he’d be my first guest. Given how experimental and rough and ready the whole thing was, it was very kind of him to do it.
I didn’t have any fancy gear. I just connected a telephone patch to the microphone input of my Sound Blaster card and talked through the mouthpiece of my telephone.
[start of Blind Line interview recording]
Jonathan: Does it ever weigh heavily on you that so many blind people are actually depending on you and your company for their jobs, their livelihood, their access to information?
Doug: Well, there are times when that’s actually a big thrill. I mean, it’s great to be able to say that we can do that. We can help blind people get jobs and do things.
But on the flip side, as you mentioned, it’s difficult because we are getting a lot of requests from a lot of blind people and saying if you don’t do this, I’m going to lose my job. So that does become extremely stressful.
[end of Blind Line interview recording]
And yet, people listened in large numbers by 1999 standards, and Doug was very gracious. I don’t think either of us quite knew what we were starting.
Well, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Doug and I, at different times, have been collaborators, competitors, and briefly even colleagues.
And yet, one thing has been constant. Doug Geoffray has made an enormous contribution to the advancement of screen reading technology, and he continues to do that to this day.
For some years, Doug’s worked at Microsoft. And every so often, I’m flattered to hear that he takes my name in vain to make a point.
25 years on, it was important to me that I do yet another interview with Doug, and we’ve done many interviews in the last quarter of a century. While we may reminisce a little at the beginning, there is plenty of innovative technology from Microsoft to occupy most of our time.
So welcome back, Doug. It’s been an amazing 25 years.
Doug: Well thank you, Jonathan! That was quite the intro.
I don’t know why we waited 25 years to get back together again. I don’t know. Something I said the first time? [laughs]
Jonathan: Oh, we’ve done it a few times. I remember talking to you about different versions of Window Eyes and all kinds of stuff like that over the years on Main Menu, that kind of stuff.
And I don’t know how vividly you recall that first interview. But I’ve got to tell you, I was so nervous. I was totally daunted by the prospect of interviewing you. [laughs]
Doug: [laughs] Well, you had me convinced. I thought you were very professional. I thought you had this giant recording studio. So you were very good.
Jonathan: Oh man. Some of the best radio comes out of boxes. And that literally was just a little Pentium box back then, but it was amazing.
Doug: [laughs]
Jonathan: I listened to that interview the other day. We talked about your backstory, and all the amazing technology that was going on in 1999, and we were talking about how we’d come a long way.
But my goodness, I don’t think that any of us could have predicted AI and some of the incredible things that we’re dealing with now. And I think one of the really positive things is the way that assistive technology companies have had such good cooperation with Microsoft.
Because when we were talking in 1999, I think there might have been Microsoft Active Accessibility at that time. But really, there was a lot of hackery going on in the best possible use of the term, to get into the operating system, wasn’t there?
Doug: Oh, absolutely. We would just kind of dig under any rock we could to be able to get any sort of information because there was no one specific standard. So there were certain things we could do, but not everybody conformed to that, and it just wasn’t rich enough. So yeah, we did anything and everything. And screen readers today still, unfortunately, have to do that in certain cases.
Jonathan: And in those days, Microsoft was supportive of screen readers, and they say it’s really great what you guys are doing. And I know that you had access to some engineers.
But they didn’t kind of embrace accessibility at the core level in the same way that they have now. I mean, now, you’d have to say accessibility is a core part of Microsoft’s DNA. It’s a very different kind of culture.
Doug: Oh, absolutely. When I first started back in the GW Micro days working with Microsoft, I always worked with them ever since we started in 1990. And there was one individual, Greg Lowney, he was the entire accessibility voice for Microsoft, if you can imagine that.
And now, that would be unthinkable. So now, every team has an accessibility evangelist that’s working through, and accessibility is just kind of in the DNA of Microsoft at this point.
Jonathan: And then, there’s you. So what are you doing at Microsoft? What contribution do you make?
Doug: I’ve actually been at Microsoft for 7 years. I started working for the Narrator team at first, and the UIA team, the UI automation team for the accessibility API. Worked with them for about 4 years.
And then, I jumped over to the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk for about 9 months, just to kind of interact with customers and get some feedback of what’s going on with Microsoft from the outside.
And then, the last 2 years, I’ve actually been in the accessibility team here on the Experiences and Devices Group, the E&D group, which is responsible for most of the desktop apps, Office, most desktop apps. If it’s web-based, it’s probably not under E&D, but there’s a few exceptions to that.
So I’ve 7 years and 42 years in the industry. It’s been fun.
Jonathan: I think it is important to give credit where it’s due as well, because we get a lot of calls here from blind people who have issues from time to time.
But sometimes, when a blind person seeks technical support, it can be a very frustrating experience because they have to explain that they’re blind. And sometimes, you get a tech support person on the other end who actually apologizes and says oh, I’m sorry you’re blind, and then still asks visual questions.
I have really appreciated the quality of the support on the few occasions that I’ve had to call the Disability Answer Desk. I’m the kind of person who can generally solve my own tech problems. So when I call, it’s usually a really hairy kind of problem. [laughs]
And yet, the fact that you are talking to somebody who understands what JAWS is or what NVDA is, and how you, as a screen reader, interact with the application that you’re using or the operating system that you’re using makes an enormous difference. And it’s to Microsoft’s great credit that they’ve done that.
Doug: Absolutely. I was amazed even before I joined Microsoft and I heard of the Disability Answer Desk, and that any individual with any disability can call up using any assistive technology, and the person on the other end can actually interact with you knowing what that technology is, and be able to work with you, and not saying oh, you’re using product X. well, that’s not Microsoft. That’s not our deal. That’s not how they run. It’s amazing that they can keep that up, and the volume that comes in.
And then, the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk for enterprise customers as well. It’s just amazing how they can keep up with all that.
Jonathan: Yeah. That’s a very good point that you make, actually, because it is easy for blind people to get bounced. There were times when you’d call your screen reader vendor and they’d say well, we can’t really help you with this because it’s a problem with the application that you’re using. You’d call the vendor for the application you were using, and get bounced back. But Microsoft does not do that.
Doug: Exactly. And again, back in my GW Micro days, when somebody did call the Disability Answer Desk. And let’s say back then, they had some issue with Window Eyes. They would work with them trying to resolve that. But if they determined yeah, this likely maybe is a Window Eyes issue, then they would contact us and say hey, we’ve got this customer who has this problem. So it just allows the customer to have 1-stop shop, as opposed to having to figure out okay, it’s this. I’ve got to call this guy, or that guy. It’s just call one number.
Jonathan: Now, there aren’t many sighted people who can do this. Eric Damery is one. Russell Smith, who I still miss very much was one. You are one. You are definitely someone who thinks like a blind screen reader user thinks. You seem intuitively to know what a good user experience is like.
How did you get there? Is it just as simple as being around a lot of blind people for long enough, or is it more complex than that?
Doug: I think immersing yourself in that experience certainly helps.
My very first experience was way back in 1982, with a blind individual, Bill Grimm, who started Computer Aids Corporation. I owe really where I am today to him, who was a mentor to me. He was my boss. He was blind. He was dependent on this technology as well. And that, just working with him day after day after day, you realize well, wait a minute. I took this for granted or whatever. And so just immersing yourself in it for 42 years, [laughs] you become good at anything. And I just attribute everything to all the individuals who worked with me over the years and have helped me. And I just try to work with them as well, just try to get in their shoes and understand the problems that they have.
Jonathan: Yeah. Because a lot of people make the assumption initially, when they come into this industry, that it’s as simple as just being as verbose as possible. And those of us who need to get our work done know that it isn’t that simple.
I have made the observation on the show before, and you’ve obviously picked up on this comment of mine that sometimes, I feel like some Microsoft products are saying too much. And I’ve described that as killing us with kindness.
Yet, my excess verbiage may be someone else’s essential information. That’s the dilemma.
Is there any sort of objective methodology that can be applied to this efficiently, or is it kind of gut instinct in the end?
Doug: There’s a lot of gut instinct in there, for sure. And you’re absolutely right. I quote you many times.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Doug: There’s a blind user who’s very influential in the industry, and he’s saying, “Stop killing us with kindness.” I quoted that many many times, and will continue to do that.
And a good example of this is just what we call the confirmation of action. When you issue a command and you hear nothing, that’s not good, right? We need a confirmation of some sort. But do you need a paragraph of text to tell you what you just did, or could a couple words tell you what you did? If you toggle bold on and off, do you want to hear “bold on”, “bold off”, or do you want to hear “bold is enabled”, “bold is disabled”? Keep it short, concise, but very informative to get what’s done.
And if you enact something, let’s say you hit a copy button or something. Do you want to be told that the information was copied, and yet focus moves off to something else, and then you hear the focus? Or is the focus move enough?
If you hit copy and focus moves to something else, to me, that’s the confirmation. You didn’t get an error. You know you invoked the button because focus moved, as expected, to wherever it goes after you did that.
And so I’m educating the teams to, okay, you think a blind person may need all this extra information? They don’t. Let’s keep it concise, just as short as possible, to keep them efficient. Some of the things that we constantly talk about here in the accessibility group is we want things to be understandable, efficient, and habituating. And how can you be efficient if you’re just blabbing these unnecessary things to the user, or you’re providing information to a screen reader user that a sighted user doesn’t. If you didn’t think it was important enough for a sighted user, why do you think it’s important for a screen reader user? And so just things like that.
And that’s what I really love about the job that I’m in now, is I have that position to work with product teams, educate them, and set the guidelines that Microsoft should be using for all these different things that come up – this being one category, confirmation of action.
Jonathan: And how much is this the screen reader vendors’ responsibility to give people control over this verbosity?
To give you an example of this, I personally find the “loading page” messages and other status messages from Microsoft Edge way over the top. I mean, I got by without them for a very long time. So when I hear “loading page”, “load complete”, … I know the load’s complete because the page starts to talk. So for me, the load complete is redundant.
And yet, when I say this to some people, they say, “I really like that. I find it helpful to know what’s going on.”
But what then happens is that people like me agitate to Vispero, and they spend development time. And, you know, they don’t have a massive number of developers like big companies such as Microsoft do. They allocate some development time to give people like me a user interface to get control over the verbosity.
Should that be a Microsoft function? Why not have an accessibility set of options in Edge itself that control how much verbosity is sent to all screen readers?
Doug: Yeah. One, they would probably never get it right, right? I mean, they would never get it to where everybody is happy. You’re always going to have the person that wants this, or doesn’t want that, that type of thing.
So, and what I typically argue within Microsoft is that if each individual product has to go to that level, one, it’s maybe difficult to discover, it’s difficult to keep habituating (that goes back to my word again). So you can’t keep it consistent across the different applications, and it puts a lot of burden on the user to figure out where those are, what the terminology is for that app, or this app. Versus if we can provide a mechanism of exposing this information in a documented way and give some context to what that content is so they don’t have to look at a string that could be localized in many languages and say oh, bold on, I don’t want to hear that, so I’m going to block off the word bold on. But in German, it’s something else.
So we provide the APIs that give them context of what’s happening without parsing the string, and then allow the screen reader, (as some have done already, and I’m hoping that we can even enhance that over time) to allow the user to either filter certain things out that they don’t want, or replace it. Or in Braille, let’s do it this way. In speech, let’s do it that way. Which, by the way, how would Edge ever do that, right? How is it going to say oh. In Braille, we want you to do this. But in speech, we want you to do that, where a screen reader can be smart enough to do those kind of things.
Jonathan: That’s a very good point. And actually, I do have different information displayed on my Braille display compared with what is spoken. So I take that point.
The one that’s really interesting to me at the moment (I think it’s an insider build of Windows) is when I load a folder, it says “working on it” before I get to the folder. [laughs] I’m not quite sure what the purpose of that one is.
Doug: That was a very well-intended sighted user who thought, this would be very helpful to a screen reader user. And the feedback like yours… Because I didn’t notice it myself, So I wasn’t aware of it until you brought it to my attention. We brought it to the team’s attention, and I believe that they are resolving that.
Jonathan: Marvelous!
Alright. I want to talk about AI at length because AI is changing our lives. It’s a really exciting time.
Microsoft is doing some important work in this space, and there are quite a few AI products from Microsoft which are branded CoPilot. I want to spend most of our time talking about Office. But of course, there is also CoPilot built into Windows and Edge.
Could we talk a little bit about CoPilot in the operating system and in the Microsoft browser first, in terms of what you might do with that, why it adds value.
Doug: Well, all the CoPilots are designed in the space that they’re in to enhance that situation. So if you’re doing CoPilot in Word, it’s designed to really help you with that Word document. If you’re in Windows, it’s kind of designed to help you kind of all up on Windows and that type of thing.
Part of what’s happening with these CoPilots is they are changing constantly. They’re looking at how are users using it, what do users really want out of it, how are they benefiting, What do they like, dislike, those types of things.
They’re constantly changing. So even what I say today may not be true a week from today as well, because we are listening and trying to figure out what really is going to help people. But again, they’re mainly designed for wherever the space is that you’re invoking that CoPilot.
My job is to work with all these individual teams, whether they’re Office, or Windows, or Edge or whoever, and try to make it, again, my word, habituating, efficient, and of course, understandable as you’re dealing with all these individual CoPilots. you don’t have to say oh, let’s see. I’m in Edge Copilot. I got to go do this to enact it. Or oh, I’m in Word. I got to go do this. Let’s try to keep it as consistent and habituating as possible. So that’s kind of my work as we go through it.
Jonathan: One of the things that I’ve been hearing about on social media recently is obviously, Microsoft is introducing a CoPilot key, which it’s working with some of its hardware partners on. And also, it is available in the new Surface device, I think, this dedicated CoPilot button, which gives it prominence.
But I understand the Windows C CoPilot shortcut might be under some threat, that it’s disappeared in some of the insider builds. Do you know about that? Is that something you have any information on, in terms of whether we might see that Windows C key coming back?
Doug: I know that there was a lot of pushback when they announced that the Windows C was being removed, and they’re definitely listening to that feedback.
Jonathan: Okay.
Doug: And so I honestly don’t know where it will end up, if they will bring that back.
Right now, what they’re saying is Windows C is going away. You just need to focus the taskbar. So you could do a Windows T, I believe it is, and then arrow to the CoPilot and hit enter to engage it, which isn’t necessarily as quickly. Or you have the CoPilot key if you’ve got a hardware device that supports it directly.
So a lot of this is we want feedback. We want to hear from the users if they don’t like something, or the direction that Microsoft is going. It’s amazing how now that i’m on the inside, how i see them actually listen and react to the feedback that users are giving.
Jonathan: How do people provide it? Because I think some people think well, Microsoft’s a huge company. Is it really going to be interested in a user like me? What’s the best way to get feedback to Microsoft in a way that will resonate?
Doug: And that was kind of exactly my thought too, when I was on the outside of Microsoft.
But now that I’m on the inside, … Especially when I was in the Narrator team, for example, we would go through (on a daily basis) all of the feedback that was generated specifically for Narrator at that time. And we, as a team, would sit down, and we would look at all of that and determine, okay. Is this a bug, is this a feature request, or whatever, and seriously make decisions based on that.
And that was done in that case. That was through the Feedback Hub. So you could do Windows F, for example, and bring up the Feedback Hub, and it helps drill down specifically the scenario that you’re talking about, and allows you to type in specific comments about the situation you were just in, or the feature that you’d love to have, or whatever that you could do.
But with CoPilot too, you also have the like and dislike buttons. Visually, they’re shown as thumbs up, thumbs down. You can invoke those buttons, and that will initiate a dialog that will allow you to, again, provide feedback and say what you liked or what you didn’t like about this experience. And that gets submitted to the appropriate teams for that CoPilot.
So again, don’t think that it will get lost in the Ethernet out there. It will actually be looked at by the appropriate team, and hard decisions are made based on the feedback.
Obviously, we can’t always respond to the one-offs. But we look for groupings of feedback, things that are coming in consistently like Windows C, those kind of things. Enough people are upset or wish something would change? Likely, it’s going to change.
Jonathan: Okay, that’s brilliant.
Microsoft Office, then. What is CoPilot for Microsoft Office, and why might I want to use it?
Doug: I’m an old school guy, right? All this stuff is new. And like you said, 25 years ago, back in 99, if you’d have said we could do what we could do today, I’d have just laughed you out of the room.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Doug: So it’s amazing what you can do, and I think, what can possibly happen in 5, 10 years from now as well.
But i’m using it more and more. Specifically, let’s say I’ve got to write a document, or a spec or something that I’m writing. In the old days, I would just have to start from scratch. Maybe I would pull an old one, and try to reuse some of that text.
But now, I can just kind of use CoPilot to draft from scratch a complete new Spec, for example. Or I can say hey. Based on this old spec, create this new spec. So I can provide it the old document and give it a little bit of help saying hey, let’s modify this for that, or whatever. And amazingly, it creates this content that I can then use, tweak, whatever I want to be able to do.
I can also rewrite. So whether I write it or whether CoPilot writes something, I can go down and select something and say hey, let’s just reword this, or let’s tweak it this way. Let’s be more professional, or let’s be a little bit more silly with it or something like that, however you want to do it.
And it can change the tone, change the wording. English is my one and only language, but I’m not very good at it. And so typically, I can write a paragraph of text, and it’s like okay, it says what I want, but it’s just not good English, you know? [laughs]
And so I’ll just run that through CoPilot, it gives me a couple choices, and I pick the option that I want. It just helps me all around with that. That’s just a Word example as well.
But it also can summarize my document. Let’s say you send me this 500-page document, and you say Doug, what do you think? I don’t want to read 500 pages right now, you know.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Doug: So it can just quickly give me a summary of that document. And in my opinion, just as good, if not better than what a person who had already read that document would have created.
And the same is true for other apps. Let’s say I’m in Outlook, and I constantly get these giant email threads where people say Doug, give your feedback, you know, no TLDR. They didn’t give me the highlights of it. And I got to start at the bottom of that thing and read up. Now, I can just say give me the highlights of this document. So it just works really nice.
I could go on and on. Teams messages. After we have a meeting that’s been recorded, we have a transcript. CoPilot will just give you the meeting notes at the end. Again, I would sa yeven a human couldn’t give you better notes than that.
Or I can say, what are my action items? And it’ll come do and say Doug said he would do this, or Doug’s going to provide this, and those types of things. So it’s just amazingly, extremely productive for a user.
Jonathan: Now, I have to be careful to not make this sound like a sales pitch, but I’ve got to tell you a great story.
I used to deliver a lot of PowerPoint presentations in my previous job. I’m good at making them, but I don’t particularly enjoy making them.
So what I used to do is I would write a document with my speech, say, or my presentation. I’d write that in Word. And then, I’d sit there and I would open a blank PowerPoint presentation, and I would check to see okay, how much can I fit on this particular slide? I would query with my screen reader the font size. And when the font started to get too small, I would notice, stop, and go to a new slide.
And then I’d think okay. What artwork can I put in this PowerPoint presentation to make this a little bit enticing to sighted people? And on and on it would go, and it was just a chore.
So with CoPilot, I wrote my speech in a Microsoft Word document, and then I gave that Word document to PowerPoint through CoPilot. It divided the speech up into handy slides so that the font size was okay. It added a bunch of artwork, and then it put all of the speaker notes that I’d written in the speaker notes section of PowerPoint. It literally saved me hours of time.
And because I’m a skeptic from way back (because I’ve developed a lot of this technology, or product-managed it), I gave it to my sighted daughter who’s an accessibility consultant, and I said, what’s wrong with this? And she said actually, there’s nothing wrong with this.
Doug: [laughs]
Jonathan: And it saved me hours. And that is one of the most impressive examples of AI that I’ve personally come across.
The Teams stuff is great, too. You are right. I love the way that you can come out of a meeting with a list of action points.
You can also go through the whole meeting. And as somebody who chairs that meeting, you might say alright, where did we have consensus? And where are there points of difference that I might need to consult further on?
So there are all sorts of benefits there, but that PowerPoint experience was incredible.
Doug: And just to add to that, too. One of the constant issues that screen reader users have, of course, is if you create a deck. As you created that deck, what did you do? You gave it to a sighted person to say hey, is this going to look good, before I hand it to my boss and you know, look silly?
It can give you that confidence. We’re still not 100%, but it can give you much more confidence to say this is going to look good as well. Things aren’t going to overlap accidentally that you didn’t catch, or things like that. So yeah, it just gives you much more independence.
Jonathan: So is this intuitive for a screen reader user to use? I mean, does the user interface at the moment vary a bit from application to application? Do you know, as a blind person, how to get to CoPilot in all of these applications where it exists?
Doug: That’s a great question. All the different CoPilots, the goal, again, I’ll use my word – habituating. Our goal is to make everything be the same.
You’ve got all these independent teams that are going off doing their thing, and they’re trying to innovate and create new things, and things like that. So it’s a little difficult to rein things in. But for the most part, things are pretty consistent. And as part of my job, I’m able to create guidance and say hey, this is expected behavior when you’re in a CoPilot chat pane, for example, of how to interact with it.
And the first level, of course, we want to make it compliant. So we want to make sure that everything can be keyboard accessible, everything has the right name, and state, and all the different properties. So that works well.
But then, the next step is (again, my 3 words) efficient. So we need to make sure that CoPilot can be efficient because who cares if you can do what you want, but you’re exhausted at the end of the day trying to do it?
Microsoft isn’t perfect, but it wants to be. And that’s the key. And so we’re constantly working to bring these things to a consistent experience and make it more efficient so that when you type a prompt, you can quickly hear and get to the response. We’re working through different teams to make sure that that’s going to be the case.
It does take some time to get through this. And as I mentioned, Microsoft is changing things at an amazing pace. All the years outside, when I was working with Microsoft Typically is what, 7 years for an OS and 3 years for Office.
Now, things are changing almost daily. And the good of that is that if there are issues, you can quickly resolve them and get things out much faster.
The bad news is, unfortunately, things can slip at times. And maybe, something slips out that doesn’t work as optimally as it should. But then, we can resolve that and work back with it.
So I’m just constantly working with the different teams, trying to make this as efficient. That’s the key. We’re not just about compliance. We want to be usable. We want things to be as efficient as possible. And that’s what I’m driving with the Microsoft teams.
Jonathan: Right. It’s about modality, isn’t it? Because if I’m generating that PowerPoint presentation that I talked about before, I do want to know that it’s on the case, that CoPilot’s working on it. And then, I want to know when it’s complete so I can have a look at my PowerPoint.
But if I’m chatting, say, in Microsoft Word and having a bit of a conversation about what I’d like done in a blank Word document or with an existing Word document, then you might be in a chat modality. And in that case, what I really want is for my screen reader to speak back CoPilot’s responses without me having to go ferreting around for them.
Doug: Exactly right. And simple responses, reading back makes perfect sense.
But as you said, if you’re creating a 50-page document, you want to sit there and just listen to that 50 page document.
Jonathan: Yeah. [laughs]
Doug: So it depends on the experience. But you do want to know when it’s done and that it’s working, as you said. So part of the guidance that I’ve created for CoPilot as well is that we want a consistent status message so that you’re not left after 20 seconds thinking, did this thing just hang? Did my machine hang? What’s going on? You get a consistent response back. Or when it’s done, you’re told that it’s done, not just did it finish, and you go query it.
So those are the kind of things. That’s the polish. That’s the efficiency that we’re working on making happen.
Jonathan: You talked about summarizing email. Am I correct in saying that that is only available to the new Microsoft Outlook, which is known as Monarch internally and increasingly externally? That if you want email summary functions, you can’t use the classic Microsoft Outlook that most of our listeners will be using at the moment?
Doug: Actually, those features have been added to the classic Outlook, the original Win32 Outlook.
Jonathan: Okay.
Doug: So those features are there where you can have the summary, you can have the draft. Those types of features are there.
That used to be the case, what you said. Absolutely, you needed to go to the new Outlook for that to happen. But now, they have put those CoPilot functionality features back into the classic Outlook.
Jonathan: See, and this is exactly what you were saying, that things are changing so quickly. So my information about that, when I looked into it when we first got CoPilot in the organization I was then running is now obsolete because things are just moving so quickly.
Doug: Yup, yup. And that was based on feedback, right? People were saying exactly what you said. Oh, we’ve got to get over to Monarch. And let’s be honest, Monarch wasn’t really optimized for screen reader users, especially at that time. And so people weren’t willing to just jump ship and go over to it for the CoPilot features, so we put CoPilot in Classic Outlook.
Jonathan: Alright, that’s very good.
And the new outlook is obviously the future. Where are we at with that?
There was a little bit of nervousness when it first came out, and I know that there seems to be quite a bit of collaboration going on between screen reader vendors and Microsoft to get this right.
Doug: Absolutely. This is extremely important that we get this right. And this actually is my number one priority at Microsoft, is partnering with the new Outlook team to make sure that we get this right.
Obviously, the first step, as I said before, is we want everything to be compliant, right? We want to make sure that everything is labeled right, and that type of thing.
But it goes well beyond that. When I hit enter in Outlook today with most screen readers, it just starts reading the content, right?
In the new Outlook, when I hit enter, sometimes, it would put focus way up there and I have to tab 5, 6, 8, 10 times to get down to the message so I can read it.
That’s not efficient. Compliant, yes. Efficient, no, not even close. And so we are working with the screen reader vendors so that when you hit enter, we make sure that it just starts reading right at the text of that message, and just drills down as you would expect it to happen.
And just navigating through the different components of the UI which are similar, but different. We want to make sure that all that navigation experience, all that stuff can be as efficient as possible.
Right now, there are some deadlines. The current Windows Mail and Calendar, which are shipped with every copy of Windows, will go away by the end of the year.
And so that means you would need to use the new Outlook. It’s still free. You’ll have the new Outlook instead of Mail, as you know it today.
So we need to make sure that the new Outlook is as efficient or better (I’m striving for better) than what Mail was, before that actually happens. And so working with the team right now, they’re on track to make this happen. So they’re basically on track by the end of August to resolve the top issues that I would consider are adoption blockers because they’re just not efficient for screen reader users.
And then, we can get this out in some users’ hands and get some more feedback from screen reader users, because that’s crucial. We want to get it out, I can say whatever, I want to really hear from actual users. And because of some of these other issues, screen reader users may still choose to stay away.
So once those are resolved, I’m going to be going out beating the drums and asking individuals to give more feedback on the new Outlook so that by the end of the year, we can make sure that we are at least as good. And again, that’s a low bar. I want to go higher than that and be far more efficient. Because the new Outlook does have some new functionality which can make a user more productive, if we can get the keyboarding experience and the screen reader interaction to really sing.
Jonathan: Well, you anticipate my next question because I’ve been using the Outlook that we know and love or whatever, at least we’ve come to terms with it for decades. And I may sound like a Luddite, but I’m thinking what’s actually wrong with it? What is moving to the new Outlook going to give me that I don’t already have now?
Doug: Part of what Microsoft wants to do is… They’ve got all these different codebases for the OWA version (the web version), and the Windows desktop version, and you have Mail, and then you’ve got Mac versions, iOS, all these different versions that are out there. And it became difficult to maintain all of those different codebases.
And so what they’re doing is bringing it all together into one codebase, regardless of the platform that it’s being deployed on. So that’s kind of the advantage from why Microsoft is doing it, which will allow them to be able to resolve issues quicker across all frameworks, be consistent across frameworks, and that type of thing. So I think it’s really good that they’re doing it, if they do it right.
And that’s where everybody is just going with that theme, that we will make it right before we remove the existing functionality. So we mentioned that Mail and Outlook are going away, likely at the end of the year, so we need to make sure that the new Outlook at least is as good as that.
It still falls short of the classic Outlook. There’s still some functionality of the classic Outlook that isn’t there yet. Or the usability for a screen reader user isn’t quite there yet.
So we’re looking at deprecating or removing the classic Outlook, wouldn’t do it at least for 2 more years, likely even longer than that. So we’ve got at least 2 years before the old Win32 that you’ve come to love and cherish for so many years goes away. And that gives us plenty of time to get it right.
Jonathan: Outlook and I have a kind of a love-hate relationship, right?
Doug: [laughs]
Jonathan: I mean, the other day, my profile got corrupted because I did something wrong. But I know what to expect with the current Outlook.
What do you think are some of the benefits of switching? You mentioned that there is some new functionality in Monarch that’s quite compelling. Are there any specific user features that you wanted to highlight?
Doug: One of the features (and unfortunately at the moment, doesn’t have the best keyboarding accessibility, and that’s something that we’re going to be working on(, but it’s a view that allows you on threaded messages today… Threaded messages can be difficult to navigate, right?
Jonathan: Yeah.
Doug: If you just want to skip down and get to the next person’s comment, and the next one without going through all those headers and everything.
Screen readers have provided some tricky keys to maybe try to navigate it. Those are based on heuristics that can easily break. Most times, they work. Sometimes, they don’t, that type of thing.
This new view basically allows you to see each thread kind of in its own card. You can easily navigate between the cards (once we get the keyboarding experience all refined), to where I think it might be far more consistent and predictable on how to be able to address threaded messages. That’s one example of what I think would be a much better interaction.
You still have the old mode that you can go back to, where you just open up a message and you’ve got all the text of the thread. But this new view, I think, might be helpful as well.
Jonathan: So the best way to have input, I guess, would be to try this.
Am I right in saying that you can have Monarch and the classic Outlook on your system at the same time?
Doug: Right. There’s actually a switch. When you launch Outlook Today, your Classic Outlook, you’ll see up in the title bar up there, there’s going to be a toggle switch that allows you to switch to the new Outlook. And when you switch that, it will automatically take you out of the classic Outlook, download if you haven’t already had it, and launch the new Outlook. And that also will have in the title bar that says that you would want to go back to the original. So if you just want to take a quick peek, you can enable that toggle switch and take a look at the new Outlook. And if you want to go back, you just go back up there and switch it back to go back to the classic.
Jonathan: We didn’t talk about Excel when we were talking about other Office applications. I’m wondering whether there are any benefits to blind people of CoPilot, in terms of perhaps, describing highly complex spreadsheets or graphical content that might be in chart form.
How is CoPilot looking in Excel for a screen reader user?
Doug: Excel is a little bit behind in some of its CoPilot functionality.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t be catching up. And so I would expect we’ll start seeing more of what you would want as a user who can’t see the content up there to be able to get better descriptions.
Today, CoPilot is sort of limited around table information and that type of thing. But we will start seeing more of that.
And I think you’ll also start seeing more of… Especially with some of the newer ChatGPT that are being released, to be able to get much richer descriptions of whether charts, tables, images or whatever that may be, where you can start asking more questions and getting a much better description than oh, this is a pie chart. Okay, that tells me nothing. Give me richer information. I would not at all be surprised if you start seeing very rich information about those types of things.
Is that there today to the level I’d like? I don’t know, but I do believe that it will be coming.
Jonathan: I think the future of screen reading is in a really interesting place right now. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to play with it, but JAWS has amended its PictureSmart feature to utilize ChatGPT and Claude from Anthropic. So that’s two pretty prominent AI models.
You can take a picture of a screen or a control and ask questions about it, interact with it. And it seems to me that as latency starts to reduce (and we see a dramatic drop in latency coming with ChatGPT 4O), we really are in a place now where screen reading is going to be a very different experience. Because rather than browse around in a linear fashion and press buttons to try and find out what’s going on, you can, potentially in the very near future, ask some specific questions about a screen that might in old terms be fully inaccessible, and get detailed information about it.
Doug: Absolutely. I think you’re just going to see more and more of that. And just imagine if that were built into Windows, not necessarily built into your screen reader but more generically, because many people could take advantage of that type of functionality. So I think you’re going to be seeing a lot of that over time. Absolutely.
Jonathan: With all of this evolution comes the challenge of learning it as a blind person, and there’s no doubt you’ll be well aware of this with all your time in the industry, that adding another layer like a screen reader on top gives us a whole new level of complexity for users. Some blind people take to it really readily. Other blind people struggle to get their job done. They are frustrated. They understand the promise of it, but it’s not necessarily intuitive for everyone.
What is the current state of play in terms of training for screen reader users on some of this new CoPilot capability?
Doug: Right. It definitely is a learned experience.
I’ve seen some videos of screen reader users who are using CoPilot and things like that, and they’re not understanding the rationale behind it or what this one’s used for, what that one’s used for, that type of thing. And mainly, that’s because of the lack of documentation that’s been out there on it, just because of the constant flux of these things that are coming. We all agree that we need more documentation, especially from a screen reader user’s perspective of how you engage this.
But also, you just need general documentation of why you want to use this, when do you use this, when do you use that? You need that basic understanding as well. But then, I think we could throw in that screen reader approach to it as well, to make that user, again, more efficient. So I suspect we’ll see some more of that coming from Microsoft.
But I also suspect you’re going to see from outside of Microsoft. We already see this in many products today, where they create content that really hones in on how to take advantage of this application, or that application with a screen reader. And I think we’re going to see that with a lot of the AI features.
Jonathan: Yeah.
We talked about the Disability Answer Desk earlier. And one of the things that’s changed in the last year or so is that you now have an AI version of that that’s available through Be My Eyes. It’s a pretty accessible chatbot environment.
What is it searching when you ask it a question there? Is there some sort of internal database at Microsoft that you get access to? Because I’m wondering whether that might be able to help a blind person to become conversant with CoPilot.
Doug: To be honest, I don’t know what Be My Eyes themselves specifically are using.
But absolutely, there are definitely more language models that are going to train themselves on screenshots so that we can get a better description.
I mean, imagine, this is old fuddy-duddy Doug talking who, back in 99, would never think of where we are today. We could be in 10, 15, 20 years from now with AI screen readers. Can they automatically detect? Would application developers, if they exist then, would they really need to worry about creating all the accessibility work that they have to do today? Or content, do you have to think of PDF documents that you have to mark up to make them usable? Maybe that goes away because AI can just figure it out, just as a sighted person would do by reading the content. So who knows where this is going to go down the road?
Jonathan: And it requires us as end users to think differently, to coin a phrase.
I generate a lot of metadata that turns into the show notes for every episode of Living Blindfully that we publish. But it’s not readily publishable because it has some metadata characters at the beginning, and it has a large timestamp all the way down to 3 decimal places for each thing, which is way over the top. People just want to see hour, minutes, and seconds.
So I told the AI that I’m going to feed it this file, and this is what I wanted stripped from the beginning of a line, and this is what I wanted stripped at the end of a line, that when it sees a number that has a decimal point in 3 digits, just take the decimal point and the 3 digits away in every instance.
And it remembers that now. And so every week, I just say to the AI, I’ve got Living Blindfully show notes for you. It turns them into something publishable right away. And then, it gives me a link to download the file.
And it has saved me, probably that process just takes me 5 or 10 minutes, but it all adds up. And now, it’s just a simple exercise to generate the show notes.
Doug: Perfect example, yes. And you’re just going to see those examples explode in how that can enhance your productivity. Absolutely.
Jonathan: And it emboldens you, right?
So just the other day, I took a machine-generated transcript. And these machine-generated transcripts are getting better and better. I used to be pretty dismissive of them because they were full of errors, especially with my New Zealand accent. [laughs] And now, it’s just getting so much better.
I took that machine-generated transcript, I gave it to the AI and I said, draft the blog post and email message previewing the next episode for me. And I used it to customize it to my own personal style so it still sounded like me. But nevertheless, it took a lot of that thought process away and made it a much more efficient process.
It scanned, in a few seconds, 2 hours of transcript, and came up with some pretty punchy, here’s what’s coming up on the next episode stuff.
Doug: [laughs] Yeah, those are amazing stories.
And that just kind of gets people over that edge of that intimidation of having to start a project, or something like that, that’s big.
Just let it. Let AI get things going for you, even if it’s not 100% accurate. As you said, you had to maybe tweak it to your style. But it gets you going, it gets you out of the starting blocks there, and allows you to go at a much faster pace.
Jonathan: I think for people like me who’ve been around forever, one of the challenges that I had first is that you really have to talk to AI differently from the way that you might, say, type into a search engine.
I’ve realized that actually, no matter what I’m getting AI to do, you need to talk to it in conversational terms. You need to be quite clear and explicit about what you want.
And the nice thing is, if it doesn’t give you what you want the first time, you come back and you give it subtle encouragement like you would an employee. You say well, this bit is good. But actually, what I really need you to do is refine this bit. And over time, you get what you want.
Doug: Exactly. And that is a little weird. Like you say, you’re almost talking to another human.
Jonathan: [laughs] Yeah.
Doug: And you’re not used to that. You’ve been programmed to speak computer ease, right, when you’re talking to the computer. And now, you can just treat it like you would your coworker. And that’s just going to get better and better and better.
Some of the issues that CoPilots had today where people didn’t know how to phrase a prompt. And so CoPilots will give you suggestions to help you get going.
But I suspect over time that that’s going to get better. We’re going to be able to interpret the questions better, and not have to be formed in a certain way to be able to get the results that you want. That’s just going to get better and better.
Jonathan: Yeah. A few months ago, one weekend, I said to my wife, I’m going to coset myself away, and I’m going to spend the weekend perfecting my prompt engineering.
And she said, your what?
Doug: [laughs]
Jonathan: And it was the best weekend I spent, in terms of investing in my productivity, for a long time.
And I think, if I ever did another tutorial for the blind community would be on prompt engineering, because you really need to understand how to talk to these things and what can work. When you get the feel for how to engage, it is quite game-changing.
Now, that said, I don’t want to paint some utopian picture here. It does get things wrong. It hallucinates.
Doug: Absolutely, and you do need to check it.
And Microsoft is rigorous about making sure that people understand that this is AI content, and it may be wrong. So you should always always go through and review whatever gets auto-generated, and just make sure that it isn’t hallucinating or whatever.
But just from personal experience, I just keep seeing that getting better and better and better. I still don’t trust it 100%, but it is getting better.
Jonathan: Yeah. And actually, I think to be fair, Microsoft puts up a disclaimer on quite a few AI screens that I see from them, making this exact point, you know. This is AI. Don’t trust everything it does without verifying.
Doug: Exactly. That can’t be stressed enough at this point.
And when you see areas that are wrong, if you see it hallucinating, then please provide that feedback through that dislike button and provide what was wrong about it and that type of thing, so that it can get better, and it will get better.
Jonathan: Alright. And that’s a nice way to wrap, because I just want to reiterate that there are ways to provide feedback to Microsoft. So Windows F, correct? That’s available pretty much everywhere in Windows.
Doug: That’s regardless of the application that you’re in, right? Windows F can always give you Feedback Hub for whatever you’re doing.
But again, on CoPilot, it might be better to use the like and dislike because that way, we specifically get the content that was generated and get the feedback to the right product teams.
Jonathan: Okay. So if there’s a like and dislike button in an AI screen, that’s the one that you should use over any other option?
Doug: Right. If you don’t have that, then Feedback Hub always works. No matter where you are, you can always do Windows F and get there.
Jonathan: Well, I’m looking forward to talking with you 25 years from now and working out where we’ve got to. [laughs]
But I did want to close by thanking you for your just outstanding contribution to this industry, and the way that you have so positively impacted the lives of blind people around the world. And you’re still doing it.
So thank you for that interview all those years ago, and thank you for this one, and I look forward to staying in touch.
Doug: Really appreciate it. Thank you, Jonathan!
Jonathan: Yeah, it sounded a bit better than the one from 25 years ago, didn’t it?
Advertisement: I want to thank Aira for sponsoring Living Blindfully.
Over the convention season, a lot of people were using Access AI to do things like check out the thermostat in their room, just get a description of what was going on.
I actually had a great Access AI experience.
Bonnie and I had the pleasure of having dinner with the Blazie brothers. We were heading home, and there was a statue lying in the ground of an alligator. And apparently, if you weren’t careful, it looked quite realistic.
So Bonnie and I got our picture taken with the statue of the alligator lying in the ground. And what was interesting to me was that some of the other services did not comment on the statue when I gave that picture to the AI. But in all the pictures that we took of that alligator statue lying there around us, Aira did get the alligator statue.
That was quite impressive. Access AI is comprehensive, it’s easy to use, and it’s flexible.
And now, if you’re an explorer, it’s available to everyone. No need to sign up for a beta. Access AI is right there on your Aira app.
To find out more, visit aira.IO. that’s A-I-R-A.I-O, and download the Aira Explorer app from the App Store or Google Play.
Bonnie and Jonathan’s NFB Convention 2024 Audio Diary
Alright. For those who say you don’t do enough Bonnie bulletins on your podcast, Jonathan, there’s lots of Bonnie this week as we bring you our NFB Convention 2024 audio diary.
[Bonnie bulletin music]
Jonathan: This is day 1 of our NFB audio diary.
This is recorded on the H1 Essential, because I’m keeping the audio diary separate from all the other Living Blindfully interviews.
The omnidirectional mic of the H1 Essential is being protected by a very cool Sound Professionals windshield, which stops all the plosives that we were getting before without it. So I highly recommend this little Sound Professionals thing, designed specifically for the H1 Essential.
So it’s great to be back, tapping our white canes around along with thousands of other blind people.
So should we talk about the journey?
Bonnie: Oh. Well, it feels like we’ve been here a long time because our journey, …
Well, it started Monday, when we sent Eclipse off to Playland. She’s actually on a staycation with one of the guide dog boarders in New Zealand. That was the first part of the journey.
And then, the second part started yesterday, when we flew to Auckland from Wellington. We actually got an earlier flight. We’re supposed to fly out at [4:50], and catch our plane to houston at [7:40].
So Jonathan asked, could we get on an earlier flight, which we did, and which was nice because we did get to go to the Koru lounge. The plane from Auckland to Houston was delayed, for some unknown reason.
Jonathan: Things got really strange in Houston.
Bonnie: [laughs]
Jonathan: I can’t help observing that it seems to me like American airports are getting worse.
Bonnie: Oh, yeah. Gone are the days of Pan Am and TWA.
Jonathan: Everywhere we went, we were pretty much forced into a wheelchair. They tried. And I just said absolutely not. Just ridiculous!
Bonnie: Ridiculous.
And we got there, and our plane was late. And then, we were worried about catching our plane to Orlando.
Jonathan: Yeah. But then, I got a notification.
I do subscribe to TripIt Pro. And I do recommend anybody who travels to subscribe to TripIt Pro because it gives you real-time information about what’s going on, sometimes so much real-time information that it breaks the world, like the gate changed so often for our flight.
But they were being very slow. And what I worked out was what really galvanizes them into action is when I say something like well, if this is going to take this long, I think we’ll just go and find it ourselves. And then all of a sudden, they’re on the move.
They don’t want you to do that, which is not right either, because there are some people who are able to travel without meet and assist, and that should be respected as well.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: But anyway, because of the tight Connection, I made this statement, and it did its magic trick.
And then, I said to Bonnie, it looks like we’re off the hook, because the plane was supposed to leave at [6:30], and we got in after 5, so it was a very very tight connection, and I was worried about it. But then, I got the notification that the plane had been delayed until [7:40], so I said to Bonnie, that’s good. At least, we’re off the hook a little bit.
And then, right before my very ears, it came back and said oh, the aircraft’s pulled in, and it’s now going to leave at [6:35].
Bonnie: [laughs]
Jonathan: So we were back on the race again. And by this time, we’d actually got somebody who had skin in the game, you know. He was quite interested in getting us there on time.
And this was the first time that Bonnie’s traveled with 2 passports.
Bonnie: Yes.
Jonathan: So she’s coming in on the US one, which makes sense because she doesn’t need an ESTA, or all those sorts of things. And then, she’ll come back on her New Zealand one.
But she handed them both over.
Bonnie: I didn’t hand them. That was the thing. I had my passport open, and I handed him my US passport.
But I guess he saw the other passport. He grabbed it from me. I’m like, excuse me, I’m not a spy.
Jonathan: We did actually get to the gate.
We would have made the flight at its original departure time, but we’d been pinged again several times about gate changes. So just as we were settling into one gate, we’d get a notification from TripIt Pro to say the gate had changed again.
Bonnie: It was confusing. The airlines is, too. Because the first time, the plane never got there from wherever because of weather. And then it got there, and there was a technical issue.
Jonathan: So it left about 90 minutes, I think, late. Finally.
Bonnie: Well, we had to wait.
Well first of all, it was coming in from Mexico. And because it’s technically an international flight, they have to do extra security checks.
But the other thing that happened was because it had so many gate changes, there was all this luggage spread out all over 3 terminals. So we had to wait for them to gather up all the luggage to bring to the plane. I was like, we’re going to just drive to Orlando.
Jonathan: Yeah. So we finally got into Orlando, probably, I think it was about 26 hours or so after we had left home.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And you’re kind of over it by then.
The United Wi-Fi was actually quite good, though.
Bonnie: We had to wait.
Jonathan: A long wait for any assistance.
Bonnie: Because 5 planes came in at once, probably all from Houston.
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah.
And of course, I was tracking the bag, and I was starting to panic because 15, 20, 25 minutes after we landed, the Apple AirTag network had still not picked up the bag, and it was still saying it’s in Houston. And I was thinking gosh, the last thing we need after all this travel, like the final hurdle, is to have to go and file a bag report.
Bonnie: Especially with my ice cream shirt.
Jonathan: We do get this service which I should tell people about, in case you don’t know about it, called Blue Ribbon Bags. It’s got some accessibility quirks about the website.
But what you can do is you pay, I think it’s about a $10 fee for a whole trip, if it’s all on the same confirmation number, and you can insure your bag so that if it’s delayed longer than I think it’s 24 hours, you get a $2,000 payout.
Bonnie: That’s good. I’d buy a new shirt.
Jonathan: Well, I could buy new Zoom recorders to get my stuff done.
But the bag did turn up. We got here.
And Bonnie had this foolhardy idea at like [1:30] in the morning that we should go to the deli.
bonnie: I was hangry. I mean, I’d had that disgusting thing.
Jonathan: Oh my goodness!
Bonnie: And the breakfast wasn’t too great. We had fluffy…
Jonathan: I like the breakfast.
Bonnie: My waffle was okay.
Jonathan: I had scrambled eggs.
Bonnie: I was too afraid of getting stuff on me, because I made a mess. So I was hangry, so we went to the deli here, which is really nice. It’s called Red’s Deli. They have convenient stuff, but they also have deli sandwiches, which you don’t really get deli sandwiches in New Zealand.
Jonathan: Oh.
Bonnie: You don’t, unless you go to Subway.
Jonathan: Hmm.
Bonnie: It’s true.
Jonathan: Okay.
Bonnie: Americans and I talk about it all the time.
So I heard about the Turkey Hoagie, and I was slobbering for a Turkey Hoagie, so we went.
Jonathan: What does hoagie mean?
Bonnie: It’s a bun. It’s like a bread.
Jonathan: Is it named after Hoagie Carmichael?
Bonnie: Who was Hoagie Carmichael? Jonathan: A very famous composer.
Bonnie: Maybe. I don’t know who Hoagie is named after.
But they were giving us a tour of the convenience stores. [laughs]
Jonathan: It was a grand tour.
Bonnie: Here’s where the water is.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: Here’s where the energy drinks are. Like, I just want my Turkey.
Jonathan: Yeah, [1:30] in the morning.
Bonnie: [1:30] in the morning. I want my Turkey Hoagie, and I want to go to bed.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: So Jonathan got a salad, and I got a Turkey Hoagie.
Jonathan: Right, yeah.
We we were bright and early up again though, because we had the Monarch people. yeah, that’s right. And when did they arrive That was [9:30], actually, so it wasn’t too bad. But it was, when you consider that we didn’t get to sleep until nearly 3.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: So we’ve been recording.
We had a couple of interviews cancelled, but you get that at conventions. And hopefully, I’ll reschedule.
Bonnie: Well, a lot of them were stuck in checkout.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: Or check-in, rather.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: Because my best friend’s here from DC, and she got stuck in the check-in lane at 3 o’clock. And I think, everybody else was stuck there, too.
Jonathan: Yeah, it’s a busy day for people checking in.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: We got our pre-registration. We picked that up.
Bonnie: That’s pretty quick.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Had lunch with Mike Calvo and his wife.
Bonnie: Annabelle.
Jonathan: Yeah, that was wonderful. We talked about the world, and Pneuma Solutions.
And we’ve done a lot of things. Had a really nice catch-up with Deborah Kendrick.
Bonnie: Yeah, that was nice. We had another Turkey Hoagie.
Jonathan: Oh, goodness! Yeah. Deborah’s a legend.
Bonnie: Yes.
Jonathan: And it was really cool to just chat with her. I will get Deborah on Living Blindfully and have a chat about her amazing career, and the contribution she’s made to a range of fields of journalism including technology journalism. Many people of an age will remember Tactic magazine.
Bonnie: And Access World.
Jonathan: Yes. She wrote for Access World. She wrote the Mosen Excursion, you know.
Bonnie: That’s a cool title.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Bonnie: I went to the professional journalism group today. And Liz Campbell, who many may know of, she’s been at the Fortworth Star Telegram for ages, as she said.
Jonathan: She’s also a legend.
Bonnie: Yes, she is. And she, and Bryan Bashin, and Deborah Kendrick started the Professional Journalism Division.
Jonathan: So we’ve packed a lot in, and it’s just great to be in this environment again. There’s so much to absorb and to learn.
Bonnie: And we found a new favorite restaurant, I think, called Harry’s Pool Bar.
Jonathan: Yeah, we recommend the Harry’s Pool Bar. I had the Harry’s salad. What was the carby thing in that thing? Was it potatoes?
Bonnie: Plantains, plantains.
Jonathan: What is that?
bonnie: Fried bananas, plantains.
Jonathan: Really?
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Was it banana?
Bonnie: Uh-huh.
Jonathan: That was quite delicious.
Bonnie: Spanish, yeah.
Jonathan: And we have been playing with the Meta Smart Glasses because Mike had a pair of those. Vicky, who we talked to for the podcast today, Vicky Cardona also has them. What do you think of them?
Bonnie: They were really cool, you know.
Jonathan: Why don’t we get them then?
Bonnie: Well, I want to make sure I get the right one. I don’t want to just buy one for the sake of buying one.
Because I want to try the Envision ones. Because if they tell you if you’re walking along and they say what’s there if you look at it, that would be nice.
Jonathan: Yeah. Well, see, that’s one feature that Envision does have, that you can walk around in this instant text mode. And if you see signs or anything like that, then it’s just going to read them to you. So that is a nice feature.
Bonnie: But that drains the battery quick.
Jonathan: Well, sure. But you’re getting real functionality. It’s kind of like the closest equivalent of looking around at things.
Bonnie: Yeah, which I think is really cool.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: With the Meta glasses, it told me about Mike sitting across the table. And then I looked at the menu, and you can talk to it, which is kind of cool.
Jonathan: Yeah, but it doesn’t just read the document. It’s very hard to get it to just read.
Bonnie: Well, I asked it to. I said what does it say? And it did tell me, but I had to query it.
Jonathan: Yeah, AI does that in general. It doesn’t like just reading a document from top to bottom.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And of course, Envision does that, too. It will read the document from top to bottom with its OCR feature.
People are really digging these Meta glasses. And of course, you can use it for things like listening to podcasts while you’re wearing them.
Bonnie: Yeah. Then, there’s the Ray-Ban glasses.
Jonathan: Yes.
So I’m sure there’ll be other tech because the exhibit’s open tomorrow.
Bonnie: Yeah. My friend Sarah and I have this tradition of going to the exhibit hall and visiting every single booth, which could take a day.
Jonathan: Oh boy1
Bonnie: I mean, some of them we’re just like okay, we’re not that interested.
But we’re going to do that, and Jonathan’s going to have some interviews.
And then, we’re going to go to the resolutions in the afternoon.
Jonathan: I always look forward to NFB resolutions.
Bonnie: So hopefully, we can put some lunch in there somewhere. It’s not so much hard to find the time. But because there’s so many people at any convention, I suppose it can be slow.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: Like Harry’s Pool was a bit slow today.
Jonathan: Oh, yeah. You’ve got to make time.
Bonnie: You’ve got to plan and find your way places.
NFB Day 3
[music]
Jonathan: And as often is the case with these conventions, things get very busy. Here we are, not on day 2, but day 3 of our NFB convention diary so we’ve got a lot to catch up on.
How’s it been going here in orlando?
Bonnie Good. Very hot, very busy.
Jonathan: Should we talk about day 2? I’m just trying to remember what we did for breakfast on day 2 now. Bonnie: We ordered from room service.
Jonathan: That’s right, we ordered some room service because we had Jennifer and Leah from the NFB Employment Committee.
Bonnie: And we discovered there is an omelette.
Jonathan: That was very good.
I really enjoyed the discussion with Jennifer.
Bonnie: Yeah, it was really good.
Jonathan: So that will be coming up on a forthcoming episode of Living Blindfully. Some pretty thought-provoking stuff in there about one of the biggest problems that We face.
We all participated in that interview. I had 4 microphones plugged into the H6 Essential, and it’s performing like a treat.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: I recorded some other interviews yesterday, but you went off with your friend Sarah to the exhibit hall.
Bonnie: Yes. And we walked around and we got lots of candy. It was like trick or treat. You get a little tote bag, because they’re all giving away tote bags. And then, you walk along and they all have chocolate at their booths, so you pick it up. I didn’t see any today when I went over, so I don’t know if everyone ate it all or what.
Jonathan: And some of the NFB affiliates, this candy has been used to raise funds for their affiliate activity.
But they kind of have their own trademarks, don’t they? Like certain affiliates are famous for certain types of candy.
Bonnie: Yeah, they do. The Iowa popcorn. The Iowa scissors. They’ve been selling them for 40 years. So now, they’re just known as the Iowa scissors.
Jonathan: Did you get them?
Bonnie: No.
Jonathan: Oh.
Bonnie: Candy was coming from all the vendors. They just had like a bucket, you know, like a bowl of candy. And one of the vendors said someone walked by and took all their candy. [laughs] I’m like, why didn’t you say something to them? They shouldn’t be a hawk.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Bonnie: And the terrible thing is it’s so hot, that a lot of the candy’s melted. So there’s nothing grosser than picking up a Reese’s cup and then going to eat it. It’s all kind of mushy.
Jonathan: Oh, dear. That’s not good.
Bonnie: But Washington State’s selling chocolate-covered cherries, Michigan’s selling cherries, Hawaii, of course, is selling macadamia nuts.
Jonathan: One of the differences this year is that GoodMaps have mapped some of the hotel, but they haven’t mapped the exhibits.
Bonnie: I don’t think they’ve mapped any of the hotel, have they?
Jonathan: I think they might have done the lobby, haven’t they?
Bonnie: No, it’s the lobby outside the exhibit hall.
Jonathan: Okay.
Bonnie: That’s what I heard.
Jonathan: Oh, I’ll have to check. But that’s a real shame because the mapping of the exhibit hall last year was so impressive.
Bonnie: Yeah, it was.
Jonathan: It was a very good demo of the technology. I was talking to somebody about this, and they were saying it’s actually quite a labor-intensive thing to do.
Bonnie: Yeah, I don’t think I realized how, which makes sense.
Jonathan: So we appreciate it when they do it, I guess, is the way to put it.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Anything else you liked in the exhibit? You saw a EuroBraille device running Windows 11, right?
Bonnie: Mm-hmm. That was cool. I didn’t really play with it. I just saw it, you know, and talked to the guy.
And then, the thing about a lot of these (not particularly them), a lot of the booths, you kind of know what they do. And then, they want to demonstrate everything. If it’s something that you’re not particularly interested in, sometimes, it’s hard to get away. [laughs]
Jonathan: [laughs] Yeah. I remember from being on the other side.
Bonnie: Which, they’re salesmen. They’re salesmen, so that’s good.
Jonathan: That’s right. I remember from being on the other side of the exhibit hall table, somebody will come up and say what booth is this? And you’d say oh, it’s Humanware, or it’s Freedom Scientific, or it’s Aira. And they go okay, bye! Thank you!
Bonnie: Yeah. I forget who it was today but I asked who they were, and they said who they were, and I said well, thank you. I appreciate your product. [laughs]
Oh, it was a low vision booth. They had magnifiers. And I said thank you for what you do for the community. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah. Well, that’s right. I mean, it’s hard work.
Bonnie: It is hard. I know, I’ve exhibited, too. [laughs] It is hard work.
Jonathan: We attended the Resolutions Committee. I would not miss that.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And the way the resolutions work at NFB is that the Resolutions Committee considers them all.
If they get voted up by that committee, then they go to the convention floor for debate. That happens on the 7th of July. So as we record this on the 5th, it’s not happened yet.
And if a resolution doesn’t get voted up by the committee or is not endorsed by it, then it can still come to the floor if a sufficient number of delegates ask that it does. But otherwise, it tends not to.
And there were 22 resolutions debated yesterday. Most of them, very much, I would say, not to demean the content, but very much bread and butter Federation stuff; not contentious, but important.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: But there are a few that will cause some debate. There’s no doubt about that.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And we picked up an assistive listening device from Karen and the other cool people who work with the amateur radio group at NFB.
Bonnie: Mm-hmm. They did that every year.
Jonathan: I really appreciate what they do because it just makes a world of difference.
Day 3 – we’ve been busy.
We’ve got up close and personal with this deli while we’ve been here.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: They have nice Hoagie sandwiches.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: And it’s pretty quick, which, at a convention, is a good thing.
Jonathan: Yes.
And everybody here at the hotel, the staff are really nice. Very nice.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Now, the moral of the story, by the way, is that even if someone offers to do your own packing for you, do your own packing. Don’t be a slacker and have someone else do your packing.
Because we were in a hurry, I was looking after a lot of the technology, making sure that the zoom recorders were packed. We have 4 microphones this time, all very nice Sennheiser mics.
And then, Bonnie said, I’ll just whip into the closet and pack your shoes for you (the dress shoes), because I’ve been hooning around in Nike most of the time.
And then, I was giving a presentation today to the NFB Deaf-blind Division, and I said to Bonnie, I need to have a suit for this.
And we got the shoes out. They were an odd pair. [laughs] Whoa! Crisis!
Bonnie Yeah. So we had to run out to the famous footwear.
Jonathan: Famous footwear in Florida.
Bonnie: The deaf-blind thing, that was really good.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: A lot of good questions.
Jonathan: It was really good to talk to the Deaf-blind division. And probably by now, I will have put that speech up on the mosen.org website, for those who want to look at that.
But there’s a lot of intersecting technology in terms of trying to make your hearing aids talk to the technology that you use for your computer and your smartphone, there are questions of accessibility relating to the hearing aid apps, some of the hardware accessories for hearing aids. So it was a pretty receptive audience.
Bonnie: And man, there was like this line of people that wanted to talk to you, which is good.
Jonathan: Yeah, it was wonderful. Great to meet so many people at the Deaf-blind Division, and to hear about the good work that they are doing.
And we’ve had a really nice catch-up with the Blazie brothers.
Bonnie: Yeah, that’s a lot of Blazie brothers.
Jonathan: Yes, it was. And they’re on to it. I mean, they’re really enthusiastic about the industry and what they’re doing.
I actually did get to touch a BT Speak for the first time. What did you think of it?
Bonnie: I mean, I’ve forgotten how tiny the thing was. The keys are different. They’re the staggered keys like the original Braille ’n Speak. They were just straight across.
Jonathan: Yeah, very small. I mean, you can put that in a purse.
Bonnie: You could.
Jonathan: But you’re waiting for the Braille version, right?
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And speaking of that, you kind of fell in love with the Brailliant at the exhibit hall.
Bonnie: I did see a Brailliant today.
Jonathan: Did you not see that? Because that’s the exact same model that Humanware sent us for review.
Bonnie: Yeah. I mean, they kind of all look similar, so you forget what they look like.
Jonathan: What did you like about the Brailliant?
Bonnie: Small.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: And that’s one thing. They were like, you can put it in your pocket, or you can put it in your purse, and you can wear it around your neck.
Jonathan: Right, you can.
But then, the thing is, since you’ve got a Mantis already, how would you decide what you put on your Brailliant and what you put on the Mantis? Because you might look for a critical document or something on one device.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: The software is relatively the same. The capabilities are a bit different.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was some sort of cloud syncing?
Bonnie: Yeah, that would be nice.
I love the Mantis. Don’t get me wrong. I like the Mantis a lot.
But the Mantis is fairly large. I mean, it’s the size of a small laptop.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: And I have to carry my work laptop with me every day. I have to carry it home because New Zealand is a very active country in terms of, we’re on the fire rim, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, major storms are very very possible. And they don’t work 9 to 5. They show up whenever they feel like it. So the job I have and the team I’m in has to activate if there were a state of emergency in Wellington because I’m in accessibility, and you do have to think about disabled people being evacuated, making sure that they get water or whatever’s going on at that time.
So the first day, they said you just have to take your laptop with you every day at home, which is fine. I don’t have a problem with that.
But I often use my Mantis to take notes in meetings because for me, it’s hard to have a laptop with JAWS talking in my ear while taking notes. And I like to review them in Braille.
Carrying the Mantis and the laptop is heavy, so looking at maybe getting a smaller notetaker, or Braille display, or something like that. I saw the BrailleSense yesterday.
Jonathan: Now, that’s serious money we’re talking there.
Bonnie: How much are BrailleSense?
Jonathan: They’re a lot more than a Brailliant, that I can tell you.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: So would you use a Brailliant to take your notes in your meeting?
Bonnie: Yeah, I would.
Jonathan: We’ll sell the Mantis to fund that.
Bonnie: I don’t want to sell the Mantis.
Jonathan: We’ll sell it to fund the Brailliant.
Bonnie: Maybe Anthony would want it.
Jonathan: Okay.
Bonnie: I don’t know.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: But no, I may go visit the Brailliant again tomorrow and see if they can let me take one home.
Jonathan: Oh boy! Watch out, world.
Anything else of interest you saw at the exhibit? You bought an NFB cane.
Bonnie: I went to the Independence Market today, which was really cool because you got to see a lot of the stuff they have. And they were sold out of a lot of stuff, too because they had bump-ons and the things you’d basically find – blindness products. Sewing stuff, they had puzzles (There’s a giant one of the USA. I mean, it’s huge, and it’s very expensive.) And it says at the bottom, “Salute to kenneth jernigan.”, and it’s a USA puzzle. You’d put it on like your coffee table, or something. Sudoku, and different things like that. I wanted to see the cane.
So what you do at the Independence Market is you decide what you want, they give you a ticket of your item, and then you go up to the cashier, which is good because they have their demo stock, and they have stock they’re selling. So if they picked up the blood pressure monitor you wanted and gave it to you, then you know there wouldn’t be one for people to see.
And I did see the talking blood pressure monitor. I couldn’t get it to work, though.
I like the Qardio better. It’s huge.
But anyway, I want to get a thermometer because they had one that was all-purpose, so it could do meat and people.
Jonathan: Oh my goodness!
Bonnie: Yeah. You’d want to wash the probe off after it’s been in the chicken, or after it’s been in your ear, mouth, or whatever. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah. I’m sure there’s a way around that.
Bonnie: Hopefully, not your other parts that they used to take temperatures in. [laughs]
Jonathan: I think we need to just keep you away from the exhibit hall.
Bonnie: No, but I’ve got a lot of cool freebies.
So anyway, I went and looked at the canes. I’ve always been kind of interested and thought that the telescopic canes were cool, so I looked at one of those and decided to get it. And I really like it. It’s very light.
And now, I understand what I’m hearing, which I described the other day as a migration of crabs because there was this large group of, I think it was the kids, going through the lobby with their little canes. And it was click click all the way across the floor. And I thought it sounds like a migration of crabs.
So now, I have joined the migration of crabs because it does have a different sound than another cane because I guess it’s fiberglass, or something?
Jonathan: Yeah, carbon fiber.
Bonnie: Carbon fiber.
Bonnie: Yeah, it’s very light. I really like it. It’s kind of a challenge. But once you get the hang of collapsing and uncollapsing it, … It’s so light. I can’t get over how just, it’s like floating, just waving this magic wand or something.
Jonathan: I’m glad you like it.
Bonnie: I do. I like it.
Jonathan: I got my first NFB cane at my first NFB convention in Chicago in 1995.
Bonnie: But you don’t have an NFB cane now
Jonathan: I don’t now, no because what I found was I’m a swiper, rather than a tapper. And sometimes, it would get stuck in a crack in the ground. And then, you’d walk into it and it would collapse in on itself.
Bonnie: Well, I learned (and I’ve always had O&M people tell me not to do this), lean on your cane. And with this one, you definitely can’t lean on your cane. Don’t lean on your stick.
Jonathan: Yes, don’t do that.
Bonnie: They also encouraged me with an ID cane, which are the real thin ones, because I was asking, I said, which one do you kind of recommend – the telescope cane, or the folding cane?
They said well, it depends on what you want to do with it.
And i said well mostly, I’m using a guide dog.
And they said well, you might want an ID cane.
And I said well, I’ll just get the collapsible one because I won’t be using it every day.
Jonathan: Right
Bonnie: But yeah, I’m real happy with it.
Jonathan: They are very light and lovely to drive.
Bonnie: I took it on a drive tonight, when we went out. I even put it in an alligator’s mouth.
Jonathan: Wow!
Bonnie: Not a real alligator.
We were walking back from dinner with the Blazie brothers, and they have a couple that works for them at the conventions. He’s an o&m instructor in LA, and she’s a TVI.
And he goes oh, there’s an alligator over there in the grass, like a statue of an alligator.
I said oh, let’s go take a picture with the alligator, because I told my team that I was going to avoid alligators when I was here.
So we went over the grass, and he kind of got, he’s like, that is a statue, right? [laughs] Because it was just laying there in the grass, and they will do that.
So we approached it with caution.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: So then, I put the cane in the alligator’s mouth.
Jonathan: And on that note, it’s probably good to say, see you later, alligator.
Bonnie: Oh, yeah.
NFB Day 4, Including a Mini Review of the Helptech Activator Pro 80-cell Braille Display
[music]
Jonathan: Self-disciplined people that we are, we are back with… Day what is this? 4, right?
Bonnie: Yeah, just 2 more days.
Jonathan: Yeah, man.
Bonnie: 2 more days.
Jonathan: It’s going quickly. Suddenly, you can see the end in sight.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: We don’t know where it all went.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: But we have had an absolutely full-on day today, starting with our first breakfast meeting at 7 o’clock, and not stopping.
Bonnie: Until now, yeah.
Jonathan: Now, I must say, we caught up with Damian and Jen who showed us the current Handy Tech, HelpTech (I must stop doing that. It’s called HelpTech now.) the HelpTech products.
So they have made some changes with the Activator that we saw last year. There’s a very nice carrying case in it now. So you can use the device in its case. That’s much appreciated.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And I think they’re also working on some software changes that will let you use the spacebars as thumb keys, and a number of other nice changes. They do have a way of using USB-C iPhones with the Activator.
We’ve covered Activator a couple of times on the podcast, most recently with a user review. We spoke with Damian and Sigi from help desk, HelpTech [laughs] last year. So they’re making some changes there.
But the really impressive thing was when we saw the Activator Pro. Now, we will be talking a lot more about the Activator Pro as it gets closer, because we’ll talk to key people about this.
This is, I think, the most gorgeous functional Braille display I’ve ever seen in my life.
It’s not going to be cheap. I mean, it’s not going to be cheap.
It is 80 cells, so ideal for an office type environment. And while you can use it with split Braille in JAWS, it also has its own split Braille type functions built into the hardware.
The important thing to understand is that since it’s HelpTech, you’ve got the ATC, which means that as you get to the end of the line, the display knows where your hand is and it can scroll to the next line.
With this 80-cell Braille display, you can do all sorts of things like divide the display into 2 portions. Now, there could be 2 equal portions of 40 cells. Or if you’re working, say, with a smartphone, you might want to have 60 cells on your computer and 20 on your smartphone. You can do all of that.
You can pair with multiple Bluetooth devices, but you can also plug in 2 USB-C devices. There’s a USB-C port on either side of the device.
It has a QWERTY keyboard, very nice to type on, very good switches. It has a row of function keys for Windows functions, and then another row of function keys that are programmable, and even more buttons still.
You can actually drag and drop. So because it senses where your fingers are, two things can happen. You can read and then press a button, and it will drag what you’ve just read, and you can drop it onto the other device. This is truly amazing. It’s like a sighted person can move material from one monitor to another.
And because of the sensitivity of these cells, it also means that when you get to the end of a section that you’ve apportioned to one particular device, it automatically scrolls so that scrolling is sensitive to the parameters of the window that you’ve defined for each device.
it is amazing. It’s a wonderful device. That’s the Activator Pro.
Not quite shipping yet. I saw a prototype. It’s pretty heavy, this prototype, and I think that They might be looking at getting the weight down.
Bonnie: Yes.
Jonathan: But you’re not going to carry an 80-cell Braille display with you anyway. I mean, it’s a huge thing. [laughs] Long, but really impressive.
So we did that.
We caught up with Jeff and Kerry Bishop, and Derek Lane, our very own Derek Lane, who does work for us here on Living Blindfully, and also Deb Hazelton. So they popped down from the ACB convention in Jacksonville to see us.
And Derek also showed me in person his Framework laptop.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And I must say, I was super impressed with the quality of that.
Bonnie: Yeah, it looks like an HP.
Jonathan: Just the build quality, it felt like a MacBook.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And Derek actually said that on one occasion, somebody accidentally took his Framework computer thinking it was their MacBook.
Bonnie: Oh dear!
Jonathan: So it’s a very good build quality. And the way you can just swap out the ports and put new ports in, it’s a very nice device.
Bonnie: Did they get it back, I guess? Did they realize it wasn’t their MacBook? [laughs]
Jonathan: I think relatively quickly, yes. That’s a relief for all concerned, I’m sure.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And then, it was the big purchase of the convention, as we headed over to the exhibit hall.
Bonnie: Yeah, and I got the Brailliant.
Jonathan: Yeah, you did get the Brailliant. Are you happy with that?
Bonnie: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: And we’ve got the text-to-speech working on it.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And we’ve got it set up. We used your personal hotspot so you could grab some books from Bookshare.
Bonnie: I grabbed a book. And then, it told me no internet.
Jonathan: Right.
Bonnie: But Bookshare, it does that sometimes. I don’t know why it does.
Jonathan: You’ve got the 20-cell because you’re looking for something small.
Bonnie: Yeah. It didn’t have a case.
Jonathan: Oh dear.
And I must say, I did see the Braille eMotion from the company now not known as HIMS.
Bonnie: Selvas, or something?
Jonathan: I need to get familiar with that, you know. But they do have thumb keys. Much applause for this. They do seem to have thumb keys on the front of the device, so that’s great. And I was trying to find them to say congratulations for putting thumb keys on a Braille device, …
Bonnie: They have already absconded. [laughs]
Jonathan: Tell me about it. And they’d gone.
Bonnie: They’re off. A lot of the exhibitors are gone to Jacksonville, or home, or wherever they are.
Jonathan: Yeah. And this was on from 12 to 2. There was another 4 hours this evening.
Bonnie: Yeah. Even yesterday, when I was over there, there wasn’t a lot of people at their tables. They left information, but they weren’t there. So I don’t know what that was all about.
Jonathan: Every time we go and see the CIA, they’re never there. And maybe it’s a clue. Maybe the trick is you have to work out where they are.
Bonnie: And if you find them, they’ll hire you as a spy.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Social Security, I have to say, was great. They were there. They were friendly. They were helping, talking to people. They were helping people out. But that was the only federal agent. Well, except for the Bureau of Engraving. That was the only federal agency I saw that was actually at their tables. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: I don’t know where the others were. Maybe they were on a break. But didn’t see CIA, didn’t see State… IRS wasn’t at their table.
Jonathan: Of course, it was also the first day of general session.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: You have the formalities in the morning, including the roll call of states and the welcome.
In the afternoon, we had President Mark Riccobono’s report, which really does highlight the difference that NFB is making in a range of endeavors – some of them to do with civil rights like ride share refusals, access to quality education, employment issues, important things like that. And some of them just to do with fun participatory things like an accessible Rubik’s Cube.
Bonnie: Yes.
Jonathan: We had an accessible Rubik’s Cube when I was a kid.
Bonnie: I had an accessible Rubik’s Cube because someone Brailled it for me. They took the Dymo label and put the colors on each side.
Jonathan: I don’t know whether someone Brailled it for me or what happened. But I believe it might have been one of those organizations like RNIB back in the day (and I’m talking about the 80s) who made an accessible Rubik’s Cube that you could buy.
Bonnie: Yeah, there was an accessible… You see, I wanted mine. Mine had to be yellow, green. What was the other color? Red. I forget.
Jonathan: But there were a whole lot of those Rubik things.
Bonnie: And mine had to be labeled the colors. I wanted mine to be the same as sighted people’s.
Jonathan: Right.
Bonnie: But other people just had like Xs and Ys and, you know, just different symbols. But mine had to be the color.
Jonathan: Right.
Bonnie: I was very adamant about that.
Jonathan: Okay.
Bonnie: [laughs]
Jonathan: So it was a good report and a good summary.
Bonnie: They said the Rubik’s Cube was 50. Is it that old?
Jonathan: Well, I didn’t know it was that old because I remember it from the early 80s.
Bonnie: I remember it from the very early 80s, and it was hot.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: So I don’t know whether it started in Hungary 50 years ago or, you know, wherever it started.
Jonathan: And then, people were hungry for more.
Bonnie: And then, it sort of made its way into the toy, you know.
Jonathan: Yeah. I thought it might have been New Zealand just being late on the uptake again because we were like that in those days.
Bonnie: No.
Jonathan: But I definitely remember it in about 1981.
Bonnie: Yeah, early. And it was so… People were crazy. Somebody even dressed up as a Rubik’s Cube for Halloween.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Bonnie: They took a box and cut it so their body could go in it, and then they colored the different sides like the solved cube.
Jonathan: [laughs]
And a number of really good presentations today.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: The one I really enjoyed was the one on education and Braille reading. A brilliant speech, and we’ll have to try and get the author of that speech on the podcast because she had a lot of important things to say about Braille instructions and the expectations that we set of blind students. It was very very good indeed.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Also good to hear Amy Bauer again because long ago, on an FSCast about 12 years ago, I interviewed her. She’s an oceanographer.
Bonnie: Yeah. I think I told you about her.
Jonathan: You did, you put me on to Amy.
Bonnie: Yeah, and she was really interesting.
Jonathan: She is.
Bonnie: Done a lot. I mean, really impressive what she’s done at Woodhull.
There is another visually impaired or blind oceanographer up at Woodhull.
Jonathan: Okay.
Bonnie: Brett, what is her name? Brett Robin, Robenheim, or Roben? I’d have to look it up.
Jonathan: Right.
Bonnie: She is a Seeing Eye grad.
Jonathan: We’ve caught up with Troy from Aira. We’ll catch up with Troy from Aira on the podcast soon.
Bonnie: And we had Bob Fenton.
Jonathan: Yeah, we did.
Bonnie: He was talking about his career as a lawyer in the police.
Jonathan: Yup, so it’s been a very busy day.
Had dinner at the Everglades, finally, so that was nice.
Bonnie: Yeah, it was really good.
Jonathan: It was very nice.
NFB Day 5
[music]
Jonathan: Here we are, on day 5 of the convention. It’s the penultimate day. That’s a fancy word for second to last, you see.
Bonnie: Pretty much second to last.
Jonathan: Yeah, and we’re at the end of another great busy day, starting with a breakfast meeting in the morning. In fact, that was so long ago, I’m trying to remember. Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s where we had breakfast. We had breakfast in one of those massive suites.
Bonnie: I don’t know what, it seems like your day is sort of cut into these weird chunks.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: I don’t know why, but it seems like it was several days today because we had breakfast with one person, then general sessions, then lunch with someone else, and then afternoon sessions, and dinner with other people.
Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, the days have been incredibly long. But in another sense, it all goes quickly. And you think, my goodness! There’s only one day left of this.
Bonnie: Yeah, and then I dread the trip home. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: I’d like to just get the big FedEx box.
Jonathan: That’s right. I mean, the process of getting home’s annoying, but the getting home’s nice.
Bonnie: Yeah, can’t wait to see my puppy.
Jonathan: Always good to get home to the 0 gravity bed.
Bonnie: And the doggy.
Jonathan: Yeah, well, and the 0 gravity bed.
Bonnie: Yeah, and the doggy in the 0 gravity bed.
Jonathan: Yeah, right.
So it’s been an interesting day, dominated i would say by resolutions, and the general session. And there were some interesting contentious ones.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: I am very very pleased to say that the Federation passed today a resolution very much inspired by the speech I gave last year to the general session. I’m grateful to NFB for crafting a resolution which is now policy of the federation that they support the idea of a defect equity framework, or whatever one wants to call it, that identifies bugs that are so mission-critical that if they were occurring to sighted people, they would be fixed immediately out of cycle as a show-stopping bug. And I think that’s really important for our productivity, for our equality. No better organization to pursue that really important work than NFB.
Undoubtedly, the most controversial resolution related to the Perkins School for the Blind, the fact that it was named after someone who apparently was a slave trader and an opium exporter.
Bonnie: Opium smuggler.
Jonathan: Right. Yes, that’s the best way to put it, yes.
Bonnie: Someone sitting next to me was laughing when they read the resolution because it said he was illegally smuggling opium, and they said there’s no other way to smuggle opium. It’s not legal to smuggle it. You can’t smuggle something legally. [laughs]
Jonathan: Right. It was a lively and robust debate.
And when they have a vote here, what happens is that there was a roll call of states. Only the state affiliates get the vote. I mean, there is a voice vote. But if that voice vote is contentious, then it goes to a roll call vote of the delegates.
Bonnie: Yeah, and I hope they poll the group.
Jonathan: Yes. I think the process for determining the delegate vote may vary from state to state. But certainly, being in the middle of it is interesting because when things come up, a lot of them do caucus briefly.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: So that’s how the process was made.
Bonnie: Yeah, because I think it was the Perkins vote, the no’s and the yes’s sounded, I thought there were more no’s than yes’s. So I don’t know whether something changed.
Jonathan: If you’re not familiar with chairing, you often think that because the no’s are normally more kind of emphatic. It’s a louder word to say.
Bonnie: Yeah, and it was close. It was like 26 to 23, or something.
Jonathan: Yeah, it was a close vote, but a very good debate.
And there were some other resolutions that went to roll call votes as well – some discussion about the use of the word blind.
Curtis Chong made an interesting point. And, of course, most people know Curtis, but he has a long background with the National Federation of the Blind, and Computer Science, and various other things. Much respected voice on technology, and justifiably so. But he’s also been a member of NFB for over 50 years.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And he was talking about how it’s part of NFB’s culture that when they talk about blind, they are talking about the wider family, as it were, and it automatically includes that version.
Bonnie: The blind spectrum, yeah. And that was the debate in our group that, I mean, people kind of understand that autism is a spectrum, but blindness is also a spectrum.
Jonathan: So we’ve had a busy day.
Bonnie: And tomorrow’s going to get worse.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: It’s a long day tomorrow because you’ve got the banquet from [7:30] to 2 in the morning.
Jonathan: That’s right. 2 general sessions to go, and the banquet’s tomorrow night.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And then, it will all be over.
How’s your NFB telescoping cane going?
Bonnie: It’s okay. I kind of wish I’d gotten a folding cane now, but maybe next year.
Jonathan: My job in life is to collapse it for you.
Bonnie: I know. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can’t. It’s like it jams.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Bonnie: It could be the humidity here, because I think that would happen with my folding cane sometimes.
Jonathan: Right.
Bonnie: But sometimes, when it gets stuck in a crack, it’ll collapse, which is kind of annoying.
Jonathan: Yes, right. Alright.
Bonnie: But I like it because it’s very light. I’m just debating whether it’s smart to use it Tuesday when we fly, or use the other cane.
NFB Final Day
[music]
Jonathan: And this is what I suspect will be our final contribution in our little NFB convention diary, because NFB convention 2024 is now at an end.
Bonnie: Yup.
Jonathan: Welcome, Bonnie Mosen!
Bonnie: Hello!
Jonathan: It’s sad, isn’t it?
Bonnie: It is sad.
Jonathan: It’s sort of empty. Like when I’ve done a big radio thing or some major project, and it’s over, you kind of feel this, you know, it’s empty.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah, because you’re used to running at a certain pace.
Bonnie: Yeah. And it’s sad because now, we have to go back to kind of our humdrum existence.
Jonathan: It’s an interesting thing, these conventions because sometimes, when you’re walking through the hotel and you’re still getting to grips with it, and certainly for me, with hearing aids, although it’s been much better this year, it’s been this wall of sound. And there’s a little bit of you sometimes, and you think, I’m never doing this again. Why am I doing this? Why am I subjecting myself to this?
And then, some new experience happens. You learn something. You catch up with someone. You meet someone interesting. And you think, these are my people. You know, I’m at home here. I belong here. It’s a wonderful feeling.
Bonnie: It’s sad not having an affiliate that we can, you know, be with.
Jonathan: Yes.
Bonnie: I mean, I’ve always had one that was kind of there over the past many years.
Jonathan: Yeah, this is the interesting thing. I mean, I’m obviously conscious when I come here that I am a foreigner and I can’t be a member, so I try to remember my place. But people here are so welcoming.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: And as I say, I really feel like I belong. I feel like these are my people.
Bonnie: Tennessee’s asked us to join.
Jonathan: [laughs] I’m not sure if we can do that.
Bonnie: I’m going to ask them.
Jonathan: Yeah, we’ve been sitting with Tennessee. They’ve been lovely.
And we had a pretty amazing day today because, as has been well recorded and reported, Living Blindfully won a Jacob Bolotin Award.
Bonnie: Yup.
Jonathan: It was a very special occasion.
Bonnie: Yeah, very nice.
Jonathan: And not just being up there and receiving the award. And it’s not about me at all. It’s about the community that we’ve created, and that was really special to accept it on behalf of the Living Blindfully community.
But I also got the chance to talk to Mrs Jernigan who I’ve met on several occasions before, but it was just an opportunity to share with her how much discovering Dr Jernigan’s literature, when I was a somewhat (not a somewhat despondent) when I was a despondent teenager, and how it changed my life. And to be able to just tell her that and what it meant to a kid on the other side of the world, I really felt the need to do that. It was really wonderful to have the chance to do it.
I did want to report that I think for anybody with regular hearing, there are a lot of challenging environments in a place like this. But I think Bonnie will tell you that the difference between how I was able to function in that noise between last year and this year is just a phenomenal difference.
Bonnie: Oh, definitely.
Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, at the banquet last year, I could not function. I just could not hear anyone.
And at the banquet this year, I was able to carry on a conversation. It’s not perfect because I’ve got a significant hearing impairment, but it’s a heck of a lot better. So it’s great that the technology is coming along.
So it’s been an amazing day, one I will never forget, and it’s been a great convention.
We paid our way this year because I wasn’t on the program, or anything. But I still want to thank everybody who we met at NFB for being so welcoming to us. It was great to meet so many people. It’s sort of fun to be stopped. I mean, you walk around and you say something, and people recognize the voice. And so it’s fun to be stopped, and people say hello, and that’s really nice.
And to all the people who wanted to catch up who we didn’t catch up with, we’re sorry. It’s just full on. [laughs]
Bonnie: It’s very hard, yeah. It’s very hard.
Jonathan: But I think we’ll try and get to New Orleans.
Bonnie: We’ll definitely get to next year.
Jonathan: We definitely will?
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jonathan: Okay. There’s a firm commitment there.
Bonnie: [laughs] Okay. Bye, everybody!
Jonathan: Goodbye!
[music]
Advertisement: Transcripts of Living Blindfully are brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, a global leader in accessible cloud technologies. On the web at PneumaSolutions.com. That’s P-N-E-U-M-A solutions.com.
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Final Thoughts
And I know we’re a bit over time, but you know, who’s going to stop me? Who’s going to stop me?
I wanted to make a couple of points that I missed with Bonnie in that little audio diary.
The first is that we did cave, and we both bought a pair of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. I’ve got those going now. And I think it’s fair to say I’m more excited by what they may do than what they do at the moment. What they do at the moment is pretty cool.
Because I wear hearing aids that give me pretty good quality audio from my phone, I’m not so enamored with the idea of walking around and listening to podcasts with them, or doing phone calls with them, or that sort of thing.
So I’m really into it for the picture-taking, and also the Meta AI stuff that does seem to work OK here. But I’m not sure whether that’s because I set the glasses up while we were in the United States or not. but they do seem to work fine, and I do continue, at this stage anyway, to have full Meta AI access.
Aira is running a trial of the Meta AI glasses. I’m excited to see where that goes.
I hope that Meta opens up its API, and that we see a little ecosystem developing because they are very nice glasses. They’re stylish, the price is right, and it is quite exciting to see where this might go.
The other thing I wanted to comment on was the convention app. If you’ve not been to an NFB convention before, this is a really nice touch. There’s an app that you can register with. If you’ve officially registered for the convention itself, you get push notifications about events that might be changing, or that might be coming up.
You’ve got access to the full agenda. And this year, they returned the ability to add agenda items to your calendar. So we had a lot of people that we scheduled meetings with. They were all with my calendar that was synchronized with Microsoft Outlook and Fantastical. And then, we were also able to add convention sessions to that same calendar. So it was very well done.
There was a little internal messaging thing. It’s a bit like what we used to do in the old days. I remember when I was going to NFB conventions and ACB conventions before these sorts of smartphone apps were around. We used to really strain the hotel voicemail systems. Anyone else remember that? We used to call each other on the voicemail and leave messages, and you would often see the hotel voicemail get full and overloaded because of how much all the blind people there were using the voicemails. [laughs] But now, the convention app has taken the place of that.
So just a few more random observations from me.
Closing and Contact Info
Having gone well over time, I will get out of here. Thank you very much for listening once again.
If you’ve discovered Living Blindfully because of all the recent publicity, this is a bit of an unusual show, this one, and we’ll be back to more of a regular format next week. But I’m glad you’ve discovered us, and I hope you’ll stick with us.
Remember that when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
[music]
Voiceover: If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Living Blindfully, tell your friends. Spread the word on social media. And if you’d take the time to give us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, we’d appreciate it.
We love hearing from you. Be a part of the show by getting in touch via WhatsApp, email, or phone.
For all the ways to share your thoughts with us, visit LivingBlindfully.com/opinion. That’s LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.