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Contents
Some Air Fryers That Can be Used by a Blind Person. 5
Francesco Magisano Talks About Keeping Fit With the Help of Achilles. 10
Blind People Judging Each Other 18
The Use of the Word Blind in Other Languages. 22
Chris Peterson Talks About Penny Forward. 24
Native Versus Custom OS Solutions. 36
Welcome to 304
[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.
Welcome!
On the show this week: stay fitter and healthier with the help of Achilles, increase your financial literacy with Penny Forward, tips on accessible air fryers, and screen readers offering features that are already available in the operating system.
[Jonathan sings]
“Almost heaven, West Virginia.”
It’s almost heaven for Living Blindfully, the penultimate episode of the show. And West Virginia is area code 304, to match episode 304.
So if you are in the sunny state of West Virginia, a special welcome to you, and thank you for listening to the show this week.
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Accessibility of LinkedIn
Hello, Jonathan Mosen! This is Asia. I am from Ohio in the United States. I wanted to comment on your Living Blindfully show 296 about LinkedIn.
I am a current college student, and I am studying a sports major. Our professors have chosen for us to go more towards a LinkedIn account, rather than our portfolio.
And to give a bit of a background, a portfolio is something where we would put a brief cover letter, our resume, and a brief description of our current degrees. And then, we would put information on each course that we have taken and maybe projects that we have completed in that course so it can possibly be presented to an employer and say hey, I’ve done this. I am educated enough to complete this job.
I think since last fall, they’ve been trying to switch more over to a LinkedIn account. So we have students that come in with their computers, we have students that don’t have computers, and we have students that are strictly mobile users, like iPads and iPhones.
I am very strictly a mobile user, but I do have a laptop that, when it’s required, I do use it. Most often, I use it for my Office apps like Word, Outlook and things like that, and of course, when I have a third-party platform for a class, or like LinkedIn.
And I have found that you can do just about everything on the LinkedIn mobile application, especially if you’re trying to record your pronunciation of your name. My professors have created an all-star rubric that we have to follow, and one of the requirements is to record the pronunciation of our name. That can only be done through mobile. Even my sighted peers have not found a way to do it via the website. The only reason I use the website now is to upload documents and to reorganize my documents in the features sections.
So you can create your different sections. I’ve been able to add my volunteer, I’ve been able to add my certifications, my education, my jobs, all of that through the mobile application. The only thing you cannot do is add documents to the featured section. And that is because you cannot access your files correctly when trying to upload via LinkedIn via the mobile, and it gets very frustrating.
So I go to the website. You have to turn off virtual cursor to navigate the area and reorganize your documents once you have uploaded them, but it’s a very simple upload process. You add your featured section, and then you can go down to a drop down menu and go down to add media and start adding your files.
I use the most up-to-date JAWS, Windows 10 on my laptop.
So those are my experiences with LinkedIn.
I personally don’t recommend trying to use it for job applications. I’ve been searching for a job since the end of last year, and I have gotten more than half a dozen spam from LinkedIn. So I’m gonna going to keep my account for prospective employers to see, but I am no longer going to be applying for jobs via LinkedIn because I have been harassed with spam from them. But it is a nice option where an employer can see projects you’ve completed, your education, almost, you can put your resume on there, but it’s almost an electronic resume.
## Facebook Accessibility Regressions
Jonathan: Hello, Celeste. I know it’s Celeste because it says here:
“This is Celeste from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. I don’t have a lot of time to listen to the Living Blindfully podcast, but I’ll often read the transcripts when I have a moment.
Someone has boosted it on Mastodon, and find this week’s podcast has topics that interest me.
Seeing that as of late, not much has been mentioned about Facebook, yet accessibility is something you and other listeners of the podcast have strong feelings about being blind and wanting equal access to things with a screen reader, let me bring something to your attention that has occurred as of late that has left me royally frustrated.
Ever since the latest update to the Facebook iOS app automatically installed on my iPhone back on Sunday, August the 18th, 2024, I have been having issues composing new posts using VoiceOver. My friend Monty from Bakersfield, California, wrote the problem beautifully in a post on Mastodon, and I quote,
“warning! For blind users of the Facebook iOS app. If posting to Facebook from your iPhone, be aware that at least the current update, it appears, will not allow you to review the text you have entered before posting. It will look as though you haven’t typed anything when in fact, you have. How the heck accessibility can break that much is beyond me, but it seems it has. I just posted something to my Facebook which I pasted from my clipboard, and the only way I even knew that I could post something at all was double tapping in the edit field, where VoiceOver would announce insertion point at start or insertion point at end, which told me something was in the field. But I guess it’s a bit too much to ask VoiceOver to actually read what’s in the field. Just wow!””
That ends the toot from Monty. And thank you very much for writing in, Celeste.
This is indeed a major frustration for a lot of people. I’ve been hearing about this loud and clear here at Mosen Towers from the famous Bonnie Mosen.
I have been using Facebook a little bit more frequently than I tend to of late, and I’ve seen this too, but I can’t make it do it now.
This email was sent by Celeste a few weeks ago because we’ve had quite a few special shows, given the Apple season, so it may well have been resolved. But if it hasn’t been, hopefully, it will be soon because it’s a big one.
I also note that when you’re moving through Facebook now and you’re browsing your timeline, every time you see a post from someone, it first talks about their profile picture, which does slow you down. I mean, I think we can make an assumption that if you are seeing a post, you’re probably seeing someone’s profile picture. And I don’t think it adds a lot of useful information.
What you really want to do is just read the post. So I far preferred it when you just heard the name of the person, and then you got the body of their post. So it would be great if Meta would revert to that way of working as well.
Well, I guess the best thing we can do is to keep submitting that accessibility feedback in the hope that those issues will be addressed, and any future issues will be addressed.
Some Air Fryers That Can be Used by a Blind Person
In this segment, we’re mostly going to be talking about air fryers. People want to talk about their air fryers in response to Christopher Wright’s question in episode 296.
We’ll take a little diversion from Jeanie along the way. She says:
Firstly, for Chris and others looking for accessible air fryers, a couple of people on our out-of-sight cooks list have a talking air fryer made by Cobolt. I don’t know if this will be available in the US, but presumably should be. In the UK and on this side of the world, it can be purchased from Seeing Differently Royal Society for the Blind.
I am told it has 5 touch-sensitive buttons which have a raised ring around them to locate them, which does take a little practice to touch from the correct angle without touching the others, but easily mastered, and it talks. Buttons include temp, time, start, and a number of preset options for chicken, chips, etc. It is a small unit with the pull-out drawer, with a basket inside style.
Personally, I just shopped around to find one with 2 manual dials – one for temperature, and one for time. I then got a family member to add dots with tactile paint for the various increments of time and temp. Because the dials are quite large knobs, and the piece you line up is on the front of the dial, they are a bit tricky to get much accuracy. So I did resort to just turning the time knob on full, and then timing the exact time on my watch. The temp tends to work best on full or just under, so I haven’t been too fussy with that.
I do think the air fryer craze is a bit overrated, though.”
Oh no! We love our air fryer!
“I have had amazing results for things that can generally be done deep fried such as chips, chicken nuggets, crumb scallops, hash browns, and other ready-made frozen things.”
[laughs] That’s quite sad. I’m sitting here reading that and thinking I don’t eat a single one of those things, unfortunately. But we do use our air fryers for steak and stuff like that.
Anyway, Jeanie continues:
“But I have found anything with pastry or whole pieces of chicken, etc. I prefer to cook in the oven, and other meat still tastes best from the fry pan.
There has been a lot of discussion around these being easier to use, but I have found the deep metal basket actually harder to get food in and out of than a fry pan or oven. But maybe it’s just practice. I did also find recently some silicon liners that have little tabs sticking up each side to lift them out by, and another silicon thin holy liner that works like a sling to lower the food in and allows air to move through it, which could be good if I give quiche another go. But generally, if it is fast food that comes out of the freezer, goes into the machine, and can be tipped onto a plate, they are great.
Another product I have heard about, but not seen personally, but sounded very interesting are headphones from Sony that are open-air. The description was that they are like a donut shape, so the over-ear headphones have a hole in the center so you can still hear what is around you. I’m not sure, but think these may have been available as a wired option.”
And another thumbs up to the Cobolt Systems air fryer from Odd in Norway, who says:
“I bought one last January from Cobolt Systems in the UK, and it is super accessible. It has buttons and speech. The buttons are organized logically, and very easy to find. The price was around 100 British pounds.”
And Alco says:
“I am delighted to talk about my wonderful air fryer. It is called Chefman, and it’s available from Amazon. I bought the 8 quart model, but there is a smaller one.
It has 2 dials. The top one sets the temperature. I always leave it at 400 degrees to cook most things. You can mark the dial if you wish to find lower temperatures. I think the lowest is 250, but I have not used that setting.
There is another dial below that, which is the timer. You have to turn it on to activate the fryer, but I usually use the Soup Drinker and set the timer that way. You can mark it if you wish, but it isn’t necessary if you have an alternative timer.
There is a rack inside, and it can only go in one way, so you have to fiddle around to get it right if you should turn the rack around when washing. You can wash it in the top rack of a dishwasher, but it is recommended that you wash it by hand. Cleanup is a snap!”
Caller: Yes, this is William Vanderbest. I’m calling for the Living Blindfully podcast.
I’m currently listening to one of the episodes, and someone asked about a blind accessible air fryer.
I happen to have the Power XL 10 quart air fryer, which is fully accessible with physical buttons you can touch. Each button is a preset, and they can be adjusted using the up and down arrows by the power control.
Jonathan: And Gene Warner says:
“The one I use all the time is from Black & Decker. It has only 2 controls, temperature and time. Both are physical knobs you turn. There is also a handle to release and remove the pot.
I got it on Amazon for around $90. They list it as Black Plus Decker Purify 2-Liter Air Fryer Black/Stainless Steel HF110SBD.”
SurfShark Vs ExpressVPN
Let’s go to a text message from WhatsApp. It says:
“Hi, Jonathan,
Dan from Fresno, CA.
I know you are now using ExpressVPN, but was wondering if there was an accessibility reason you switched from SurfShark. I was thinking about using SurfShark to access some sports content from Nevada, and ExpressVPN doesn’t have a server there. SurfShark does have one.”
Dan, SurfShark’s great. It works very well on iOS. Less so on Windows, I have to say. I find it a bit of a pain using SurfShark on Windows, and the accessibility could do with quite a bit of work there.
I switched for 2 reasons.
One, there’s particular content that I needed to unblock where SurfShark was failing. Obviously, people got onto Surfshark somehow, and it wasn’t unblocking the content like it used to.
The second reason is that I was also interested in the ExpressVPN travel router product. That’s a nice little bit of hardware, that, and I’ve talked about that. The AirCove Go, it is called. And I guess a bonus of all of this has been how well it works on Windows compared to SurfShark.
But SurfShark certainly does have a lot of servers scattered all over the place, and that may be a real benefit.
Going Keto
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! This is Jacques François from Pretoria. My online friends know me as Tahivers.
I first want to thank you for your program on episode 276 about the Keto breath sensor. We do not get that in South Africa. I would have had to import it.
But it finally convinced me that I have much the same problem. My body does not deal well with breads, and potatoes, and other starches and fats, so I switched to keto on 15 April.
In the first 2 months, I lost about 11 kilos. And in the meantime, I have so much more energy that I ever have.
I recently started running with my dad again on the gravel road in the afternoons. In the winter times, I used to do on the exercise bike. And though it was fulfilling, it didn’t quite expend the energy that I wanted to expend because Keto, if you don’t expend the energy, you don’t feel quite fulfilled.
In South Africa, we only have what they call Keto Scan, which is also a medical device. But I would like to maybe find out if anybody knows about another accessible Keto measurement way because the urine way, I cannot do because that relies on a stick to change colour in some way, so that you can then see how much ketosis you are, or ketones you are burning in your blood.
The keto breath sensor, the one that you have advertised in 276, or not advertised, but the one that you have demonstrated on your iPhone on iOS on 276 is not available here. I can get it through import at all, but I do not have experience with importing stuff that are not supported by any organization or company here.
And I’m also scared to do that because if you do import stuff on your own and something goes wrong with the product, then you are basically on your own. There’s no technical assistance or technical support from the company for you.
Jonathan: It is good to be talking with someone from South Africa about Keto.
I don’t know whether you know this, but there’s a professor in South Africa. He’s one of the world’s greatest sports scientists, and his name is Tim Noakes (N-O-A-K-E-S).
And as he started looking at the science, he worked out that a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet gets humans into optimal condition. and he started working with people who had quite developed type 2 diabetes. He was able to confirm that in some cases, it completely reverses that. People who were once taking insulin for diabetes went Keto, and they don’t have to take it anymore.
He had the most appalling effort to silence him from the South African Medical Association. They tried to deregister him. They took him to court, merely because he answered a question that a pregnant woman asked him on Twitter, as it was back then. It was a David and Goliath situation. They tried to destroy him, and it went on for years and years.
But ultimately, at great cost, personally, and professionally, and financially, he did win his case and justice was finally done.
I’m so pleased to hear you also talking about the effect that going Keto has had on you. It is something that I’ve experienced myself, and it’s something that I hear other people talking about. It is just amazing, the amount of energy that you get when you stick to the Keto stuff.
I resisted getting the Keto breath sensor, even though Francois told me about it a long time ago because he’d gotten one, and he said it really had made a difference to him. But I kind of thought I can tell when I’m in ketosis. I adhere to it pretty regularly.
But then, I decided to get it. And I tell you what, getting something that gives you qualitative data on what’s happening to your body really is great. With the Apple Watch, you can check your heart, you’ve got blood oxygen, various other things, you can track your sleep. I’ve got a smart scale that tracks other data as well. And then, the Keto Breath Sensor just rounds it out quite nicely. And I find that if I make a conscious choice, say, to just go off the wagon for an evening, or try something that isn’t strictly Keto, it’s informative to know the kinds of things that my body doesn’t like that will send it out of ketosis.
So I did go to a restaurant the other day. I was reasonably selective, but I had a cheese board that had some grapes. Normally, I wouldn’t eat grapes. But I ate the grapes this time, and I did notice that I was able to stay in ketosis, and that’s probably because my body’s adapted to it for so long. Maybe it takes a little bit more to knock me out of ketosis than it ordinarily would. But I’ve got the data to confirm that now.
And if I do something that pops me out of ketosis, I know what it is because I keep a diary of everything I eat, and it can sort of fine-tune your Keto regimen.
So sure, it’s a bit of work. And people say to me Oh, I just couldn’t imagine giving up (insert food here). But after a while, if you start to tune into what your body’s doing and you experience the energy that’s flowing through you when you’re in ketosis, you soon lose your appetite for that stuff because you don’t want to stop feeling that way.
So good on you for doing it. I’m so pleased to hear it.
In terms of accessible alternatives, yeah, they are hard to find. There are other breath sensors, I think, but they may not be accessible. And you do get these cheap Keto strips and they require you to, well, pee on them. And then if it changes to a certain color, you know you’re in ketosis. Well, good luck with that. They are cheap and readily available, but not particularly accessible. So I don’t know whether there are any other alternatives.
In New Zealand, we don’t get it here either. So I had to import it using a freight forwarding service, and I’m really glad I did. I don’t know whether similar services exist in South Africa where you get a US address, and then they handle the import for you and send it on.
But what I can tell you is it’s still going for me. Quite some time after I did that demonstration, I’ve never had any problem with it. The original battery is, in fact, still in it. The app continues to be accessible. So it might be worth considering, at least, if you do have a freight forwarding service that will essentially give you a US address, and then intercept it and send it on.
Wishing you all the best in your Keto journey.
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Francesco Magisano Talks About Keeping Fit With the Help of Achilles
For many of us, I think there are challenges in keeping active. But doing so is so important.
And one way to do that is to get the assistance of Achilles, like the tendon. [laughs] To talk about it, we’re joined now by Francesco from Achilles.
First of all, let’s talk about how the organization got started.
Francesco: Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Francesco: The organization, it’s been around for about 41 years. It was founded by a guy named Dick Traum, and he was the first amputee to complete a marathon on his prosthetic leg – not like a high-tech carbon fiber like running blade, but like an actual just walking leg that weighed a couple hundred pounds, probably.
Jonathan: Wow!
Francesco: So he was the first to do that.
And then, he figured out like oh, this is really cool. Let’s bring this opportunity to more people with disabilities.
And so 41 years later, there’s 65 or more chapters around the world. I personally lead the New York City area for Achilles, and we welcome people with all different disabilities. Not just blindness, but people who are amputees, with brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, learning disabilities, all types of disabilities in Achilles, and we pair them with guides. Some people come and walk for 10 minutes. Some people run marathons, and everything in between.
Jonathan: So essentially, that’s what you do. You’re providing guides for people who need extra assistance to be active in some way.
Francesco: Yeah, I’d say so. It’s partially guide facilitating. So we recruit guides, train them, certify them to guide athletes with all different disabilities, equip them with the tools needed to do that, and then host weekly workouts across the world. So that’s part of it.
But the other part of what we do is actually advocacy in the race space. A lot of major races are not familiar with athletes with disabilities, don’t know the accommodations, don’t know what is allowed, what’s reasonable. And so we kind of step in and advocate in a lot of those spaces for the person with disability.
Jonathan: Is it primarily for people who want to compete, or if you just want to get into a bit of shape and you’re looking for assistance to just get a bit of exercise in so that your outcomes improve? Is that a valid use?
Francesco: Yeah. I’d say mostly, it’s for people who are very casual, very just recreational – coming out to the park, right? People join, myself included, joined to get in shape like oh, running seems cool.
But then, you end up staying and coming back for the community because you start meeting all these people, and they become your friends. And now, you’ve run with the same person on a Tuesday evening for 8 years and you know, you go out for drinks afterwards in the pub, and it’s like it becomes part of your life, not just a fitness class.
Jonathan: Why Achilles? Why the name?
Francesco: So I think the founder, so he came up with it, Dick Traum. I think the disability that he had and that we all, you know, kind of have as athletes are our Achilles heel, right? It’s our weakness, and it’s kind of turning that into our strength and learning to embrace and identify with it, and not view it as a weakness necessarily.
Jonathan: And the people who assist, are they all volunteers?
Francesco: Yup, yup. So it’s fully volunteer-based support runners. A lot of our chapter leaders are staff members, but all the running guides, all the support runners are volunteers.
Jonathan: And do they receive any sort of training on how to assist the disabled person they’re working with?
Francesco: Yup, yup. There’s a full guide training process that we’ve developed over years, just to figure out what’s the most comprehensive guide training that we can provide while at the same time, not becoming overly cumbersome to dissuade new guides. So trying to find that sweet spot of how much do we dump onto the new recruit to get them going, and what can we kind of save for later on?
Like for example, there’s a whole tactic, and strategy, and race-specific guiding. These are races that people might competitively want to run, or someone casual but want to participate, say like in a 5k.
And so that type of training, we can wait until the second or third level of guide training, not necessarily the first level.
Jonathan: When somebody wants to get involved with Achilles, do they have to be reasonably fit first? Sort of, you know, get a bit fit on the treadmill before they start going? Because I guess, people will have all sorts of levels of activity that they’re starting from.
Francesco: Yeah. So actually, that’s one of the most frequent questions we get, is how fit do I need to be to join Achilles?
And the answer is absolutely 0 fitness. I mean, people come to us having never worked out once in their life because they just weren’t aware that adaptive sports was a thing, right? Like I grew up in New York City myself, personally, totally blind, and I didn’t know that adaptive sports was something that existed. It seems obvious now that I’m so heavily steeped in it in my life that oh yeah, I could just Google adaptive (and then insert name of any sport) and something will come up. As a kid growing up in school, you just don’t think about it.
And so a lot of our new recruits, I’d say easily more than half, have never once participated in any sort of sport growing up, and this is their first time running 5 mile, or 5 minutes, or even just walking without the type of support that they normally have.
Jonathan: What about the mechanics of how this works? Obviously, going sighted guide’s probably not the way to go when you’re running, right when you’re competitive running? So how does a sighted runner guide a blind person effectively?
Francesco: It’s a mixture of tactile cues and verbal cues.
Most new guides will start off training them using a hand tether. That’s a piece of rope with a loop on either end. The blind runner holds on to one end, and the guide holds on to the other and you’re kind of running side by side, and it gives a tactile feedback.
If you’re a little bit more advanced, you switch to a waist belt tether. So that’s just a waist belt attached to another waist belt with a piece of rope. That frees up both hands, so that you’re able to swing properly to have good technique and good form. So that tether is there to stop the two athletes from getting a little too far apart, and it’s also there so that you can feel the little micro tugs of the guide as they’re sort of weaving around and maybe avoiding the smaller obstacles.
And then, you would pair that with verbal cues, mostly calling out obstacles and directions. So it’s basically anything that is not flat, straight pavement, you would call out. So hey, come a little right, there’s a pothole coming up. Or hey, there’s a bunch of people. Let’s slow down, just stuff like that.
Jonathan: It sounds like a partnership. So do you get into situations, particularly if you really get serious about this and you do marathons and that kind of thing, where you will always use the same guide and you kind of know how each other thinks and works?
Francesco: Oh, yeah. If I have a race that I want to compete in personally, I have 4 or 5 go-to guides that I’ve raced so many times with and trained a lot with, so much so that they know what I’m feeling and when I’m going to feel it before I even start feeling it. [laughs]
Jonathan: Right.
Francesco: They could just look at me and see what kind of headspace I’m in.
And it’s incredible because ideally, the guide is a little faster than the athlete, right? You never want a guide who’s slower than the athlete if you’re trying to race full out because then, the guide can’t really keep up. And so ideally, the guide is at least 10 to 20% faster than the athlete so that when the athlete is full going as hard as they can, the guide still has a little bit to give so that they can still maintain the mental focus that is needed to call out the cues and guide safely.
And so a lot of times during races, when I’m going all out and redlining it, my guides are there experiencing it with me. Some of the most vulnerable you’ll ever be in life is actually with some support runners or some guides, because they’re seeing you at your absolute worst. [laughs]
Jonathan: Yeah. So does there come a time when perhaps a blind person develops as an athlete, and you get to the point where somebody you’ve run with for quite some time can’t keep up with you anymore because you’ve developed so much?
Francesco: Oh, yeah. Definitely. That happens.
You still run with them, right? Because you’ve developed that friendship. Just because you don’t do your fastest run every week with them doesn’t mean you can’t do a fun couple miles in the park, and go out for food or something afterwards.
So you still, for sure maintain those friendships, and there’s always a time and a place for runs like that.
Jonathan: And is it exclusively running, or do you also do things like tandem biking and other forms of physical fitness?
Francesco: Yup. We like to call ourselves the leading adaptive running organization. That includes ambulatory running, right? Which is for people who have legs or who run on prosthetic legs, that’s ambulatory running.
And then ,adaptive wheeling for those who can’t. So that includes things like our racing wheelchair program, hand cycles, trikes, recumbent bikes, tandem bikes. All different types of adaptive devices that we’re able to provide for athletes so that they can experience endurance in whatever way, or whatever medium they have. I’d say about half of our athletes ride some sort of adaptive wheeling device.
And in New York City, where I’m based, we partner with Lyft and City Bike. We’re the adaptive wheeling branch, I guess, of the bike share program. And so we get a lot of people just through the bike share program who have disabilities, who want to ride but can’t ride an actual 2-wheeled standard bike. They’ll come to us and they’ll experience, say, hand cycling for the first time.
Jonathan: Yeah. I think quite a long time ago, I interviewed an organization that gave away tandem bikes. That was what they did.
And it’s a pretty cool way to travel, actually. I used to do tandem biking when I was younger, and it keeps you fit.
It’s a partnership again, isn’t it?
Francesco: It’s a lot of fun. Yeah, our athletes love tandem biking.
Personally, I’m actually racing in my first off-road tandem bike race later This year, and I’m very excited.
So yes, it’s training and all that, and you know, fitness. But you’re also exploring, right? If you’re able to ride in places you’ve never been before and just explore new areas.
Jonathan: How do you go and attract volunteers to assist a disabled person to participate in this? What’s the sort of incentive, the driver for those people to do this?
Francesco: Yeah, that’s a good question.
For Achilles, we are lucky that the brand of Achilles is strong enough. People recognize the neon yellow racing jersey in races across the world. And so we get random people just signing up, seeing us running in the park or seeing an Achilles yellow jersey in a race and being inspired by what they saw or seeing us on social media. The brand being around for 41 years, the brand has developed and solidified enough that we’re able to lean on that and leverage it, which is awesome.
I’d say a lot of people join because they’re just curious, right? For a lot of people, they’ve never interacted, let alone became friends with someone with a disability. And so for them, just coming out, learning about disability, Being comfortable around it, I think, is just something that a lot of people are interested in.
Jonathan: And you are quite vulnerable, I suppose. You mentioned this earlier, actually, when you’re running with someone. So what sort of screening takes place to ensure that somebody is going to end up with somebody who’s reliable and not up to no good, all those important things?
Francesco: Yup. So when a new volunteer signs up, there’s the regular intake form. There is a background check that everyone goes through, which we can cover if cost is a barrier for anyone. Then, they go through the whole guide training process.
So before a new volunteer is paired with any one of our athletes, they have to go through the application, the background check, the online guide training. There’s like a kind of a questionnaire thing that they have to answer after going through the online guide training.
And then they show up to an in-person guide training where they meet up with either me or any one of our many trainers, let’s say around the country, around the world. And they go through the hands-on, where we can actually examine them in person, let’s say in front of us.
And after going through all of that is when they’re finally able to sign up for a weekly workout. And when they sign up, they put in what their preferred pace is, what their preferred distance is, and that’s how we’re able to pair them with an appropriate athlete based on whatever pace they want to do, or distance.
Jonathan: Well, we’ve got listeners in 113 countries, which is quite extraordinary. How likely is it that Achilles is available near where our listeners are?
Francesco: It’s pretty likely. I mean, we’re not in 113 countries, but we’re in probably about half of that.
Jonathan: Right, yeah.
Francesco: And so we’re in many countries in some very unlikely places. One of our strongest non-US chapter is actually in Mongolia. Some others include Tokyo, the UK.
What I like to do, actually, is if I ever go on vacation, I like looking up and running with the local Achilles chapter because everyone kind of does it a little differently, right? Like I do my Central Park workouts. But whenever I visit my family in Tokyo, cause I’m half Japanese, I run with the Tokyo chapter and they actually lay out, they’re like pickled vegetables and cold tea and stuff. And you get to like have a little vegetable, and then you run your kilometer, you have a little snack, you run another kilometer. It becomes a whole morning thing.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Francesco: And that’s something that we don’t do in New York. So it’s cool to meet people and have that foot in the door, let’s say, of a different culture just by leveraging Achilles and the family that it is.
Jonathan: And it’s funded fully through donations? Is that how the organization keeps alive?
Francesco: Yup, yup. We don’t charge any athlete or any guide anything. It’s totally free to join and participate, and all that. We try to cover as much as possible for athletes – if they want to do races, and travel, and do all that stuff as well. So yeah, fully funded, either donation or just corporate sponsors, corporate gifts.
Jonathan: Are there times when someone might be better using some sort of professional coach, or personal trainer? Or for disabled people, does this really serve the same purpose?
Francesco: The type of adaptive running that we provide provides the place in the world, the facility to do that, right? We’re providing the community where all of a sudden, you’re around other people with the same disability that you have who are accomplishing these major things, and you’re just kind of learning from each other. So it’s not necessarily one-on-one coaching, even though we do have some of that, but it’s providing the environment for an athlete to come in and kind of discover and figure out what they want to do.
And then obviously, we do have training, and plans and things like that, that we can provide if an athlete wants it. But it’s never a pressure of like, you have to follow this plan, and do this race, or get up to this mileage in a certain time. There’s never any pressure like that.
Jonathan: We talked about the partnership that exists between the runner and the, what do you call the two people involved in that partnership?
Francesco: Yup. So we call anyone with a disability an Achilles athlete, and anyone paired with them is either a guide or a support runner.
Jonathan: Yeah. Okay, right.
So you’ve got the Achilles athlete and the support runner. That’s obviously a very special partnership that can mature over time. Is there opportunity for other Achilles athletes to get together and bond as well, and share experiences?
Francesco: Oh, yeah. I think the real special thing about Achilles is that community social aspect where basically, after every single workout, people are hanging out, making plans, going out to drinks together. We have specific social events that we organize, whether it’s a brunch after a race, or a pre-race dinner the day before, or a picnic, or a bowling night, or movie night, or anything like that. So it really becomes a full social experience. [laughs]
Jonathan: Right. And you hear about disabled people running marathons – the New York Marathon, the London Marathon. I know a couple of blind people actually reasonably well who do the London Marathon regularly. Is Achilles involved in that?
Francesco: Oh yeah, for sure. We have, I mean, this past November for the New York City Marathon, we had over 500 Achilles people run that marathon, whether athletes with disabilities, guides, charity runners. We had (I forget the exact number) but like 60 or 70 do the London Marathon this past April. We do Boston. We’re basically in every major marathon/endurance event in the world.
Jonathan: And why do you do it?
Francesco: I was in that boat of not really doing any sort of fitness or organized sports growing up, just because I wasn’t really aware of it. Back in 2017, in May, I joined Achilles and ran my first marathon later that year and just got hooked.
I think it’s less for me about the love of running 26.2 miles. It’s more just being involved in the community, having this sort of camaraderie, this team that I never really had growing up. And now that I work for Achilles, being able to deliver that to other people with disabilities that I meet and kind of went through the same thing that I went through, and being able to provide that for them.
Jonathan: Well, I have people listening who’ll be thinking oh my God! This sounds absolutely grueling. I mean, you must perceive benefits from the actual process of doing the running. Do you feel better as an individual? Are your health outcomes better or that kind of stuff?
Francesco: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it goes without saying, right, that you running, adapting to any sort of active lifestyle has profound impact on your health. You look better in the mirror (whether or not you can see the mirror is irrelevant), but you look better in the mirror.
Having The discipline and the confidence of when you walk into a job interview, it all connects, right? We’re all one life, one connection. So the confidence, and discipline, and work ethic and all that stuff we build in our athletic lives, it transfers over to our personal life, or professional life and all that. And so yes, it fully fully impacts.
For a lot of our athletes, that whole spectrum of benefit where now we’re involved in this thing, we can make of it as much as we want to, right? There’s no pressure on athletes to do all these things. But if they choose to, all of a sudden now, the whole life is slowly being changed.
Jonathan: How can people find out more information, if they’d like to find out if Achilles is available to them?
Francesco: Yup, absolutely. So the easiest way is AchillesInternational.org fully spelled out AchillesInternational.org.
If web is less your jive, then you can call the office, you can email info@AchillesInternational.org, and we’re also on basically every social media platform. You could just send a direct message, if that’s more your speed. So basically, any platform you feel comfortable with – email, website, just hit up Achilles International, and someone will help kind of figure out what’s the nearest workout near you, what’s the nearest chapter.
And if there’s no near chapter near you, then there’s virtual offerings, virtual meetings and stuff that you can attend as well.
Jonathan: Okay. How do they work? Just before we go, how do the virtual things work?
Francesco: Yup. So kind of split apart either topically, or regionally.
For example, on Thursday evenings, I host a thing called Achilles Connect. That’s more topical. We talk about like training tips, community building, and just kind of what’s coming up.
There might be calls regionally where people within, let’s say the US, who are not near a chapter, they might jump on a call, kind of get to know each other.
And then, there’s obviously opportunities around major events for people who are not near a chapter to travel, which we can sort of help facilitate, travel in and kind of meet and do a weekend. We call them race weekends.
And a lot of times, there’s stuff around the expo, there’s a pre-race dinner, there’s a social after a race. They can kind of have that in-person experience around specific races, even if they’re not living near a chapter.
Jonathan: Have you got into the Peloton sort of thing, where people go on these virtual classes together and they are actually peddling? I think there are a number of products that do this now.
Francesco: Yeah, yeah. We’ve started exploring a little bit of that. There is no kind of widespread adaption of that just honestly, because we found such a barrier for athletes to have equipment like that. A hand cycle can cost $7,000, $8,000, $9,000, $10,000. And so now you have a hand cycle plus an indoor trainer, which could cost a few thousand, and putting that in someone’s living room at scale. not necessarily the most sustainable.
So what we’re trying to do is just figure out what is the best way we can make fitness as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. So it’s always a work in progress.
If anyone listening has any ideas, please send them along. We’re always trying to improve and get better. So yeah, looking forward to hearing from everyone.
Blind People Judging Each Other
Caller: Hello, Jonathan and Living Blindfully listeners! This is Jane Carona from Silver Spring, Maryland in the US.
I have had a marathon Living Blindfully experience for the last 4 or 5 days. I was like 5 issues behind. And now, I’m finally up to halfway through 295, so I’m getting there.
But I have a few things to comment on, or talk about, or ask about. I even had so many, I had to make notes because senility is setting in, you know.
The first thing. What I’m listening to right now is the thing about blind people being intolerant of others who haven’t reached as far as they have up the capability ladder, as it were, and I’ve experienced that quite often. Blind people can be extremely cruel and intolerant of each other, and that’s a shame.
There is an email list for blind people in ACB, and I’ve been chastised severely on that list several times for asking a question. So now, I’m very careful about what I post to that list because I know that more than likely, I’m going to get a negative pushback from it. And that’s a shame because I’m doing relatively well in my life, and I always try to reach down and help the next person who’s coming up behind me.
I’m sort of known as a resource. Everybody calls me to ask. You wouldn’t believe all the things people think that I know the answers to. But I try to find them answers, and I try to help them. We can do.
And then, my other WhatsApp question is that with the Meta Smart Glasses, I have WhatsApp connected to MetaView. I tell it to make a WhatsApp video call, and it calls on the phone to people. So I don’t quite know what’s going on with that.
The last thing. I’m rambling on like a fool. The last thing is that I think I have found an accessible stove. I couldn’t believe it. my stove is starting to be cantankerous, and I figured it was time to get a new one. So I called my local appliance store, not at all expecting that they would have something. I was expecting to have to go to 3 or 4 stores, and go in and look at them and everything.
But he said GE has a stove that’s built or meant for the disabled. So it’s a cooktop, and it has 5 knobs on the front, one for each burner, and one for the oven. And apparently, you just set it. You don’t have a menu or anything, no flat screen.
I haven’t gotten it yet. I immediately bought it. I said, I want one right now, so they’re ordering it. It’s rather more expensive than a regular stove, but I figured it’s accessible.
Jonathan: Thank you very much, Jane! The timer ran out there on the old voicemail system.
I’ve got this image in my head now of a cool rock band – Jane Carona and the Cantankerous Stoves. What a great name for a band: Jane Carona and the Cantankerous Stoves.
Now, going back to the WhatsApp question. It is working as expected, Jane. So you tell the Meta Glasses to make the WhatsApp call. The WhatsApp video call will begin on your phone. And when everybody’s connected and everybody’s happy, what you do is you double tap the button on your glasses, the one that takes the picture and the video, and that will transfer everything over to the Meta Smart Glasses and you’re off to the races, mate. So give that a try.
Voice message: Hello to Living Blindfully!
Before we get started, I just want to let everyone know that I am one of those people who have to use sighted guide all the time, okay? I can’t use a dog or a cane. I have some mobility challenges, directional challenges, which prohibits me from being able to get around independently. I’ve had these challenges since I was little, and I’ve had these challenges to this day.
I’ve gone through all different types of mobility training, structured discovery, traditional O&M training, modified mobility. You know it. You name it. I’ve had it all. And so, Sighted Guide has been, to me, a lifesaver.
But I have been both on the receiving end of blind bashing, and I will admit, I have probably done some of it myself. So I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum here.
When I was growing up, I wasn’t really introduced to ACB and stuff like that at that time. I had a very limited, one-size-fits-all introduction to blindness.
I grew up in family members who supported the NFB, who were big into the NFB. I was behind a lot of other blind people, both at the School for the Blind and at the NFB conventions, and even at some of the training that I attended, and I was pretty much mocked for being behind everybody else. I was ridiculed for not being able to keep up with the other students.
I even had an aide who, … We’re friends now, now that her and I discussed the main aspects of blindness and the different kinds of blindness. But she tried to compare me to another student who is a lot less likely to hold a conversation like you and I are doing. This student, I knew from Schools for the Blind, and he happened to be in public school.
And this aide said to me, “You were with the substitute aide, and she was very surprised and very shocked that you couldn’t get to your classes on your own with your cane. Now, the other student that she has been an aid for, he’s a little bit out there. He’s got some problems, shall we say, and he can get to his classes by himself. So why can’t you get to your classes by yourself?”
And I basically said well, everyone has a different mobility level. This aid was new. This aid was not very familiar with blind people, so I thought I could teach her a few things.
But she’s like, “No, I don’t think so, Alex. I think you’re not trying hard enough.” So I got ridiculed and kind of bashed for that, for “not trying hard enough”, and I felt angry that I’d be compared to a student who’s got more special needs maybe than I do. I’ve had experiences like this.
And when I went to the training center, some of the counselors were not very happy that 3 weeks into the program, I still couldn’t get to the bus stop by myself. I couldn’t tell the training staff, “Please, sir, I’m having a little bit of trouble getting to the bus stop. Maybe, if you don’t mind, could we work on the route privately?”
And the response would have been, wow! You do it every day. Why do you need us to do it? You need to try harder. What are you here for if you’re not trying hard enough?
So sometimes, you have to choose what you need to advocate for in these places. Otherwise, they might lash out at you. These instructors think because they have a job, they think they can lash out at us and they can be more superior. These instructors had the attitude set in mind that you should know the route once, or maybe twice after we’ve introduced it. And if you can’t do it, you’re in big trouble. Why’d you do it on Friday but you can’t do it on Tuesday?
Now, according to that woman from Virginia, Beth from Virginia Beach, I think it was, I agree with her on a couple of things. But I want to also add that the reason why I think that person might have been a little bit hesitant and wanting to know about why she wanted to take her “person” with her to the convention. I think, and, you know, if this lady’s out there and wants to call in, I would love to hear her response to this. But I think that what it is, is maybe she had an experience that we don’t know about. And maybe that experience made her very wary around blind people.
I was certainly wary around blind people for many many many years. And it’s only within the last 10 years when I met 2 very special people who were very kind to me, who demonstrated that blind people are just like sighted people here.
I’m not jealous when I hear about people who are software engineers developing things. I’m actually happy for them. So I would not lash out at those people myself because like you said, these are the people that develop things like NVDA, JAWS for Windows, whatever it may be you’re using. I don’t know anyone in the company who does those things. I have different friends who work in these companies who aren’t software engineers, but I like it that they’re doing the jobs that they do. And I like working with them. And I have no reason to lash out at them, because I think they’re cool buddies of mine. And we talked once in a blue moon, and I appreciate them. And I think they appreciate me as a customer. So you’re never going to hear me lash out at people who are working, who are big.
But it is sad when people who think they can lash out at us because they have better skill sets, or whatever it might be. That’s a very sad thing. And that does bother me, too.
We talk about these kinds of philosophies and stuff. We talk about live the life you want, which is a philosophy that sounds great on the inside, sounds perfect. But if we want to live the life we want, we have to be able to accept more informed choice.
So for example, if we don’t want to wear blindfolds and we want to use our residual vision, we are living the lives we want. So we have to be able to live the life we want in a way that is comfortable for us.
If we want blindfold training, hey, it’s there. We can use it, and that’s up to us to make our informed choice to do it.
Comments on Episode 296
Voice message: Hey there, Jonathan! Chris Nusbaum here from Delaware in the US.
To the lady (I believe her name was Carolyn) who was having issues with Google Calendar, I am having the same issues.
Google Calendar is the calendar system that is used at my work. And the only solution that I’ve found to work consistently is to use the native calendar app on iOS. If I connect my Gmail account (both personal Gmail and work-based Gmail) to the Mail app on my iPhone and enable Calendar, that will allow me to create events in the Calendar app that will then show up both on my computer and on my phone. So that’s a good workaround.
Google Calendar still needs to fix it because Google Calendar used to be very accessible. So her point is very well taken, but that is a workaround that can work for the time being.
Thanks to Tristan for the 3D demonstration of his ride in the self-driving vehicle. Huge thanks to Tristan for that.
I’m an assistive tech trainer working mostly with K-12 students. I played that whole 3D audio segment for one of my students, and he was just completely fascinated by it, as was I. So huge thanks to Tristan for that.
Finally, I just wanted to share some thoughts about my upgrade to an iPhone 15. I did that last week, updating from my iPhone 13 mini to an iPhone 15. I have a few thoughts about it. Mostly good.
There was one thing that was a little disappointing, so I’ll start with the good news first.
First of all, I love the speakers and the mic on this thing. I’m recording now using the RecUp app, which records in MP3 format in stereo quality, and uploads directly to Dropbox. I just love the audio quality of the mic. I always have, but this is especially good.
And I also really like the speakers on this thing. I realized that the Mini was a smaller phone, so the speakers weren’t as good as the bigger phones probably. But the 15’s speakers are definitely impressive.
I also like the responsiveness of VoiceOver on this phone. It seems to have improved.
I’m still getting used to the bigger screen, though, because the 15 doesn’t have a mini version. So there are some times, particularly when I’m on a phone call, where I can’t find the notification center. So if you have any tips on that, that would be great to hear. I’m trying.
For example, I have an alarm set to remind me to take my meds at a certain time. And if I’m on a call or even if I’m listening to, I don’t know, the Living Blindfully podcast with my screen unlocked and then my alarm goes off, sometimes I have trouble finding the stop button. Maybe that’s just a matter of getting used to it. But if you have some ideas, I would love to hear them.
The one thing I was really hoping that the update to iOS and the new phone would fix, and it hasn’t, is that just bug-a-bear Braille issue. In fact, it might have gotten worse. The Braille issue I’m speaking of is that annoying little issue where it doesn’t automatically connect to my braille display and so even though I’ve long since paired it I have to go in and go back into accessibility settings and connect to my braille sense manually. This has been a problem as far back as I can remember and each time there’s a major iOS update, I have hoped that they would fix it, and they never have consistently. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. It just seems, to me anyway, that even as far as VoiceOver bugs go, the Braille bugs are the last ones to be fixed. And this one just really messes with all of us.
The Use of the Word Blind in Other Languages
Let’s go to Germany and hear from Fanny, who says:
“Dear Jonathan,
In episode 296, Bill asked for the usage of the word blind in other languages than English.
Well, I can tell you that we’ve a very similar situation in German-speaking regions. Blind is often used figuratively, in the sense of being prevented from, or failing to perceive important aspects of something. For example, we speak of blind rage, or claim that love leads to blindness.
I personally never related that to myself as a blind person. For me, that adjective simply has two meanings, so I never felt uncomfortable with that. But I often notice that sighted people avoid the word, so as not to offend me.
And we also have similar discussions about using the word that way as an expression of ableism in our community here.”
Good to hear that that discussion is happening in Germany.
Fanny continues:
“I made an interesting experience according to that with Czech. As far as I understand, in the Czech language, the word blind is officially not used in its original sense anymore. Instead, they use an adjective that can be translated as not seeing.
I don’t know since when, but that has been the adjective I learned first to tell that I’m blind. I know that it’s been used in a song about a blind girl from 1969. To use that is very common. Whenever it’s about the blind community, organizations for and of the blind, or blind individuals, this is used. And for a long time, I considered it as the only expression for blind in the Czech language.
Only much later, I got to know that there’s another word very similar to the one I knew in Russian, another Slovakian language with lots of similarities to Czech. So I guess this one is probably the actual expression. I found out that nowadays, this word is used for the figurative sense of blind, or ironically, by blind people for themselves.
Only once, at a moment when probably the speaker didn’t expect me to understand, I heard her use it, meaning me, as the blind person. The speaker was a bit annoyed because she had to change something in her schedule because of me, so I guess it wasn’t supposed to be very appreciative to me.
For me, it’s interesting that the not-seeing word today is the common expression for us, while the old expression seems to be used more or less for the figurative sense. Of course, I’m no Czech native speaker, and maybe I’m wrong, but I find it fascinating how the separation of the actual and the figurative sense of the word has worked.”
Thanks, Fanny!
I’m sure if we’re not careful, there’ll be a lot of often sighted professionals in the English-speaking language which would love to banish the word blind in the same way. Long may we continue to use it loudly and proudly.
Sending Audio iMessages
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan and the Living Blindfully listeners! It’s Darren here from Devon in the UK. Just wanted to drop a quick message for Catherine and others from episode 297, the screen away mode for Braille input, and the sending of audio messages.
You can toggle this setting off by going into settings, scrolling down to messages, double tapping on messages, scrolling down to audio messages. There’s an option under that heading for raise to speech. And if you double tap that to off, then that will no longer cause you a headache.
Jonathan: Ah. Thank you, Darren! It didn’t occur to me that the raise to speak thing might be the culprit there. So thanks. I hope that that resolves it for Catherine.
Advertisement: We appreciate Aira’s sponsorship of Living Blindfully.
Aira’s doing some exciting things at the moment.
In the last week, you may have heard of, or even attended, or watched the video of the webinar that Aira had on the integration of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. It’s super exciting.
This is in beta at the moment. It is being rolled out pretty steadily. And it means that if you own a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, you will be able to connect to an agent.
There are a few steps involved, and they are clearly documented, but you’ll be able to connect to an agent and end up with that call via WhatsApp on your Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. So you can walk around hands-free, the agent sees what you would be seeing, it’s all coming through the glasses. It is a pretty exciting development. In some respects, it’s kind of back to the future, but this is with very affordable, commercially produced glasses, and there is the hope that Meta might make this even simpler in due course.
So if you’d like to try this, well, find out more by going to aira.io. Make sure that you’re signed up there.
And while you’re there, do check out Access AI as well, a pretty cool implementation of artificial intelligence where you can get confirmation from a trained agent. I tell you, it’s all happening at Aira. Go to aira.io for more information.
Chris Peterson Talks About Penny Forward
The question of managing our money, working with a budget, all of those things, they’re important, particularly to many blind people who have limited income and maybe want to expand their income as well.
When an organization called Penny Forward popped up on the list of exhibitors, I thought to myself, I had to find out more while I was here at the NFB convention. Penny Forward’s founder is Chris Peterson. He joins me here at NFB. Welcome, Chris!
Chris: Thank you, Jonathan! It’s good to be here.
Jonathan: What got you into this area? Because you’re a pretty well-known software developer.
Chris: Part of it was that I started to get a little bored with software development.
Jonathan: [laughs]
Chris: After 20 years, that can happen to anybody.
Part of it was that my blind friends, and also my family (my sister’s blind, incidentally) started to ask me financial questions like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did know how to use Google and do research, and I have a pretty good idea of what is legitimate fact and what is not.
And so I started to try to help people with some of their financial problems, and I found that I really enjoyed it.
When the pandemic hit and I sort of experienced a crisis of conscience, I guess, I started to found Penny Forward, not really knowing what direction I wanted to head with it – whether it was going to be a for or a nonprofit company, whether it was going to do education, or advice, or a blog, or a podcast, or exactly what we were going to do.
But through the use of tools like Clubhouse that everybody was using during that time, I was able to talk to a lot of people in the blind community and come up with a direction pretty quickly. And also, with a great board of directors that has helped me found the organization and build it up from here.
So I would say that there is something to be said for making a lot of money, but there’s a lot to be said too for making a lot of difference. And I have chosen to maybe sacrifice the money in favor of the difference.
I’m very fortunate to have a wife who is bringing in a second income for our family, and so she is supportive of this. This has been a sacrifice for our family. Our standard of living has decreased quite a bit so that I could do this for the community.
But one of the things that persuaded her was that she came to a number of blindness conventions with me and helped out at exhibit tables, and she got to see how much of a difference we were making in the blind community. This is just as we were getting started, and almost nobody had heard of us yet. And as our name gained more recognition, she kind of helped me to make the decision by saying, you know, you can’t not do this because you’re making such a huge difference in the lives of other people in the blind community.
Jonathan: What does the name Penny Forward mean?
Chris: [laughs] It’s a name that came to me in the shower.
Jonathan: [laughs] Good old shower thoughts, eh?
Chris: Yeah.
I’m a guide dog user, normally, and I was trying to come up with a name that was related to financial guidance. When I started, I was using a lot of orientation and mobility metaphors in some of the talks that I was giving and some of the marketing literature I was producing.
And I thought, wow! What if you had a guide dog that could guide you through the complicated landscape of your finances? And that guide dog’s name could be, oh, I don’t know, money, or dollar, or well, Penny sounds like a good name.
And if you had that guide dog, you might say, “Penny, forward.” And suddenly, they’re guiding you around obstacles and helping you to target your financial goals.
Jonathan: Isn’t that cool when something like that happens?
Chris: Yeah.
Jonathan: And you look back and you think, man, I’m so cool for having come up with a name like that.
Chris: [laughs]
Jonathan: For me, it’s like with the Living Blindfully thing. I could not believe that nobody had used Living Blindfully before.
Chris: It’s brilliant!
Jonathan: I kept searching on it and said, somebody’s got to have grabbed this already. So Penny Forward’s one like that?
Chris: Yeah.
Jonathan: That is brilliant.
So what do you actually do? You talk about the help that you’re providing and the difference that you’re making. What does it actually consist of?
Chris: It consists of self-paced online financial education courses. We’ve so far produced 6 courses over the last 2 years, and we are aspiring to produce 2 to 3 courses a year continually, until we feel like we’ve done the topic justice, which is going to take a long time.
Those courses are text-based, screen-reader-friendly courses that consist of multiple lessons. Each lesson has a short multiple-choice quiz, and then the course concludes with a final exam and a downloadable certificate that you can show that you have learned something from the course.
We also do workshops that we started holding over Zoom, again, during the pandemic when this was a very popular thing. And it still is, in the blind community. We do a series of monthly workshops on the ACB community platform, as well as a weekly workshop series for our paid members.
We try to make our memberships as affordable as we possibly can. If I had my choice, I’d give them away for free, but we’re just not there yet.
We use those workshops to sometimes cover topics that we haven’t built a full-blown course around yet. And sometimes, we use it to reinforce material that we’ve learned in the courses.
And finally, we offer one-on-one financial counseling. I chose to pursue a financial counselor accreditation. I am, as far as they know, the first blind person to receive an accredited financial counselor certification.
And we aspire to train more blind financial counselors. We have two others that are working on that right now, and we are working with the accrediting body to smooth the bumps in the road that we’ve found to accreditation to make that a more level playing field for everybody.
And we hope to someday be able to train financial counselors all over the world that can help people in person, or at least in their own country, where the laws and the benefit programs and things that are available to people are sometimes quite different from the way that they are in the US.
Jonathan: What sorts of things can a financial counselor help with?
Chris: A financial counselor can be an educator. They can teach you about anything from basic budgeting, to credit, to debt, anything to do with our finances, taxes, social security benefits in the United States, investing, (not advice, but education about the terms and concepts related to investing).
We can also help you to build a personalized budget, or to create a plan to work your way out of debt if you’re struggling with that, or to build up a good credit score if that’s something that you would aspire to do.
And some people are just nervous about getting started with things. Maybe they want to consult a financial advisor to start investing, but they’re not sure of how to go about finding one, or how to go about talking to them about blindness-specific issues. And then, they also are not sure who they should and should not trust.
And so sometimes, we will sit with somebody and work them through the process of locating some possible financial advisors that they might want to meet with, doing some role playing where I might kind of pretend to be a financial advisor and talk them through what the financial advisor is likely to ask them about when they first do a discovery meeting.
We’ll also talk about how to talk about blindness-specific issues with your financial advisor, and how to explain to them some of the things that might be different for us that they may not know about.
Jonathan: This question of credibility and making sure that it’s not a sort of a fly-by-night, get-rich-quick scheme must be a real challenge because you mentioned Clubhouse. And I must admit, I haven’t been on Clubhouse for some time. And when I look just to see where it’s at, I find it very confusing now. I don’t quite understand what it all means and how it all works anymore. But one of the things that started putting me off Clubhouse after the peak was that it was packed with these sort of crypto get-rich-quick type schemes, and I would imagine that separating Penny Forward from all of that and making it clear that you are looking at true financial sustainability and quality advice must be a challenge.
Chris: It is. And some people, just because we talk about finance, there’s immediately a wall that goes up between them and us. They think that we might be a get-rich-scheme, maybe a multi-level marketing, or an investment Ponzi scheme type of organization, and it is a challenge.
I try to make it as clear as possible that we don’t sell any financial products. What we do is we provide education, and one of the reasons why we decided to build a nonprofit rather than a for-profit company was to establish a level of trust with the blind community.
We didn’t use Clubhouse to market ourselves in the way that a lot of those get-rich schemes did either. We used Clubhouse to have meetings with people to ask them questions about what they wanted.
And we have primarily marketed ourselves in different ways from Clubhouse by going to state and local blindness conventions. This is our first NFB convention, but we’ve been to several ACB national conventions. And also, by making use of things like the ACB community events platform, which also arose during the pandemic and has been a good way for us to connect with the blind community.
That being said, we still do use Clubhouse for some things, particularly with regard to our ACB community events. And it was a valuable tool for us to connect with people we hadn’t previously met, and find out what might work well in the blind community.
And I guess, that would be a recommendation that I would make to anybody maybe wanting to start a business working with, or for blind people is it all starts by asking. It’s never wise to make assumptions about what people need or want when you can just ask them. And Clubhouse gave us a great way to do that. I’m a little bit sad at the direction it’s taken, honestly.
Jonathan: Yeah, yes. It is a bit weird. It seems to have lost its sense of direction entirely, which is a pity.
So there’s an old Billy Hill song (he was a country artist in the 90s) called Too Much Month at the End of the Money. [laughs] And it seems to me that with inflation being rampant and things being difficult, a lot of blind people are finding it tough.
So are there two aspects to this? Is it both reapportioning the cake that you have, and hopefully baking a bigger cake?
Chris: Well, yeah, it is. It’s exactly both of those things – building a budget, Understanding where the pieces of the cake are going, and maybe, reapportioning them is an important thing to do, whether you do or don’t need to increase your income.
And sometimes, we even find that people feel more stretched than they actually are. And one of the reasons that they feel that way is because they’re not following a plan to spend their money. They’re spending it when they have it. And sometimes, that may be on things they need. Sometimes, it may be on things that they want. But it isn’t necessarily thought through in detail where that money should be going to make the biggest impact in our lives.
And that, by the way, is true for people with high incomes as well as low incomes. It’s maybe more true with people with high incomes because we have more discretionary income that we can play with. Therefore, we maybe can get away with not thinking things through in so much detail and not experiencing the consequences as badly as people with lower incomes.
But we do recognize that Social Security benefits (and right now, we’re mostly focused on the United States because that’s where we are, and that’s what we know so far), they don’t provide a level of income that is capable of supporting an individual, much less a family. So we created a Social Security course to explain to people how the Social Security system works, and a little bit about how to best work with the Social Security system to try to eliminate miscommunications that result in things like overpayments or underpayments at times.
But we’ve also just recently released our Employment Essentials course, which is focused on job searching. We did that because we know that employment is a way to increase one’s income, as well as self-employment. And so some of the things that we have on our roadmap for the future are courses related to self-employment, managing a small business on your own, and how to maybe do that in parallel with receiving Social Security benefits, so that you can increase your income without getting yourself into trouble.
Jonathan: Social Security in this country has eroded substantially in real terms. Is that correct? In other words, in terms of its relativity to inflation, there’s not been any significant increase for quite some time. So the percentage as compared with the average salary will have dropped a lot.
Chris: Yes, that is true. And that is something that is being recognized, I think, at the legislative level, and policymakers are trying to fix that.
It is also true that the Social Security system is in some financial trouble, not just now, but in the next 10 years or so. And so policymakers are looking at ways to fix that as well.
And while we don’t consider ourselves to be a public policy or an advocacy organization so much, we do encourage people to be aware of the advocacy efforts that NFB, ACB, and other organizations are making to try and resolve some of those issues.
That being said, I personally don’t imagine that Social Security is ever going to be a system that provides a person with something equivalent to a salary from employment or self-employment. And I think that that’s somewhat intentional on the part of policymakers. They want to provide the system as a safety net for us, but they would rather we didn’t use the system if at all possible, or that we would use it as a last resort.
Jonathan: Some years ago, I overcame, I guess, a kind of a psychological wall when it came to investing in the stock market, bonds, and other areas like that.
I grew up in a working class family. My parents didn’t have any formal education. I was the youngest of 5 kids. We weren’t super poor, but we weren’t wealthy. We were sort of lower class, I guess, and it never really occurred to me that investing was for the likes of me.
And when I had a bit of spare cash building up, I started to look into this further, and I love it now. I’ve actually acquired a portfolio that has done pretty well, largely thanks to NVIDIA, I have to say. [laughs]
Chris: Yeah.
Jonathan: It’s been incredible. I got in there in the ground floor, and I just got super lucky.
But it seems to me that even people who may only have a few bucks a week to spare, if you start investing wisely, even if it’s an ETF (an exchange traded fund) when you’re very young and you take compound interest into account in the general trajectory of the stock market, it can make a huge difference. And a lot of blind people don’t seem to appreciate that.
Chris: I don’t know if it’s that they don’t appreciate it, or if they don’t feel like there is enough extra money in their lives for it to make a difference for them.
Jonathan: Right.
Chris: But you’re absolutely right. Consider the case of, say, a child whose parents start investing in the child at birth. If a parent were to invest maybe a couple hundred dollars a month, from birth to age 20 or so, their child could have several hundred thousand dollars that they could use to build their adult life with. And if the child simply let that money ride for another 20 or 30 years until they retired, they could be a millionaire.
And it doesn’t take a lot to get started in real money terms, but it takes a lot in real time terms. And a lot of people also are, frankly, a little bit impatient, and they say well, that’s just too slow. It takes too long.
But I’m here to tell you that I wasn’t someone that was really terribly interested in saving or investing when I was younger either. My wife at the time was, though. She was very frugal and very into saving. And it was really thanks to her influence that we started to save and invest our money at age 23.
And when we unfortunately divorced when I was about 33 or so, we had the decision of how to split up several hundred thousand dollars between us because she had had us do that.
And so, you know, while I regret that we got divorced and I’ve had a long time to heal myself from that, I also really appreciate her influence in my life in that way, and getting me started down that path.
Jonathan: One of the problems may also be that some of the tools are not always as accessible as they might be. We’re very fortunate in New Zealand that there’s one investing platform that I use that is quite accessible, and you can trade on the New Zealand, the US, and some of the stock markets. And I enjoy it.
I’m very cautious in the sense that I don’t necessarily expect quick wins. You elevate your risk considerably if you try to game the market, rather than just ride the trends. But it’s engaging. I really find myself getting into it.
So accessibility of the tools may be another barrier potentially.
Chris: It could be. Though I talk to a lot of blind people who do invest, and…
I personally use Fidelity. I don’t endorse them necessarily, except to say that I found their platform to be pretty accessible. I discovered it because it was where my workplace retirement account was, initially. And now, I have a brokerage account. And also, my ABLE account through them.
We need to remember to talk about ABLE accounts here in this discussion.
But people also tell me that Vanguard, Schwab, and E-Trade and some other platforms have been quite accessible to them as well. Sometimes, there is a fear of whether the platforms are going to be accessible or not, or an assumption that they’re not going to be accessible that prevents us from trying.
Jonathan: Is this something that Penny Forward is educating people on at the moment?
Chris: We are. In our workshops, we’ve actually demonstrated investing platforms. I have showed people how to make a simple trade, actually, using my brokerage account as an example. I have shown people how to use things like the Yahoo Finance app to do research on investments. And I also let people know that if investing is something that you want to do sort of passively without putting a lot of effort into it, there are options for you, including index funds, which are thought to be very good investments for the average person anyway, and also can be kind of a set and forget sort of a thing.
And then, of course, there are ABLE accounts. ABLE accounts are special investment accounts that are designed for people with disabilities in the US, and the platforms that they run on are accessible, or they should be, because they are designed for people with disabilities. So the states that sponsor those ABLE programs mandate that kind of accessibility.
Jonathan: What are the advantages or otherwise of an ABLE account?
Chris: ABLE stands for Achieving a Better Life Experience. ABLE accounts were something that were introduced into the financial landscape for us in 2016, so they’re still fairly new. They allow people who are receiving some types of government benefits, particularly means tested benefits like supplemental security income, or Medicaid, to continue receiving those benefits while building up a nest egg through saving or investing.
They offer the choice of acting very much like a savings account, or even a regular old checking account with a debit card, or of making use of some pre-packaged investment choices, a lot like a 401k would from an employer. You might have 5 or 6 investment choices ranging from very conservative, to very aggressive that invest in different ratios of stocks and bonds, but don’t necessarily tell you what the individual holdings are going to be.
There are big advantages for people that are on SSI or Medicaid in investing in ABLE accounts. Even for people who aren’t on those programs though, ABLE accounts provide tax advantages, similar to something like a Roth IRA, where the money that you invest or contribute to your ABLE account is taxed when you contribute it. But if you sit and let it grow for a long time, the money you withdraw later on, including the interest you’ve earned is all tax-free. So that can be a big advantage, and you can contribute around $18,000 a year this year. And the IRS adjusts that amount every year, almost, so it can be a big deal.
Some of the disadvantages though are the investment options are fairly limited. Some might say that they’re fairly dumbed down. And so an experienced investor may not find an ABLE account to be particularly useful from that perspective.
And the fees for managing your investment account are somewhat higher than they would be if you were to open your own self-directed brokerage account, or individual retirement arrangement or something like that.
Jonathan: So if your only income is SSI and you choose to put a few dollars into, say, NVIDIA at the ground floor, and suddenly, your investment has appreciated by 200+% or whatever it might be, does that have the potential, if you are not using an ABLE account, to affect your SSI entitlement?
Chris: It absolutely does.
Jonathan: Right. It’s capital gain. And therefore, it’s eroding what you’re entitled to?
Chris: It is eroding what you’re entitled to.
Also, particularly with SSI, you’re only allowed to have $2,000 in resources. That’s not just money in the bank, but that’s also physical things that you own. And they exclude some things like a house that you live in, or a car that you need to drive to get to medical appointments or things like that. But by and large, you are sort of mandated to be poor in order to receive SSI. This is a legal and ethical way around that. You can have up to $100,000 in your Able account and still continue to receive SSI.
So it could allow people to save for expensive pieces of assistive technology that they might not be able to afford otherwise, like an embosser, or a video magnifier or something of the kind. Or even a home, Or a car, if somebody to or wants to own a car to get themselves around recognizing that blind people don’t drive, but we often have spouses that do, or have friends or family that help us, or we hire drivers. And so that can be an option using an ABLE account.
It can also be used to save for education, it can be used to save for medical expenses, it can be used to pay for food, clothing and other things that we need to live, and maybe to find job opportunities as well. So having that savings, that nest egg can be, and is very powerful.
Jonathan: And then, there’s SSDI in the United States, which is a different kettle of fish, as they say, because it’s a contributory scheme. People have been working and contributed bit into that, and then they can draw from it when they’re no longer working.
Chris: Yes. And SSDI doesn’t impose that $2,000 resource limit, so you can have as much money as you want. Therefore, one of the advantages of an ABLE account disappears with SSDI, though you still have the tax advantages, but you may then choose to, and you may feel free then to invest in a regular brokerage account, or if you’re working and not making the substantial gainful, activity amount, which is currently about $2,590 this year, if I remember correctly, a month. And you can contribute that money to pretty much any type of investment account at that point if you’re on SSDI. So it is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Some people are very much aware of what benefits they’re receiving, and some people aren’t even sure whether they’re receiving SSI or SSDI and need help figuring out that detail in order to know what they can and cannot do.
Jonathan: What support is available for somebody who has really got themselves in a bit of a financial pickle? Because credit, certainly at one point, was very readily available through cards. You get them in the mail. It’s so easy to start using this new source of credit, particularly, I think, when you’re younger. Maybe it’s not just an age thing, but you kind of think about today and not the long term. And suddenly, you find yourself with thousands and thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and it can be an incredibly overwhelming experience. How do people dig out of that hole?
Chris: We’ve created an entire course on this subject, and there’s a lot of different ways that people can do this either by themselves. There’s a few different methodologies that people have found to be helpful including something called the debt avalanche method. There’s also something called the debt snowball method that is promoted by Dave Ramsey, who’s a pretty prominent financial influencer.
Jonathan: Yeah, Dave Ramsey. I know about Dave Ramsey.
Chris: And then, there are not-for-profit credit counseling organizations or debt management organizations that can help you to create a plan that you execute yourself. Or if you just don’t feel like you have the discipline, there are non-profit organizations that will help you to pay your bills, not by giving you money, but by having you pay them one bill that they distribute among your creditors until your debts are paid off.
And there are also for-profit companies in this space that can be, depending on how bad things have gotten for you, not so great to work with. They call themselves debt relief, or sometimes debt management companies, or debt settlement companies. And you often see the worst example of these on TV, advertised.
Jonathan: Actually, I subscribe to SiriusXM, even from New Zealand, because I can use the online service. And you hear these really scary ads, you know, beat the IRS. [laughs]
Chris: Yes. Yeah. So these aren’t all bad. They have, in fact, helped people that are really struggling. But they really do need to be a last resort because the way that they work is they essentially have you send money to them that they keep in an escrow account for you, and they wait for your creditors to sue you, and they represent you as your lawyer and try and get you out of the debt at a fraction of the cost. But you do have to get sued in order for that to happen, and it can severely damage your credit score.
If your credit score is already very very low, there may not actually be any disadvantage to working with these companies. But if your credit score is fairly high, you may have better ways to dig yourself out of debt than a debt settlement company, or a debt relief company.
And then finally, there’s bankruptcy. And bankruptcy is a legal proceeding that can be time-consuming and expensive where your debts can be forgiven, or they can be paid off by the courts as the result of a sort of a debt relief plan.
Our course talks about the different types of bankruptcy, how those processes work, and who is and is not eligible for them. So we really try to give people an overview of all of their options at a level that’s easy to understand, and is also detailed enough that they can decide which ones that they want to learn more about and dig more into those so each one of our courses also comes with a downloadable resource list that points people to more information on these topics, so that they can do research on their own.
Jonathan: How much do the courses cost?
Chris: They’re all available through a yearly subscription, which is normally $99 a year in the US.
Jonathan: And is the information in the courses really primarily geared to the US? In other words, if somebody from another country, (we have listeners in 113 countries) is interested in financial management, are they likely to get enough out of the information at this point to warrant purchasing the course?
Chris: It depends on what you’re looking for. Some of our courses are specific to the US, like our Simplifying Social Security course, or taking on taxes. Others, concerned about credit or digging out of debt or budgeting and banking basics, are going to be much more applicable no matter where you are in the world.
So I think there are people that can get a lot out of Penny Forward from all of the countries that are listening to your podcast, and I also think that we could be doing better.
Jonathan: You also have a podcast and a blog, I think, so there are other methods through which people can keep in touch.
Chris: Absolutely. Our podcast, we call A Show About Blind People Building Bright Futures, 1 Penny at a Time. And we do a lot of interviews with blind people who are working to improve their financial lives. Some of it might be related to careers that they’re pursuing, or that they have pursued. Some of it might be related to building small businesses, or maybe even not so small businesses. And some of it may be related to doing things like buying a house, or doing something else, accomplishing some other financial goal that somebody else may want to know how to accomplish.
Some of the coolest guests that we’ve had on the podcast are Bruce Horak, who was the first blind actor to play a role in a Star Trek series. We also had George Wurzel, the Subaru guy. He was in a Subaru commercial back in 2018 and is also a highly skilled woodworker. And he talked about what he thought was key to being successful in the blind community. We’ve also interviewed somebody who built her own tiny home really on a shoestring, because she didn’t feel like she could even afford to rent an apartment where she was living in charleston south carolina, and so her solution to that was to fundraise a little bit and also to kind of do things bit by bit as she had the resources. And it took her about four years, but she went from having a non-livable, not even finished building to a fully finished, fully furnished tiny home that’s about 24 feet long and about eight feet wide and is parked on property that she hopes to own someday, but is renting right now.
Jonathan: When I hear that story, it puts into my head, we do usually have quite a bit more control of our destinies than we think we do.
Chris: We do. It takes a lot of persistence, it takes some belief that big things are possible, and it takes a willingness to make sacrifices. Sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better.
And in the case of the lady who built the tiny home, she lived in the tiny home for about 2 of that 4 years without heat, without running water, without fully finished walls or furniture. She was essentially camping in it and using the facilities at a local university that she walked to in order to meet her basic needs so that she could finish this project.
And so, you know, if you think about her willingness to sacrifice what many of us would consider to be kind of a basic standard of living in order to achieve the standard of living she wanted is very impressive.
Jonathan: That is impressive.
You mentioned that there were certificates that people obtain when they complete the courses. Did they have any kind of formal standard?
Chris: Not yet. We do hope to add some formal standard certificates.
There are some that are offered, like the Accredited Financial Counselor Certification that I mentioned that we would like to build a blind-specific training program around. There also are bookkeeping certifications and accounting certifications that are fairly easy to study for on your own that we would like to add as vocational training programs, and we’re looking at ways to expand into that and to get funding for that, to offer that stuff to the blind community right now.
One of the reasons that the certificates are helpful is that some other agencies, such as World Services for the Blind in Little Rock, Arkansas, are using Penny Forward’s platform to train their students. And so in the case of World Services, they require all of their students to go through all of Penny Forward’s courses and to present their certificates to WSB in order to continue on with their vocational training programs.
Jonathan: That’s awesome. So where can people find out more?
Chris: Our website is either PennyForward.org or [pennyforward.com](https://www.pennyforward.com. You can send us an email to PennyForward@PennyForward.com, or you can call our toll-free telephone number, which is 1-888-332-5558. Again, that’s 1-888-332-5558. And all of that information is prominently available on the website. So I hope that we’ve made it as easy as possible for people to find us and get in touch.
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Native Versus Custom OS Solutions
We have an email here from Nikola. I hope I’m pronouncing your name correctly. My daughter is called Nicola, my youngest one is, and she has a C in the middle of her name. This correspondent has a K, so I think it might be pronounced Nicola. I hope that that is correct.
And Nicola’s writing in, partly about a fairly testy, I have to say, testy exchange that he has copied in this email with a member of the blind community that he had on Mastodon. And, I don’t really want to amplify that on Living Blindfully because, I mean, it’s public on Mastodon for anybody to have a look at.
Can you say pissing contest on Living Blindfully? You probably can’t. But I do want to discuss the point that you raise because I think it’s an interesting one. So I’ll paraphrase a little bit, just so we don’t get dragged into the social media drama, you know.
Nikola’s point relates to the fact that you can press the JAWS key with F10 in JAWS for Windows and get a list of running applications, and that is a feature that’s been around for a long time.
What is new though is that you can press the delete key when you’re in that list to close an application. it could be that the application’s misbehaving or something like that, and it can be very useful.
Now Nikola, when learning about this on Mastodon through a toot, made the point in response that JAWS was reinventing the wheel as usual, as opposed to teaching the users that while holding the Alt key and pressing Tab to move between the running apps, pressing Delete on any of them closes it. Screen reader Agnostic, works on any PC you will ever encounter. As opposed to do I have the right version of JAWS for this feature?
This elicited the response. If I can just take a lot of the snark away from the response, that there are people who have dexterity issues who really benefit from lists, and others too who benefit from everything in a nice list, and that’s just much easier.
Nikola responded that you can either go to the taskbar by pressing Windows with T, and get a list of apps there, assuming you don’t have anything pinned to the taskbar, or you can press Windows with Tab and get that list of running apps, and if you find an app and press Delete on it, then it will also close the app.
Nikola says:
“So what happened to all the benefits of the feature JAWS offers displaying your apps in a list and working with them that way? So, if we take this into account, do you really think that it’s wrong to say JAWS reinvented the wheel here and provided something that already exists?
Now, I want to make something very clear. Do I think JAWS should remove this feature entirely? Absolutely not. Even if one user is used to accomplishing a task a certain way, there is no harm in keeping that way working as long as it is technically possible. However, I strongly believe that we should promote native solutions built into the system itself whenever it is possible, and whenever they do not cause any significant drawbacks.
Let’s play a game for a moment and imagine that in iOS 20, Apple told us, Sorry, VoiceOver users. Since today, don’t use the app switcher to see your active applications. we have this special VoiceOver gesture now that opens a dialogue we call the VoiceOver Apps List. You can use this screen to manage your running applications.
Everybody would rightly be in uproar. Why do we need a different tool? Can’t you make the existing one accessible?
Of course, the comparison falls short in terms of the fact that Apple is making both the operating system and the screen reader. But in the same fashion, the Windows task view is perfectly accessible, so Microsoft takes no blame here.
Imagine picking up your friend’s PC to help them with something. You turned on Narrator. But because you have only been taught the JAWS way, now you don’t even know how to find the list of running applications. Don’t you think this puts us in a kind of sandbox? It also makes it much harder to learn a new screen reader than it should be. It does not need to be all about learning tons of new commands if you were taught the native Windows shortcuts from the beginning and fall back on your screen reader’s way of doing things when it is really necessary.
I am not just saying these things. I’ve seen multiple examples of such issues, especially when I am helping users switch from JAWS to NVDA. They wonder why NVDA doesn’t have a shortcut to view the list of running apps. And when they are told the Windows shortcut to perform this, they are completely taken by surprise.
Of course, I keep these expectations to a reasonable degree. I’m not going to say, don’t use the JAWS PictureSmart feature, pay for an OpenAI API key, insert that key, and then use it to get image descriptions. This is what I meant when I said, if the native solution gives us significant drawbacks, this one clearly does. Not everybody is tech savvy enough to do this.
Similarly, I am a big fan of the JAWS notifications history feature. That one is not only convenient, but actually offers us advantages compared to opening the Windows Notification Center. Such as choosing which notifications should be read via its powerful custom rules.
I am genuinely curious to understand why such custom solutions are being promoted when the native ones don’t give a worse experience. I could absolutely understand this mindset back in the days when Microsoft was much less committed to accessibility than they are today. In those days, it was practically necessary. But my opinion is that in many ways, even if not all, these days are behind us.
So to conclude this rambling, what do you think about this topic? Should we promote built-in, system-native ways of accomplishing tasks, or should we keep custom dialogs, which are, in my view, fragile, and they could break if Microsoft performs a change?
This isn’t just hypothetical. Microsoft is constantly redesigning the taskbar. And in fact, a similar dialog for showing the system tray list did actually break in the past and required a JAWS update to resolve.”
Yes, it did. There’s no doubt about that. I remember that well because I use that command a lot, and I miss it because it is ,superior in my view, from an efficiency perspective than the native Windows B. And I would argue with you that that is also the case with this.
So let me give you a scenario. Let’s say that I am broadcasting live, and I have a bunch of apps open at once. I might have an encoder window, Microsoft Outlook open for checking my email, Word for taking notes, which I sometimes do when things occur to me in a live broadcast and I just want to write them down, the broadcasting software itself. Most likely, I have a browser window open because I’m doing some sort of research from time to time, a Mastodon client, and who knows what else might be running. Maybe if I want to put a call to air, I might have Zoom or some other tool, WhatsApp or whatever open.
Now, there are a number of things that I could do here. I could press Alt Tab and eventually get to an application that I want to get to quickly. That can be time consuming. I could pin applications that I use regularly to the taskbar because the advantage of pinning them is that their order never changes and therefore the hotkeys don’t change. And then I can use the Windows key with the number row to go to a particular application, so that’s pretty nifty, but it’s not necessarily intuitive. You have to remember where you pinned everything on the taskbar.
If I press the Windows key and tab, you’re absolutely right, I do get a list of applications. I have to left and right arrow through it, but guess what? I can’t use first letter navigation, and that’s a deal breaker for me. If I quickly want to get to an app, I can’t just type its first letter and get there. I’ve got to arrow through it. So to me, you don’t get much more efficiency than alt tab.
Or I can just press the jaws key with f10. I’ve got a nice little list. a list supports first letter navigation. I can press the first letter of the application’s name, get there, press enter, and I’m in.
So I guess my answer to your question is if i can get any kind of efficiency gain from a screen reader feature, please count me in.
This is actually why I use Leasey. There are lots of things in Leasey that I don’t absolutely have to have and that I do in a specific way because I have Leasey installed.
But could I do it as efficiently? Absolutely not. Do I want to be as efficient as possible? You betcha. My time is precious. I want to get stuff done quickly. I’ll take it.
And that’s why I believe that the JAWS key with F10 is actually still superior to something that Microsoft is offering.
That said, I take your point. You may well be in a situation where JAWS is not installed and you have to configure a family member’s computer. So sure, there are benefits in knowing the built-in Windows keyboard shortcuts, without a doubt.
But wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft did actually make that Windows tab a list view? I would love that. I’d love to be able to use first-letter navigation in that environment. But at the moment, we can’t.
And it’s interesting that other people agree, because even though there is no built-in insert F11 system tray equivalent in NVDA, when I looked some time ago, there was an add-on that introduced it. People want it. People want this simple list approach with first-letter navigation. And at the moment, Microsoft ain’t offering it, and it adds value and efficiency.
And as I wrap on this topic, let me just say, everybody, be nice to everybody else on social media. It lowers the blood pressure.
Using Jira with JAWS
Voice message: Hi, Jonathan! This is Ron from Houston, Texas, United States. This message is in reply to the gentleman who, in episode 296, was looking for tips on using the JIRA web application with screen readers.
Jira is a significant part of my daily workflow, so I know firsthand that navigating the web interface can be daunting because of the large number of links, buttons, and other elements on the screen.
The good news is that the combination of Atlassian’s excellent development and coding practices and Jira’s almost exclusive use of HTML elements in its interface make this application very highly accessible to screen readers. If JAWS, either standing alone or as part of Fusion is the screen reader being used, the news gets even better, as using the Navigation Quick Keys and Place Markers features allow users to customize the JIRA navigation experience for maximum efficiency.
Freedom Scientific has, of course, very detailed documentation information on its website about both navigation quick keys and place markers. Anyone using the JIRA application would do very well to read these materials carefully. An easy way to get to them is to use Google to search for the terms navigation quick keys and place markers, and then after each term, type the word site, S-I-T-E,:FreedomScientific.com. That should bring the appropriate links right to the top of the search results.
I won’t try to paraphrase those materials here, but I will explain a little bit about how each feature can be used with Jira.
As a bit of a refresher, JAWS navigation quick keys are available when the browser is using the virtual PC cursor mode. This typically happens by default when the browser is launched, but it can also be toggled on and off manually by pressing insert Z in the desktop layout mode or caps lock Z in the laptop layout mode. This mode allows for single letter navigation to dozens of screen elements. The ones I use most with Jira are K for place markers, which I’ll talk more about in a moment, L for list, and T for table.
The Jira home screen typically includes one or more tables containing information about each assigned task, like the issue number, issue name, date assigned, date of last action, current status, and so forth. JAWS readily detects these tables, and each press of the letter T will cycle the focus to the beginning of each table on the page. Within a table, holding down the CTRL and ALT keys allows one to navigate the rows and columns with the directional arrows. Using the left and right arrows allows one to navigate the rows, and the up and down arrows allow one to travel north and south through the columns. Pressing the Enter or Space button on clickable elements will activate them.
The place markers function can be used to even greater advantage, as it allows one or more elements of any type on the screen to be marked and then cycled through by pressing the letter K.
For example, I have marked the Return to Homepage link, Add Comment button, and Change Status drop-down list box, and can easily cycle through just those 3 items by pressing the letter K.
It’s easy to add a place marker to a screen element. Just navigate to the desired element with JAWS. press Ctrl-Shift-K to bring up the placemarker’s list dialog, then tab to and press the Add button.
On the next dialog screen, add or change the name of the placemarker if desired.
I recommend checking the box Defined for All Pages on Current Domain, but checking the Anchor to Text option depends on the type of element being marked, so use your best judgment in selecting it. And remember, you can always change or delete the placemarker if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped.
Also keep in mind that while the placemarker’s function generally works pretty reliably, sometimes JAWS will report that there are no placemarkers on a page, even when you know darn well you’ve put them there. This is when what Jonathan might call a little jiggery-pokery might be needed to help JAWS refresh its scripts and see the markers again. Try pressing the Escape button, pressing Control-Home to bring the cursor to the top of the page, Refreshing the page by pressing F5 or using whatever method you choose, or alt-tabbing away from the page for just a second and then alt-tabbing back to it. If none of these tactics allow you to resume cycling through your placemarkers, you might need to close the JIRA tab or the browser entirely, but that should be a very rare event.
The virtual find function, invoked with Ctrl-F, can also be very useful in navigating JIRA, especially when seeking less frequently used elements. For example, I don’t need to access the reporter or requester names very often, so I don’t have those labels set up with a place marker. When I want to get that info quickly, I just press Control-F, type the word reporter or requester as may be needed, and my virtual cursor moves to just the right spot. Keep in mind that if the search for term appears in more than one place on the page, pressing the F3 button will cycle through each instance until you reach the one you want.
The JAWS Flexible Web feature could also potentially be used to create rules to help with JIRA navigation, but I don’t necessarily recommend that. It can take considerable time to set that up properly, and it also frequently involves instructing JAWS to ignore some screen elements so that it doesn’t read them out loud, both of which can be somewhat frustrating and lead to unintended problems down the road.
Using navigation quick keys, place markers, and the virtual find functions is likely to be quicker to set up and much more straightforward. These should have you flying around Jira with ease in no time.
Jonathan: Wow, Ron! Thank you very much for that. I didn’t edit a single thing about that contribution. That was really well done.
And you had me laughing very loudly about the jiggery-pokery reference.
I like Flexible Web a lot. I was working at Freedom Scientific when that was put together and was a real proponent of its development. And I still find it useful.
I use a forum here in New Zealand, for example, and I use it so frequently that I’ve customized it with Flexible Web to be super optimal with speech. I would be delighted if Freedom Scientific did some more work on this. Maybe some of the things that are going on with AI might allow for a better user interface to be constructed because it is quite geeky, and that puts some people off. But it’s very powerful.
If you are using a web-based environment frequently enough and you want to customize it, Flexible Web is outstanding.
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Closing
We will do this Living Blindfully thing one more time when we bring you episode 305, our final episode next week. And what an amazing guest we have to go out with.
In the meantime, thank you for listening!
And remember that when you’re out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success. And with your cane, you’re able.
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