Kia ora Mosen At Largers.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday at 1 PM US Eastern time with the keynote at which plenty of new software, and possibly some new hardware, will be announced. We’re going to hear about new versions of iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, watchOS, and tvOS. And there may even be a new operating system announced as rumours swirl that apple may be preparing something called homeOS. As always, right after the keynote we’ll be recording a podcast looking at all the announcements from a blindness perspective, this year featuring Heidi Taylor, Judy Dixon and Michael Feir. If you just can’t wait for the podcast to drop, and/or you’d like to share your own thoughts on what Tim and the team unveiled, we’ll be live on Clubhouse in the Mushroom FM club. Be sure to RSVP for the event so you get a notification when it starts.
So this weekend’s Mosen At Large is your final chance either to be a pundit or to make a wish. What do you think Apple will deliver this year for all these platforms, and what do you hope they will deliver. We have plenty of thoughtful comments on this subject to include already, so why not give it some thought, get in touch, and let your voice be heard?
Last week, we touched briefly on the sense of disempowerment and frustration some blind people feel due to being patronised by the medical profession. There are some interesting comments and related matters on the show this week. Of course, articulating the problem is important, since if we haven’t defined the problem, it’s impossible to fix. But if we don’t go onto the next step and offer constructive solutions, we’re just complaining idly. So, what can we do to better equip more of the medical profession to view blind people as competent, rather than helpless?
We’ll be introducing you to an interesting research project that seeks to address a serious accessibility issue. While well-intentioned, much of the automatic ALT text generated by Facebook and other AI solutions is often too generic to be helpful. Many people don’t caption their visual content on Twitter, even though that platform offers a generous number of characters to do so. What if a solution existed that crowd-sourced high-quality image descriptions, so they can be reused where appropriate? I’ll introduce you to Sonaar and its developer, and let you know how you can participate in the research study.
As usual, there’s a wide array of blindness and technology topics from listeners on which you may like to comment once you hear them.
If you want to raise something new, you’re very welcome.
Getting your contributions in ahead of time leaves you free to hear the show, and gives me a chance to organise them all, so go for it. Please don’t be shy, I’d love to hear from you. To contribute, send an email with an audio attachment or just written down to Jonathan at MushroomFM.com, or call the listener line, +18646066736, that’s 1-864-60Mosen.
The best way to hear Mosen At Large is when it airs live and in full. Catch it on Mushroom FM, either on the station itself or in the Mushroom FM club on Clubhouse, the Mosen At Large YouTube channel and the Mosen At Large Facebook page on Saturdays at 2 PM Eastern, that’s 7 PM in the UK. It will then be available in abridged form on the Mosen At Large podcast, available anywhere you get podcasts. If you RSVP to the event on Clubhouse, you’ll be sent a notification when it starts, plus you’ll be helping to spread the word to your followers, so we really appreciate the RSVP there.
Thank you so much for listening and contributing to the show and see you soon for Mosen At Large.