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Contents
A Salute to Gary O’Donoghue.. 2
The Overcast Podcast App Has Been Rewritten.. 4
The Prodigal Castro User Returns. 6
Comments on the Doug Geoffray Interview.. 7
I Want to Know More About the Ray-ban Meta Smart Glasses. 10
iPhone Problem, Accessible Voting Machines, and Be My Eyes Private Groups. 13
Pac Mate Accessible Pocket PC.. 15
Follow-up on Jumping Between Programmes in Windows. 16
How to Review Living Blindfully on Apple Podcasts. 17
Advice for First iPhone Buyers. 18
Braille Screen Input in iOS 18.. 20
A Quick Look at ExpressVPN for iOS.. 21
Looking for a Database App.. 27
WhatsApp for iOS Focus Issue.. 27
Response to the Matthew Horspool Interview.. 29
How I Got Back into Knitting.. 30
My Zoom H1 Essential Recordings are Too quiet 31
Odd Problem With iOS Notifications. 33
Odd Braille Problem in iOS.. 35
I Put a Deposit on a Glide.. 37
Zoom H6 Essential, and Setting Up a New eSIM… 37
Inaccessible Locks on Suitcases. 39
Working With TP-Link Routers. 44
Reading Documents Straight From the Focus 40 Blue Refreshable Braille Display. 44
In WhatsApp, What are Channels, Groups, and Communities?.. 45
Welcome to 292
[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!
On the show this week: the popular Overcast podcast app has been rewritten from the ground up. So how’s it working out from an accessibility perspective?, feedback on the recent Doug Geoffray interview, more on the Ray-Ban Meta Smart glasses, and how to get started when buying your first iPhone.
We’re at episode 292. It’s a nice symmetrical kind of number. And yet, there is no country code nor area code 292. You never know. One day, it might be yours. But that day is not today, so I’m going to move on because we have an enormous number of listener contributions to try and catch up on.
The WhatsApp machine has generated contributions, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.
That’s a very Trumpian statement. Maybe I should leave it to him.
Trump: The WhatsApp machine has generated contributions, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.
Jonathan: Exactly. Thank you, Mr. President.
So we’ve got some catching up to do.
A Salute to Gary O’Donoghue
But before we go there, I do want to make this comment.
For many years, I’ve expressed the view that we need to do what it takes to ensure more blind people are in what I call change agent roles. And by that, I mean CEO, senior leadership, and board roles.
But also, visible public-facing roles like local and national politics and the media. When more blind people are heard and seen in the media covering and competently discussing the issues of the day, or even just providing entertainment while someone heads to work in the morning, it subtly but clearly conveys to the listener or the viewer that blind people are a part of our society.
When I worked in commercial radio, my blindness didn’t come up very often. It was irrelevant for me to raise it, but I wouldn’t try to avoid it either. So occasionally, I might make reference to it because it made sense in context.
The phones would inevitably light up with listeners saying, “Did you just say you were blind? Gosh! You don’t sound blind.”
The media can be a powerful force for attitudinal change. I was reminded of this on a much larger scale on what for us in New Zealand was the 14th of July, when news broke of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Clearly, this was a huge news story. Those who were on the scene were covering a rapidly developing and highly charged event.
Covering that Trump rally as he’d covered many others was BBC reporter Gary O’Donoghue. He and his team were just outside the venue. They heard the shots clearly, and instantly knew what they were.
They were far too close for comfort to the shooter. They dived behind the car (the only cover of sorts they had) and went live to air on the BBC, Gary doing the cross, lying down because they weren’t yet sure if the threat had been neutralised.
Later, Gary spoke with an eyewitness who gave him a story that was picked up all over the world. The eyewitness had seen Thomas Crooks crawling on the roof of a nearby building with a gun, and had tried to get authorities to do something. It was a story that was carried around the world by multiple networks.
Emotions were running high. While Gary was on air, an angry rally participant tried to stop him from broadcasting, considering it inappropriate. Gary gently put his hand on the attendee’s arm to calm him down and calmly explained that it was important that people knew the facts about what had happened in Butler, Pennsylvania that evening.
I would not at all be surprised if Gary’s coverage from Butler earns him some prestigious journalistic accolades. He deserves every one.
During a period of strong feelings and highly charged social media posts, there was remarkable consensus among those who trusted Gary for their news coverage of the story, that Gary was a credit to his profession. That is quite an achievement when there is so much cynicism out there about the media.
He showed empathy, bravery, and he let people talk. It must not have been easy. At the beginning, it would have been bloody frightening.
If the name Gary O’Donoghue rings a bell for you, he has contributed to this podcast over the years. I conducted an extended interview with him on The Blind Side some years ago.
Gary is blind. Gary has seized the opportunities he fought for, and was eventually given by the BBC.
He’s calm under pressure, a consummate professional. Most of the time, his blindness makes no difference to his output. But he doesn’t hide his blindness either. He’s right up front about it on social media using the handle BBCBlindGazza on X.
There are a variety of ways for our quest for equal participation in society to be advanced, and one way is to be a trailblazer. That’s what Gary is by providing what, in my view, was the best coverage of a significant breaking news story.
I feel sure Gary helped change some attitudes, and a lot of that change will have been subconscious.
Well done, Gary. Very well done.
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The Overcast Podcast App Has Been Rewritten
Voice message: Very very good morning, evening, or afternoon, Living Blindfully staff, Jonathan, and the rest of you guys who are listening to this show. Hera or Gerardo here from Tampico in northeast of Mexico.
I would like to make you guys aware, if you guys haven’t noticed, or maybe you guys have. But we who are Overcast podcast fans, they updated a few days ago, and wow! What an update. I’m definitely liking the new changes layout, especially that right next to the podcast name, you have the info button. And if you flick one up, you get to the delete. How many times has it happened that you don’t want to hear the current episode for X or Y? It’s maybe not interesting or whatever. You just flick up, and away it goes.
And so for those of you guys who haven’t given Overcast a try, definitely definitely give it a go. It’s definitely a lot less cumbersome and a lot less clutter than the Apple Podcast app. Thus, now, I’m definitely going to transfer more of my podcasts to Overcast that I used to have on the Apple native podcast app.
And also, remember too that for those of us who have an iPad and an iPhone, for example, you can sync Overcast between two devices, so that’s definitely a plus. So definitely good job, Overcast, for continuing to evolve.
Jonathan: So to provide a bit more context around this, it’s the 10th anniversary of the Overcast podcast app. and Marco Arment, its developer, has released a brand new version.
I had heard this was coming. I don’t know about you. But when you hear a phrase like “This has been rewritten from the ground up.”, it strikes fear into the hearts of many tech-savvy blind people. [laughs]
It’s not too bad, and we’ll hear some more comments from another listener about this in just a moment.
I’ve certainly noticed that the pace of new features in Overcast has slowed markedly over the last few years. Marco has acknowledged this, and one of the reasons for that is that the architecture of Overcast was becoming a bit old and creaky, and it was difficult to take advantage of a lot of the new features that iOS offers. And in his discussions about the new Overcast, one of the things that he’s emphasized is that this should make accessibility easier.
Now, Marco’s got a very strong track record in the indie development industry. He developed Instapaper, which is an app I still use. It’s well and truly moved on. I think it’s had a couple of ownership changes after Marco now. But he developed that, and it was accessible. He does care about VoiceOver. And when you have an indie developer who shows that level of concern and commitment to accessibility, it’s very encouraging. So even if something gets off to a bit of a rocky start, with a developer like Marco, I tend to think it is going to be okay.
And there has been some rockiness with the initial build of Overcast that has got out there. For example, when you double tap on an episode, a little pop-up menu, well, pops up, and the focus does not automatically switch to that menu, so you have to go scrambling around looking for the play button.
Also, the source of the podcast is not being spoken anymore in a playlist. In this initial build, when you swipe through a playlist, you find that each episode requires 2 swipes because there’s now an info button after each thing, which I personally find superfluous and annoying because there’s no reason why that info button can’t be part of the actions rotor.
Speaking of which, the actions rotors options are significantly diminished. So hopefully, we’ll see a larger actions rotor coming back because that’s a handy way to get to things that you need.
You no longer get the show notes automatically spoken to you, which is a really big deal.
So there are quite a few significant issues there. And there are some features that we have to wait a wee while to get back.
For example, Overcast has always believed that you own your data, and you should be able to do what you want. So they have facilitated importing podcast data from another app, as well as exporting it, if you want to leave Overcast. That’s not there in the new version, but Marco promises it is coming back.
So there are some rough edges, and it’s definitely not as nice to use at the moment as the previous version, but I have confidence that it’s getting there. And I have actually seen a TestFlight build where some of these issues are being fixed. so it’s actively under development. So hopefully, any inconvenience is very temporary.
John Dowling is commenting on this and says:
“I updated. And so far, the UI looks pretty good.
I’m a little sad you can no longer stream podcasts, but downloading works fine for me.
And it looks like the sluggish VoiceOver bug I was facing before while playing podcasts has been fixed, So I will be retiring Downcast once again in favor of my old friend Overcast.”
Yes. I can confirm, John that for me, this is the case also. It is much more performant, much more responsive, so that’s really good.
The reason why Marco’s taken streaming away is that streaming can be a bit problematic in this era of dynamic ad insertion. So he’s done away with that, and it should make listening to podcasts more reliable in certain circumstances.
The Prodigal Castro User Returns
All this said, I have had on my list for a while to take another look at Castro. People have said to me, “It’s a lot better than it was. You need to check it out again.”
So I did, actually. I checked Castro out. I downloaded it again.
There was a point there where I just didn’t have it on my phone anymore. I was really disappointed because I liked the Castro app a lot. But as has been well chronicled on this podcast, it got super unreliable. Podcasts weren’t coming in. It was just a debacle.
I was also not a fan of some of the clutter that Castro added to their inbox. It used to be such a simple system. You just had your inbox and your queue, and that’s all there was. Now, it’s got a bit more complicated.
Nevertheless, I tried it. And since there was no exporting of OPML from Overcast at the moment, I saw this as an opportunity. I decided to go and search for each podcast that I wanted to add to Castro to see if it was there. because this was another problem actually with Castro in the past. There were podcasts that Castro simply could not find that all other clients did seem to be able to find.
I’m delighted to say, all that seems to be resolved. It seems to be refreshing in a very timely manner. So the systems, the infrastructure appear to be in excellent shape.
I’m kind of gritting my teeth and bearing the more complex user interface of the inbox.
But there is one significant accessibility bug that remains, and that is that Castro is not speaking the source of the podcast in the inbox. So you get the episode title, you get its duration, and you get the episode description, and it’s very fast and efficient. But it no longer tells you (and it hasn’t done for quite some time) the name of the podcast from which the episode comes. That is a bit of a big deal, you know. I mean, sometimes, you can work it out by context. But if you subscribe to a lot of news podcasts like I do, it is a problem.
So if you happen to be talking to the Castro people, if you, like me, have returned to the fold, the prodigal Castro user returning, then let’s mention this. This one does need to be fixed.
But I have to say, it feels great being back on Castro. I feel like I’ve come home.
The efficient way I can navigate through podcasts and triage them is just out of this world. It’s saving me time.
I got all my shortcuts switched over now. So when I push the action button on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, it now starts playing Castro. If I do a 2-finger quadruple tap, it marks the current episode as played and starts moving on to the next episode in my queue. I can use a double back tap to skip forward by 30 seconds.
So it’s just fantastic, and it’s responsive. I love the way that it handles chapters. The sideloading feature is nice. I’ve said all these things before in Castro’s heyday. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope that Castro continues on this recovery trajectory.
And I’ll also be keeping tabs on Overcast because if Marco does eventually get to a UI where you can go in and select all the episodes that you don’t want or that you do and then delete the ones you don’t want, then that will be Castro-like and I will look at it again. But this is the thing for me with the number of podcasts I consume. Castro does, for now, save me a voluminous amount of time.
But it’s great to see Marco getting his zest for the app. He’s obviously got this new toy, this new baby. It’s going to be easy for him to create new features, and I really look forward to finding out what happens next with Overcast.
[music]
Voiceover: Share your thoughts with the Living Blindfully community. Be in touch using text or audio, email, WhatsApp, or phone. Whatever works for you.
It’s easy. Visit LivingBlindfully.com/opinion for simple instructions. So don’t hold back. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion. Operators are standing by. Well, okay. I uh, may have made that last bit up.
Comments on the Doug Geoffray Interview
Now, I’m going to ever so slightly be castigated here by this email from John Riehl, who says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
As is always the case, I enjoyed your latest Living Blindfully episode.
I wanted to comment on your interview with Doug Geoffray.
In most ways, it was a fine interview. Doug does deserve all the praise and accolades for his accessibility and screen reader work, and I’m sure he is doing a lot of good things at Microsoft.
However, I think you were a little soft on him, particularly when it came to your discussion of the new Microsoft Office and the Windows C key. It would have been really interesting to ask Doug, given Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility, and if Microsoft does in fact listen to feedback, why the Windows C key now brings up CoPilot despite the accessibility issues you and others have cogently raised.”
Yeah. I’m just going to stop here and say I’m not sure whether there’s a typo here, or whether we have different perspectives on this because what I’m hearing and what I certainly want is I want Windows C to bring up CoPilot. People are concerned about the fact that they’re taking Windows C away, which will mean that unless you have one of those new Microsoft keyboards with a CoPilot key, then it’s going to be harder to get to CoPilot than it used to be.
So the clamoring I’m hearing from some blind people is they don’t want Microsoft to remove Windows C. We’ve got used to Windows C, we like it bringing up CoPilot.
The reason why I didn’t push too hard on that is Microsoft is such a big company, and the decision to remove Windows C would not have been made by anyone involved in the accessibility team.
I think a lot of these things are marketing-related. They want a shiny button with CoPilot written on. And I understand that from a marketing standpoint, but I don’t think that there’s any reason whatsoever why they should be taking Windows C away. I suspect that the accessibility team may be making that point.
So if I had Satya Nadella on or somebody who was ultimately responsible, I would push it very hard. But it didn’t seem right or fair to hold Doug’s feet to the fire for a decision that he would not have actually taken.
John continues:
“Concerning the new Outlook, it would have been really good if you could have expressed to Doug the very real concern, since Microsoft seems to have a rare and fast deadline to introducing the new Outlook and Mail by the end of the year that accessibility will be given short shrift. I’ve seen this numerous times at work when management will say, we know this isn’t 100% accessible or usable, but we’re going to roll out the app, then fix the accessibility later.”
Yeah. We’ve seen that in recent times with Sonos, haven’t we?
“My fear”, says John, “based on experience, is that deadline will trump accessibility and usability, and we’ll have to suck it up once again.
It is also my understanding, based on reading David Goldfield’s email list, that the other primary reason Microsoft is completely changing the interface for the new Outlook and the way it interacts with the computer is that it is using WebView, which essentially makes parts of apps function as if they are web-based apps.
It would have been interesting to probe that issue a bit with Doug. Why did Microsoft feel it necessary to go to WebView and completely change the interface?”
Well, Doug did actually comment on that, John. We talked about why the codebase was changing, and the answer was that it was causing Microsoft considerable resource constraints when you have multiple codebases for Outlook across different platforms. So by going to a WebView, it’s a standard that can be deployed across multiple platforms. So that’s exactly why they are doing it.
This is increasingly common now. If you go to certain websites, they’re actually better with the virtual cursor or browse mode (or whatever your screen reader calls it) switched off because they’re applications that happen to live in the internet.
If you’re a Microsoft Teams user and you run that application, it is a WebView. And by default, any good screen reader is going to turn off the virtual cursor or browse mode because it just performs better without it.
Similarly, the Todoist task manager app that I demonstrated back in 290, it’s got a WebView in Windows.
So these things are really common, and I don’t think we necessarily have to fear them. But it does require excellent use of keyboard commands, and it also requires appropriate setting of focus. By that, I mean that when you open an email in an email client, what we typically want is for the body of that email to start reading and for the cursor to be placed at the top of the body of the message, and the headers of the email should be easily queryable. Those things are important, and those are the things that Microsoft is working on refining right now.
Microsoft is actually wanting people who have the inclination and the skills to give them feedback on the new Outlook now, so they can continue to fine-tune it. At the same time, I know that Microsoft and Vispero are working very closely together on the new Outlook experience. So there’ll be a bit of scripting work from the Vispero side. There’ll be ongoing work that will carry over to all Windows screen readers, and it is starting to come together. It’s not perfect by any means, and we’re still only in July, but there is intensive work being done on this new Outlook.
And there should be. At the end of the year, what happens is the old Windows Mail app goes away, but the existing Microsoft Outlook that’s in 365 is going to be available for the foreseeable future.
They have not set a sunset date yet for the Microsoft Outlook that many of us know, and love, and have used for years and years. So there is quite a bit of time. And if Microsoft does not deliver in conjunction with its trusted third-party screen reader partners by the end of the year, we should be justifiably concerned about that.
But I may be putting myself out on a limb here a bit when I say I believe it’s on track. It’s starting to whip itself into shape now. I’m less troubled by Monarch (as it’s called internally at Microsoft) than I first was when I heard about the project.
Knowing that someone of Doug’s caliber is on the case, monitoring the accessibility specifically, giving advice, and talking to a range of blind people who are choosing to test it also gives me some comfort. I think we are largely now at the point where it’s accessible. It just needs to be made more efficient.
Good to get your email, John. Thank you very much!
David Lepofsky writes:
“Greetings from Toronto, and congrats on the 2 fantastic awards!”
Thank you, David!
“Just a bit of feedback on last week’s discussion of Microsoft’s accessibility helpline. There was some suggestion that it is already quite seamless, but I ran into a frustrating problem a few months ago.
I called in for some help with Office 365.
I teach part-time at an Ontario law school, which provides my license for Office 365.
The Microsoft help person helped me a bit. But then, told me he couldn’t help me anymore because I’m using an enterprise edition of Office 365.
I should note that the features in issue were a regular part of Office. I’d assume it is in both individual and enterprise editions.
I was told that my case would have to be referred to the enterprise accessibility help team. I asked what number I should call to reach them. I was told there is no number, and that I must wait for them to call me, which, I was told, would be in the next 48 hours. I needed the help right away.
I found a workaround, so I gave up on going after help on this issue any further. And by the time the Enterprise team called, the issue was resolved.
However, I was left seriously considering buying an individual subscription to Office, just so I could be assured full help from the main Microsoft Accessibility Helpline that I can call whenever I want. I have not yet done that, but it’s still a live concern for me. I have not had to call back to Microsoft for help since that incident.
This is all an unjustified bureaucratic barrier to good, accessible customer service. Microsoft should not put us in the position of having to buy an individual license for Office 365. It’s like a backdoor disability surcharge.”
Thanks, David!
I have found the EDAD (the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk) exceptionally helpful, and I have had email dialog with them.
There may well be someone from Microsoft listening. And if there is and they’d like to respond, of course, you’re always welcome to do that.
I may reach out on this and see if I can get some answers for you myself.
I Want to Know More About the Ray-ban Meta Smart Glasses
Here’s Kelly Muggridge with a discussion about a pretty hot topic in our community at the moment. She says:
“I know you are a bit of a geek, …”
Guilty as charged, I guess, Kelly.
“and I need a little advice.
You may know that the latest craze on the market is the Ray-Ban Wayfarer smart glasses, which is a collaboration with Meta.
What I need to know is: are these smart glasses accessible if you are totally blind (which I am), and are there any listeners out there using them?
I understand these smart glasses have a camera, and you don’t need to hold your iPhone while traveling. I think you can take pictures with them by using your voice.
Have you used them, Jonathan?
The reason why I’m asking is because I don’t want to buy a pair if they are inaccessible. Can you help?”
Absolutely. They are accessible, Kelly. Bonnie and I both own a pair. We picked up a pair each from Amazon while we were in Florida. We’ve been using them this week.
Bonnie’s been wandering around Wellington saying, “Hey, Meta. What am I looking at?”. It takes a picture, and it will describe what you’re seeing.
Sometimes, the descriptions are a little bit superficial. Sometimes, the prompt that you give it is really important. So if you say something specific like read the text, then you’re more likely to get what you want if you’re, say, looking for a sign or something like that. Sometimes, it doesn’t read all the text, but that’s a characteristic of a lot of AI.
I find the AI that Meta is using pretty lackluster compared to some of the other options out there, but I understand that will improve over time. And people seem pretty confident these glasses and their capabilities are going to improve over time.
I actually used them the other day to unpack a box of 10 fresh meals that we get delivered every week. Normally, what I do is I just take the Seeing AI app, I put it into instant text mode, I find out what the meals are, and I sort them appropriately.
But in this case, purely in the name of science and experimentation, I used the Meta smart glasses. I said, “Hey, Meta. Look and tell me what this is.”, or, “Hey, Meta. Look and read the text.”, and it did. It did a sort of half okay job if the meal was upside down. But if I’m holding the meal up the right way and I ask it, it’s pretty good, actually. Pretty quick and accurate, and I came away from that process quite impressed.
You can use these glasses for a lot more than that function, though. You can take video with it and send it instantly off to Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. You can take pictures with a voice command, or just by tapping the button, and a lot of people are having fun taking pictures effortlessly of what they’re looking at.
And the audio is amazing, really good audio. So you can use this to just wander around, listen to podcasts, participate in meetings or phone calls, or whatever hands-free with great audio. So it could be very useful if you’re just using a GPS app, for example, and you don’t want your ears covered.
And they don’t look like smart glasses. They look cool because they’re Ray-Ban. A number of people have actually stopped me and commented on the glasses.
I hope they do a lot more than they’re doing at the moment, but they are still pretty cool.
They’re certainly accessible, Kelly. You don’t have to worry about that. And we do have more features coming up on the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses.
But I’m quite enjoying these. I was a bit skeptical, but I could tell what was happening in the community. I decided that Living Blindfully needed to have these because there was increasing chit-chat about them. So it was kind of a business expense, really.
But then, I started using them, and I’m hooked. there’s something about these glasses. They just work really nicely.
It does need to get over its refusal to describe people and some of those annoying things that we’re contending with where certain AI is concerned. But it does show a lot of promise for the future. More to come on these glasses, for sure.
If anyone else wants to share their experiences (because so many of us are getting these glasses now), by all means, feel free. Tell us how you’re using them. What are some of the magic commands that you find work the best when dealing with Meta AI when you’re wanting to get good results? Have you had any successes that you’re particularly pleased with? You can go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
You can get in touch on WhatsApp. Actually, it would be really easy if you add the Living Blindfully WhatsApp number to your contacts to send a message from your Meta smart glasses. Amazing!
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iPhone Problem, Accessible Voting Machines, and Be My Eyes Private Groups
Voice message: Hey, Jonathan. Steve Bauer out of Wichita, Kansas. I got about 3 things to quickly mention.
I have the iPhone 13, and I’m experiencing significant delays in delivery of notifications – news alerts, weather alerts, the doorbell, and text messages.
Sometimes, I don’t even get the alert tone that lets me know I have a new text message. So I basically got to the point of always letting VoiceOver sit on the text app, so if the number changes from no text messages to 1 or 2, then I know I’ve got new messages.
So I went to the Verizon store and they first said oh, this is your SIM card problem. We’ll change that.
They did. Made no difference at all.
So I went back a week later, and ordered a new phone. I still got another iPhone 13 because I had the insurance and didn’t really cost me anything.
Got everything finally set up, even though it was extremely annoying and frustrating that NLS books that I had downloaded did not transfer. But nonetheless, got everything set up, finally.
No change. Everything’s still delayed.
Another call to Apple technical support, and they said well, you’re probably going to do a complete reset. You’ll have all your apps, but everything will go away – passwords, your VoiceOver settings, everything will go away. It’s like starting fresh.
And then, they said, but there may be another solution.
They said they’d call me the next day, and that call never came. So I guess, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and reset the phone and go through that tedious process of setting things up because Apple has got things screwed up.
In my opinion, they’re putting too many features on these phones, and they’re breaking things. It’s a vicious circle. I know they have to put new features on to keep selling phones. But they’ve got too many features on them, as far as I am concerned.
One quick comment about audible voting machines.
I have been using audible voting machines for quite a few years and invariably, when I go to the poll to vote, people are a little confused. Oh, can you sign your name? You know, make comments like that.
So I go through that and I get to the machine. And probably, 50-60% of the time, the poll worker has no clue as to how to get the audible ballot going. And so I have to do a little training class and show them how to do it, and we get off and running, and everything’s fine.
So the election commissioner’s office is continuing to fail in training poll workers on how to do audible ballots for people who want to hear the ballot, but who can’t see it.
Finally, last year, Be My Eyes came up with a new deal where they had Be My Eyes groups. And what it is, you could invite family and friends into your trusted group, and they can help you with, say, personal things you may not want a stranger, you know, a volunteer somewhere in the world to help you with.
I thought this was a fantastic idea, so I set up a group. And just to test it out, I invited one friend, and my brother and sister.
Well, it didn’t work like I thought it would because they are not just there to accept my call and to help me. They are being hit by everybody else that has put in a call for help from a volunteer. There’s no isolation of that group from the whole world.
I contacted Be My Eyes, and Hans Wiberg wrote me back and said no, there’s no way to change that. All they have to do is not accept those calls.
Well, nonetheless, the 3 people that I got set up in my trusted private group decided they didn’t want to mess with it. They’re willing to help me, but it’s a real annoyance to have to keep saying no to the calls that are coming in that you don’t want to accept.
I think, Be My Eyes has failed miserably in what could be an outstanding service.
Jonathan: Good to hear from you, Steve.
Regarding your first point with respect to the iPhone, I have seen this. I have little idiosyncrasies on my phone now that I am sure relates to a corrupt settings file. And one that I can immediately think of that I have not seen on any other iPhone is that when I swipe down with my iPhone 15 Pro Max to get the notification center, I can swipe down and swipe down and swipe down, and it will kind of make that bonk sound when the iPhone isn’t able to do something anymore.
And people say oh, you must be doing the gesture wrong. I am not doing the gesture wrong. And I’ll tell you how I can prove that I’m not doing the gesture wrong. If I invoke the keyboard command on my Mantis to bring up the notification center, the same thing happens.
Sometimes, the only way to get it out of this mode is to go to the home screen, if I’m not there already, or go into another app if I am at the home screen, change something, and then the notification center pulls down okay.
But I’ve not seen this on Bonnie’s phone. I’ve not seen it on any other phone. Not that I go playing with too many other people’s phones. But this thing is so annoying that if it were happening to too many people, I’m sure that I would hear about it.
As an experiment, I did try to set up my phone from scratch, and I wasn’t experiencing the problem.
But I’ve just customized my phone so much, I’m kind of reluctant to do it. I guess now that I’ve got a bit more time on my hands, [laughs] it might be the ideal time to bite the bullet and set my phone up from scratch again. Perhaps that’s a little project that I can undertake.
Now, these devices are computers. Settings files do get corrupted. But it’s frustrating.
And the fact that you got a whole new device, and then you restored your software and got that same problem back, that definitely indicates that something in the software has gone awry. I wouldn’t have thought for a moment that it was related to your SIM card because presumably, when you’re at home, you’re on Wi-Fi, so your SIM’s not going to affect the delivery of notifications when you’re on Wi-Fi. But anyway, I guess it sent you away with something and a little bit of hope that turned out to be dashed.
Before you erase all content and settings, I take it you have tried erasing just the network settings. That might be worth a shot. It’s certainly a lot less drastic to just have to set up your Wi-Fi networks and things of that kind than to set up your whole phone from scratch. so that might be worth a try.
Now, regarding your third point, you’re the second person to raise this on this podcast. Pam McNeil raised it a few months ago.
I contacted Mike Buckley about this. Because I think if you’re going to set up a private group, there will be people who, like your friends and family, only want to help the individual. They don’t want to be available in the general pool.
And surely, this is a software thing because whenever I talk to people from Be My Eyes, they say that the biggest complaint that volunteers have with the service is that they don’t get enough calls. They’re sitting there, waiting for this thing to go off. So if you’ve got people who only want to help one particular blind individual, it’s not going to break the system because they’ve got an abundance of volunteers who are already willing and able to assist any blind person.
So I agree with you. I think at the very minimum, when a sighted person is logging into the service, you should have a checkbox that says I only want to assist with private groups I’m added to, or I want to be available to assist anybody.
Pac Mate Accessible Pocket PC
This email says:
“Hello, Jonathan,
My name is Mark Velasco, and I have been following your work since I was really little.”
Aww! Thank you, Mark.
“I first heard about you when I found your review and demonstration of the Pac Mate BNS.”
Whoa! That would have been back in the Main Menu days. That’s a while ago now.
“I apologize”, says Mark, “but I’m going to get a little mushy. You’re the reason why I love assistive technology, and why I study it to this day.
I wanted to ask if you still have that Pac Mate. I’ve always wanted one. But by the time I was able to get my hands on one, I didn’t have very much luck with it, and Freedom Scientific had stopped supporting repairs.”
Mark, I don’t think I do have a Pac Mate anymore. I think they would have all gone back to Freedom Scientific at some point.
Of course, several years after I recorded that initial Pac Mate BNS review, I did become the vice president of blindness hardware product management at Freedom Scientific. So I was responsible for later iterations of the Pac Mate including the Pac Mate Omni, and various other things of that nature. So I did have a few Pac Mates lying around, but I don’t anymore.
He says:
“I really admire you and your work, and thank you for continuing to do what you do.
I am on my way to getting a degree in sociology, and my end goal is to become a disability rights advocate and start my own non-profit so I can help other people with disabilities.
I hope we can meet one day.”
Well thank you, Mark. I hope we can, too. Thank you for writing in, and all the very best with your forthcoming career. There’s certainly no shortage of work to be done in the advocacy space, so more power to you.
Follow-up on Jumping Between Programmes in Windows
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan and fellow Living Blindfully listeners. It’s Gary from a very cool Cape Town.
Jonathan, some time ago, I asked you about navigating programs with shortcuts instead of just using alt tab. You mentioned to me using start menu and numerals, and it works fabulously on my one PC that a guy set up for me. I bought the machine from him. But I can’t seem to get a hold of him anymore.
But the problem I’ve got is on all my other machines that I’ve got, when I use the start menu and numerals, it doesn’t necessarily jump from the programs that are open, but it opens up new programs such as, believe it or not, Internet Explorer, and a whole lot of other stuff which I don’t want open. I just want to basically, jump from the programs that are open.
Obviously, if there are 3 programs open and I do Start Menu and 4, then it can do what it likes, and it’ll probably open something else. I get that.
But I want to know how to change that setting that it only rotates or jumps to the program that I want. For example, Windows Explorer on 1, VLC media player on 2, and Excel on 3, because I opened them in that particular order, right? As I said, the one PC works brilliantly, and the others just do what they want to do – open up all random sort of stuff.
I did Google, and I can’t seem to find any results so any help will be very very much appreciated from either you, or other Living Blindfully listeners.
Jonathan, I’m assuming you are well like always, and thanks again for an awesome awesome podcast.
Jonathan: Oh, you flatterer, Gary.
Alright, here’s what I think is going on. I think on some of your machines, you’ve got a bunch of applications that have been pinned to your Windows taskbar.
You want to unpin them. The way to do that is to press Windows with M for Mike to get to the Windows desktop. And then, press Shift Tab maybe once or twice, until you get on a list of applications in your taskbar, which you will then be able to press left and right arrow to navigate through. And I suspect that’s where you’ll find in the first position, you know, whatever’s opening when you press Windows 1 and the second position, whatever’s opening when you press Windows 2, etc. So to get rid of it, all you do is arrow to the application in question and either press the application key (if you have one) or shift F10 if you would rather do that. Up arrow a couple of times, and you should find an option called unpin from taskbar. If you press enter on unpin from taskbar, it will get rid of the clutter. And then if you’ve unpinned all your applications from the taskbar, everything will appear in the order that you opened the application.
Hope that helps.
How to Review Living Blindfully on Apple Podcasts
Well, you know that we say that it helps to spread the word. If you’re kind enough, give us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts in particular, which seems to be the primary place where you can go and review podcasts.
Teresa’s writing in and says:
“I’m not smart at computers. I am unable to find how to give a 5-star review to your excellent podcast.
Could you give me some step-by-step?”
Well thank you, first of all, Teresa, for struggling with it and trying to give us a review. I really do appreciate that. It’s kind of you.
What you do is if you have the Apple Podcasts app on your iPhone, that’s how I typically would do a review. If you’re following Living Blindfully already, then it’ll appear in your library when you double tap the library tab at the bottom of the screen. But if you’re not, you can search for Living Blindfully and it will come up.
When you double tap the podcast page, you’ll see recent episodes there. Towards the bottom of that page, there’s a button, and it says write a review. You can give it from 1 to 5 stars. I hope very much you’d like to give it five. And if you want to enter some additional text, there’s a place there where you can type that text in. And then, you can submit the review.
I’m sure there are other repositories that allow you to review podcasts. But to be honest, Apple Podcasts is the key one in this space.
So if people do want to help spread the word, it doesn’t cost anything other than a bit of time, for which I’m very grateful. It really does help. So thank you in advance to anyone who wants to do it, and thanks for asking the question, Teresa. I really appreciate it.
[music]
Voiceover: X marks a spot where you can follow Living Blindfully. Receive show previews and alerts the moment we publish new audio or a transcript.
Because of the short usernames on X, we’re LiveBlindfully. That’s all one word.
Follow LiveBlindfully on X, and stay in touch.
Advice for First iPhone Buyers
Walt Smith says:
“Some of us are only just getting into the 21st century, technologically speaking, and are about to take the giant leap into iPhone land.
Listening to so many of your podcasts where VoiceOver and the multiplicity of iPhone apps has been discussed causes me to realize that I need a truly basic, comprehensive, getting started document, something aimed at the blind totally iPhone inexperienced customer. My thought is that such a document might include selecting the right iPhone model based on our personal needs, how to get VoiceOver started, and a thorough review of the app (I know that Jonathan recently did a really good overview of this.), a listing and overview of useful apps that a blind user shouldn’t be without like Be My Eyes, etc., anything else that experienced iPhone users think would be useful, helpful, or valuable to the total neophyte.”
Well, the good news is, Walt, there is a lot of material out there on getting started with an iPhone. I believe that AppleVis still has some information on this, so you can go to AppleVis.com. When I looked years ago, there were a series of getting started type documents there that tell you about how to get started with an iPhone, VoiceOver gestures, how to get it started, all of those good things.
You can also pop on over to National Braille Press at NBP.org. At that site, you will find a book called iOS Basics for the Beginning User. You can order that for instant download, or you can even get it in hard copy Braille if that’s your jam which some people still do prefer, particularly when learning a new device like this. And if you type iPhone into the search box there in the store at NBP.org, you will find a bunch of iPhone-related books on a variety of topics including making the most of your camera, writing, creating documents with your iPhone. A whole bunch of stuff there, so type iPhone into the search box. You’ll be delighted with what comes back.
And in an incredibly meticulous labor of love, Michael Feir has produced 2 editions now of a book called Personal Power iOS Edition, and donated it to the blind community. I mean, this thing is huge. It’s very comprehensive, but it’s also well segmented so you can move through the things that you want to look up. And you can find that and download it free at MichaelFeir.blogspot.com. That’s MichaelF-E-I-R.blogspot.com.
There are also many Apple-related email lists out there, if you would like to join and ask questions.
And I don’t know whether you’re a social media guy or not, but there’s plenty of support on social media as well – people who will happily chat about your iPhone to you. There are forums on AppleVis for that purpose as well.
People tend to be quite evangelistic about their iPhones. They’ll be happy to chat with you about things and answer your questions.
And, you know, I’ve seen it go both ways. I’ve seen some people get an iPhone who are extremely competent with their computer. And for the first few weeks, they want to throw the damn thing out the window. There can be a high level of frustration initially, but it usually passes.
On the other hand, I’ve seen the other thing happen, too. I’ve seen people who are not particularly comfortable with a computer. It just doesn’t register with them, the whole computer thing. But something about the iPhone does, and they take to it like a duck to water in a way that they never did take to Windows, Mac, or whatever desktop operating system they were using.
Now, I will chime in on what iPhone you might consider buying. I’d suggest that if you have succeeded in your life without an iPhone until now, then you can survive for another couple of months. So I would wait until the new generation of iPhone comes out, and get the iPhone 16 something.
There’ll be people who disagree with me about this. I do not recommend the iPhone SE. Some people have been sticking to the SE because of the size, and also because of the home button.
Face ID is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And it does constrain the technology you have access to because the iPhone SEs tend to be a little further behind than what’s out there right now, what’s current. So I would go with an iPhone 16 something that has Face ID.
You then have some choices about the size of the phone that you prefer. If you are going to make use of the Braille screen input virtual option, some people, particularly if they have larger hands, find that going with a Max-sized iPhone is preferable. It also gives you better battery life because it’s a larger phone, so they can accommodate a larger battery.
The other thing you want to consider is whether you want to go with a Pro model, which is a bit more expensive, or just the standard iPhone 16. The camera system in the Pro is better. Although for the kind of photography that many of us are into, it may not matter that much.
But one thing that is significant is that the Pro devices have LiDAR, and that gives you access to some pretty fun features like door detection, people detection, and a few other things. You may or may not use that. If you wear your iPhone in some sort of harness and you’re moving around an unfamiliar building, door detection can actually be quite useful. And I have heard on this very podcast of people who use people detection to find empty seats in a bus, for example. So there is some practical use there.
But for many use cases, the standard iPhone 16 would be just fine. You’ll have the latest and greatest technology. Most significantly in this age of AI, getting the iPhone 16 will give you access to Apple Intelligence, which is going to play a significant part in Apple’s software developments going forward.
So those are my thoughts. I hope those resources are helpful.
Do let us know how you get on.
But if I were you, I’d keep the old wallet closed for another couple of months. The iPhone 16 will be available in September, so you don’t have too long to wait.
Braille Screen Input in iOS 18
Christian Bertling’s on the WhatsApp. He’s everywhere. He’s multi-platform, I tell you. And he says:
“Hey, Jonathan,
I know from previous podcast you’ve mentioned before that you’re a regular user of braille” (with a lowercase b) “screen input.”
You’re right, Christian.
“And you’ve said that if you don’t have a Braille display connected, that that’s the primary way you input text on your iPhone.”
Right again, Christian. You’re on a roll here.
“Is this still the case?”
Yes, it is.
“Have you tested the new Braille screen input in iOS 18?”
I have tested it, yes.
He says:
“If you have, what do you think of it? And will you give a demo during the beta cycle like how you did with focuses and Eloquence?”
I probably will, Christian, yeah.
I haven’t put iOS 18 on my primary device because I didn’t want to have a beta on my phone when I was doing a lot of international travel, and I need my phone to just work during critical times. So I suspect, iOS 18 beta is coming to my primary device relatively soon.
But I have played with it on another device, and I’m very impressed, very impressed with what they’ve done with the Braille screen input. They’ve added a whole lot of utility and functionality, and it seems to be very well thought through, so it’s a significant development.
A Quick Look at ExpressVPN for iOS
Voice message: G’day, Jonathan! Scott from Sydney here.
Just wanted to say how much I really enjoyed your piece on the AirCove router from ExpressVPN.
I would be interested in hearing a demo of the iOS version of ExpressVPN. The Windows version, I did try a long time ago (probably about 3 or 4 years ago), along with the iOS version. So it possibly has changed since that time. But yeah, that was an excellent piece, and I wasn’t aware that they were doing the router thing now. So thanks very much for telling us about that.
I look forward to awesome episodes of your podcast in the future. Thanks very much.
Jonathan: I’m happy to give you a quick demo of the ExpressVPN app. I’m pretty pleased with this, actually.
So I’m happy to offer you 30 free days of ExpressVPN, so you can try it out for yourself. And if you do that, you support Living Blindfully too by giving us an additional 30 days of ExpressVPN, so everybody wins. It’s a beautiful thing.
To take advantage of the offer, just go to LivingBlindfully.com/VPN, and sign up from there. It’s that simple. LivingBlindfully.com/VPN.
And since it’s you, Scott, since it’s you, I’m going to use the Australian Karen voice to give you a quick look at ExpressVPN on the iPhone.
It’s a good app, this one. We’ll open it up.
[Siri sound]
Open ExpressVPN.
I’ll perform a 4-finger single tap on the top half of the screen to get to the top of the screen, …
VoiceOver: Button, thermometer.
Jonathan: and I’ll flick right.
VoiceOver: Not connected, button.
Jonathan: If I double tap this button, it will connect to the last VPN server that I was connected to, which in my case is in the UK. But I’ll keep moving forward.
VoiceOver: Select a location.
Jonathan: I’ll flick right.
VoiceOver: UK, East London.
Jonathan: And that was the last VPN that I connected to. And if I double tap,…
VoiceOver: Help, button.
Jonathan: I’ll flick right.
VoiceOver: VPN locations, heading.
Done, button.
Search for city or country, search field.
Jonathan: And if you want to connect to a particular city or country, you can double tap this search field and simply type it in. But if we flick right, …
VoiceOver: Selected, Recommended, Button. 1 of 2.
All Locations, Button. 2 of 2.
Jonathan: Recommended will give you a shorter list based on VPN points you’ve connected to before, and also, VPNs that are close by.
There are a couple of reasons you might want to use a VPN regularly. One is if you’re using a public Wi-Fi hotspot somewhere, like at a cafe or at an airport. Maybe you’re saving your cellular data because public Wi-Fi is available, but there are security risks with using that public Wi-Fi. In that case, you want to connect to a VPN service that’s close to you because that’ll reduce latency, and the effects of connecting to a VPN.
So in that case, for example, I’m in Wellington in New Zealand, I’ll want to connect to a VPN service that’s close to me. If I want to do some geo-blocking circumvention because I want to watch or listen to content that’s not available in my country, then I’ll want to pick a particular destination.
So if I flick right, …
VoiceOver: Smart location. New Zealand.
Jonathan: And there you go. It’s detected based on my IP address and maybe other location data that the phone provides that I’m in New Zealand, and this would be a sensible thing to connect to. If I keep going, …
VoiceOver: Recent locations.
Jonathan: we’ll see things that I’ve connected to previously.
VoiceOver: UK, East London.
UK, Midlands.
Recommended locations, heading.
New Zealand.
Australia.
Open all Australia locations.
United States.
Open all United States locations.
Hong Kong.
Open all Hong Kong locations.
Jonathan: And although VoiceOver isn’t speaking that these are actionable items, they all are.
So if I double tap, say, on the United States, it’ll just connect me to a server that it wants to connect to. But if I have some reason for wanting to connect to a specific city in the United States or a state in the United States, I can double tap, expand the list, and ExpressVPN does have an extensive list of cities and states that you can connect to.
And that’s essentially what’s on this first tab, the home tab. If I tap the bottom of the screen to look at the tab bar, …
VoiceOver: Tab bar, selected. VPN tab. 1 of 4.
Jonathan: I’ll flick right, and we’ll see the 3 other tabs.
VoiceOver: Keys tab. 2 of 4.
Jonathan: I must confess, I haven’t played with this. This is their password manager that’s built in to ExpressVPN.
I am, and probably always will be unless something drastic happens, a die-hard 1Password fan. It’s multi-platform. It works well. The price is right. They are reliable. I entrust my password security to 1Password, and it’s just so good that they’ve earned my loyalty. It would take something quite extraordinary for me to switch. So I’m not interested in this particular part of the ExpressVPN app myself.
I’ll flick right.
VoiceOver: Help tab. 3 of 4.
Jonathan: That’s self-explanatory. There’s a lot of good documentation from ExpressVPN. They seem to be a pretty well-run outfit. And finally, …
VoiceOver: Options tab. 4 of 4.
Jonathan: I’ll double-tap this, and we’ll take a quick look at some of the options available.
I’ll go to the top of the screen.
VoiceOver: Options, heading.
Advanced protection. Block ads and enable additional safeguards, button.
Jonathan: I’ll double tap, …
VoiceOver: Take control of your online experience with advanced protection features. these are only active when the VPN is connected.
Learn more.
Jonathan: and flick right.
VoiceOver: Threat manager.
Jonathan: This is the name of this section. So if I flick right, we’ll get some of the threat manager settings.
VoiceOver: Block trackers, switch button, on.
Jonathan: I do have this on at the moment, but I also have similar technology running all the time through a Safari extension that does similar things.
VoiceOver: Block malicious sites, switch button, on.
Add blocker. Blog ads, switch button, on.
Jonathan: Now, I do have a few qualms about technology like this because I know businesses need to make a living, and they do that by selling advertising. Believe me, as a podcast host in a niche market, I completely identify with this.
The trouble is that some of these ads really do interfere with accessibility. So where I can, if there’s a site that I can support by throwing a few dollars their way, I will do that rather than endure some accessibility issues.
VoiceOver: Parental controls.
Jonathan: And then, if you’re working with kids, you’ve got parental controls here on the screen as well.
We’ll perform a 2-finger scrub to go back.
VoiceOver: Advanced protection.
Block ads.
Jonathan: So it’s a very well-behaved iOS app.
VoiceOver: Other settings. Change VPN protocol, network settings, and more, button.
Jonathan: You probably don’t want to go in here, unless you know what you’re doing.
There are advantages of using certain kinds of VPN protocols in certain situations, and you can get a lot of help from ExpressVPN for this.
I should add that when you become an ExpressVPN subscriber, you also get access to their smart DNS server. So if you want to, you can override your internet service provider’s DNS either on a device-by-device basis, or by going into your router and configuring it at router level, which will affect the whole network. And that will unblock a whole bunch of sites without you having to log in to the VPN, so there are some advantages in doing that.
I’ll go back.
VoiceOver: Advanced protection.
Block ads.
Other settings.
Change VPN protocol.
Account, button.
Jonathan: There’s just your username, password, that kind of thing, how long you’ve got to go.
VoiceOver: Privacy and security tools, button.
Jonathan: There are some useful things here so I’ll double tap, …
VoiceOver: Tools.
Jonathan: and flick right.
VoiceOver: IP address checker. Check if your IP address/location is hidden.
Jonathan: I’m not logged into the VPN at the moment. So if I were to double tap this, it would tell me what my IP address is. That’s the internet protocol address assigned to me by my internet service provider. And I actually pay them to give me a static IP address because I run several server functions here, and it makes it easier.
VoiceOver: DNS leak test. Check if you have DNS leaks.
WebRTC leak test. Check if WebRTC is leaking your IP address.
Password generator. Create strong and secure passwords.
Technology, heading.
Trusted server. Our VPN servers run on RAM, not hard drives.
Tab bar. VPN tab. 1 of 4.
Jonathan: I’ll go back, and flick right.
VoiceOver: Set up on other devices, button.
Jonathan: One of the many things I like about ExpressVPN is that you can connect to multiple devices at the same time, which means you can share your subscription with family members. Now, I’m seeing conflicting reports about how many concurrent devices. Some articles I’ve read say the number is 5. Other articles I’ve read say the number is 8. Either way, it’s pretty generous.
One more thing about this app is that once you have connected to a VPN, you can then connect to that last VPN that you were using simply by going into your iOS settings. You’ll find a VPN option in iOS settings. If you double tap that, you’ll find your ExpressVPN option there. You double tap that, and you’ll be connected to the last VPN that you were using from ExpressVPN.
If you want to change your vpn location, go into the app itself and change it there.
So, very accessible. It’s a great service. I’m delighted with it, actually.
So a reminder, if you want to get 30 days to try it out for yourself and as they say, kick the tires, we’ll give you 30 free days on us. Go to LivingBlindfully.com/VPN, and have a play with it. LivingBlindfully.com/VPN.
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Looking for a Database App
Let’s go back to the WhatsApp machine for a text message from Yadiel, who says:
“I have a question for the Blind Hive Mind.
At work, we are trying to build a database of different products. We give out and lend a variety of products, and we want an easy way to track which devices are being given away, which ones are being loaned, and which ones were returned and when.
Right now, we keep all that information in an Excel file, and it works great. That is until a well-meaning person starts screwing with the format, or adding information on the wrong cells.
So my question is, do you or anyone in your audience know of an accessible database creator and manager that doesn’t require a ton of technical knowledge to build and operate? I tried AirTable, but their accessibility left a lot to be desired. Not looking for a massive inventory tracking system, just something a little bit more powerful than Excel. Extra brownie points if it is web-based, since we work for the state, and getting IT to install new software requires an act of Congress. Only barely exaggerating.”
Whoa! Look at that. Our first WhatsApp coming through there via text.
Where’s D-Base when you need it? I used to love using D-Base in the old DOS days, but it has been a while since I’ve had to use a database package like this.
If anyone has any ideas, do be in touch. Remember, the best way to find out all the ways you can get in touch with the podcast is to go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion, and all the ways – email, phone, WhatsApp are listed there.
WhatsApp for iOS Focus Issue
Let’s go back to WhatsApp for a text from India, and Avnish writes in:
“Dear Jonathan,
That your email announcement to add WhatsApp as a mode of communication for Living Blindfully came at the time that it did, proves to me beyond doubt that you are clairvoyant.”
Bit of a stretch there, Avnish. I’ve tried so hard to get the lottery numbers to pop into my mind but so far, nothing. [laughs]
“Let me explain.”, he says.
“I have been using WhatsApp as my primary mode of communication for various reasons for the past many years. The app has always been extremely VoiceOver friendly.
However, for the past few days, I have been having a problem which is rather unusual with this app. When scrolling down a list of messages, photos, and videos, whenever the focus is on a video, the focus does not move forward or backwards. It gets stuck there. I either have to play the video or go back to another contact and start all over again. This is very irritating and completely spoils the flow of action.
I am using the Apple iPhone 15 Pro with the latest version of iOS and the latest version of WhatsApp. Have tried all simple tricks to try and see if this could be resolved, but to no success.
Did you, or any of your Living Blindfully followers have a similar problem? It almost seems to me that you sent out this invitation to add WhatsApp as a mode of communication just so that I could send you my WhatsApp problem on WhatsApp itself. Do you have a magical resolution to this problem, or do we write to WhatsApp?
Thank you very much for everything that you are doing for all of us.
Whenever I finish hearing a Living Blindfully podcast, I am amazed at your skills of time management. How were you able to cram so many things in a 24-hour day? Perhaps one Living Blindfully podcast episode should be dedicated to the Jonathan way of doing so many things in so little time.
Best wishes, and healthy blessings.”
Thank you very much, Avnish!
I’m glad you seem to be coming to terms with your iPhone 15 Pro a bit.
Now, I haven’t seen this. But I’m unlikely to, because I don’t really get many video messages on WhatsApp. It tends to be text or audio.
Just because I’ve not seen it doesn’t mean that I might not encounter it, were the circumstances right. So if anyone else has seen this and they have a workaround, do be in touch. Just go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion. All the contact details are on that webpage. You can pick the one that’s best for you. You might want to send us a WhatsApp message like Avnish did.
As for getting things done, well, I’m getting fewer things done than I used to at the moment, and I’m quite enjoying the more relaxed lifestyle for however long it lasts.
My lovely wife keeps saying to me, you are the most motivated person I know, and I wish I had half your motivation, and all this sort of stuff. But I can’t tell you what the secret is because I’m just doing what I do.
I will say though that one thing that does help a lot is actually taking time, even on a very busy day, for meditation. It seems counterintuitive, but stopping for 15 minutes, even at either end of the day is actually an investment that pays off in productivity throughout the rest of the day.
Response to the Matthew Horspool Interview
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan and other Living Blindfully listeners! This is Hope. It’s my first ever contribution on the podcast, though I’ve been listening for a long time now, These past few months, especially.
But I wanted to make a comment on the interview from episode 288, which was a really really informative interview. I really enjoyed listening to it. I know Matthew personally, like we talk on WhatsApp, and it was pretty cool to see him on the podcast. I met him through a technology group, which is pretty funny, actually, now that I mention it.
I just wanted to make the comment that I agree with a lot of what he had said, especially in terms of the importance of Braille. I find Braille extremely important. I have learned it since I was 3 to 4. I started learning it in preschool, and I learned obviously by writing my name first. And then, obviously, it got more pronounced, and I learned more as I got older. And by the time I was in kindergarten, I was really learning how to do the alphabet, different contractions, and all that stuff.
But I also wanted to comment on the whole UEB thing as well because I was one of those people, okay? Remember, I learned Braille in the early 2000s. That’s when I was a child. So naturally, I wasn’t a fan of the change. It took a long time before I accepted it.
I think one of the biggest reasons that I accepted it, truthfully, was because I was using a BrailleNote Apex at the time with my iPhone, and Apple was obviously ahead of its time because it had the UEB code as its default code, like as one of the default codes. Before, it was called Unified English Braille. Actually no, it literally was called English Braille Unified. And that was the default code, for the longest time. Like, I think it was just uncontracted Braille. That was not really changed much. But contracted Braille, which was like the normal grade 2 Braille, it wasn’t a thing. So I had no choice but to get used to UEB because at the time, I used my BrailleNote Apex with my iPhone a lot. This was back when I had an iPhone 4, and I literally had to force myself to get used to UEB.
But I remember when it was first proposed, when all my teachers and my vision teacher was talking to me and everything, and she was like, you know, there’s this new code called UEB.
And I’m thinking, what is this? Why are we changing Braille? I learned Braille for these years. And now, I have a whole new code, and it’s like why? I got used to it.
And I’m like, this isn’t too bad. It’s weird, but it’s not bad.
But I will never forget it. I was one of those people that was just so against the ever-changing Braille code.
I agree with Matthew completely. If it would have been marketed differently, especially in the US, that would have been fine. I would have been like oh, it’s an improvement on Braille. Like, how can we improve it? I’m curious. I’m interested. I’m intrigued.
But that’s not how it was marketed. It was oh, we’re gonna create a completely new Braille code. It’s gonna be changed. And that made me mad, as totally blind from birth, learned Braille at a young age person, to when I was a teenager, they’re like oh, okay. Well, now, it has to be changed. And that really did upset me, so I get it.
But honestly, I agree with a lot of what was said. I do think that Braille is very important, especially with learning how to spell.
I am also one of those people that primarily uses speech. I also am the same way with when it comes to how I interpret text-to-speech. I kind of do put some more expression into it. I’ve kind of learned how to do that over the years. But I also agree that Braille is pretty important.
I remember one time, I was doing one of those standard placement tests. I don’t know if you have them in other countries, but we do here in the US. Where we have a lot of, it was a standardized state test that we had to take. And one of the subject lines was reading comprehension.
And my vision teacher asked me. She said, do you use the Braille display? I noticed that you’re arrowing a lot and using speech. But when do you use the Braille display?
I’m like well, I use speech primarily, but I’m using the Braille display to read over any words that might sound the same, or if I’m making sure that it looks okay because it was proofreading.
Jonathan: Change is difficult for a lot of us a lot of the time.
Lovely to hear from you, Hope, on the WhatsApp, no less. Good to get your first contribution.
How I Got Back into Knitting
Voice message: Hi! This is Sonia from Quebec City.
I wanted to say WhatsApp is a great idea as a new tool for Living Blindfully, and a very good idea. And also, I wanted to say thank you because you inspired me for a solution.
I just relearned knitting. I started knitting years ago, but I stopped for a good 25 years. And then, my sight lowered a lot, and I relearned knitting lately.
One of the tools I use is ElevenLabs because I have written instructions that I convert to voice via ElevenLabs. And then, I upload to Overcast. So that gives me the Overcast interface to be able to skip back a few seconds, or a word, etc using voice while knitting. That’s very useful. So thank you for introducing me to ElevenLabs.
And yeah, first voice message so far that I made on WhatsApp. So I’m going to stop there, and hope it makes sense.
Thank you a lot for all you’re doing, and I love your podcast and everyone part of the big Living Blindfully family.
Jonathan: Well, lovely to hear from you. Thank you so much!
I fully agree. It’s great to hear the perspectives of people from all around the world, and I’m glad that we’ve heard yours.
I do admire people who do the knitting. It sounds so intricate and detailed, and I don’t know whether I’d have the ability to do it. So well done!
My Zoom H1 Essential Recordings are Too quiet
Caller: Hello, Jonathan! I’m Jan from Ohio, and I love the Living Blindfully show.
I have a question. I listened to your demonstrations of the Zoom H recorders.
I have a question about the Zoom H1 recorder. I have that recorder. I recorded some files with it, and they turned out wonderful when I play them on the recorder itself.
But when I move the files to another device and play the files on the device that I’ve moved the files to, the volume is very very low, and I can hardly hear it.
I called Zoom support, but they say that they have no idea what could be going on. So I was wondering if you might have some suggestions on what I can do to improve this, because once I record the files on the Zoom H1 recorder, I don’t want to keep them there. I’d like to move them to a different device. I like to play them on the Sense, at a BrailleSense player, and the Victor Reader Stream. Any suggestions you might have will truly be appreciated.
I thank you so much for listening to my question.
Jonathan: Oh well, that’s what I’m here for, Jan. It’s lovely to hear from you. Thanks for calling in. I hope you enjoy your H1 Essential.
Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this. What’s going on here is that the files that you’re making on the H1 Essential are in 32-bit float, which means that they have incredible dynamic range. And Zoom records at quite a conservative level by default.
So you need to make these files louder after they’ve been recorded. You would get a lot of control over this process if you’re able to move the files onto a computer with recording software on.
So if you have a PC, you could put Audacity which is free on there, and it has a normalize function. The demo version of GoldWave also has it. Any good audio editor will have a normalize function.
But if you want to move straight from the H1 Essential to something like a SensePlayer or a Victor Reader Stream, then you’ll need to do this on device. And you can do this.
So the way to do this is to get yourself into the mode where either you’ve just recorded a file and you’ve pressed stop (so you do this right away), or you go into playback mode and you find the file that you want to do this to by playing it, and you press stop so you’re not in standby mode. You’re in this kind of files mode when you’re in that mode. We’ll press the left-hand soft key, and I’ll do that now on the H1 Essential.
Guide sound: File option.
Move to trash.
Jonathan: We don’t want to do that, so we’ll go right.
Guide sound: Normalize.
Jonathan: There it is. This is the function of normalizing which makes the loudest point of the file at a certain decibel value. So I’ll press Enter.
Guide sound: Normalize.
Cancel.
Jonathan: We’re on cancel by default, so I’ll go right.
Guide sound: Execute.
Jonathan: So when I press Enter on this, …
Guide sound: Processing.
Jonathan: It will go away. Takes a while.
Guide sound: Done.
Jonathan: There we go. That was actually quite a short file I did that on.
Guide sound: Playback.
Jonathan: But it is going to take a lot longer if you have a longer file.
Now, it’s important to note that you haven’t actually changed the original file. So when you go in and you look at the files that are now on your device, you’ll see a new file with the same date and time as your original with norm (N-O-R-M) at the end. I presume Zoom is doing this so that you have the original, in case you don’t like what normalization has done and you haven’t lost anything important. So it’s the files with norm at the end that you’ve created after you have normalized that you will want to copy to another device.
Another thing to note is that to save some space on your other device while you’re in that file screen, you may want to export the file as well because that could save it to a slightly smaller file size which will consume less space. There may be some devices that are not capable of natively playing the 32-bit float files that the H1 Essential creates, so exporting to a smaller file size does have advantages as well.
I hope that helps, Jan, and that the normalized files work out better for you.
[music]
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Odd Problem With iOS Notifications
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan and Living Blindfully community. This is Urh, speaking from Slovenia.
First of all, I just want to thank you for all of your great work and this amazing podcast, which, by the way, I am a plus subscriber and I’m listening every week.
Now, I just want to talk about an issue that I’ve been having for about a week now on my iPhone 15 Plus running iOS 17.5.1. The issue in question is something very strange, actually.
For some reason, my notifications on my phone are not spoken, nor do they make a sound when the phone is unlocked. If the phone is locked, I get the sound and VoiceOver saying 1 notification, or 2 notifications, or whatever.
I do have an Apple Watch connected. And if my iPhone is locked, my Apple Watch does say that a notification has been received. But if my iPhone is unlocked, the normal behavior would be that my iPhone would receive the notification and I wouldn’t hear it on the Apple Watch. But now, even on the iPhone, for some reason, the notification just is not spoken and it’s only visible in the notification center.
I have no idea how to fix this. I have tried restarting both devices. If I disconnect my Apple Watch from my phone, or if I just turn it off completely, the phone still does not display notifications correctly when unlocked. I really don’t know how to fix this. I have all of my notification settings set correctly. I have tried everything.
I really want to know if anyone else is having this issue, and if you guys have been able to fix it.
Thanks again for this amazing podcast.
Jonathan: Well, thank you so much for supporting it with your Living Blindfully plus subscription. Really appreciate that. It helps to keep the podcast alive.
Ooh! That is a really interesting one. Is there any chance at all that you may have inadvertently turned a focus mode on? If you go into control center, does it show that do not disturb or any focus settings are completely disabled? Because depending on your settings, what you describe might be possible if a focus mode has somehow got itself turned on and you didn’t know about it.
If that’s not the magic answer, the only thing I can really think of to do is to reset everything. Now, this could be tricky because what I often find is that if your phone gets into a weird state like this, even if you restore from an iCloud backup, sometimes, that fixes the issue. But sometimes, it just brings the issue back. So it may not work.
One thing I do every couple of weeks is, in addition to keeping daily iCloud backups, I keep a good backup of my phone on my PC using iTunes. So when I’m happy with how it’s all going, every week or so, I’ll just take the time to make that full backup to iTunes as a fail-safe. And that has got me out of a few binds from time to time.
But that’s not going to help you now because you’re in the stage you’re in now.
Of course, it might be worth calling Apple to see what they say. But I suspect, they’re going to say to you, reset and try and restore from the backup.
It does sound quite similar to the experience that Steve Bauer recounted. Was that in episode 289, I think? So maybe there’s something going on.
Others might like to chime in if they’ve had a similar problem, particularly if you’ve been able to fix the problem. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion is where you go on the web to find out all the ways to be in touch – on WhatsApp, email, and phone.
Robotic Guide Dogs
Let’s follow up on our interview with Dr. Nicholas Giudice, who talked about robotic guide dogs and autonomous vehicles.
Peter is still in Budapest, and he says:
“I’m a white cane user, but I have my well-considered opinion on robotic guide dogs.
I think one must separate two things sharply. The first is a tool for navigating. The other is a companion with very strong emotional strings.
We’re approaching the point when the navigation is better helped by a machine than by an animal when a robotic dog equipped with artificial intelligence works more efficiently than the barking version. But we’ll never reach a point when a machine can, on the emotional side, compete with a living, breathing, furry 4-legged friend.
If I had the chance, I would like to have both – each in its place, each in its role.”
Well, I guess the question then becomes though, Peter, if the robotic guide dog is a better tool, and it’s a better mobility aid, will we be able to insist on special rights for service animals? Because there are plenty of sighted people who also get that strong emotional bond from their dog, but they don’t have the same rights that we do because these dogs are a mobility tool first and foremost. And if those mobility functions are better carried out, more cost-effectively, less intrusively with a robotic device, then do we have a case anymore for getting our companionship from a service animal rather than from a pet like everybody else?
I think this is going to be a really difficult question over the next few years. We’re not there yet, but this technology is moving quickly, and it won’t be far away before it becomes a real issue.
“Now,”, Peter continues, “one more unrelated question. Why on earth are these endless”test matches” organized in cricket? Why not play a real game? Has anybody ever heard about a “test” match in European or American football, or any other sport at all?
What the heck are they testing? The ball? The display that tells the audience the results? The grass? The shoes? Why testing? Why not playing? I’m begging all cricket lovers to explain it to me.
All the best from Budapest.
Signs off,
Peter, as usual
Peter, first of all, test matches are not unique to cricket. You regularly get test matches in the game of Rugby Union, which is a popular game around some parts of the world. Largely in the same nations that play cricket, actually. Not all the same nations that play cricket, but New Zealand, Australia, the UK, South Africa, a number of other countries.
Rugby League is also another game where you see test matches played. So the term test match is common in many countries. And I agree, you don’t hear about soccer test matches, but you do hear about other games where there are test matches besides cricket.
What they’re testing is the teams, the skills of the teams. The term test match applies to international games. So it is the ultimate test. You are pitting the best in your country against the best players in another country. And that’s why it’s called a test match.
I love the game of cricket. I think it is the most strategic, wonderful game in the world. And a test match is the ultimate form of the game.
Odd Braille Problem in iOS
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan and Living Blindfully listeners! This is Rich Yamamoto, coming to you from Kansas City, Kansas.
I’m sending out an SOS/smoke signal because I am in need of dire assistance with our iPads at work.
There is a specific iPad. I cannot remember which one it is right now. But no matter what I do with it, I cannot get contracted Braille to work with Braille displays. It’s grayed out in the settings, meaning for those who are VoiceOver users, that means that it’s dimmed, but every other option is available. I don’t know what to do.
I’ve updated it to the latest version. I’ve tried other Braille displays aside from the Mantis. So I’ve tried like our QBrails on campus, our Manti, and our Chameleons from APH, and the Focus 40s, and I cannot get it to do either input or output of contracted Braille.
This is a big problem because a lot of our students are contracted Braille users. And when I first couldn’t figure it out, one of them yelled, you are the worst Braille person I’ve ever met in my life!
I would like to avoid having that problem again before the school year starts. So if anybody has any idea of what to do to fix this problem, I would be very curious to know. That would be very helpful for me.
Jonathan: Well first, Rich, that person needs to get some manners. That’s totally rude. You’re doing your best.
I wonder whether the Braille table might have something to do with this. Have you gone into the Braille tables option under Braille settings of VoiceOver and had a look at what’s available there? Because on mine, there are 2 tables installed by default. One is the system one, and another is a LibLouis. And I’m wondering what would happen if you changed the Braille table from whatever is selected now to the other. Will the contracted Braille come up then?
You can also add a Braille table. So it might be interesting to see what other options are available, and whether it has any effect when you add another compatible table.
Others might have some ideas. Do be in touch. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion is how you find all the ways that you can be in touch with the podcast.
If my suggestion doesn’t do the trick, I hope someone comes forward with an idea for you.
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I Put a Deposit on a Glide
To the merry old land of Oz we go. Christopher Sims is in touch. Thank you very much for your Living Blindfully plus support as well, Christopher. He said:
“I thought I would write to tell your podcast listeners that I have paid the deposit for my Glide device. I have taken the view that even though it’s new tech, someone needs to be the first. I look forward to finalizing the pre-order for the device.”
Good on you, Christopher, because orders now are available. So if you listened to the interview with Amos from Glide and you’re interested in it, you now can put a deposit and pre-order the Glide.
Christopher continues:
“Regarding the interview that you did about the self-driving cars, when a person with a disability summonses such a vehicle, the protocol should be that the vehicle would have the same status as an emergency services vehicle. This would be for the purposes of parking to pick up someone such as you or me. This would eliminate the problem of finding the vehicle.
The only time this would be overridden would be when one of the relevant authorities were attending an incident.”
That’s really interesting, Christopher. That might have some merit.
You still have to find it though, don’t you? So if you’ve been to a function and there are 3 or 4 vehicles out there that have the right to park where they do so that it’s fairly easily accessible, you’ve still got to know which one is yours. So there’s got to be some sort of way of communicating between you and the vehicle that authenticates that this is yours.
Otherwise, you’re going to jump into any old vehicle and it could take you any place. That could be quite exciting.
Zoom H6 Essential, and Setting Up a New eSIM
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan and other Living Blindfully listeners! This is George from South Africa.
Firstly, Jonathan, thank you for allowing us to send WhatsApp messages into the podcast. I use WhatsApp pretty much as my exclusive method of contact. A lot of people here in SA do, and I’ll be talking about that in just a second.
If I were to record and send an audio file via email, I would record it on the new fancy schmancy Zoom H6 Essential that I received. It’s an absolutely wonderful device.
I took it to a conference and recorded some stuff. Things could get loud there. Imagine about 900 teenagers going absolutely wild with a pair of big bassy speakers thumping in the background.
Yes, it took that quite nicely. I just raised the volume of the track. And thanks to 32-bit float, I got some incredible incredible results.
The only difficulty was recording something that was away from the recorder, which was one or two of the panels that we had. The speakers were sitting a little ways in front of me, but I was still able to raise the volume of that and get some pretty decent sounding audio. I love, love the device.
I wanted to mention a couple things, firstly regarding the Essential series of recorders.
Jonathan, I listened to all 3 episodes, or 2 of them, and I noticed that you demonstrated updating the firmware in the Zoom H1 Essential.
I do want to say I did this on the H6 Essential. And after the firmware update was complete, the voice guidance (or whatever it’s called, guide sound or voice guidance, I always get confused between this and the Olympus recorders.) the voice guidance said done, and I could turn the recorder off and back on. So yes, that was incredible.
I was actually a bit nervous. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed it, but I thought i would like you guys to know.
And then, I just wanted to bring your attention and specifically, the attention of the South African listeners that we’ve got to a couple things.
First of all, Melon Mobile (that’s M-E-L-O-N mobile, 2 words), that is a new internet service provider that allows for the use of eSIMs which is something new here. We don’t get those very often.
The app is not very accessible. It’s accessible enough for managing your plan.
But I just wanted to say well done to the support team because they were incredible.
So when you first sign up, you have to, I don’t know whether they have something similar in the rest of the world, but reeka yourself (that’s, I think it’s spelled R-E-E-K-A). And that’s basically essentially registering the number to you. And to do that, you have to provide a selfie and a photo of your ID.
And the tech support rep that I was working with said alright, can you send me the stuff?
And I explained. I said unfortunately, I’m blind, so taking photos of these things is difficult.
But this tech support rep was incredible and said no, don’t worry. I’ll guide you if the photo is wrong. And if we really can’t manage, then I’m afraid you’re gonna have to ask someone to help you.
Anyway, that took about 5 minutes.
When that was done, I had to go into the app and import my eSIM. I explained that the app wasn’t very accessible, so they sent a QR code that I was able to paste into a Microsoft Word document and scan with my device, and import the eSIM. And yeah, everything was smooth-sailing. I was up and running in about 20, 25 minutes. Everything worked nicely.
And also, for just (and this is not an advertisement by the way, but I thought it would be handy for everybody to know) for R199 a month, you can get unlimited voice calls, unlimited text messages, and 5 gigs of data in one eSIM. So yeah, I thought I would just let you guys know.
Thanks once again for listening.
Jonathan: Thank you very much for that informative message, George.
Just coming back to the Zoom H6 Essential. When I did the review, there was no firmware update available for any other device than the H1 Essential. It’s been heartening to see some changes since those reviews were done, including the new firmware speaking the names of the tracks that are armed, and the accessibility of the firmware process now being better. I’m encouraged by that because sometimes, what happens is that a manufacturer does a one-off thing to tick the accessibility box and never touches it again.
That clearly is not the case with Zoom. They have been responding to user feedback, and that’s very positive.
Inaccessible Locks on Suitcases
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan, and hello, everybody who’s listening to Living Blindfully. This is Marco Zehe from Germany.
First of all, I’d like to congratulate you on the new WhatsApp channel. I think this is a great addition to the podcast. And hopefully, many people will start using it over the landline, especially if you use an iPhone to call the landline number and use AirPods or some other Bluetooth headphones. It really doesn’t sound great. I so hope that many more people will be using WhatsApp voice messages now instead of that. But that’s just my personal audiophile opinion.
I have a question to all the frequent travelers.
I used to travel much as well (Not so much since my retirement.), and I used to use backpacks.
But my back can’t handle backpacks or rucksacks well anymore, so I bought myself a nice suitcase from Samsonite. It has this lock, which uses like 3 wheels (almost like the older model Focus Braille display Whiz Wheels on the side, but more tiny) to set 3 digits to secure the lock.
I was wondering if any of you have ever found an accessible way of using these because first of all, I find it hard to actually set the lock so the suitcase closes up well, and then to unlock it. So is there any kind of accessible way to do this?
I would really appreciate any advice on that because I am traveling in 3 weeks, going on my summer vacation here in Europe to the Baltic Sea, and would like, you know, to send my suitcase in advance. We have a company here in Germany who does this, but I need to lock up the suitcase for that. So I’m just wondering how this is going to work.
Jonathan: Nice to hear from you, Marco.
That’s interesting about the fact that when you send your suitcase away like that, they’re going to let you lock it. Because last time I checked, the airlines are pretty clear. Do not lock your suitcase. It will get busted open if you do, if they decide that it’s necessary to open it, so I don’t lock them anymore.
But I have seen the kind of lock you’re talking about on briefcases.
And when I bought a briefcase some years ago, I had to be very careful because what I found was some of those combination locks stop at 0, and some of them don’t. Some of them, you whiz the wheels around and around, and they just move around interminably.
But I was able to find a lock where it stops at 0, and it stops at 9. And that’s how I was able to get around it. I think I did need some assistance to set the combination initially. But once I’d set the combination, since everything stopped at 0 and stopped at 9, I was able to dial in the combination that I needed.
I don’t know whether it’s too late to return the suitcase. But if yours just woozes around and around, it might not be the most accessible option.
Perhaps others have found ways around it though, so let’s find out. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion is the page to go to for all the information about how you get in touch with us. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
Blind Guy Buying a Car
Voice message: Well good evening, Jonathan, or good morning, probably.
Just wanted to try sending a test message via WhatsApp to see how it goes. I’m sure the audio sounds good.
And wanted to thank you for these interesting discussions you had, particularly the one about the self-driving cars. I just finished listening to that, and I’d wondered about that. Your car may get you to the pub, for example, but where does it drop you off? Does it drop you off at the door and then park itself, or how does that work? All these little niggly little things.
Also, I wanted to tell you about an experience I had.
Some years ago, I was in the process of trying to buy a car for our family. I called up the dealership and gave him all the information I had.
And then, I told the dealer that I’m blind, so I have no driver’s license. I think he wanted a driver’s license number, or something.
He got all confused and said that I wasn’t able to buy this car because they wanted someone with a driver’s license on the loan. That was not a practical thing to do because at the time, my credit was going to be the thing that needed to be used and didn’t need to add anybody on because it would change things. They did not want to put me on the loan unless I had a driver’s license. They wanted someone else to be on the loan, and I found that rather unusual.
I said to myself, what happens if there’s some blind guy out there who he’s got someone that drives for him, and he’s got very good credit, and he doesn’t have a partner necessarily – wife, anything like that, but he wants to buy a car? Should his chauffeur’s name be on the loan? That ’s not practical. So what do you do in a situation like that? It sounded fishy to me.
So I called another dealer whom we ended up going through, and they didn’t care. As long as I had the credit, they had the car, and they would be happy to sell it.
It was just a weird situation. Don’t know if anyone else has had a situation like that, but that was a rather strange thing that happened.
Also, thank you for the information about VPNs. I’ve looked at VPNs before.
I looked at NordVPN and found their app at first to be somewhat accessible. I think it was version 6 of the app.
Then, they updated the app to something new, and it even became worse. It wasn’t so much that you couldn’t set it up. You could actually set it up for the first time. It wasn’t too bad, but it was a bear to get to the settings on the NordVPN app.
So I had a good deal with them, and I kept it because it lasted for about a year or so.
But their app is atrocious. At least the Windows app is atrocious. The iPhone wasn’t so bad.
I’m curious, did you go through several VPNs before you found an accessible VPN app for the PC? or did you just happen to stumble on ExpressVPN?
I’m not really sure about that. I just wondered about that.
But congratulations on your achievements. Not many of us can do what you’ve done. But it did take a lot, and it wasn’t something that happened quickly. I know it’s something that happened over time, and took a lot of effort. So at any rate, It’s nice to be able to do things the way you want to do them and stuff like that, at least for a while.
But it sounds like you don’t want to just do nothing, so you’re going to keep yourself busy and maybe find other things down the line here.
I had an uncle who he wanted to work, and he was well into his 70s, maybe close to 80. He worked at one of the carpet mills here in town, whom I shall not name.
But one thing about the companies here in the state of Georgia, Georgia is not what is known as a right-to-work state. And in Georgia, you work at the convenience of your employer. And they have a way of getting rid of you one way or another, in some cases.
So what they did with my uncle, they wanted him to leave. He wouldn’t leave. He just stayed there, and stayed there, and stayed there, worked and worked and worked.
Finally, they came up with a way to get him on a safety violation. They fired him because they said he’d violated some safety thing, or not. Whether he did or not, I’m not really sure. But at any rate, they fired him.
I honestly believe he didn’t know what to do with himself after he left the job. I think he tried to buy a horse, or something like that, or some property or something like that. But whatever he did, it really didn’t go well for him, and he’s no longer with us.
But it’s so funny. Some people can’t think of anything to do when they don’t have to work. Me, I can think of a million things to do. Some of them though, require money, so you just can’t do anything. But it was just weird that he just could not figure out what to do with himself after he’d lost his job. But like I say, he was about 80 years old, so he wasn’t into technology or anything like that.
Jonathan: That’s Joe Norton. He didn’t announce himself, so I’ll back announce him as if he’d just written a number 1 hit record. It was a number 1 hit contribution to the podcast.
Thanks for your good wishes, Joe! I’ll work back through your contribution.
I’ve got bits of consultancy work coming in. and of course, the podcast keeps me very busy, and that does bring some money. And so I’m keeping very busy, and very happy, and just taking the time to see what happens next, and it’s a great feeling.
Regarding VPNs, I’ve been a VPN tinker for a long time, and I’ve tried different things.
For a while, I was using a thing called Hide My Ass. I think they changed their name to HMA after a while. I don’t hear much about them anymore. I’m not sure if they’re still around.
I’ve used Private Internet Access. And most recently, I’ve used Surfshark.
The things that I’m looking for in a VPN are obviously, security and integrity. But also, what do they unlock when you connect to another country’s VPN? How accessible are they on all the platforms that I use? And in that regard, after a lot of playing around with different packages, I found that at the moment, ExpressVPN seems to tick all those boxes really well.
This is another opportunity to tell people that we do have an offer going at the moment for Living Blindfully listeners. If you want to try ExpressVPN for yourself and install it on all your devices, we can give you 30 days free. You’re also supporting Living Blindfully because when you do that, we get 30 days free as well. Isn’t it glorious when it’s a win-win situation like that?
And to take advantage of that deal, just go to LivingBlindfully.com/VPN, and try it out. LivingBlindfully.com/VPN.
Now, your story about the car brought back some interesting memories for me. Oh boy, where do I start with the story?
I think I need to start with the story by saying that when I met my first wife and she introduced me to her best friend, one of the first things that her best friend said to me was, you don’t want to get into a car with this woman. [laughs] And obviously, my first wife (who wasn’t my first wife then, she was my girlfriend) objected vociferously to this advice.
Anyway, I’m sure this has no bearing on the fact that I think it was in 1991 or 1992, she wrote the car off. And luckily, she was okay, but the car was not.
I was working on a radio station, not earning a terribly large amount of money at the time, and we wondered where the money was going to come from to replace the car.
So we were cogitating on this, and thinking about what’s our credit like? What kind of loan might we get?
It must have been 1992, because I had finished university. I got home from my radio work at about 11 in the morning, and there’s a knock on the door.
I go to the front door, and this person’s there and says, “Are you Jonathan Mosen?”, and I said yes.
And he said, I am representing such and such a law firm, and we’ve been looking for you because there’s a woman who’s been listening to you since you were very little on the radio (I’ve been on the radio since I was 4 years old, for better or worse). This lawyer person said she’s been listening to you on the radio. She’s just died, and she’s left you a bequest.
And it was well and truly enough to buy a new car outright. I mean, what are the chances of that randomness happening? I mean, that all happened within a few days of each other.
Now, I’m not even sure why we did it, but the car was in both of our names when we bought it. It was registered to Amanda and me. Amanda had a driver’s license, of course, and I most certainly did not, but we were both registered as owners of the vehicle.
Fast forward to the middle of 1994. We get home, and we’re going through the mail, and there’s a letter addressed to me containing a speeding camera fine. You know, those cameras that go ping when you drive past if you’re driving too fast, and if you’ve exceeded the speed limit for that particular area. It pings you, and it knows who you are, and it sends you this automatic infringement notice.
So it’s addressed to me, and it’s got a driver’s license number that apparently, belongs to me in this letter, and it’s not my wife’s driver’s license number. And we thought, this is curious.
And it so happened that at the time, I was taking a big gamble in my career. I was applying for a government relations position at the blindness organization here, the manager of government relations. It was a senior leadership position. I was 25. Everybody thought the position was sewn up and it was earmarked for someone else. But I put my hat in the ring.
And then, I thought, you know, I’ve been handed another opportunity here with this car-related thing. If I can make a bit of a noise about the fact that here’s a blind guy who’s received a speeding camera fine, I can demonstrate how well I can work the media.
So just a little before the interview was due to take place for this government relations position, I did a media release – “Blind Man, issued with speeding camera fine”. I have never known anything like that in my career before or since. This release went viral in an international way. I mean, it was really bizarre. It was on the TV news here and everything like that. I was getting interviewed from all over the world. I was getting calls from radio stations and newspapers. I think the farthest I can remember it going was in Amman. I got called by this media outlet there who wanted to talk to me. It was all over the place. And I think it was impressive to the people who interviewed me because I did get the role.
But understandably, Amanda was a bit sort of perturbed after a while because she’s thinking, well, now the whole world knows that I was the one who actually got the speeding camera fine.
Working With TP-Link Routers
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan!
In episode 288 of Living Blindfully podcast, Christopher Wright said that after the firmware upgrade, his TP-Link router became less accessible.
I just want to add that TP-Link also has a mobile app called TP-Link Tether. 6 years back when I last used it, it was accessible. So just give it a try.
Reading Documents Straight From the Focus 40 Blue Refreshable Braille Display
Jonathan: Back to WhatsApp, we go for a text message from Kenneth Surat from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. He says:
“I would like to read documents straight from my Focus 40 Blue refreshable Braille display.
What program can I use to convert text or Word files to BRF-formatted files? This way, I can read documents straight from my Braille display as a standalone device.
Thank you very much!”
Good question, Kenneth. And I’m scratching my head to remember the answer way back when I did an FSCast for Freedom Scientific on this very subject, when the new Focus 40 Blue series came out. I know there were a couple of products from APH, and batch files and things where you could do this, so you might want to check the FSCast archives because it’s been a long time since I did that podcast.
It could be that there are people with Focus 40 Blues doing this every day. What’s the best way to get those documents into contracted Braille on the Focus 40 Blue? If you can help Kenneth out with some product suggestions, that would be delightful.
Get in touch. All the ways you can do that, including the WhatsApp, are all listed at LivingBlindfully.com/opinion. So go there, pick the best one that works for you, and be in touch. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
In WhatsApp, What are Channels, Groups, and Communities?
Voice message: Jonathan, I applaud this use of WhatsApp.
However, it’s been some time since I’ve used WhatsApp, so I’d like to ask a question. They refer to channels, communities, and groups. What do these terms mean as applied by WhatsApp?
Jonathan: That sounds like Roy. Good to hear from you, Roy.
Alright, let’s have a look at WhatsApp channels first.
Living Blindfully does have a WhatsApp channel, and they are one-way broadcast media. If you subscribe to a channel, then you’re essentially opting in to broadcasts from that channel about things of interest.
For example, if you belong to the WhatsApp channel for Living Blindfully, you’ll get announcements about forthcoming episodes and maybe, a few extras from time to time. News outlets, sports teams, businesses, many organizations of all different shapes and sizes have WhatsApp channels.
If you’re a part of a WhatsApp group, you could have up to 1024 members in that group. That’s the maximum that WhatsApp allows. That has increased over the years.
And it’s interactive. So in a WhatsApp group, people can talk to one another. They can leave text or voice messages. It’s a way for people with some sort of common interest to get together. It could be a local sports team that you’re trying to organize, or some group that you’re a part of. It could be a local chapter of your preferred blindness organization, for example. Any common thread that brings a group of people together.
And then you have communities, which allow you to have a series of groups under one umbrella.
So let’s go with this analogy that you’ve got a group that is your local chapter of your preferred blindness organization, the one that you are affiliated with. That group could become a member of a community that is set up for that entire nationwide blindness organization. So a group for a chapter, or a state affiliate or whatever can exist within the community.
The communities can have common threads, like an announcement channel that broadcasts announcements to the entire community. So if the national body of a large blindness organization wanted to let everybody know via a community about specific things that are coming up that they need to be aware of, they could broadcast to that whole community which comprises a series of groups. So it’s a pretty flexible system.
I hope that’s of some help.
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Closing and Contact Info
I mean, this is absolutely extraordinary. We now have made a little bit of progress in getting through the amazing volume of WhatsApp contributions that have come through. I am not complaining. We love all this interactivity. Keep using that WhatsApp, now that you hear it’s working so well and everybody’s coming through so crystal clear. It might inspire you to get on the whatsapp as well.
We’ll be back next week for more. Thank you so much for listening.
Remember that when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
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