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Contents
Zoom Announces Another Accessible Recorder: the H1 XLR.. 14
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and privacy. 15
Podcast Players for Windows Supporting Chapters. 17
Deleting Articles From the ElevenLabs Reader. 18
More on the Need for Accessible Medical Devices. 19
Looking for a Good iPhone Keyboard.. 22
The Blind Hating the Blind.. 25
My Experience at the Movies. 29
New Phonak Hearing Aids and Roger On.. 31
Listening to Podcasts With Alexa.. 35
Inaccessible Recycling System in Hungary. 37
Problem With GPS and Mapping Systems. 38
Travel, Speechify, and What Do People Think of the NLS eReaders?.. 38
Using CoPilot to Make a PowerPoint Presentation.. 41
Confirming Problems With WhatsApp Videos. 42
Welcome to 295
[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: more on the serious matter of inaccessible medical devices, Arielle Silverman from the American Foundation for the Blind talks about the choices made around Blind Barbie, a new accessible recorder from Zoom, and the blind judging and trolling the blind.
Lovely to be back with you.
I do have a story to tell about Country Code 295, since this is Episode 295. This is the first Country Code I have encountered that has been discontinued. Intriguing, isn’t it?
It used to belong to San Marino. But now, it doesn’t. Country Code 295 no longer exists.
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Comments on Blind Barbie
Voice message: Hey, Jonathan! It’s Angie Matney, from the great state of Virginia. I wanted to quickly comment on Blind Barbie.
I ordered one recently to take to an event at my employer next month. It’s for Disability Pride Month. Yes, Disability Pride Month was in July. Actually, I’m sorry, the event’s later this month but as lawyers, we’re great at delaying things and postponing things. So later this month, we are having a Disability Pride-related event, and I ordered a Blind Barbie to take with me. I also ordered a second one to keep mint in box because my inner nerds said I had to.
With respect to how she’s depicted and represented, and that sort of thing, yeah, I appreciate that she is wearing heels. I am a person who chooses never to wear heels. But that is a choice I make, and doesn’t necessarily have to do with blindness.
But anyway, as far as the glasses go, I like to think maybe there’s some kind of cool wearable glasses that give her technology.
But even if they’re not, in between being a mathematician and a lawyer, I was, for a brief time, a rehab counselor. And what I learned in doing that is that so many of us are at so many different places and have different experiences of blindness, and what seems the right way to do something isn’t the same for everybody and may change. And I mean, I know we all know this, but it may change as a person ages, or a person just looks at things differently.
I sometimes wear glasses because I was not able to open my eyes until I was about six years old. And sometimes, they end up closing on me. And so sometimes I wear glasses. I mean, I wouldn’t have to. People could just see my closed eyes or whatever. But sometimes I choose to, and sometimes I don’t. But I guess what I’m saying is to me, it doesn’t bother me that Barbie has glasses that are removable because that is going to reflect some people’s experiences.
And then, I guess I’m more tongue in cheek situation. There are things now that I approach differently than I did when I was younger. And there are certain ways that I do things that I didn’t do when I was younger, because I kind of feel that I don’t have to struggle so hard to prove that I must do something a certain way.
And I’m not at all trying to imply that that was the motivation behind some of the comments on Barbie. But my friend and I had a joke about this, and my friend had made for me one of these round buttons like a campaign button, you know, a badge that you can pin on to something, and it says Bad Blind Person on it. [laughs] So I am a founding member, badge-carrying member of the Bad Blind Person Club, I guess.
So I don’t know. I’m okay with Barbie being where she is, and I will choose to think that her glasses are her Meta Glasses or whatever they may be, and I’m going to take her with me to Disability Pride Month event, and we’re just going to have a good time.
Arielle Silverman From the American Foundation for the Blind Discusses the Design and Impact of Blind Barbie
Jonathan: Since Mattel announced the release of its first blind Barbie following consultation with the American Foundation for the Blind, it’s been a hot topic in the blind community with some applauding the decision, and others expressing concern about what they fear will be the furthering of stereotypes. There’s been a lot of social media discussion about this. It is interesting what pushes people’s buttons.
So to talk about Blind Barbie and the process, I’m joined by Dr. Arielle Silverman, who is Director of Research at the American Foundation for the Blind. She is herself blind and she wrote a memoir, which I highly recommend, actually. It’s called “Just Human, The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion”. It is a great read.
Arielle, it’s really good to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Arielle: Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to come on and talk about Blind Barbie. I’m excited.
Jonathan: So what’s the significance of this move in your view? What does it mean for blind and sighted kids alike to have this?
Arielle: Well, I think representation is really important. And as a social psychologist, we study stereotyping and prejudice, and where those things come from. And certainly, although it is a little more complicated than this, it’s certainly true that exposure to models of people from different groups can shape people’s attitudes toward members of those groups. And so I think, we have good reason to believe that at least for sighted children, and maybe even sighted adults and older people as well, being exposed to a model of a doll who is blind, who is confident and going out on the town with her cane, and fashionable, and doing all of those kind of typical things, that kind of image is likely to reinforce a positive concept of what it’s like to be a blind person for sighted people.
I’ve seen a few discussions on Facebook from blind people saying, I really hope that next time a sighted kid sees my eyes in the grocery store, they say, “Oh look, mommy. She looks just like my Barbie.”, rather than, “Oh look, mommy. What’s wrong with her eyes? That would be a pretty cool development.
And then for blind children, there’s, I think, a really powerful impact of being able to see a doll that resembles them in important ways. And one of the things that I wrote about in my book (and that was really kind of key to my life and the lives of many of us who are congenitally blind) is that we grow up being the only blind person in oftentimes our families, our schools, our neighborhoods, and then later on our workplaces, sometimes even in an entire town. You may be the only blind person. And so for a child who’s growing up who’s the only blind person, who doesn’t really quite understand why everybody else is doing things differently, – why nobody else has a cane and nobody else reads Braille around them in their environment, it’s easy to start to pick up on some of the negative messages that float around about blindness being a horrible thing, and being scary, and being limiting, etc. And so having this example of a doll who actually is blind and is using a cane, I think, can counteract some of that internalized ableism that blind children can acquire if they’re in this environment.
Jonathan: Would it have meant something to you as a kid if blind Barbie had been around then?
Arielle: That’s an interesting question, because I didn’t really play with dolls much as a kid except for dolls that could talk, or that could move on their own. I was just fascinated by toys that were life-like, that could speak, or that could move. So if Barbie could do those things and she was blind, that might have had an impact.
I mean, it’s hard to say for me personally, because I didn’t really care or recognize that I was blind or that I was different until I was probably 9 or 10 years old. And by that point, I wouldn’t have really been probably into playing with dolls anyway.
I read a couple of books where the main character was blind as a child. I love to read. And I don’t know how much I really identified with those characters because, like I said, I didn’t really care or recognize that being blind was a significant part of my identity back then, so I don’t know if it would have affected me personally.
But I think for a lot of kids who are maybe more socially aware than I was, or kids who are hesitant to use canes, …
I was never hesitant to use a cane, probably in part because I have some balance issues, and the cane has always made me feel secure walking. I’ve always felt like a cane was an extension of my body, and never once considered not using a cane.
But I know I’m kind of in the minority about that. There are a lot of, especially kids with low vision, who feel like maybe they don’t need a cane, it slows them down, or it’s embarrassing, that people might treat them differently if they use a cane.
So I think for those kids, especially if they identify with dolls in that way, having the blind Barbie using a cane could be really powerful. And I’m very curious to see if there are impacts on (I don’t know if we’ll be able to measure it), but it would be really cool to see if there are impacts on the uptake and willingness to use canes among blind children who get the Blind Barbie.
Jonathan: It’s a little bit of a non-sequitur, but I did want to point out how fascinated I am by the rehabilitation of Barbie. Not the blindness rehabilitation, but just the fact that in earlier times, the feminist movement was staunchly opposed to Barbie, her shape, the stereotypical imagery of women. And now, with all that Mattel has done, they really rehabilitated the brand.
Arielle: Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan: How long were AFB and Mattel working on this project before blind Barbie was finally released?
Arielle: I don’t know exactly when Mattel first reached out to AFB. It was probably sometime in early 2023.
I do know that we kicked off our engagement with them officially at the end of May of 2023, so about 15 months ago.
We started off with my team, the research team, giving them guidance on the design of blind Barbie. We didn’t actually do research per se. But there were 4 of us – 3 of us being blind and one being a sighted teacher of the visually impaired, who provided really in-depth feedback on really basic things like should blind Barbie have a cane, or a guide dog? We said she should have a cane because children use canes, and the vast majority of blind adults also use canes. Although, of course, we would be in support of some kind of guide dog accessory.
There were questions about the eye gaze, and we provided really detailed feedback on how to set the eye gaze so that it was suggestive of the fact that the Barbie was blind. But at the same time, not being over the top or stereotypical.
We provided guidance on the clothing and the shoes, including settling on that she should have high heels, which I’m happy to talk more about that, and some other just basic decisions.
We also did a cane demonstration on video with Mattel so they could see how somebody holds the cane, and we gave feedback on different grasp positions for holding cane. Then of course, the type of cane, the length of cane was based on a combination of our lived experience as blind people and some of our professional experience with one blind teacher of the visually impaired, one sighted teacher of the visually impaired, and the other two of us are blind and have worked in youth programs, so we did have a lot of professional expertise to share, in addition to our lived experience. And so, that was the first part of the engagement.
And then, the second part of the engagement was primarily with our communications team and our digital inclusion team auditing and testing the Mattel website to make sure that it was accessible, and reviewing things like the packaging, the images of blind Barbie that went out on social media, some kind of multimedia-like video that went out about blind Barbie, and really just reviewing the language to make sure it was inclusive and all the media to make sure that it was accessible before launch.
Jonathan: Okay. That’s a great summary. So I’d like to drill down into some of those things now, and I’ll start with the more positive things first.
It feels like many have declared war on the word blind. There was a lot of discussion about this at the recent NFB convention. So it’s great to see that Barbie loudly and proudly proclaims her blindness. She’s not visually impaired Barbie, thank God. [laughs] She’s not Barbie with sight loss.
[laughter]
Was that something that was up for debate at all, whether they should use the blind word?
Arielle: I don’t believe so.
I know at some points in some of the correspondence early on, it was referred to as Barbie with blindness.
Jonathan: Oh, no! [laughs]
Arielle: And I don’t think that was really meant to be the final term. It was just kind of a placeholder. And of course, we said, it definitely should be blind Barbie.
But I don’t think there was really any debate, like I don’t think anyone wanted to call it visually impaired Barbie or whatever. We were all pretty much in alignment that it should be blind Barbie.
Jonathan: Okay, good. It gives you hope for the human race.
Arielle: [laughs]
Jonathan: So it’s concerning how many blind women are discouraged by sighted professionals from wearing heels, purely because of blindness. I mean, it’s a perfectly valid choice, but blindness in and of itself doesn’t necessarily influence that choice.
While I’ve only seen praise from the blind women who have commented on blind Barbie about her being in heels, my wife tells me that she’s heard some mainstream media discussion where they’ve expressed concern about blind Barbie in heels, and they implied that blind women don’t wear them. So perhaps, this illustrates the potential for some public education there.
Arielle: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve seen some of those just on Facebook, some of those comments. And then, a lot of responses pushing back against those comments.
I personally feel that was part of our motivation for putting her in heels was exactly that – to try to educate members of the public who might think that blind people need to wear specific types of shoes to be able to get tactile feedback.
Or, there’s a lot of misconceptions about blind people and falling. And it’s interesting because I personally have some balance issues that I don’t even know for sure if they’re blindness-related or not. But I don’t fall very much because I’m careful. The way I move through space, I’m very careful. Blind people that I know without balance issues who are athletic and doing all this kind of stuff, they don’t have fall issues either. So blindness and falling really are not correlated unless people, you know, maybe are newly blind and don’t have training yet, which sometimes happens.
But there’s a misconception that blindness puts you at risk for falling. That’s not actually true. So I think having the heels does kind of push back on that, which is great.
Jonathan: Yes. Because so often, people imply that blind people can’t climb steps easily.
Arielle: Right.
Jonathan: And if you’re being guided by someone, they will go to some considerable lengths to avoid the stairs, for example.
Arielle: Exactly.
Jonathan: Onto areas where there’s been a little bit more debate, there has been quite a bit of criticism of her glasses, which have been said to be somewhat stereotypical. What are your thoughts on that?
Arielle: Yeah. So we had some back and forth discussion about the glasses, and we emphasized that they should not be mandatory. So we were really glad that they put the glasses on top of her head instead of having her wearing the glasses, because we emphasize that some people do wear sunglasses and some people don’t.
Some people wear sunglasses for fashion reasons, others wear the glasses for eye protection reasons, photophobia reasons, or minimizing the appearance of their eyes – if they’ve had surgeries, they’ve had scars, or other kinds of differences with their eyes. So blind people have a lot of reasons they might wear sunglasses.
And if we had done this over again, I don’t know if we would have necessarily put her in sunglasses. But I think the way it ultimately ended up, I think was good because the glasses were there. They could be used, but they don’t have to be used. So they do represent some blind people who use the sunglasses. And also, people who don’t can just get rid of them.
Jonathan: We had a comment from a listener before you came on the show who was saying she is choosing to interpret these glasses as being smart glasses. They might be Ray-Ban Metas or some other glasses, and that this is her cool high-tech accessory.
Arielle: True. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Jonathan: Her gaze, you mentioned this. This seems to be attracting quite a bit of discussion. This is a tricky one, isn’t it?, because it is the way that some congenitally blind people look, right?
Arielle: Right. There was no perfect way to do the eye gaze, right? Because if we had her eyes look completely typical, we would have gotten pushback from people saying, “Oh, she doesn’t look like a blind Barbie. How do you know she’s blind?”, you know, so on and so forth.
At the same time though, if you’re trying to represent eyes that represent blindness or low vision, there are so many different variations. We decided, for example, not to give her cataracts because we thought that was a more outdated or stereotypical eye appearance, since cataracts nowadays are usually treatable. I have an eye stagmas, personally, where I have involuntary eye movement. I don’t know how you would represent that on a Barbie. [laughs]
Jonathan: Can you describe the way she’s looking? What’s her gaze actually like?
Arielle: From what I’ve been told in the image descriptions, the eyes are looking a little bit up above center, and a little bit apart from each other. The left eye is looking a little bit more to the left, and the right eye is looking a little more to the right. It looks like the eyes just aren’t quite looking at you. But I’ve also been told by a lot of people that’s a pretty subtle difference.
Jonathan: I mean, it’s valid, right? I mean, we can’t deny the reality that that’s a pretty valid way for someone who’s congenitally blind to look.
Arielle: Right.
Jonathan: Some would like to have seen other accessories, and you mentioned the guide dog accessory, for example. Do you get any sense of how committed Mattel is to this project? Might we see also a Braille display accessory, for example?
Arielle: I hope so. AFB is definitely committed to keeping up the partnership with Mattel, and it seems like Mattel is feeling positively about the work that we’ve done together, so I really do hope that.
And I think this is an excellent opportunity for the people in the world to give feedback on the types of accessories that they want to see, and I hope that Mattel will take that feedback and put it into consideration. I think definitely a guide dog, I think a Braille display or a Braille notetaker, some kind of Braille device would be a good accessory. And maybe some smart glasses, or maybe a phone, something like that too.
Jonathan: Sure. Because if public education is one of the objectives, wouldn’t it be amazing to actually introduce people to the facts that blind people do use computer technology? It’s amazing to me how many people still don’t realize that’s possible.
Arielle: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan: What kind of feedback are you getting? I mean, I know that typically, people tend to put fingers to keyboard when they’re outraged. But there must be also feedback coming through from kids who find that this really means something to them.
Arielle: I haven’t heard directly from kids yet, but I have heard from a lot of parents who have purchased the blind Barbie for their kids.
I have one friend who is blind and has 2 kids with low vision. And initially, she said on social media that she was very mixed about blind Barbie, and she didn’t feel like it really represented her children. She was put off by some of the wording and some of the marketing statements, and so she felt really mixed about blind Barbie. But she also felt that representation was important, so she decided to go ahead and buy one.
She said her older daughter (who had used to be into Barbie, and then was less so nowadays), but her older daughter just absolutely loved it, and was so happy with it, and was playing with it. Then, my friend said she realized like, wow, this is actually a good thing for the blind community, and she started promoting it on her social media.
I’m definitely hearing a lot of positive comments from other parents of blind children, and also, sighted children who are playing with it, and also, a lot of adults. I think I’m pleasantly surprised by how many adults of both genders, or all genders of blind adults who are saying wow, I want to get one.
Jonathan: Yeah. I was going to mention this to you. I don’t know whether this is normally a thing, or whether this is a distinctly blind Barbie thing, whether adults collect them or not. But I have been interested to see that there are blind adults buying these blind Barbies.
I wonder why. Is it because they wish they had them when they were kids, or they just want to support the concept?
Arielle: Yeah, it’s probably a bit of both. I mean, there’s definitely some comments of people saying, “I really wish this had existed when I was a kid.”, so they’re kind of buying it for their inner child.
[laughter]
Jonathan: Get in touch with their inner child, yeah.
Arielle: Yeah. And I think for some of them, they want to support the cause, the representation.
Jonathan: One of the things that is also true for kids who have some vision, but the prognosis is that their vision may deteriorate over time, is there’s an enormous amount of pressure on those children to do things the “normal way”, even when that might result in eye strain, lack of efficiency, fatigue. And as we all know, having been kids once, the pressure to fit in and just be part of the in-crowd is immense.
I wonder whether having this representation of a cool, fashionable, blind Barbie proudly carrying her cane and dressed nicely might really help those children to realize that it’s okay to be blind. It’s respectable.
Arielle: Yeah, I definitely hope so.
And I’d be really curious to know if blind kids are playing with the blind Barbie with their sighted friends. Kids who play with Barbies sometimes do it with friends, you know, as a group activity, or paired activity, or something like that. So I’m really curious if blind kids who are having their friends over to their house, for example, would take out their blind Barbie and play with it together. I think that could be really powerful for the sighted child and for them to build their relationship. And yeah, I definitely hope that kids with full vision will start to feel more comfortable doing things non-visually.
But unfortunately, a lot of the pressure, a huge amount of pressure comes from parents, you know, adults – sometimes from parents, definitely from teachers, from medical professionals, from just even family friends and people who are trying to get the child to see things and do things visually, or deny that they have a visual impairment. I think the adults really need to be educated, and I hope that blind Barbie will help do that.
But I think it will definitely impact the kids. And hopefully, when the kids grow up and have kids of their own who are low vision, they will have a different attitude than maybe their parents did.
Jonathan: One of the hot button issues I missed when I was going through the little list was the clothing, and the way that it fastens and unfastens. Someone told me on the show here that it was Velcro. But I understand it’s not Velcro. Can you clarify that?
Arielle: I believe it is Velcro.
Jonathan: Okay, it is.
Arielle: That’s what I have been told in the discussions. I’m not an expert about barbies at all. I don’t know about any of you.
Jonathan: [laughs] Me, neither.
Arielle: On the social media discussions, people were saying well actually, a lot of the barbies have Velcro. So I think maybe the way it was described, I can see how it seemed a little bit othering because it was like this doll has special Velcro to help them dress and undress it. We definitely understand and take that feedback to heart.
At the same time though, we also are big fans of universal design, and part of universal design is making things easier for everybody, and more intuitive, and removing barriers. And also, understanding that probably at least 40% (if not more) of blind children have additional disabilities. And oftentimes, the brain-based disabilities can affect motor coordination. So I don’t know what the non-Velcro alternative is for Barbie clothing. But for some kids, if they have a motor impairment, doing that dressing and undressing could be more difficult. Also, some kids with low vision, if they are reliant on their vision, the bright colors can be beneficial.
So it’s a fine line to walk because you don’t want to reinforce stereotypes of like, blind barbies need special clothes. But at the same time, you also want to provide inclusion for people who actually need those accommodations. And the universal design principles kind of ensure that, ideally, inclusion is provided in a way that is not othering, that just puts everybody on the same playing field. So hopefully, in the future, all the Barbies will have Velcro, they’ll all have easy fasten.
I certainly appreciated that the box was easy to open. Although actually getting the Barbie out of the box was a bit of a challenge, and probably not something a little kid could do because you had to cut with scissors in a couple of places and all that.
But I love the Braille on the box. Although, some people might have missed it because it’s off to the side.
Jonathan: What does it say? Does it just say blind Barbie in Braille on the box?
Arielle: It just says Barbie.
Interestingly, the word Barbie is written in UEB, and somebody had commented about how the Braille didn’t match because of the AR contractions in there, and the dot 6 for capital B. Somebody commented that the Braille didn’t match up with the print, and that was confusing.
And one of my colleagues who’s on the research team, she responded and she was like, “Blind Barbie is going to be an educated woman who knows how to read UEB, and doesn’t just read grade 1.
[laughter]
Jonathan: Wow! It’s interesting the minutiae people are going into here.
Arielle: Yeah.
Jonathan: But one thing that this discussion has revealed for me, my wife who is blind as well had a Barbie collection when she was a child. I didn’t know this. Funnily enough, we never really discussed barbies before.
And when this conversation came up and I was talking to her about it, she said, “Jonathan, have you ever undressed a Barbie before?
And I said, “Actually, Bonnie, no, I have not.”, funnily enough.
And she said that she used to undress and redress. Oh, that can’t be right. Redress is a different thing. Anyway, she used to change the clothing on the Barbie quite regularly.
And she said, “If it’s too difficult for anyone, whether they have any kind of additional impairment or not, what happens is that you keep running to your mom and dad or your caregiver, whoever it is, getting them to help.” And so if you can fashion something in a way that allows the child to change the clothes and accessorize them and things themselves, it’s much more inclusive.
Arielle: Yeah, absolutely. And it helps the child build self-determination skills.
And I imagine, practicing dressing and undressing a doll for children who end up deciding to have their own children, that experience could really help with the motor mapping that’s required to eventually dress your baby.
Jonathan: Yeah. I do have some experience of this, and I can tell you, I mean, I practiced in the anti-natal classes, and nothing compares to a wriggling baby trying to get away from you there. But no, that’s a good point.
Now, I do have to ask you this because you have great credentials in the organized blind movement. You’ve been active in the National Federation of the Blind for years. And of course, you’re a former NABs president, the student division.
But some in the consumer movement have expressed concern that an organization of the blind, not for the blind, should have been the one Mattel partnered with on this. What’s your assessment of the moral authority or otherwise that an organization like AFB (not just AFB, but an organization like it) has to pursue a project like this?
Arielle: That’s a great question. I understand the critique. And I think if I were on the other side, I would maybe even be voicing similar opinions.
I think it’s important to note that AFB is transitioning, to a great extent, to a larger percentage of leadership who is blind. And I think it’s vital that any organization that’s providing feedback on this type of groundbreaking development should, the individuals who are providing the feedback should, majority of them should be blind. And in our case, the majority of the staff who provided feedback are blind.
Our CEO is blind. 40% of our staff are blind, and more than half of our Board of Trustees is blind. So I think that’s part of the response that I would give.
I don’t know what Mattel’s reasoning was for why they selected us, rather than one of the consumer organizations. I can’t speak on that because I really don’t know.
I definitely emphasized when I spoke to them that our opinions were just our opinions.
And I was very glad that in addition to consulting with AFB, they also convened, I believe, focus groups of children and parents in Southern California to actually in-person test out the different outfits and different configurations of the doll, so that it wasn’t just the maybe 6 or 8 of us who are giving feedback, but actually a larger group of blind individuals.
You know, if I were Mattel, maybe I would have done things a little differently and had a larger sample of blind people providing feedback. But I think the diversity of our staff, … You know, we have teachers who are visually impaired. We have blind parents. We have blind people like me who are not parents, but used to be blind children. We have people with knowledge of communications, and marketing, and things like that. I think the diversity of perspectives and the fact that most of us are blind did give us a pretty good credential to provide feedback on what I think in the end, turned out to be a really excellent product.
So I mean, in terms of future collaborations, I think we need both. We need organizations of the blind, absolutely. I think we also need organizations for the blind that are led by blind people and that also have a focus that is a little bit more impartial because they’re not membership organizations. So they can look at things from a little bit of a longer view and look at the teacher perspective, the parent perspective, the child perspective, and the blind adult perspective simultaneously. So I think we need both types of organizations.
I think it’s imperative that any company that’s making a product, if they’re consulting with a blindness organization, they need to ensure that the critical individuals providing feedback, majority of them are blind. Now, of course, we had, you know, one sighted person who gave feedback on things like the logos and the images that were posted on social media. You need sighted input for that, of course. But the majority of the people from AFB who gave feedback are blind people.
Jonathan: I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Arielle, for coming on the show. It’s been useful to just learn a bit more about how some of the decisions that we arrived at were made. Thanks so much.
Arielle: Awesome. Thank you so much.
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Zoom Announces Another Accessible Recorder: the H1 XLR
Jonathan: There’s a new product from Zoom (that’s the audio recorder people) to tell you about.
You may recall on Living Blindfully, we took a look at the Zoom H1 Essential, the H4 Essential and the H6 Essential, all of which have accessible menus.
It was fantastic to take the H1 Essential and the H6 Essential to the NFB Convention and record with that peace of mind because I could use the menus to check my settings, and even make sure I was actually recording.
Now, there’s a new one. It’s called the Zoom H1 XLR. And as I understand it, the form factor is like the H1 Essential. But instead of the built-in microphone, it has 2 of those combination inputs.
You can use XLR with this. That means you can plug in any microphone, be it a dynamic mic or a condenser mic. You can also use an input cable. So if you want to use this little device to record off a mixer, you can do that. It’s also got the 3.5 millimeter stereo input jack, so you can record that way if you want to as well. It also acts as an audio interface, and you can record in 32-bit float with the Zoom H1 XLR while you’re using it as an audio interface, if you want to.
Putting this in a blindness context and in the United States, let’s say you are going to the state convention of your consumer organization and you’ve been tasked with streaming it, and perhaps, recording some extra items. This would be ideal because you can take the H1 XLR, connect it to the soundboard so you get direct sound. You can use it as an audio interface so that you’re streaming to the Internet while you’re also making a recording of those proceedings. And then, you can just unplug it from the board when the sessions are over.
And if you want to do some additional recording, plug in a couple of mics. You can do good quality one-on-one interviews.
Very nifty product.
You can power it with 2 AA batteries, or you can connect something to the USB-C port that provides a power source.
You can insert a micro SDHC card into the device, which could give you up to a terabyte of storage. And even at 32-bit float, 96 kHz, that’s going to give you a lot of recording time.
So another option for you to consider. I guess, this kind of bridges the gap between the H1 Essential and the H4 Essential.
I believe it’s coming in at $149. Pricing information is a bit sparse at the moment, but that seems to be where they’re pitching it.
What will be interesting is when Zoom come out with some new recorders that are not in this H Essential line. For example, I used to use a Zoom F3, and it’s a very nice recorder. It’s got lovely preamps in it. And in that sense, it’s technically a better recorder. So when they refresh the F series and some of those other recorders, I and I think many blind content creators are hoping that their accessible menu technology will make its way into some of those more pro recorders.
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and privacy
Now, I want to follow up on a couple of things we’ve been talking about recently on Living Blindfully.
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses continue to be a hot topic in the blind community.
I did find out something this week that intrigued me. I was having a little chat with my Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, and I said to them, “What large language model are you running?”
And they responded, “I’m running a large language model based on Llama 3.1.”
Now, it’s possible that the glasses are hallucinating, but it’s possible that they’re not. Llama 3.1 is quite new. It is the latest and greatest effort from Meta at their large language model. It is supposed to be far more multimodal and capable. And at the time of recording, I haven’t done too much with the glasses to find out whether we have any real evidence that Llama 3.1 is in fact, on the glasses. But that could be very interesting.
I was talking to Bonnie this morning, funnily enough.
Bonnie’s away as I record this. It is very quiet at Mosen Towers. I cannot tell you how quiet it is.
She is away at a conference. She said she got the agenda of the conference. She took a picture of the agenda, and she told the glasses to read the agenda top to bottom. And apparently, it did.
Because this conference is a literary conference, she got some books comped to her as part of her registration package. She asked the Meta Smart Glasses to describe those covers. And apparently, it did a pretty decent job.
Here’s Imke writing in, and she says:
“Following up on your response to a listener question in episode 294, I am wondering to what extent you have concerns about your own privacy when using the
- Smart Glasses from Meta, and
- WhatsApp.
I understand you are not using the Smart Glasses to post to social media. However, to what extent can you limit what information about your movements and about what the glasses see?
If you cannot control what is connected, are you sufficiently content to live with the fact that you cannot do so in the interest of trying out the glasses?”
Ah, the things we do in the name of scientific experiment, Imke, and serving the Living Blindfully listeners.
Yes, I am aware that there are risks in using anything from Meta, and they may be collecting all sorts of data. I do have the Ask App Not-To-Track feature enabled in all Meta products that ask me to give permission. I never do. And under Glass’ Privacy, you can switch off the storing of recording of your voice prompts using the Meta AI feature. But you’re right, there is a risk, and I’m taking that risk because it’s an intriguing product.
She continues:
“In the case of WhatsApp, do you not have the same concerns as with Facebook?”
Not so much. I’ve been using WhatsApp since before it was acquired by Meta. I take comfort from the fact that the conversations are encrypted between people.
I haven’t, to be honest, researched a lot about how much cross-pollination there is between WhatsApp and other products. But it just feels to me like WhatsApp has been able to preserve its culture to some considerable degree. That may be wishful thinking on my part.
But I like the quality of voice messages on WhatsApp. I always have. They have a great range of functions on there.
And you always have to make the trade-off, don’t you? There are some people who know what Meta gets up to with Facebook, or at least what they’ve historically gotten up to with Facebook, and they make the trade-off because their friends and family are there, the people that they want to communicate with are there, and there are groups that they want to participate in that are on that platform.
WhatsApp is like that for me. I use WhatsApp a lot. I really enjoy it. And it just feels to me like it’s not quite as intrusive and out of control as Facebook at least once was.
Podcast Players for Windows Supporting Chapters
In episode 294, Walt Smith was asking about podcast players for Windows with chapter support.
And Christopher Wright says:
“Luna RSS works well with podcast chapters.
I discussed this a while ago.”
Oh. Sorry, sorry. You just have so many pearls of wisdom, Christopher. It’s hard for my brain to retain them all.
“It can be found at www.NathanTech.net.” That’s N-A-T-H-A-NTech.net. And it’s absolutely free. It’s a great podcast client and RSS reader for Windows.
I’ll just add here that this software is developed by a blind person. He develops several packages. So if you want to support a blind software developer, download his stuff and give it a spin.
And we’ve also heard the same thing on Mastodon 2 from a listener, so thank you so much.
There’s another suggestion coming, but there’s something else first from Christopher. He says:
“If I was going to give a large amount of money to any blindness organization, it would be NV Access, and this is what I also recommend for the person calling. I wouldn’t hesitate at all.
NVDA is a very big deal, particularly for less developed countries. Having said that, I’m in the United States, and would be very upset if something ever happened to this wonderful project. It would be far more damaging than any other company or website going away.
NVDA is developed for and by us. It levels the playing field, instead of segregating us into the privileged enough to have Tool X, or those that don’t, Camps. We control its future as a single organization. There are thousands of people contributing to the project, so I’m not at all concerned if NV Access or any of the founders disappeared tomorrow.”
And back on the topic of podcast chapters under windows, Stefanie Magura says:
“Please let your listeners know that if a podcast episode has chapters, the Grover Podcast app…” [Grover’s voice immitation]
What? I’ve not heard of this before.
“The Grover Podcast app supports this. I tend to listen to episodes all in one go, or as close as possible.
But if you look for now playing when listening to an episode, you will find that each timestamp is linked. I found this by chance when playing an episode of Living Blindfully and opening the aforementioned area. At this point, I had learned of chapter support. But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had any idea why the links were there.”
Well, I looked up this Grover Podcast app, and it’s available in the Windows Store. It seems to be available in a number of other places as well, but I suspect the Windows Store is a good place to get it.
That’s G-R-O-V-E-R, just like the cute little furry monster on Sesame Street. I have no idea if he’s still on Sesame Street, but he certainly used to be when I was watching it as a kid, and when I was watching it with my kids.
Or if you prefer, if you’re a bit more cerebral, like the 22nd President of the United States of America, Grover Cleveland. He was in office from 1885 to 1889, I think.
It appears to be free. So there’s another option.
Also, it is worth mentioning (and Stefanie reminded me to mention this, given her reference to timestamps) that if you go to LivingBlindfully.com, you can get to each episode simply by entering a slash and its number. So for example, for episode 295, you can go to LivingBlindfully.com/295.
Now, that works when the episode has gone public. It doesn’t work during the period where it’s only available to our wonderful Living Blindfully plus subscribers.
When you go to LivingBlindfully.com/EpisodeNumber, you’ll find we have show notes where we tell you what different sections are, and what time in the file they start. And on that web page, each timestamp is also a link. So if you navigate to the link for the timestamp and press enter, it’ll jump you straight to that section, and it will play the section in question for you.
Deleting Articles From the ElevenLabs Reader
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! It’s Derry Lawlor here from Ireland. I hope you’re keeping well.
I know you’re busy with the NFB 24, which I’m enjoying following the hashtags.
Quick question. I recently downloaded the ElevenLabs app for reading some books.
I love my device called Lily. It’s one of the default devices that comes up.
How do I delete the articles I have? Well, in an article, I can go more, but there’s no delete button.
Maybe that’s coming in the future. But is there any quick fixes to delete articles?
Jonathan: Top of the podcast to you, Derry. Good to hear from you.
The ElevenLabs Reader, for those who haven’t tried it, is quite a cool thing. We’ve talked about ElevenLabs before. We’ve had one of the founders of ElevenLabs here on Living Blindfully in the past.
They now have this iOS app called ElevenLabs Reader, and you can use your own voices or their voices and bring documents into this thing, and be read to by the ElevenLabs voices. It really is quite fun, particularly if you’re a talking book type fan.
I’m one of those people that likes to get information quickly, so I like using text to speech and cranking it up. So I guess, I’m not the perfect use case for it.
But you know, there might be some interesting blindness use cases, particularly if you are not a fast Braille reader, or you haven’t had the opportunity to learn Braille and you need to give a report somewhere, and you can do so in your own voice. If you’ve written something, you can have your own voice reading it back. There are all sorts of interesting use cases for this.
But anyway, to answer your question, Derry, all you do is when you’re in the article in question, double tap the More button. There are a few options that will then pop up, and Delete is right there.
More on the Need for Accessible Medical Devices
Voice message: Hi, Living Blindfully. Jess Smith here. I’d like to raise another topic from episode 290, where we were talking about medical devices and their inaccessibility.
I have obstructive sleep apnea, and that causes me to stop breathing during the night, or during times when I’m asleep.
I’m also totally blind (no vision at all), and this can have a significant, serious impact later on down the road.
If the sleep apnea is not treated, I could have a heart attack, I could have a stroke, I could have death in my sleep, and all that.
And it’s interesting because the gold standard in this country, in the United States of America, is the CPAP machine (the Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Machine), where you wear a mask over your face, and you are connected to a tube, and you are wearing this while you sleep. And every time you stop breathing, the machine will open up your airway and try to get you to breathe again.
I have talked to my neurologist about this, and she’s great. I’ve been working with her. I also have epilepsy which is controlled via medication, which is great. But the neurologist that I talk to is also a sleep specialist, and I’ve been working with her for 20 years, just about.
And I said, “Look, the CPAP machine is just not an option.” It’s not even the fact that the mask may be uncomfortable, or any of that stuff. It is the fact that I literally cannot make adjustments myself if the machine needs them. I would literally have to call the CPAP manufacturer, or the company that deals with the CPAP machines, and have them, over the phone, make adjustments for me.
Or even the worst case where the machine has an error in it and I can’t see that via the screen, obviously, because there is no accessible speech or any kind of accessibility on the machine. So if I were to set the machine up and one night it works and the next night it doesn’t because there’s an error on the machine, you know, maybe there’s too much water in the tank, or there’s an error on the machine screen, maybe there’s something not plugged in right, or there’s something not available to the machine that keeps it from being turned on and working, I cannot accessibly see that.
And I just told the neurologist, “Hey, I can’t use this.” I don’t care if it’s the gold standard or not. I don’t care if it’s the best treatment in the world or not. If I can’t use something because I’m totally blind and I can’t see the screen, I’m not going to use it, period.
So yeah, we’ve got to make accessibility more of a top priority for medical appliances. It’s not right that sighted people have all these medical devices, and they can see the screen instantly.
And I would have to call a sighted person via Aira, or a family member that might live 20 minutes away or something, have them drive over to the house where I live, or to the apartment where I live, just for a 2-second, a 2-second intervention with that machine. So yeah, we’ve got to work on this.
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan! It’s Carolyn here, trying out the new WhatsApp way of sending a message through. I wanted to comment on the inaccessibility of medical devices.
I have had a very recent experience where I have had to go for a test to establish whether I am a candidate for a surgical procedure.
I’ve been having issues with acid reflux, and I had to do an pH-impedance test. Now, for those of you who don’t know what that is, a brief description is that you are not supposed to take your antacid medications a week prior to this test. Then, you go in and they insert a tube up your nose, down your throat, into your esophagus. And then, it somehow connects up to a computerized device that you are to wear for a period of 24 hours. And then you go back to the hospital and they remove the tube, etc., and it records everything that is going on inside you during that 24-hour period.
Now, I specifically asked them if there were any issues for me as a blind person doing this test that I needed to be aware of. And they said oh no no no no, it’s all fine.
And so I get to the hospital. The tube is put up my nose and down, and we get through that. That’s fine.
And then, I get this computerized device hung around my neck. That surprised me because I was told that you were to wear it around your waist. That’s the information that was provided in the booklet. No, I just about get strangled with it hanging around my neck. But that was only just the beginning.
Then, they take my hand and they put it on a flat screen, and they proceed to say, “You press this button when you’re eating. When you finished eating, you press it again to turn it off. When you get symptoms, you press this button. And when your symptoms stop, you turn that button off. When you go to bed, you press this button. When you wake up in the morning, you press that button again.”
I say, “Wait a minute. This is a flat touch screen. So is there VoiceOver on this, so I know which button’s which?”
“No.”
“So how am I going to know which button to press? I’m blind, and I live alone.”
“Oh, oh!”, they said.
I said, “Well, could we not put stickers, or dots, or something on those buttons?”
“Oh no, we can’t do that.”
And I said, “Well, we may as well stop right here and you may as well remove the tube, but because there is no way that I can actually do this test.”
“Oh.”, they said.
I said, “I did ask at the time whether perhaps because I lived alone, I should be admitted and do the test in hospital. But I was told no, it needed to be done at home.”
And I said, “If I was admitted, then the nurse could possibly do that.”
But, I said, “This device is totally inaccessible for me as a blind person to use.”
“Oh yes, it is. Okay. Well, we will have to think of something else.”
And so they took the tube out, and so that was the end of that. I couldn’t do the test.
What it means now, there is a couple of other tests I can do. But if it doesn’t show what they’re looking for that this test would show, I have to go and have a procedure that is not done in the public health system here in New Zealand, meaning I will have to pay for it. And frankly, I do not think that that is fair that I have to pay possibly for a procedure, simply because the one that they had in the public health system is inaccessible for me as a blind person. There should be an area where, okay, then we will pay for that because there’s no way you can do the other one.
I’m getting concerned that while it’s great we’ve got all these computerized devices that can do different things and give different readings for us and help us to manage our health, that many of them are now becoming inaccessible, and that clearly the health system is not thinking about accessibility. That concerns me, and I’m just wondering, because this is not just a local issue. I accept that this is a worldwide issue. Hence, maybe the World Blind Union needs to take this one up because it is becoming more and more serious.
I’m thankful as a diabetic that I can have a talking glucose machine, so I am able to manage my diabetes myself. But if it turned out that the devices changed yet again, and we had to change devices and there was no more talking device that was accessible, then there’s a problem.
So I do think it is a problem we have to start looking at and pushing back on very hard before it gets too out of hand and we find ourselves in a situation where we can’t get treatments for certain things, because the process is simply inaccessible.
Jonathan: That sounds hideous to have to go to all the trouble of getting a tube inserted like that, only to find you’ve got an inaccessible test device.
Well, if there’s any good news, it is that they are on to this in the United States. There’s legislation that is hopefully working its way through the system. And who knows how long that might take?
But what we’ve found in the past, of course, is that the American market is so large, so influential, and so important that if the American market insists on accessible devices, it will trickle down. So let’s hope that that legislation there will progress.
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Looking for a Good iPhone Keyboard
“Hello, Jonathan and friends at Living Blindfully,”, says this email. Pearl Sumner here from Melbourne.
Pete and I love your work and the shining inspiration you show us all. Thank you for Living Blindfully to the hilt.”
Well thank you so much, Pearl. I appreciate that.
She says:
“I discovered when setting up Todoist after your demo that my Outlook email runs on an IMAP system that is not compatible with Todoist. Boohoo! I’ll probably have to work out how I can best manage this situation, as I use my email more than the phone for many things.”
I totally get that, Pearl.
You might want to download the Todoist app for Windows, which is nice and accessible when you turn the Virtual Cursor off. You may find that that does the job for you, and it will keep your tasks across your iPhone and your computer in sync.
She says:
“I was amazed at how you enter material into your phone at a million miles an hour. This task is a real bugbear for me, but something I want to be able to do. Many of my blind friends have tried a variety of QWERTY keyboards for this purpose and seem to give them up as being too difficult after spending precious money on them.
What keyboard do you use for inputting into your phone?
Your recommendation would be much appreciated.
Many thanks once again, Jonathan, for the big lift you’re giving many people.
I helped to run a blind grandparents list, …”
I qualify now. That’s exciting.
“and have been encouraging them, and many others, to listen to the podcast.
Love and hugs!”
Look, I really appreciate that, Pearl. Word of mouth makes the world of difference to Living Blindfully, so thank you so much for doing your part there.
Well, I have my Braille display, the APH Mantis, and it has a QWERTY keyboard. So when I’m inputting material into the iPhone, I’m using the QWERTY keyboard on my Mantis.
However, there are plenty of other very good options.
The Apple Magic Keyboard is a lovely keyboard to type on, in my view, and the latest version of it has a physical on-off switch. It’s nicely spaced, and it’s still quite portable. So I’d check out the Apple Magic Keyboard as a viable option.
Logitech also do a range of keyboards, and one of the big advantages of the Logitech range is that a lot of their keyboards allow you to pair with multiple devices. So at the press of a button, you can be working on your iPhone. Press another button, you could be controlling an Apple Watch, or even your computer, if you’ve paired those devices with the keyboard.
But I would say that for an iPhone, the Apple Magic Keyboard is kind of a stock and trade device, and it really is a very nice keyboard to type on.
Words About Words
Joe writes:
“First, with respect to the discussion with Bryan Bashin concerning the language guide for Be My Eyes, my head was spinning with the hair splitting over how to describe a lack of, or diminishment of eyesight. People use words in different ways based on familiarity of use, cultural experience, and exposure to the topic. I cannot expect the sighted world to totally understand me, or my experience, or my mindset, as the average person has no contact with a person with a visual impairment.
For a person with a visual disability to draw offense from the innocent nuance in words is looking for every tripwire to trip over. I find it best to assume the good intentions of people, unless it is clear that they have crossed an offensive line. Also, to make sighted people feel uncomfortable because they use a word we did not prefer causes them to be afraid to interact with us for fear of offending us. I prefer to build relationships and therefore, I ignore the harmless use of a word or two that I may not prefer.
Let’s talk about the word blind. I don’t know why organizations that serve people with visual impairments shy away from the word blind. It is immediately clear what it means, and to be blind or visually impaired is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a part of who I am. And even though I am legally and not totally blind, I am not offended when service organizations use the word blind in their name.
I served on the Board of Directors of Recording for the Blind for 18 years. Then, I made it clear what we did.
When later, the organization expanded to include people with dyslexia, we changed the name to Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. And again, this was very clear as to what services we provided and who we served.
After I was no longer on the board, the organization changed its name to Learning Ally. And now, the average person would have no idea what the organization does. This doesn’t help outreach to the people who could benefit from the services, and it definitely doesn’t help fund-raising.
Next, you talked about how so many visually impaired individuals are unemployed or underemployed, and that some who succeed to build a career in the competitive business world can’t appreciate why others can’t succeed.
I’ve had a successful Wall Street career working at several investment banks, and I am not going to tell you that was easy. It does take a lot of resilience and willingness to deal with a lot of rejection, so I understand how challenging and frustrating it can be for job seekers with a vision disability.
Allow me to make a few suggestions for our community. If a blind person wants to develop a professional career in so-called knowledge-based industries, I believe they need to put themselves in a better position to succeed.
A few points here.
I believe a blind person has a better opportunity to succeed if they move to, or live in a major city where professional jobs are plentiful, and good public transportation is available. Also, it is important to have a strong professional network, belong to professional organizations, to go to regular professional organization meetings, and to stay in touch with people over things like lunches or coffees. All those things are easier to do in a major city, especially when one is visually impaired and needs public transportation. I would never have had the career I did if I had not taken a job in New York City over 30 years ago.
Another thing I would say is find a mentor. And if you do find a mentor, be willing to take advice, get out of your comfort zone and change what you are doing. If you are not willing to change, if you keep taking the same approach, then nothing will change.
Just a few miscellaneous thoughts here.
Jonathan, keep up the good work.”
Thank you, Joe!
Some good advice in there. Networking and resilience, both very important factors.
I like to hope that Living Blindfully can help with the resilience side of things because we can be a bit of an oasis of encouragement.
It can be very demoralizing if you are doing the hard yards, if you are applying for job after job, and you are just struggling to get ahead. But of course, as we always say, the one job you are sure not to get is the one that you don’t apply for.
The Blind Hating the Blind
On similar topics, Chris hofstader writes:
“In episode 290, you discussed a class system, maybe even a caste system, that seems to exist in the minds of many blind people. Although I had rarely avoided controversy in my own writing, this was a subject I had hoped to address at numerous times over the past couple of decades, but couldn’t find a way to do it to my own satisfaction. On Living Blindfully, you did a terrific job of threading this needle, and the conclusion you presented was entirely in line with mine.
I joined the blind world when I arrived on my first day of work at Henter Joyce. I had been writing and managing software projects professionally for about 20 years at that point in my career.
The culture shock of going from mainstream to access technology was profound. The vocabulary was unfamiliar, and the fiercely competitive nature of the mainstream technology world was missing entirely.
What shocked me even more was getting to know blind culture as time passed, as an HJ/FS executive. The first blind people I would meet in the biz were of course, successful software engineers and other technology sorts. I can’t mention names as a lot of these people are still friends of mine, but the blind elite seemed to have a really poor attitude to those whom they described as low functioning. I would try to remind them that those people are our users, and that we earn our salaries because of those people.
Over the decades, I’ve met all sorts of blind people in various places around the world.
I get angry when I read a post by a blind person on Facebook that describes how great their blindness skills are, and literally mock blind people whose skills aren’t as good as their own. At the same time, some of the most accomplished blind people I know, those who pull in an annual income in excess of a million dollars, often have terrible mobility and other blindness skills.
Some people choose to place a higher value on being an independent blind person, have done a lot of traveling around the world, and have enjoyed many an adventure. Other blind people choose to spend their time with a sighted guide, but worked to get a PhD, a law degree from a top program, become a hacker extraordinaire, or do something else remarkable and are very happy in their lives.
I don’t think either group is right, and I don’t think either group is wrong. Both have their own personal priorities, and spend their energy focusing on what makes them happy. I think we need to remember that blindness is not a uniform experience. Quoting Sly Stone, quoting Muhammad Ali, ‘Different strokes for different folks’.
It pains me when I hear a successful blind person gloat about their success and include hateful statements about blind people who, for one reason or another, have been less successful or live on government benefits. I don’t know any blind people who wouldn’t prefer having a job. But a combination of discrimination, a deteriorating education system of disabled kids in America (I don’t know much about elsewhere), and so many other factors make it very hard to secure employment from most profoundly or totally blind people. The blind people who act as if they are superior to those less fortunate than themselves seem to forget that those other people are human, that they try hard, and that they are stuck in a system that is mostly broken.
Another thing that makes me crazy in the blindness world along this pattern is that a successful blind person who gets any public acknowledgement is going to hear a lot of hate from what I assume are jealous other blind people. I’ve seen the abuse tossed at you. I’ve gotten my share. Ted Henter would hear hate from blind people who would then praise any sighted person who made a screen reader.
I think the one that hurts me the most is the fervent hatred I hear tossed at Mike Calvo. He’s not just a close personal friend. He’s a model for blind entrepreneurs everywhere.
Mike hasn’t had Ted’s financial success, but he also came along a little later. But he has innovative ideas, a great hacker in Matt Campbell, and they do terrific work, but hear so much…” (expletive deleted) “nonsense.
Why do blind entrepreneurs take more abuse from blind people than the huge companies who produce inaccessible technology? The blind-on-blind hate is disturbing, and I’m happy you were able to do such a good job with it on Living Blindfully.”
Voice message: Hey, Jonathan and everybody.
It is blisteringly hot here. I hope everybody is staying cool, wherever you guys are.
And congrats, Jonathan, on your ACB and NFB awards at the conventions.
I would like to bring up a topic which is by no means new to general blindness discussion or to this show, but I now have the wherewithal to state my opinion and give examples. That is, expectations of blind people.
There was a lady who called in to an ACB show. She sounded very frightened, and she said that she cannot use the services of a dog or a cane. She must have a sighted assistant, and she wondered if she would be allowed to come to convention and bring her person.
Of course, she was told yeah, come on, guys.
While I knew that’s what they would tell her, I was very sad that she was so frightened about this, or at least anxious, or there was some kind of negative feeling that she was so afraid that she would be told that she couldn’t come.
It seems to me that as in any group, there have always been people who I used to refer to as superblind. I was very sarcastic about it, and they are the ones, and I’m being facetious, but maybe there are some who can do this. “Oh, I can hear a route once, and then I can do it flawlessly.”, and “I can do all of this stuff.” And the unspoken, and sometimes, I guess, spoken corollary to that was, so why can’t you? Not me me, but the general you. If I can do it, why can’t you do it?
How do you think it would go over if tomorrow morning, in the US, we woke up to the news that (and it was splattered all over signs and businesses) that there were now certain personal expectations of all people of color, and nothing was mentioned about Caucasians? How do you think that would go over?
I know myself the best. I do not want other people making expectations of me, for me. Kind of goes back to nothing about us without us. I want to be the one to make, break, or change the expectations of me.
Now, I’m not talking about work or school expectations, for example. Yes, you dress appropriately, you get there on time, you do your job well. I’m not talking about that. This is personal expectations.
So what do you guys think about this?
Jonathan: That’s Beth from Virginia Beach.
Interesting that we had those contributions coming in with very similar sentiments.
When I was rebranding Living Blindfully, I sat and thought about what is the overall philosophy or message of this podcast, and Living Blindfully came out of that exercise.
And then, of course, you want a tagline. And after a lot of thought, I came up with living your best life with blindness or low vision. I guess it’s another less catchy way of saying live the life you want, which is a great slogan from NFB.
Self-determination is all about living the life you want. But determining what life it is that you want, ideally, needs to be an informed choice.
So many people have been bombarded with a lifetime of negative stereotypes about blind people, and they’ve been deprived of quality training, opportunity, and blindness services, so they’re not necessarily living their best life.
And if you’ve been blind since birth, it may have started with childhood. It may be that you had parents who did what they thought was best. Maybe they weren’t provided with accurate information about what a blind adult might become if they’re given the right nurturing, training, opportunity, and technology. So maybe, out of the very best of intentions, those parents mollycoddled their blind kids. They thought they were doing the right thing, but what they succeeded in doing was raising a blind adult with very limited expectations of what they might do, and some degree of trepidation about taking on the world.
We can’t know the details of someone’s journey of events that have happened in their life and how it makes them feel, and I don’t think it’s appropriate or necessary to knock someone’s choices, or mock someone’s choices.
We can be there to perhaps, just through example, demonstrate that blindness isn’t the characteristic that need determine your destiny, that if you are given the right training, the right opportunity, if you’re surrounded by people who believe in you, and you’re able to make an attitude adjustment, you can do whatever you want to do. But that’s everybody’s individual choice.
Now what I try and do, and what I think this community tries to do here on Living Blindfully, is give people good quality information about the choices available to them. Because if you are one of those people who has not been fortunate enough to have access to information, opportunity, technology, mentoring, then it can be very tough, especially if you’ve tried to put yourself out there in the past, you’ve sought opportunities and they haven’t worked out, and in the end, you just find it hard to keep going. In our community, especially the online blind community, which let’s not forget is just a tiny microcosm of the blind population of the world at large, it is pretty easy to become a big fish in a small pond.
In terms of the criticism and the vitriol that people get, (and yes, I certainly have had my fair share of that, and it’s never pleasant to be in the middle of a firestorm like that), it’s hard for me to know whether this is somehow worse in the blind community, whether it’s worse with minority communities overall, or whether, as I said in my comments about AppleVis last week, we’re just at a point with social media discourse where a lot of people think it’s fun to be unpleasant to somebody else who’s a name, it’s a name that people know, it’s a name people talk about, and it’s fun to just trash them and their character.
I do accept though that some of that behaviour in our community does date back a lot earlier than the social media era, so perhaps it is something about minorities.
And in a way, even though it’s incredibly unpleasant and upsetting to be on the receiving end of, I think I understand at an intellectual level what’s going on. If you’ve put yourself out there and you’ve sought those opportunities, and you keep being rejected, and you see somebody else who’s kind of apparently flying through life, even though we don’t really know the struggles that they had to get there or anything that might be going on in their life, it’s a human reaction to say, “Why them and not me?”
And I think, the difference then comes down to human behavior and the way that people react to diversity. Some people will say, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it. Maybe there’s something I can take from their success journey and apply it to my own journey.”
And then, there’ll be others who just lash out, and we certainly do have our fair share of that in our community.
So plenty of things to talk about there. And if you want to join the conversation, LivingBlindfully.com/opinion is the web page you go to, and it’ll provide you with all the details of the ways that you can be in touch via phone, via email and of course, WhatsApp, which has become the dominant way of being in touch with the podcast now.
My Experience at the Movies
Kia ora, listeners. My name is Renee Patete from Wellington, New Zealand, and I wanted to tell you a little story about an event that happened to me recently, which made me consider an interesting question.
On the 1st of July this year, I decided to go and see my first audio-described film in theaters, Inside Out 2, with one of my good friends.
In the Wellington region, there’s only one movie theater that provides descriptive audio at cinema screenings, and that is in Lower Hutt, which is quite far out for us who live in the city, in the town area of Wellington. So we had to take a bus that took us quite far out, in order to get to this cinema. So that in itself is very disappointing that audio description is not as widespread as it should be.
When we arrived, I was given a headset, which consisted of two over-the-ear headphones, which could play the audio description track and the film audio. I decided to turn down the film audio all the way so as to hear it through the speakers, and just wear one headphone to hear the audio description track.
We had booked to see a Dolby Atmos screening, so that we could take advantage of the enhanced surround sound.
For the first half of the movie, everything seemed to be going fine. I wore the headphone and heard the audio description track. Although, I did notice that I was missing out significantly on effects in the surround sound because one of my ears was covered.
During the second half, however, the headset began to cut out, and I presume that this is because it was running out of batteries. The cinema had neglected to make sure that the headset was charged up properly before the screening, probably thinking that no one was going to come and use the audio description track. This is unfortunate because of course, I was wanting to use the audio description track, and this ruined my experience of the movie.
Fortunately, I was with my good friend who is an excellent describer, and filled in the remainder of the description for the second half of the movie. In fact, I think her description was better in some ways than the pre-recorded audio description track, since it matched tonally and emotionally with the mood of the film, and was placed artistically.
With this experience, having description and film both not coming out of any headsets, I was able to fully take advantage of the Dolby Atmos sound for the first time, and I noticed what a big difference it made not having to wear a headphone, and really being able to experience the movie and enjoy something that we as blind people should already be able to take advantage of without any extra accessibility features.
And so that brought up an interesting question for me. How much should we have to sacrifice in order to be included or to have accessible content?
I believe that although we had audio description in that particular screening, we had to sacrifice something. And that something was sound quality, which I believe that blind people should be able to make the most of, since we have, in many cases, good hearing and can really enjoy good sound, sometimes more than sighted people can. I believe that having to wear a headset when we are going to the cinema, partly or mostly to enjoy the effects of surround sound, is a big disadvantage.
Many people may say that we should be grateful for the fact that we were even able to experience the movie with audio descriptions, but I’m not sure if we should just simply be grateful and not think about what we are compromising or sacrificing in order to gain accessibility.
I suppose a similar situation is in the cases where a book has been recorded as an audiobook, only in an abridged version. This means that we as blind people listening to the audiobook can find out what the story is about, at the cost of the full text. I believe that this is a similar example of how we sometimes have to sacrifice things, in order to have some accessibility and by extension, inclusion.
My ideal solution to this particular instance with the cinema would be to have the audio description track playing through the main theatre speakers. This means we would be able to listen to the Dolby Atmos or Surround sound without anything blocking our ears from experiencing it. However, I do understand that sighted people may be annoyed by the audio description track.
I also think though that there is the possibility of making a more artistic audio description track for a movie, which could even enhance the experience for all moviegoers, blind and sighted alike.
I’d be interested in your thoughts and to see what people think generally of this question of sacrifice and gratitude around these accessibility things, because I think a lot of people think that we should just always be grateful for even a little bit of accessibility because we’ve been left out for so long. But sometimes, we also have to think about the costs and the compromises that come with that.
Jonathan: Great contribution, Renee. Thank you very much for it. Nice to hear from you.
I keep a gratitude journal. Gratitude is a really positive thing. And every day, I make a point of writing 10 things down that I’m grateful for. And as somebody who does a lot of advocacy, it keeps me grounded. It gives me a sense of perspective.
But gratitude’s got a bit of a bad rap, I think, because a lot of people have interpreted being grateful for something to mean you mustn’t criticize it, or seek something better. And I absolutely agree with you that if you’ve got an accommodation that isn’t meeting your needs properly, you should say so. You are a customer. I mean, you went in there, and you paid your fee to sit in the movie theater, and you are as entitled to a good immersive experience as everybody else.
I don’t know how regularly you listen to Living Blindfully, but I’ve been blithering on for years, blithering on for years about the fact that when you switch on audio description in a home environment, you often find that the movie soundtrack has been down mixed either to stereo, or even to mono in some cases. So we’ve got a problem with this right across the board.
I think the problem specific to movie theaters could be solved very easily though by replacing the current headset with bone conducting ones, assuming that you can get them loud enough. That way, you could hear the audio description soundtrack without anything covering your ears, and hopefully enjoy the full immersive 5.1 experience.
I wonder whether anyone around the world has seen this work where you go into a movie theater that’s all equipped with Dolby Atmos and you’ve had bone conduction, so you can hear the audio description without it affecting your ability to enjoy it. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion, if you’ve got some experiences of this. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
I have heard all around the world over the years from people who say that going to a movie theater, wanting to see a particular movie so much that you do that, rather than wait for it to appear on the streaming services, and then getting an audio description receiver that cuts out on you halfway through because it hasn’t been charged properly is all too common.
New Phonak Hearing Aids and Roger On
Here’s a nice testimonial and some good quality of life improvement from Walt Smith. He says:
“When Jonathan received his award from ACB, the presenter stressed the accuracy and objectivity of his technical reporting, and I’m here to vouch for this. Just in case anyone thinks that he slants his comments, I want to report otherwise.
I have a profound hearing loss – somewhere close to 90% without aids. I was not particularly satisfied with the aids I’ve been using when I began to subscribe to Living Blindfully. And in one of the first episodes I listened to, he was beginning his hearing aid saga.
Naturally, as a totally blind hearing aid user, I was interested. When he zeroed in on Phonak aids and the Roger On accessory, I became extremely interested and determined to look in to the hearing aid manufacturer that, until that time, I’d never heard of.
I located a Phonak representative within 8 miles of my home, and was completely blown away by her professionalism and clear desire to help her clients and not merely sell hearing aids. The result is that I now have a pair of Phonak aids virtually identical to those Jonathan is now using, plus the Roger On accessory. And I can say, categorically, that these are the best hearing aids provided by the most professional audiologist that I’ve had in the 52 years I’ve been wearing such devices. Every word that Jonathan said about Phonak and Roger On are 100% accurate. I haven’t yet availed myself of an iPhone so as to utilise the hearing aid and Roger On apps, but am looking forward to doing so.
In short, when Jonathan reviews a product, my personal experience is that you can trust his observations explicitly. Had I not stumbled almost literally over his hearing aid saga, I’d still be wearing aids that utterly failed to assist with background noise or crowds, not to mention an audiologist whose attitude every time I tried to talk to him about the unique issues facing a blind person with hearing aids was to consider me a whiny complainer. These new aids are making a fundamental change in my life, late as it may be, and it’s all thanks to our intrepid host.
Congratulations to him and the Living Blindfully community on the history-making 2 awards, and thanks for being there at a critical time for me, albeit without his knowledge.”
Well thank you, Walt.
Hearing aids are a very personal thing. I’m so glad they’re working out for you. What works for you and me may not work out as well for others, but I am so so pleased that you happened to come along to the podcast at just the right time, and also that not only are you rocking some great hearing aids now that are making a difference, but that you’ve got that all-important relationship with an audiologist who listens, who’s wanting to work with you, who’s determined to make it work. That’s just a wonderful email to get, so all the very best.
I’m kind of getting dizzy producing this podcast, hearing myself sounding like I’ve really got a bad case of flu, which I did have in July when these contributions were coming in, and now when I’m well and truly recovered and healthy again, so I apologize for that. But I had to get the contributions recorded, you see, because otherwise, there’s just such a backlog. It becomes an enormous, un-conquerable mountain.
Now, since that contribution came in, there’s been a conference at which Phonak has announced a brand new generation of hearing aids. Don’t you just hate that? I do, as somebody who bought my last hearing aids in April with my own money. I’m going to see if they might help me with an upgrade. I don’t know whether that’s going to be a thing or not.
These new hearing aids are very interesting, in that Phonak has gone all-in on AI. I’m waiting for the really big reviews to come out, and I may comment more when I’ve read and watched those reviews. But essentially, there’s a chip in these hearing aids, and the only purpose of that chip is to filter background noise from speech. And if you’ve done any audio production of late, you will know that there are some amazing algorithms. You go into Isotope RX, for example, and you use their dialog isolate function. It’s amazing what can be stripped from audio these days. And finally, there’s technology like this in these new Phonak hearing aids.
I am told by people who have a good reputation that this breakthrough is quite phenomenal, in terms of being in a crowded environment and having noise filtered out so you can carry on a conversation. It really is very exciting.
The other thing that they’ve said is that these new hearing aids are AuraCast ready. Now, that’s an interesting turn of phrase because they’re not saying they have AuraCast right now, but they’re AuraCast ready.
AuraCast is the future of getting public audio into your hearing aids. It’s absolutely brilliant. I talked about this in episode 283. It not only has application for people who use hearing aids, but you’ll also be able to use it if you have Bluetooth earbuds of the future, too.
They’re also using Bluetooth low energy. And I think, that might mean that latency with an iPhone will be better. Because one thing that is annoying is when you pair these hearing aids with any Bluetooth device, it’s laggy. It’s just laggy enough to be annoying.
Luckily, we do have Roger On, and that’s how I typically use computers that I work with. But with the iPhone, it’s a bit of a problem. It’s not a show-stopper. It’s just noticeable enough, particularly if you’ve used an iPhone without hearing aids.
So that may well have improved as well. I haven’t had any firsthand experience to know that yet. So we’ll see how this goes. We’ll wait until they get into the hands of people. But from credible reviewers, it sounds like these hearing aids genuinely are a breakthrough.
I’ve become a big cynic when it comes to the marketing speak and the hype of hearing aid manufacturers. I’ve been hoodwinked too many times, and disappointed too many times.
These current Phonak hearing aids that I’m wearing, the Lumity, are the real deal in the sense that they’re a significant quality of life improvement over the previous aids I had, which were the Oticon Open S1. But it sounds like this is a whole new level again.
And this is the thing, right? Technology just keeps marching on.
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We are now publishing Living Blindfully plus episodes to Apple podcasts for people who choose to subscribe that way. And you may remember, I did a long thing last year sometime about how inaccessible that experience is to work with, as a content creator. Has Apple done anything about that? No, they have not. It is still just as inaccessible as it always was, in terms of determining the dates that things are going to be published.
Aira and its RIM integration to the rescue. Every week now, when I want to publish an episode of Living Blindfully, I give an Aira agent a call. It is a snap to ask them to initiate a RIM session.
And of course, it is free to use. Just download it and set it up, even if you choose not to get a subscription.
And the Aira agent helps me get the Living Blindfully episode published to our wonderful Living Blindfully plus subscribers on Apple Podcasts.
It is a match made in heaven. Aira and Pneuma Solutions’ RIM.
You can find out more about Aira by going to Aira.IO. That’s A-I-R-A.I-O. And don’t forget to check out their amazing Access AI feature as well.
Todoist
Jim King is writing in. He says:
“Hello, Jonathan,
Thank you for your review of the task and project management application Todoist.
As a result of your recommendation, I decided to use it for a small community project I am involved with here in Winthrop, Maine, USA. The project Winthrop Heritage Day involves organizing, implementing, and managing a town picnic and fair celebrating our people and history. I created the project, and it is now shared with 5 users. I am using the pro plan of Todoist, while most of the others are using the free plan.
The measure of a good program is when the meetings and discussions are about the project, and not about the application used to manage the project. We have not reached that point, but we are quickly getting there. With a community project like this, the team includes members with vastly disparate technical abilities. It is the mark of a good application when a team like this reaches or gets close to that point.
Currently, our project has 9 sections. Many of the tasks in the project have subtasks. The ability to expand and collapse sections and subtasks really helps with navigation.
With both the Windows and web app, I use both the virtual and application cursors at about the same rate. I have found that using the tab key when the virtual cursor is off navigates to controls on the main project page that are not otherwise accessible using other navigation techniques.
There are some keyboard commands I have trouble with. For example, the GThen/ command seems to do nothing. After pressing GThen/ and entering a section name, pressing down arrow to find the section name in the list and pressing enter, nothing happens. But overall, the keyboard shortcuts in the Windows and web apps are very useful.
Even though I try to stay away from apps that use an HTML UI, Todoist is certainly one of the more accessible apps of this type.
I have also installed Todoist on my Pixel 8 Pro. It works great on this device. If someone is an Android user and uses TalkBack, then it is a piece of cake getting started with Todoist in Android.
The AI Assistant is really wonderful. I told it I want to install and set up a Plex server. It gave me a list of general tasks to get the job done.
Now, go to the Task Options menu for each task, and launch the AI Assistant from there, and the general task can be broken down into detailed subtasks. I have not worked with the AI Assistant too much, but I would imagine that you could continue this procedure for each subtask and come up with an extremely detailed list of tasks to get the job done.
Thank you for a great recommendation and review of Todoist. It is now an essential tool in my toolbox.”
Thank you very much, Jim! I really appreciate that email.
And it’s good to know that it’s working well in Android as well, for members of our community who are Android users.
Listening to Podcasts With Alexa
I’m not sure who this message comes from, but it does come from New Zealand. I can tell that by the country code. It says:
“Hey, Jonathan!
I just wanted to say thanks for the amazing episodes, as always.
I’ve emailed you a few times, but the introduction of WhatsApp is great!!!” (with exclamation marks.)
“One question. Is it normal for the Soup Drinker to not behave well with podcasts, or is it just user error?”
Well, without knowing what you’re doing, what you’re experiencing, and what you expect, it’s sort of hard to say. But typically, I find that the jolly old Amazon personal assistant, the Soup Drinker, as we affectionately call it here, works pretty well.
At the moment, my podcast provider seems to have defaulted to Amazon Podcast. You can set up a number of options in the jolly old app for the soup drinker, which you can download for your iPhone or your Android device. You can go in there and specify which service you would like to be the one that handles your podcast.
Amazon Music seems to be working okay for me. I just say to it, “Play the latest edition of Living Blindfully.”, and it does. Miraculous!
What it doesn’t do, at least with Amazon Music, is support chapters. And that would be great if you could say to it, “Skip to the next chapter.” But I’m not aware of any support for chapters on the jolly old soup drinker.
I do find though, that if I stop listening to a podcast, and obviously, Living Blindfully episodes tend to be 2 hours long, when you go back and play Living Blindfully again, it picks up from where it left off. So it seems to be working okay for me.
If anyone wants to share their experiences of listening to Living Blindfully or other podcasts on their Soup Drinker, by all means, be in touch. Go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion for all the ways that you can be in touch including WhatsApp via text or audio, email, and even the good old phone.
New Gadgets and AI
Brian Clark is writing in from Indianapolis, Indiana, and he says:
“Many thanks for so many new cool things lately. It feels like Jack Nicholson is Joker in the 1989 Batman movie when he said, Where does he get those wonderful toys?
So many things have impacted my life, personally and professional, thanks to you teaching us about this new tech. Just to name a few, Suno AI, ListenLater.net, Zoom H1 Essential, Mona, and all the updates on apps already familiar to us.
The interview with Doug Geoffray was fascinating, and a great look under the hood at Microsoft Accessibility. I can’t wait to hear what you both talk about 25 years from now.
I was particularly interested in his comments about the differences between accessibility and usability, and it is comforting to know that people are understanding the difference in working towards efficiency and usability. Recent changes on the Suno AI website have made it less usable, even if technically, it is still accessible. I sent them an email with the details, and hopefully, they’ll listen.
I also found the exchange between you and Doug regarding CoPilot and AI in general fascinating. I know many of us keep bringing up the subject, but AI is coming whether people like it or not. And just as the wheel, printing press, combustion engine, personal computer, and internet have proved useful tools, so will AI, and those that can harness this new tool will benefit.
I recently had a former student of mine thank me for helping her not to fear AI. It seemed a surprising comment to me, so I began to inquire as to the reasons behind it.
She told me she hears so many negative things about AI from the news and media. She told me that what I show her helps to understand that AI can be used for good, productive purposes too. I’m beginning to realize more and more that showing people new and creative ways to use this new technology has to accompany my excitement about it.
Furthermore, I agree wholeheartedly that we must use caution and check the work of the AI models. I say they are like brilliant teenagers that think they know everything. They do great work but can be sloppy, and you gotta check it.”
Thanks very much, Brian!
It is indeed a very exciting time to be around, monitoring this technology, seeing it evolve, and using it.
Inaccessible Recycling System in Hungary
Let’s go back to Hungary and hear from Péter with a very interesting message. He says:
“From the 1st of July in Hungary, a so-called deposit refund system is in place for cans and bottles.
Once those liquid containers are empty, you can, or I’d better say should, bring them back to the returning points. In fact, these are machines placed in grocery stores in which you insert your cans and bottles.
You then get back 50 Hungarian forints for each. That’s 14 US cents.
Now, the problem is, this equipment is not accessible for us because it’s controlled by the consumer via touchscreen. For example, using these screens, you can tell the machine if you want a voucher or paper that you can use at the checkout payment. The amount will be deducted from your bill.
Or you can choose the more sophisticated option, in which you read a QR code from the machine with your smartphone, and the money will appear immediately on your bank account. For that, you also have to use an application on your phone. The app is not accessible either.
A viable solution could be if food delivery services recollect the cans and bottles when your next order arrives at your door. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. In fact, it does with one online shop, but this particular shop’s website is not accessible.
So I was wondering. In other parts of the world, how these recycling systems work regarding accessibility. I’m absolutely for the protection of the environment, but what I can sense is one more obstacle, one more area where I am dependent on other people’s favors. Living Blindfully listeners, can you recycle your liquid packaging independently?
I’m preparing this week to file an official complaint in front of the ombudsman, because this practice goes obviously against a bunch of Hungarian laws that forbid discrimination, and oblige the state and the world of commerce to provide us with equal treatment.”
Well, that sounds like quite some sophisticated system you got going on there, Péter.
We have recycling, but you just dump it in the appropriate bin, and then you put the bin out on the designated day. The content of the bin gets collected and emptied, and off we go.
But there isn’t any kind of compensation for those cans either via that system, so that’s one advantage you have. I guess it’s a great incentive for people to recycle, if they’re going to get some monetary compensation for doing it.
It’ll be interesting to hear whether others have similar systems around the place. If you want to tell us how it works where you are, by all means, be in touch. Just go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion, and all the ways that you can be in touch are listed there. Pick the one that’s best for you. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
Problem With GPS and Mapping Systems
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan and Living Blindfully podcast listeners. This is Eric Duffy from Columbus, Ohio.
Jonathan, I want to congratulate you on receiving the Bolotin Award from the National Federation of the Blind. This is well deserved. I think this speaks to the quality of both the content and the production of the podcast. Again, congratulations.
I’m sending this message because for the last several months, I’ve had a problem with GPS or mapping systems used by most drivers. These systems direct the drivers to the back of a house, or a business, whatever the location seems to be. This is not helpful. 99.9% of the time, I would say we want to go to the front entrance. Yet, drivers take us to the back because they say that’s where the GPS told me to go. This is both a waste of time and money.
If others have experienced the same thing, it would be great to put together a campaign to contact the makers of these maps and GPS systems. Apple and Google are the main 2 that come to mind, but I’m sure Waze and other GPS and mapping services likely have the same problem. If others are experiencing this, it would be great to know. And I think it would be great to see what we can do about it.
Thank you.
Jonathan: Thanks for the kind words, Eric.
And for sure, it will be very interesting to hear if others are experiencing this, too. So be in touch. Go to LivingBlindfully.com/opinion, where all the various contact methods are displayed there. Pick the one that works for you. LivingBlindfully.com/opinion.
Travel, Speechify, and What Do People Think of the NLS eReaders?
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! This is Jim East from North Florida, Gainesville locale area.
First off, congratulations for the awards and honors you received. I’m so excited. This is definitely long-deserved, and I want to congratulate you on that.
I am a Living Blindfully subscriber, and have been since the start.
A couple of things I wanted to talk about.
First off, WhatsApp is great. I’m glad you’re on it. I’m using it to create this message.
I wanted to tell people in the States that as you know, at this time of year, it’s really hot here. And it is possible to go some place cool, as I heard someone from the southern part of the world talk about how cool it is where they are.
In 2016, I went to Canada, Victoria, and I got to wear a light members-only jacket in July which as a born Floridian, I’ve never done before. So you don’t necessarily have to go south of the equator to experience cool weather. You can do it in North America, for anyone that didn’t know. Probably, any of this information you probably didn’t want to know, but you can.
I wanted to talk briefly about an app that I discovered called Reader. Or it’s also, if you do it in the App Store, called Speechify.
I wanted to know if anyone knew how or where we could find files that Voice Dream saves in our library because according to Speechify, or Reader as it comes up once it’s downloaded, it has AI voices, some of which are by some famous actors who have agreed to have their voices copyrighted, which is kind of cool. But I’m not sure where to find that stuff, and where I find those files.
I checked in my files, I did file search names, and they never came up. So I don’t know if they protect them, if you’re kind of stuck using their app with that, or not. It might be proprietary. I don’t know.
But anyway, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the issues with iPhones, little idiosyncrasies. I find sometimes, when I’m using my iPhone 13 that sometimes, I will put my finger on the screen when I’m in an app, and it will switch apps, or it will take me to the home screen, just by touching with one finger. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s intermittent.
And sometimes, it’s really frustrating. Like I’ve been in Clubhouse, and I want to unmute myself, or if I want to mute myself. So that’s funny. Then once in a while, people on Clubhouse can hear VoiceOver. And sometimes, they can’t. I’ve heard that with other people using Clubhouse, and other apps like that. So interesting, some of these idiosyncrasies that we have with devices.
Also, I’d like to hear… (I know, I said last thing) what people think about the eReaders in the state. I don’t know if that came up during conferences or not, but I’m not real happy with mine.
There are 2 vendors that are being used, and mine in Florida is the Zoomax. I know other people are using the one made by Humanware.
So I just wonder what’s going on about that because there’s a lot of people that are having problems with it, from what I’ve heard.
Jonathan: I have heard those rumblings too, Jim, that people say the Humanware one, which is essentially a stripped down Brailliant is great, but people get quite grumbly when the Zoomax one comes up. I heard that consistently when I was at the NFB convention.
Regarding your Speechify question, I don’t believe there’s any way for you to get to the files that are in Voice Dream Reader in any kind of open way. It’s pretty sandboxed. So if you want to take content, for example, from Bookshare, I don’t believe that Speechify offers integrated Bookshare support in the same way that Voice Dream does. So you would have to download from Bookshare. And then, share the file to Speechify.
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Update on iPhone Issue
Voice message: Hello, Jonathan and the Living Blindfully community. It is Urh again from Slovenia. Just a bit of an update on my previous voice message about the iPhone notifications not working when iPhone is unlocked.
So I have actually been able to fix this issue by restarting my iPhone.
But you know what happened? A few days later, it occurred again. And then I restarted it, and it didn’t fix it.
And then suddenly, it just started working on its own again, like it is mad. So I then really got very very angry.
So I checked all of my focus settings. But then I realized, you know, yeah, all of your focuses are working perfectly fine. And the funny thing is that if the focus was an issue, then why would the Apple Watch and the phone be receiving notifications when they were locked? I mean, it doesn’t really make any sense.
So then, I thought about resetting my iPhone. But I feel like this is a software issue, and it’s not only happening to me. It’s almost like it’s something with the iOS 17.5.1 because by the way, this has not been happening to me on any previous iOS version.
By the way, you mentioned that you have a bug sometimes when entering Notification Center. Well, this is happening to me as well, and it is only happening on my iPhone 15 Plus. On my iPhone 13 Pro which I used to own, this has not been happening.
And also, I truly hope that you will, in a not too distant future, if possible, of course, make a bit of a demonstration about all of these shiny CoPilot features on Windows because I’m sure that I’m not the only one that is really struggling to use them and really get a feel for them.
Jonathan: Well, I’m sorry to hear that problem persists, and kind of goes away, and comes back. That’s very annoying because you kind of think hurrah, it’s fixed. And then, it comes back again. That’s horrible.
I am comforted that you are having the notification center issue. You are now the second person who’s been in touch.
Lynette on Mastodon was the other to let me know that they are having this problem, too.
So just to recap, every so often, out of the blue, you try and swipe down to get to notification center, and it just goes bonk. And nothing you can do will get you into notification center, unless you take some step like maybe try and go to the home screen a couple of times, or toggle VoiceOver off and back on again or whatever.
Actually, I am now running iOS 18 on my primary device because I am back home from the great travels, and I figured actually, it’s a bit rough. You would get that with a beta. But it’s not that bad this year. I am knocking on wood. So I put iOS 18 on, and I am enjoying that.
But the notification thing is far worse with iOS 18. One time last weekend, it got so bad, I just could not do anything to get it out of this mode where it would not bring up notification center, other than reboot the device. With previous versions of iOS, I have not had to resort to that.
Using CoPilot to Make a PowerPoint Presentation
Aaron Linson says:
“In your recent podcast about CoPilot, you talked about creating a PowerPoint presentation from a Word document.
Could you please give some more detailed explanations of how you accomplished this task? Did you use the Pro version of CoPilot?”
I certainly did, Aaron. I used the corporate version when I was chief executive of the organization I was leading at that time.
And the way that you had to do it was to put everything in OneDrive. I don’t have access to it now to refresh my memory, but I believe what I did was I went into PowerPoint. I used the CoPilot feature from within PowerPoint and imported the Word document, which had to live in OneDrive. After I did that, it just went ahead.
It took a wee bit of time, and it generated the slides. It inserted artwork. It used my notes from the Word document in the Speaker’s Notes section, and also turned them into bullet points on the main slide itself.
It was a very impressive process. But I suspect it may only be available in the corporate version of CoPilot, the one that organizations can buy, because everything had to live on the corporate OneDrive for this to work. It then put the PowerPoint presentation in the same OneDrive.
But that was an example for me of how AI and CoPilot really can save someone a lot of time. Something that I’d budgeted about 2 or 3 hours of time for to get right took much shorter than that.
And what really impressed me was when I sought verification from a sighted person about this, they said there was nothing necessary to do to it.
Confirming Problems With WhatsApp Videos
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! It’s May Thompson here.
I forget the man’s name. I’m sorry. But I have had the very same trouble with WhatsApp when Dawn has sent me a video, and I just couldn’t get past it. I got stuck, and I just couldn’t swipe past it. Very very annoying.
I hope they get it fixed. But just let them know that I’ve had the same problem.
ThinkBIOS Utility
A text coming through on the very busy WhatsApp machine from Mitchell in California. He says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
I’m interested in buying a Lenovo computer. I’m wondering. Is it only Thinkpads that the BIOS feature you demonstrated on an episode of Living Blindfully work, or is it all the computers?
Jonathan: Well, Lenovo would give you the definitive response to this, Mitchell. But I’m guessing, and I think it’s a pretty solid guess, that since it’s called the ThinkBIOS Utility, the Think suggests to me it’s only going to work with Thinkpads and not other Lenovo models.
But there are plenty of Thinkpads out there. There’s bound to be one that suits your tastes and budget.
Closing and Contact Info
Thank you for another very busy Living Blindfully. I appreciate all the contributions that are coming in, and I look forward to bringing you next week’s episode.
Thanks, in particular, to our Living Blindfully plus subscribers. If you would like to support the podcast and you’re not subscribed to Living Blindfully plus yet, you can find out about how to do it at LivingBlindfully.com/plus. It really makes a difference, so thank you.
And remember, when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
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