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Welcome back to another exciting episode of Friday Finds! In this episode, Marty and Linn dig into the highlights from Apple’s WWDC, ponder over the conspicuous absence of AI in the presentation, and analyze Apple’s preference for the term “machine learning” instead.
They also discuss ‘EmpathEyes,’ an innovative VR simulator that helps parents and caregivers understand a child’s exact visual impairment, and how this could change the way we perceive and react to visual impairment.
Finally, they explore the recent controversy over Reddit charging for API access and its impact on accessibility, including an exemption for accessibility apps and an upcoming user protest.
Join Marty and Linn as they unravel the intricacies of these fascinating developments. Stay tuned, leave your comments, and don’t forget to join us next week for another Friday Finds!
Reach us for any questions or feedback at
feedback@unmute.show

Transcript

Marty:
[0:05] Hey all, Marty here, and welcome back to another Friday Fines with Lynne.
Hey Lynne, how’s it going?

Linn:
[0:10] Hey guys, this has been quite a busy week, huh?

Marty:
[0:13] Yep, definitely. So quick announcement here at the top, I just want to let everyone know that Michael and I were on IACAS doing WWDC Recap, and that’s going to drop in the unmute feed on Saturday, so look for that.
Lynn, what’s our first topic?

Linn:
[0:32] Okay, so we will start out with WWDC and I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it because I know that we’ve been pretty saturated with it all week.
But the one thing I did want to touch on, of course, there were a lot of things, the headset, $3,500 headset that I won’t be able to afford anytime soon.
But yeah, and it has voiceover built into it. So it’s going to have some accessibility features.
And I guess I listened to the entire presentation.

[1:16] And of course, I’m sitting there and I’m thinking about it. And I’m like, okay, where is AI?
I have not heard any discussion of AI.
So I was very surprised by that.
But I found an article in The Verge that was titled For Better or Worse, Apple is Avoiding the AI Hype Train.
And it was written by James This is Vincent from June 6.
And basically, what they discussed in that article is that Apple is really taking a more cautious approach to the whole AI thing.
Of course, there was AI throughout the whole presentation, but they didn’t call it AI.
They preferred to use the term machine learning.

[2:11] And I think that some experts are saying that actually machine learning is a better way to describe AI.
Artificial intelligence has sort of like a science fictional connotation to it.
And AI is Apple is really taking more of a cautious, conservative approach in talking about it. it. It doesn’t mean they don’t have it. It just means, you know, that they’re going to kind of describe it in a different way.
And that’s probably not a bad thing, because as many of us know, AI has really gotten some bad press.
A lot of people, when they hear about AI, they hear about about the end of humanity at the worst, and AI taking jobs and misinformation and all sorts of malfeasance, whatever.
So yeah, AI is starting to have some negative, you know, public press.

[3:21] And I think that that’s gonna be, that may have been something that Apple was thinking about when they actually did not say the word.
Because as we know, if you listen to the Google presentation and the Microsoft presentations, if we had a dime for every time they use the word AI, we probably could get a nice pizza for everybody in the audience.

Marty:
[3:44] Yeah. So do you think that they should explain what they mean by changing the verbiage to something different, or you think they should just go with it just let people figure it out.

Linn:
[3:58] I think that by using the term machine learning, they are accentuating the positives about AI.
So in that respect, I think it’s a smart move on their part.

Marty:
[4:12] And not to say anything, just to let it ride and just let it be a different…

Linn:
[4:18] Just have it be a different, right. Because again, AI just has such a negative publicity right now.
And it’s a shame, because it shouldn’t. There’s so much good about AI, and we need to focus on the good.
And in sort of changing the name, maybe like a euphemistic sort of expression, Apple is really trying to accentuate the positives.
It is AI after all, but they’re changing the name of it. So I don’t know, you know, the jury is still out on whether this is a good idea or not.

Marty:
[4:57] We’ll see moving forward. Right. I mean, we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Linn:
[5:00] It may actually be a very smart move on Apple’s part, you know.
So this this article I found, it is really kind of a very, very interesting technology.

[5:17] And basically, you know, I was born totally blind.
And so when you say totally blind, you sort of understand what that means.
There’s not much room for misinterpretation, right? You can’t see at all.
That’s it. Yeah. But most folks that are considered blind actually are not totally blind.
And one of the things that I have noticed, I have blind and visually impaired friends.
But in discussing this with a lot of my visually impaired or partially sighted friends, they very often face sort of the challenge of, you know, trying to explain to people why they can see some things, but they can’t see other things.
And I can imagine that this would be especially difficult for kids who really don’t have the ability to communicate this type of information.
Plus, their parents may not even understand the child’s eye condition well enough to, you know, advocate well for the needs of the child. So, there was an article in…

[6:43] Blind cool tech from june fifth and it was posted to the tech vi list that was run by my friend david goldfield which is a great list and the product is called empathize and i’m going to spell it.
E-M-P-A-T-H-E-Y-E-S. And basically what it is, it’s a VR simulator.
And what it tries to do is, it tries to represent an individual’s exact visual impairment.
So when And you put, you know, it’s a sort of like a, I’m trying to think AI or VR, sort of like a headset, I guess you could say.
And you put it on and the technology will actually allow you as the parent, you can put in the child’s eye condition, what it is, And it will show you what your child is seeing in different places, like on a bus, on the playground, in the classroom.

[8:01] And there are like 50 eye conditions that are in this software.
And it was, basically it was developed by a mom who has twins who are blind, in Ireland.
And she did this because she was trying to…

[8:27] Help not only herself but other people get a good idea of what their child is able to see and not able to see and it also has different views and different ways of looking different light conditions different strengths to sort of show the parents in real time what their own children are seeing.
And I just think that is an amazing thing, because this is really one of the challenges.
If you have difficulty seeing, you can see. And some people say, well, you can see or you can’t see. But that’s really not true.
I mean, there are different levels of visual impairment.
And with this virtual reality simulator, it’s sort of like a flight simulator, right?
You get in there, and it allows you to actually experience what your child experiences from a visual perspective.

Marty:
[9:32] I think this is really cool. I mean, if you are a parent and you’re trying to have some sort of idea of what your child is going through, and you can actually sit in a simulator and at least experience, oh, this is what their vision is like, or, oh, this is what they’re going through.
I mean, that goes a long way to let the parent understand exactly how and what their kids are dealing with.
I mean, this is, you know, taking something like virtual reality, which is used mostly for gaming and, you know, stuff like that, and putting it into a real world problem, you know, and letting you being able to experience.
So I think that’s really, really cool, you know?

Linn:
[10:22] 360 degree immersion, so that, yeah, so it’s pretty awesome.
And it has, you know, you select the eye condition that your child has.
And I imagine that this would even be able to help not just children and parents, but other people as well.
So it’s in it’s.
There, the person that developed this does have a lot of.
Academic resources behind her and is trying to raise money to.
Make this more widely available and it’s going to be shown at, it seems like it’s like an optometric conference soon, and it’s going to be tested with a lot of other people, and then they plan to offer it all over the world.
This is pretty cool. That is empathize, right? E-M-P-A-T-H-E-Y-E-S. Yeah.

Marty:
[11:29] I’d love to see this thing move forward, make some progression, and really get into more of the mainstream if that’s possible, but it sounds really awesome. So, cool. Yeah.

Linn:
[11:41] It’s a headset, I guess.

Marty:
[11:43] Awesome.

Linn:
[11:43] All right. This is the week of headsets, huh?

Marty:
[11:46] Yeah, definitely.

Linn:
[11:47] Okay. My last story for today relates to something we talked about a while back.
I don’t think it was on this program, but we were talking about the social media site, Reddit.
And Reddit has not made its users happy because they have started to charge for their API.
And I’m trying to remember, Marty, you were saying one of the developers.

Marty:
[12:18] Yeah, there’s a really famous Reddit app that people use on iPhone, which is called Apollo.
And that’s been a really famous app for Reddit for quite a long time.
And I believe what they said was they were going to charge them like $20 million a year or something ridiculous like that.

Linn:
[12:40] Yeah, something ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah.

Marty:
[12:42] Just to be able to keep their app going?

Linn:
[12:47] So what they have done is they have now made an exception for accessibility clients.
And so lately, you know, like many blind folks are mods on Reddit.
And it’s really difficult because there are accessibility challenges with the current Reddit clients, the official ones that are out there. and, you know, people are saying, wait a minute, how are we going to be able to access this if we are stuck with one client or one or two clients that are not, that have accessibility issues?
So, they, Reddit has addressed this, and it’s, it’s non-commercial and And apps that address accessibility needs, they won’t have to pay to access Reddit state data.
So that’s good. And…

Marty:
[13:57] So does that mean that, let’s say Apollo implements voiceover into their app so that blind people are able to use our app with voiceover?
Does that mean they won’t have to pay the fee or is there some other thing that has to happen or something more that has to happen?

Linn:
[14:15] Yeah, so basically, Reddit says that they’ve connected with select developers of non-commercial apps that address accessibility needs and offered them exemptions from the large-scale pricing that they’re doing.
And there’s a, supposedly there’s going to be a huge protest.
I remember thinking, you know, is this just going to tick off blind people?
But it turns out that no, other other Reddit users, which I thought would be the case, are not happy campers.
Because of this, they’re going to lose access to the apps that they like.
And this is sort of a Twitter-esque kind of move, right? Sort of…

Marty:
[15:11] I don’t understand why numbers have to be so outrageous. Even if they’re going to charge a fee to use their APIs, I don’t understand why the price is so outrageous.
It seems just way out of line for developers to be able to use their APIs.
I’m not sure what’s behind that, why they’re doing that, but it would be interesting to know.
So clearly we’re just hearing now, you know, that Apollo is pulling the plug on their app, I guess, so.

Linn:
[15:39] Right. So there are a few blindness-specific apps.
One was called Luna, I think, Luna. The other one is called Reddit for Blind.
Um and so they apparently will still function but gosh wouldn’t it be nice if they would just go ahead and make their app accessible like really that would be in my opinion the best way to one of the well not the best way but you know then you wouldn’t have to have these special things right you could just say well yeah you’re talking about the actual reddit app is that what you’re talking Right.

Marty:
[16:25] And it’s not accessible currently.

Linn:
[16:28] I think it’s, it may be accessible, but I think it has accessibility challenges from what we talked about on, I think it was IACAST.
Right. We had, we had discussed this.
So apparently the, there’s a Reddit, a subreddit for, that’s for blind folks And they’re going to join in with other subreddit in shutting down on June 12th to June 14th in protest.
So the blind subreddit says that they are going to participate in that protest.
So we’ll see what happens. That’s, you know, it’s really a shame. Definitely.

Marty:
[17:17] It’s really interesting, you know, all of this stuff that’s happening.
All right, Lynne, thanks so much for another Friday Finds.
And if you have any questions, comments, you can reach us at feedback at unmute.show.
And everybody have a great one and we’ll see you next time.

Linn:
[17:35] Thanks a lot, guys.

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Episode Notes

On This episode, Michael, Taylor, Marty, and Lynn discuss everything announced at WWDC 2023’s keynote.

MacRumors – WWDC 2023 Recap

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Read transcript

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Join us for another exciting episode of ‘A Lady with Lucy’, where our hosts, Marty and Lucy, dive deep into the fascinating world of Amazon’s virtual assistant. Discover the magic of various features like the Follow-up Mode, Whisper Mode, Routines, Themes, and the intriguing VoicePad. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a smart device lover, or someone new to the realm of AI, this episode is sure to provide you with some hidden treasures and secret hacks to make your life a tad easier.

In this episode, Lucy walks us through how to optimize our usage of these features, from enabling and disabling different modes, understanding themes, to experimenting with recording through VoicePad. So, are you ready to level up your interaction with Lady A? Tune in now!

Transcript

Marty:
[0:04] Hey y’all, Marty here and we’re back with another A Lady with Lucy.
And Lucy, welcome. How’s it going?

Lucy:
[0:13] Oh, it’s going great. Going great. Yeah.

Marty:
[0:16] So what are we going to be talking about today?

Lucy:
[0:18] Okay. So today I thought I would go over just a few things that you can do with your Lady A, just some kind of, oh, miscellaneous things, modes that you can set up and things like that.
So, first one is called follow-up mode.
And that means that you can ask your Lady A more than one question without having to say her name again.
Because normally, you You know, you ask her one question and then you have to say her name again before you can find out anything else.
So with follow-up mode, I’m not actually sure how many questions you can ask her at a time, you know, without having to stop and say her name again, because I asked her that question and she didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to find out.

Marty:
[1:21] That would be a fun game to play, you know, see how many questions you can ask before she cuts you off.

Lucy:
[1:26] Yeah, yeah. So the first time you use it, you have to say enable follow-up mode and then it will be turned on from then on. So.
My device today is called Ziggy.
Enable follow up mode. Follow up mode is now on. Ziggy, what’s the weather today?
Currently in Lansing, it’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit with partly sunny skies.
Tonight, you can expect mostly clear skies. What’s the humidity?
Right now, the humidity is 26%. Is it going to rain?
No rain is expected tonight. By the way, there’s an air quality alert in effect until Friday, June 2nd, 9.30pm.
What’s the date today? Today is Thursday, June 1st. What’s the weather tomorrow?
Tomorrow in Lansing, there will be partly sunny weather, with a high of 92 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 62 degrees.
By the way, there’s an air quality alert in effect. Hmm.

Marty:
[2:35] So I would have never even thought that I thought that what you were doing, you could just do. I never. So if you didn’t have that mode on, you’d have to say her name every time.

Lucy:
[2:46] Yeah. So let’s, let’s try this.
Ziggy, disable followup mode. Followup mode is now off. Ziggy, what’s the date today?
Today is Thursday, June 1st.
What’s the date tomorrow?
Yeah, I see.
So maybe it’s just like never ending. You can just keep asking it questions.

Marty:
[3:12] Or maybe there’s a time limit. Like I wonder if you waited long enough with a pause in between the questions, if it would disable.

Lucy:
[3:19] There is. I don’t know what that time limit is, but I know it’s not very long.
I would say 10 to 15 seconds at the most.

Marty:
[3:29] Right. casket questions one after another, like you were doing, it probably could go for a long time. But if you wait too long, whatever that time limit is, then you’ll get out of that mode properly and you’ll have to say your name again. Yep.

Lucy:
[3:43] Yep. Hmm.

Marty:
[3:45] Interesting. But that’s pretty cool though.

Lucy:
[3:46] Yeah, it is kind of cool. I have mine on all the time just because, you know, there’s yeah. Yeah.

Marty:
[3:54] If it’s on, do you have to still say her name in the first time?
And then once you say her first time, then you can continue without saying her name.

Lucy:
[4:02] Correct. Got it.

Marty:
[4:03] Cool.

Lucy:
[4:04] Yeah, you always have to say the name the first time to activate it, yeah, to wake it up.
So the second one, I don’t really see much advantage, but it’s kind of cool.
It’s called Whisper Mode.
And it is what it says it is.
So, Ziggy, enable whisper mode. Sure. Whispered responses is now on.

Marty:
[4:32] Did she speak?

Lucy:
[4:38] Yeah, she did.

Marty:
[4:40] It doesn’t come across in the audio, just so you know.

Lucy:
[4:42] Yeah, unfortunately. I thought it would, but it doesn’t. But yes, she was whispering.
And it’s actually kind of creepy. I don’t like it. Because it’s just, I don’t know.

Marty:
[4:55] Well, here’s an interesting question. If you whisper at her, she’ll whisper back without having to enable whisper mode, right?

Lucy:
[5:04] I don’t think so. I don’t know.

Marty:
[5:06] That’s what happened to me anyway, that’s why I said, you know, it was all let me see.

Lucy:
[5:10] So let me see Ziggy disable whisper mode. Okay. I’ve turned off whispered responses.
Ziggy, hello. Hello. No, the Stanley Cup playoffs are almost done and I’m taking my best slap shot to predict the Ziggy stop.

Marty:
[5:28] How did it come out of the hockey question? If you whispered at it by saying hello.

Lucy:
[5:34] I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. Who knows?
Yeah, you must have had yours on somehow because I’ve noticed that, yeah, if you’ve got to have that on in order for her to reciprocate the whispering.

Marty:
[5:52] All right. Got it.

Lucy:
[5:53] Okay. So the next thing is kind of silly also.
And I don’t know exactly how many themes there are that you can activate.
I’ve only found two. And the only thing that it does is it kind of gives you some sound effects before it says something.
One is the space theme and one is a cat theme. So let’s enable the cat theme.
Ziggy, enable cat theme. disabled cat theme in the past. Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here’s cat theme.
Welcome to the cat theme. And just so you know, I’ll add some cat fun to the weather, timers, and even jokes.
And if you ever want to pause, just say, no more cats.
To start right meow, just say, hello. Hello? Hello? Hello?

[7:01] Ziggy hello.
Hello to keep kidding around ask me for a cat joke Yeah, see that’s just kind of stupid And I don’t know you know Who are severe cat lovers are gonna probably love that or you know people who are into Star Wars and Star Trek would like the Space theme what’s the Star Wars one sound like oh, let’s see let’s see Ziggy enables space theme You’ve disabled Space Theme in the past.
Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here’s Space Theme.
Welcome to the Space Theme. Engines are go for liftoff.
I’ll add an interstellar twist when you ask for things like the weather, timers, alarms, and even jokes.

Marty:
[8:15] That there.

Lucy:
[8:16] Here’s a fun fact. A laser battle in space would be dark and silent.
To lighten things up, try asking for a joke about space. Oh gosh.
Yeah, see, it’s just, it’s silly. I don’t know. It’s probably, you know, something for kids, you know? Yeah, definitely.

Marty:
[8:33] They like those sounds and stuff, you know?

Lucy:
[8:38] So another thing that’s kind of cool is you can set up what they call routines.
And this means that it’s kind of a bundle of tasks that it will perform when you say a certain thing.
So it’s kind of like what you can do on your iPhone by setting up activities.
Don’t really want to get into that, but they have some routines that are pre-set.
In other words, you can enable like the weather routine.
It’s like, so after you dismiss your alarm that you have set for the morning, it will give you the weather.
And there’s one called Start My Day and this, it’ll give you the news and traffic updates and more, just what we need, traffic updates. Right, Marty? Oh, yeah.

Marty:
[9:37] I’m going to need that.

Lucy:
[9:40] And then there’s one called, and I don’t know how this works.
It’s called Morning Shower.
And it’s like, it says it will give you weather and favorite radio station when Lady A detects water running for two minutes.
Now I’ve never tried that one so I don’t know you know, how it would.
I guess, I guess it would, I don’t know, that’s pretty weird one, I know, right?

Marty:
[10:07] Maybe it does that. It’s the thing is, well, if it’s raining, you’re not going to go anywhere. So here’s your favorite radio station.

Lucy:
[10:16] And there’s one called Sunset. And that turns off the lights.
Or I mean, wait a minute. It’s called Sunset Lights, excuse me.
So it turns on your lights when the sun goes down.
That is if you have smart lights, smart home lights, and we’ll get into smart home devices in another episode of this.
And then there’s one called good night and that wishes you good night, turns off the lights, and plays sleep sounds.
And so in order to find these routines you would go into your Amazon Alexa app on your smart device and go under the more tab in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen and then flick to the right until you find routines.
Double tap on that and there are some tabs at the bottom of that.
And to find the preset ones you go into gallery and that will give you the preset routines. There’s tons of them in there. Hmm.

Marty:
[11:24] That’s kind of cool.

Lucy:
[11:26] Yeah. And you can also…

Marty:
[11:28] You don’t have to mess around with all the different ones to see which one would suit your needs.

Lucy:
[11:32] Yeah. You can also set up your own routines. I’ve never set up my own routine, but it’s not difficult at all.
So, um, yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. All right. So the next thing I want to talk about is something called voice pad.
Now this is kind of a cool thing.
Once you enable it…
You can ask it to, it’ll ask you, what do you want to do? Do you want to record?
Do you want to read your notes? Or, you know, what do you want to do?
It will allow you to record things quickly.

[12:16] Like if you, let’s say, you know, somebody gives you a phone number and you don’t have your phone around or it’s dead or whatever and you don’t have anything to record with.
So you would just ask your Lady A device to open VoicePad.
So let’s just see. Let’s do that. Ziggy, open VoicePad.
Welcome to VoicePad. Say record to start recording. Say stop to stop recording.
Say read to read everything back. Say email to email yourself your notes.
What do you want to do? Record. Recording. Please speak now.
This is a test just to see how this works.
And in a minute, I will ask you to read back what I just said.

[13:14] Recorded. read my notes oh let’s see how do I do this now read back maybe recorded Ziggy stop stopping recording okay what do you want to do now read my read my recording sorry I am not currently recording and say record to start recording or say help for help.
What do you want to do? Read. You want me to read you your notes, right? Yes. Please email me the words that I am saying.
This is a test just to see how this works and in a minute I will ask you to read back what I just said. Read my notes.
That’s the end. What do you want to do now? Stop. Okay, goodbye.

Marty:
[14:02] So is that in text or is that an audio file?

Lucy:
[14:05] It’s in text. Okay.
And you can only have that email you that text if you have your email linked to your Lady A account.
And you would do that by going into your Amazon Alexa app, and then you go into settings and you find, you flick around until you find mail and calendars.
And there’s only certain email providers that will allow you to do that, but Gmail and Google, they’re one of them.
So you could, yeah, you could have it email those notes to you.
And I mean, you know, with all the devices I have, I don’t really find much of a use for that, but you know, somebody might. It’s kind of a cool thing to have around.

Marty:
[15:04] Yeah, you never know.

Lucy:
[15:05] Yep. Okay. So, um, that’s about all I have to talk about today.
So we will be back next time.
And so I’ll see everybody next month.

Marty:
[15:23] All right. Thanks so much, Lucy. We appreciate it. And thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time.

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[Music]

This is the Shell Phone Show.

Showing you how to do something on the Blind Shell Classic 2.

Brought to you by Peyone Media LLC.

[Music]

All right, so I’m going to answer a real quick question that I’ve gotten a couple of different

from individuals who have asked.

And that is what is this way around application that’s

available in the blind child classic two app catalog.

So if you go to the app catalog, as of today, seven June, you can

download under the new applications, an app called way around.

Once you’ve downloaded this, you’ll want to set up an account

if you don’t already have one and then acquire some way around tags.

Of course, you can get them from AT guys, but you can also get

at WayAround.com. I recommend AT guys only because I work for them, you know. I don’t get paid a

commission, but definitely, you know, check them out. So once you’ve gotten those WayTags, then you

and you’ve set up your account. The very first thing you’ll want to do is press and hold the

down button once you open WayAround. This will put you on the very last button, which is to write.

And if you press okay on that, you can actually write a description. There’s going to be an edit

field that you can put a description in and this is what you can put on your way tag. So for example

let’s say you have milk and you want to keep track of the expiration date. You can put those details

in the description and then the last button on that screen will be right. When you hit okay on

right it’ll say touch a tag to the back of your phone. This is about halfway up the back of the

phone that you just want to touch one of the way tags against. When the phone has read it, it will

vibrate and let you know, “Hey, this has been written,” and you can move on with your day.

Then attach that tag to the item that you just labeled.

Once you’ve done that, next time you open the way around application, you simply touch

the back of your phone against that tag.

The phone will speak and vibrate and let you know, “Hey, I’m reading the tag that you already

wrote.”

Then once you’ve read that, you use your down arrow key and it’ll let you read the information

that you saved to that tag.

Tune in to unmute presents on Sunday.

I’m going to demo this for you, but that is a quick overview of how to use the

way around system with the blind shell classic to make sure you get your

account set up, get some way around tags.

If you’re looking for something to get started with, there’s a sampler pack for

$15 that’ll let you get one of each of the tags, or if you really want to get

involved, get the starter pack and that’ll give you between 10 and 15 of each of

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Transcript

[0:01] This is an ACB Community Call presented by American Council of the Blind.

[0:10] Music.

[0:17] This Unmute Presents Community Call was hosted on Tuesday, June 6, 2023.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another Unmute.
We want to get everyone’s tech questions answered. So go ahead and raise your hands, and we’ll get to you as quickly as possible after a couple of announcements here.
We also want to remind everyone we’re going to go through all the first hands up.
And if we have enough time, we’ll take second hands and be respectful to everyone, as you would want to be for yourself to get everyone’s questions answered, no matter how easy or tough you think they are because we always say there’s no dumb questions.
Michael, how you doing?
I am doing well. I tried to get Mallory to come live with us today.
She called me right as Chanel’s announcement was playing and I’m like, we’re live in like 30 seconds. You want to go live with me? And she got off the phone real fast.
She was not interested. Oh, well, one of these days we’ll have to get her on.

[1:17] That will be a first cause she’s never been on any of my podcasts, uh, intentionally intentionally anyways. Uh, so Marty we’ve been publishing some interesting things over at unmute.
Haven’t we? Yeah. A couple of things here and there, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Technically working dropped yesterday with Demasi and I, if you haven’t listened to that and you want 110 minutes, Marty loves those longer episodes of rambling this between Demasi and myself, go capture that episode.
And then on Sunday I posted a follow up to a question someone had asked us related to the numpad commander on the Mac.

[1:53] Interesting thing there is I learned how I should probably configure my numpad commander because I have it configured in a way that probably could be done more reliably. And then Lynn and Marty sat down, talked about some tech things on Friday. So that was that episode that dropped. And then on Thursday, as we typically do, we had something a little bit more in depth. And that was a fun episode with Allison Sheridan from the Podfeet Empire. Uh, so if you’re interested in that, learning more about how she as a sighted Mac user tests, some apps for accessibility and what she’s done with podcasting and some fun adventures, uh, real worth the listen.
Then we posted on the shell phone show on Wednesday of last week, accessing the manual on the blind shell classic too.
Once you have that blind shell classic too, how do you go and learn more about operating the device itself? And then of Of course, we had the ACB Community Paul replay for May 30th.
We’re already in June. Can you believe it, Marty? Crazy, I know.
We’re halfway through the year already. It seems like I’m still getting over the holidays.
Definitely. Let’s go take some of these hands and then stay tuned because we have a cool demo that we will show you before the end of the hour that’s exciting that I guarantee some of you will be using this summer. Monica, who do we have first? Doc.

[3:17] Hey, Doc. How are you doing? You are muted. Good morning. Oh, there you are. Hope I’m unmuted.
Yeah, you are. We can hear you. Well, okay. I was going to give you a report on how to delete mail folders. I told you once before I was just deleting them and they were coming back.
So, I finally have figured out the routine.
Okay.
Okay. When you’re in email, you hit F6 until you get the mail folders preview, arrow to the folder you want to delete, press the application key or shift F10 if you don’t have one and then down arrow to delete folder And wallah, it is gone forever.
And you have to hit enter a second time to confirm that you do want to delete it.
Right. So that’s how it goes away forever. So let you know.
Thank you.

[4:15] Yeah. Appreciate your directions. Okay. Have a good one. You too.
Thank you. Next we have Beth.
Hey Beth. Okay. You can.
Yeah. I just saw that you, Michael, that just noticed that you had sent me an email. Yeah.

[4:38] And I didn’t read it yet, but I just noticed that before this call, but I also have a problem.
When I get into the app games, it will, no matter if I swipe, like usually you hear at the very top of the screen, like, look, Wi-Fi, cats, Wi-Fi, and then orientation, like stuff like that.
My phone just says no matter where you go on the screen.
And I don’t know why it does that.
I have an idea for you, Beth, because I saw your email and I didn’t have an immediate answer, but I think I might know what’s going on.
What I want you to try doing is and I can email these steps to you after the show as well.
Change your rotor to screen recognition, and it will probably say on and flick down once, and it should say off.
And I think then that might actually fix it.
Mine did say off because I had asked on iPhone and iPad apps for the blind and visually impaired.
I did ask about the games, and she said, make sure your screen recognition is turned off.
And mine is interesting. Okay, I don’t have another answer for you.
That might be one to reach out to the Apple Accessibility team, and they may be able to get your phone and see what’s going on there.
Okay. And I emailed them yesterday. I can’t is iPhone 13 mini. That should be good.

[6:08] Phone. Good. That’s a perfectly good phone. It was released a year ago.
Yeah, a year or a year ago.
Yeah. Yeah. So email is fine. But Beth, what I actually recommend is just give them a call.
OK, I’ll call. And if you need, I’ll email you their phone number.
But give them a call because then you get someone on the phone and they can answer the questions you have.
Emails can get lost, as we’ve all learned.
Oh, sure. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Thanks Beth. Okay, thanks. Next we have Herbie. All right, Chris May.

[6:41] Hey, Chris, what’s going on, fellas? How you doing? Great, Chris.
Hey, so question, what did you guys think about the WWDC as far as the VR headset?
Do you think that might have some interesting potential for low vision individuals or people that are, you know, high partials? And if so, what would that be telling?
Interesting question. We’ve talked about this quite a bit actually.
Yeah, do you want to jump in and give your thoughts and then I can give my thoughts?
Well, so far my thoughts are I haven’t seen anything in terms of low vision or no vision accessibility yet.
So it’s one of those things where we’re kind of waiting to see what and how it’s going to be used.
There is an accessibility talk that’s going to be coming up sometime this week and we’re hoping they’re going to talk about it during that session.
Session. And then also, they always announce things and they always don’t announce things, and then they bring them as the year goes on before the gold master gets sent out. So.

[7:49] We’re going to see what happens here and we’re going to see how they’re going to implement it for accessibility, but it’s so new, we don’t really know yet, but we’re hoping that there will be some benefit. And this is a great representation to show you that Marty does not spend any time on social media because it was confirmed yesterday that voiceover will be supported on the VR headset. So yeah, which is super exciting. And honestly, I had no, and probably like Marty, I had no doubts that they were going to find a way to have voiceover be supported on this headset. I’ve told people on a couple of different shows that I’ve been on, I will be buying one, probably not this edition, but yes, I will be buying one. How is it going to work for a for a blind user?
I have, I don’t have that answer right now. My thought is gonna work similar to, you know, IRA.
You could put it on and it will read to you what’s around you, what’s in front of you.
If you’re walking down, you know, a doctor’s hallway and you’re looking for the room number you’re supposed to go in, or if you’re in a hotel and you’re looking for your room number or read signs, things like that.
I mean, I think that that’ll be a really good use case for it.
To actually do something like that.
All right, that sounds great. And one more last question, real briefly.
Is there anything that we should be aware of in the new iOS 17?
I think it was iOS 17, right, that they announced during WBC briefly.

[9:14] Yeah, there were some cool features. One that was really something people were liking a lot is.

[9:20] If somebody leaves you a voicemail, say like you’re in a meeting, it’ll transcribe the message, while it’s leaving the message. And you can decide whether it’s something important, you could pick it up right away, right from the voicemail if you want, or just leave it and let it go to voicemail. So people were excited about that.

[9:39] God, there were so many things. What else, Michael? Another thing that I’d recommend you do is if you join in on the BITS call tonight, I believe Herbie at 8 p.m. Eastern will be talking about it as well. So that way, more things that will come up. I think for me, one of the other cool things that I forgot about until someone else brought it up is the check-in feature.
Every time my wife or her mom or we go anywhere or her sister goes somewhere or any of us, the rule is check-in when you get to the place that you’re going. So we know everything’s okay.
Sometimes we forget to do that and you know, but we do try.
And now this can make that automated and just be that extra level of insurance to be able to say, Hey, my family is safe.
Another thing is messages.

[10:27] Another thing that was really cool is if you meet someone while you’re out and about, you can bump your phones and send your contact information over to their phone. I thought that was pretty cool.
And in FaceTime, if you call someone and they don’t answer, you can actually leave them a video message and they’ll get it when they get back to their device.
All right. Well, thank you, fellas. I appreciate your feedback on WDC a little bit. Thank you.
Yeah, no problem. All right. We do have one other person in Clubhouse, Mary. Hey, Mary.
Hello, everyone. How’s it going? Well, it’s been very frustrating. I hope someone can help me.
Help me. I had to switch email providers, so therefore my email address changed. So therefore I wanted the daily menu to come in.

[11:15] And on my new email address because at the end of May I discontinued my own one.
However, I’ve been working on it for a month and I get no response and I get, I get, and every day it’s not there and I’ve tried several different things but nothing seems to be working. So I was hoping that someone could reach out and help me. I may actually have a lot easier of a self-help solution. Let me verify that I’m understanding what you’re trying to do correctly though. You’re looking to get the daily community emails. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So if in your web browser, you, and I’m doing this right now, so I can verify that I’m telling you this the correct way, but if you go to the, yep. If you go to the website, acb.community, so no.com, just go to acb.community. There’s a, that’ll take you to a page and there’s a pay email address that says ACB community events plus subscribe at groups.io.
If you click that link and send a blank email to that email address, you should get a response email that says, Hey, are you sure you want to subscribe to this email list and just reply to it and hit send like you normally would.
And then you should start getting the daily emails and that should automatically get you on there.

[12:36] Okay, I will try that and see if that works. if it doesn’t let us know if it does or if it doesn’t but that is of course you can always send an email to community to acb.org but you’re looking for more of an automated way so hopefully that’ll help you out well i’ve sent many emails to acb community you know to different people and different but i have gotten no response check your junk mail too because that that’s not normal so i’d make sure you’re checking your junk mail as well and make sure you’re you’re sending the email to community at acb.org. Okay, well, I’ll try all those things and hopefully I’ll be happy tomorrow morning.
No problem. Just go to acb.community and that’ll take you to that page.
Okay, thank you. Bye bye. Thanks. Who we got next Monica? Lisa G. Hey Lisa!

[13:26] Can you hear me now? Yes. Yep.
Okay. I lowered my hand instead of unmuting. Hi, everybody. I wanted to give an update and a big thank you.
Okay. Big thank you. I have been struggling with Zoom, the one tap mobile for months.
I mean, really just gotten out of control.
And you gave me the Zoom email address and I sent them an email and then I said, I said, I’m depressed, like I need to get into the community.
It’s a lifeline for me, very explicit. They said, what’s the problem?
Just the day before, there were three calls I could not get into with the OneTap mobile, and I told them pressing the numbers takes too long, I’m always getting thrown out.

[14:15] I don’t know what they did. I sent them that. I haven’t heard from them again.
I said, please let me know what’s going on.
I had been able, I got into this call. I couldn’t get into this call with the one temp mobile.
So now all of a sudden it’s like magic.
I don’t know what they did or how it happened, but now it works.
So thank you. Did they make you do an update or anything or what did they do?
You don’t know what they do, anything, but that just tells you.
And I’m going to go ahead and actually send this podcast over to the access team because we’re all guilty of saying, Hey, this isn’t working, but now that it sounds like they hopefully have fixed it, we’ll definitely share that positive feedback with them.
And thank you to let us know that hopefully that has fixed it and you are now able to use one-touch dialing.
Thank you. And I hope that other people who hear this will email Zoom.
Can you repeat that Zoom email for people who might be listening?
Certainly. It’s access at zoom.us. Yep. Access at zoom.us.
You’re awesome. Thank you so very much. No problem. Thank you, Lisa. Yep. Thank you.

[15:18] Who do we got next, Monica? I don’t know if Herbie has another question in Clubhouse.
Maybe I forgot to lower his hand, but if he doesn’t, we can go to Greg.
He went away. So Greg is a let’s go to Greg. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Hello, everybody. How are you doing? Good. Good.
So my question is, I have an iPhone eight, and I know everybody’s saying dinosaur dinosaur in the background.
But I’m happy with my iPhone 8.
What can I do to preserve that, you know, as long as possible?
What should I be doing to, you know, continue to make it work as long as possible?
Well, so the first thing I would tell you is that my dad also had an iPhone 8 plus up until about a week ago.
And he got it when they came out. And the only reason why he finally got a new phone was because it would stop charging.
The battery just was completely kaput on it.
And when he went to go get a new phone, he traded it in and they gave him $800 towards a new phone.
And I couldn’t believe it. I was blown away by that.

[16:36] The first couple of things I would say is make sure that you do the battery optimization so that your battery will last as long as it possibly will.
And what that means is you just go in and make sure that it’s set to the setting where it will charge up to a certain point, and then it will stop charging until it knows around the time that you wake up and then it will charge the last 20%.
And what that does is it doesn’t keep your battery charging, charging, charging all the time and burn your battery out.
So definitely make sure you’re doing that. that. It’ll make your battery last longer. And then I don’t know how to give a hard drive space you have on your phone, but I would definitely make sure you keep hard drive space free.
You need usually about 15 to 20% of free space for your device to run at optimal level. And keep it updated to as much as you can, until it won’t let you anymore. Those are the three things I would say to do right out of the gate.

[17:37] Yeah, and one thing I’ll tell you, Triple G, is this iOS 16 is the last update you will receive on that iPhone 8.
The iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 or X will not be supported for iOS 17.
IOS 17 will only go back as the XR.
Okay, but it shouldn’t, as long as I check my storage, and do you know how to do that?
Shouldn’t affect, you know, other apps that I download, um, correct.
As long as my storage is, is good. And, you know.

[18:10] The only thing you’re really going to have, Oh, sorry, Michael, go ahead.
I was just going to say, yep. So you can just go to settings, general and storage and check the storage, uh, of your phone, if that’s what you’re asking. And that won’t really affect it unless you fill up your storage, Marty.
I was going to say right now, you’re probably not going to notice really much of anything.
But as time goes on, once they release 17, and then that starts getting going, you’ll notice that you’re probably gonna start having apps that may not work on your phone.
Your web browser may not work on every website because you’re only gonna get to a certain point, and then it’s gonna start having security issues and things will get updated, but you won’t be.
So that’s when you start having issues, once it gets really far away being able to get updated anymore.

[18:59] Okay, I know call me a dinosaur, but I’m just, you know, I just like things, you know, that, that iPhone se 2022 has a very similar form factor to the iPhone eight, and you’ll be very comfortable and it’ll give you a lot faster of a device.
And you get to keep all the features you like just just throwing that out there.
Okay, thank you.
No problem. I do see we have another hand. So I’m going to go over to Monica and ask her who that is in a moment. But before we do that, Michael D., if you don’t mind, after we take this question, getting ready to unmute to share some stuff with us. So who do we have next, Monica?
We have Kim. Hey, Kim.
Hello. I think you probably just answered my question. They do have an FE-22?
Yes.
Okay. And are they gonna keep making those, hopefully?

[19:53] They haven’t said one way or the other yet. Yeah, we don’t know what Apple’s going to do.
Hopefully they will, but we don’t know.
I will say, though, that the SE22 currently has the same processor in it as what’s out now.
So you’re pretty up to date on that.
They only make it in a regular size, though. They don’t make it in a plus or a large size.
So that’s, you know, it is what it is. I still want it to go in my pocket.
And I still want my home button. I love my home button. Yeah, I mean, if you’re going to do it, I would do it probably sooner than later because we don’t know if they’re going to discontinue it or not. You’re getting a pretty current processor and you can still upgrade the hard drive. I believe 256 is the max on that device. Yeah, that should be good. Thank you. Okay. Alrighty, Michael, are you there? I am here.
Hello, everyone.
Hello. Thank you for joining us.

[20:50] Thanks for having me. Yeah.
So we wanted Michael to come on and come share some information with people because he’s an intelligent guy who’s always got his fingers in a lot of different things.
And one thing didn’t work out. So he may be back next week. We’ll see.
But I said, well, what can we have you come talk about? And I think you’ve been working on something.
Do you want to share a little bit about what you’ve been working on?
I do. So, I’ve been working with Jeff and the ACB Media team for quite some time, and everybody is great and it’s been awesome doing this again.
But we’ve been working on an update to ACB Link, the iOS version of ACB Link, the app that lets you connect to ACB media, find out more about your affiliate, your closest affiliates, and to learn more about the American Council of the Blind in general. And we have not put out an update in quite some time. And so we thought, you know, it would be a good idea to do this. And so.

[21:57] ACB media, I mean, ACB link 3.0 is now, uh, we’ve been working on that for a little while.
And so I’m very happy to be able to announce as of about 10 seconds ago that the app is now released in both the iOS and Mac app stores. It’s out in the wild. Now it’s out in the wild. Now Now it’ll probably take some time for it to show up for everybody to download, but it is now live now.
So a lot of things have been streamlined. A lot of things have been really improved in this version.
If you’ve used the app in the past, you know, it’s been great, but it’s even better now.
So Michael, you’ve been testing it. What are your thoughts of it?
Oh, I love this. I’m going to show people the iPhone real quick.
I’m not going to plug it into the mixer, but I’ll bring it close to the microphone so you guys can hear it.
So, uh, let me turn my speech right down a little bit.

[22:55] All right. So, uh, as you can see across the bottom now, Tab bar, home, tab, one of five, affiliate tab, two of five, selected streams, tab, three to five, podcast tab, four to five, about tab, five to five.
And so as you heard it said, streams, tabs selected. Now here’s my favorite part, because that means I opened the app and it, as of, well, maybe because I didn’t close it out of the app switcher, Mike, we can clarify, But it automatically put me on the streams tab.
If it didn’t, all I do is tap that middle tab in the, at the bottom.
And then of course I’m getting a phone call because that’s what happens while we’re doing stuff live.

[23:32] But you heard us say ACB media five, which is about a third of the way up the page, watch us double tap.

[23:38] And of course it’s probably.
So now I’m listening to ACB media five. If I don’t want to listen to this anymore, now we’re on ACB media. That right there is magic to me. The podcast will allow you to search the podcast. It looks like, Is that correct, Michael?
That is correct. So you can search through all the podcasts.
You can even search individual podcasts, like you can go through each podcast themselves and do searches on each of the screens.
So all of those things are there.
It’s a very easy app to navigate and you can use dictation, all of those things.
So now you can listen to the streams without needing an A-late.
You could just do it right on your phone.

[24:27] Exactly. Your phone or your Mac, if you have a Mac. So what is the devices that you can get the app on and computers?
So you can download the app on iOS, iPadOS. And now for the first time, a native Mac experience is now live.
So you’ll be able to get the app on the Mac App Store as well as you can on iPhone.
You’ve been able to get the the iPhone app on the Mac, but this is a proper Mac app now.
So, yeah, it’s pretty cool too.
Um, and, uh, what’s really nice about it is there’s one table you interact with when you get to the content you want, if you want to go to that tab section, there’s a tab bar that you go to and you interact with that and you can choose any of those five tabs and, uh, it dynamically updates and it’s really easy to navigate by keyboard.
So if you already have a CB link, all you need to do is check for updates.
And then when it’s available, you can download it or you can go find a CB link in the app store, correct, Michael?
That’s correct.
Perfect. Well, thank you. And, uh, yeah.
Do you have anything else to say before we go on to the next hand?
No, I, I would like to just share a few thoughts if that’s okay with you guys.
Yeah, for sure. If you guys, um, have not been aware, the IACAST podcast is back.
We’ve been talking a lot. We’ve, we’ve done basically a prediction show and then we did a, uh, summary show that will be coming out soon about WWDC.

[25:57] And we kind of go into detail. It was before we really had an understanding of the accessibility of the glasses.
So as I posted on social media last night, people are going to get very tired of me talking about these glasses, because I use like the Patriot viewpoint to help me enlarge text and I messed it on just went off, which is going crazy last night whenever I broke the news that we found out about voiceover being on the glasses.
So being able to magnify doing all these things and accessible apps on a VR AR headset is just going to be a huge thing and I think we’re gonna be you know you guys I’m sure on unmute and everywhere else are gonna be following this very closely. I think that this this this WWDC the OS updates were interesting but the what we got with the the glasses is going to be even more impressive so I I was very happy to hear during the second big presentation they did yesterday there, that platform state of the union, that, uh, we would have accessibility features and they’re even doing sessions throughout the week on how developers can make their apps and games accessible on this headset.
So that’s all very exciting.

[27:12] So that’s everything I wanted to share. So thank you guys for having me. Yeah.
Thanks for coming and sharing that. And as I also, when I shared your post on mastodons, it was yours or someone else has said, you know, this is a great time to be in. I’m, I was excited for this WWDC and I’m more excited for next year’s because hopefully this will be out in the wild for a couple of months and we’ll build and see what people have done with it.
And y’all know I’ll have one as soon as they’re Thanks, Michael. Monica, who do we have next? Thanks, Michael.
We have Peggy. Hey, Peggy. Thanks for your Hi, I have a question.
This has probably been since the latest version of iOS, but every once in a while I’m in my email And a mail will come in that.
Was something I sent out like a week or two before to someone.

[28:06] It’s like, almost like a reminder or something.
And it shows up at the top of your inbox. And it’s like, did I send this? Like, what is this?
It drove me crazy until I figured out what was going on. So what’s going on is Apple has decided in their infinite wisdom that they want to be our reminders in our email.
So if you send an email to someone and I believe you can go into your mail settings and turn this off But if you send an email to someone and they don’t respond to that email within 72 hours It will resurface the message and as you will read in it It says something like reminder or resending or something like that. And yeah first that I recent I mean I did I don’t remember sending that evil But no It’s just a reminder for you and your inbox that they have not replied to a message you sent them.
And I’ve, I’ve, I know where we’re coming from. I’ve experienced that a few times at this point.
And I think the idea is good, but the implementation is not that good.
Cause they don’t really tell you exactly what it is. It’s just all of a sudden shows up in your inbox and you’re like, wait, what?
It doesn’t make any sense.
Really. Yeah. And I keep thinking, well, maybe the message is at the bottom.
You know how sometimes people.

[29:22] Have too many times and the message that they write back is on the bottom.
No, no, that’s yeah. Okay. You’re not crazy. It’s that’s what’s going on. Okay.
All right. Thanks a lot. No problem. Who do we got next? Monica? We have Scott. Hey, Scott.
Hey, Scott. How’s it going? All right. Well, okay. How do you turn that off? First of all, I will have to look that up and let you know for sure, because there is a way to turn it off, But I will see if I can find that.

[29:54] Yeah, it’s like settings, mail, and then there’s a preference to turn it off.
Uh, also, so getting to my question, I understand blind shell was supposed to make some major announcement today that about some new app or something they’re adding a new app.
Yeah, I know that there was. So Diane was on vacation last week who does the blind one-on-one calls and there There was a mix up and so the call wasn’t canceled yesterday.
What I can tell you is Blindshell has a Thursday call this week called Talking Points.
So if you’re not subscribed to BlindshellUSA.com slash Talking Points, probably go over there.
That’s all the information that I have.
Well, I was just curious. I’m not that interested.
It’s not urgent if I don’t have a blind. No, no, because I was on the call last Monday when Diane said next Tuesday, we’ll have a new app. And yeah, so I would go to the Thursday call and see if they have any ideas.
Or I’m sure I’ll hear about it sooner or later. Probably. I have.
I keep abreast of forbidding sources. You’ll definitely hear about it.
I’ll hear about it. All right.
Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Scott. Who do we got next, Monica? We have Beth back. Hey, Beth. Hey, Beth.
Okay. Yeah. Yes. So the app you were talking about, about, about the ACB. Yep.

[31:23] Well, well, that see, I can go on my phone to ACB media five.
It does tell me a link, but that goes to Safari, right?
Yep. This is this is completely different. That’s what I was demonstrating.
So the current ACB link app, it does bring up a page And then you’ve got to find the little play button and then play that, um, the update that is out.
So you would want to go check for any updates sometimes going and doing a search for the app and bringing the app up itself and three finger flicking down to reload the page, uh, can bring that update available.
But now what happens is you tap on streams at the bottom and then you tap the stream number you want, and then it starts playback.
There’s no going to find a play button, no swiping around it’s streams.
And then the number you want and it’s playing.

[32:08] Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I want to, um, no, if it has like, um, the radio, the ACB radio and they, it only has a cafe is yep.
Cafe is on there.
It’s all, it’s all 10 of the screens that are available. Yep. Okay. Yeah.
And, um, I was gonna ask about my media player on my computer.
I tried what you told me to try to shift F 10 and, and it does not say, um, anything about playlists. So, okay, I am not that familiar with media player, Beth. So maybe there’s some other people that are listening that might have some additional resources. And if they do, hopefully they’ll call in or they’ll email us to let us pass that along to you.
Okay. Oh, sure. Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Monica. Next, we have Astoria.

[33:03] Hello. I do a couple of weeks ago, you told us how to get rid of the and I don’t know, I can’t remember the terminology.
But when you search for something to get rid of that list, and the history, what device are you talking about on which device? I have an Android phone and I have an iPad.
Okay.
And where are you searching that you want to get rid of the history from?
I’m Google, I guess.
Gotcha. Okay. So what you can do is you can go to google.com slash account, and there’s an option to clear your Google history there.
Um, and it is a pretty seamless process if that’s what you’re looking for.
Uh, I’m not sure if that’s exactly what you’re looking to clear.
Google.
Would you repeat that? Yep. Google.com slash account. Okay.
And then you can clear your history, your account history there as well. Okay.
Thanks. And I did reply to your email. It took me a little while, but I did get back to you. So yeah, perfect.
Thanks for calling in.

[34:15] Who do we got next? Monica. We have Greg. Hey, Greg.
Hello again. I’m good. I’m still good.
Um, and I’m still a dinosaur, but anyway, um, I’m still a dinosaur.
I have a question regarding deleting a row on Excel with JAWS.
Now, it’s a whole row that I want to delete. Actually, it’s quite a few rows.
I’m doing something for ACB students right now, an affiliate I’m working with, and I need to delete several rows.
How do I do that?
So I forget the keystroke, but I can tell you, and someone may have a different or faster, easier way to do it, because I’m not seeing we have any hands right now, but I can tell you if you do alt Q like Quebec, that’ll put you in a search, and then you can just type in delete, and delete rows should be one of the options that pops up.
Okay, okay. And can I ask one more question? Certainly.
Google Docs has always, always, always been confusing to me, no matter how many YouTube videos I watch on it.
I’m just wondering if you know of a good way, I’m a JAWS user, but if you know of the best way for me to work with Google Docs, because like just typing into it and just, you know.

[35:41] Just it’s not been very, very friendly, you know, to me.
So I told you about a keystroke in Excel called Alt-Q to search the menus.
In Google Docs, there’s a keystroke, which is Alt-Slash, and that brings you to search menus.
Type in accessibility and make sure that you have screen reader access on and braille access on because that will improve the experience even if you’re not using a braille display.

[36:09] Make sure that you turn your JAWS cursor off with JAWS key plus Z And then you should be able to use your up and down arrow keys like you normally would, Select text like you would and use ctrl B ctrl I etc Like you’re familiar with in Word and that might help you a little, Okay, thank you. The dinosaur is out, Problem. Thank you next Monica Harvey, Alright, well, first of all, I just gotta ask and this is rhetorical but no, it’s a dinosaur going to get on the mastodon, But I digress as Chanel, Yes, so a couple things If you’re for some reason ever using a Mac don’t turn on braille support in Google Sheets because it kind of doesn’t work very well.

[36:58] Yeah, and so this new app by the way, is it also called a CB link in the Mac App Store?
Yep, okay, cuz I just came out so it might take a little while for it to Get around for everyone to be able to see it I think literally it’s came out in the last like 20 minutes or so So might take a little bit for it to show up for everyone So just give it a little time, but probably you know by this afternoon everyone will be able to see it I’m assuming and then cuz I know in the iPhone app I really haven’t used it a lot because you have to go to stream Or you have to go to radio, then streams, then the name.
So hopefully it’s a little bit easier. So I’ve been testing this to give some feedback to help make it a great experience.
I will tell you, I have used ACB media and listened to ACB media in the last week and a half more than I have in the last three years, because all I have to do is open the app, tap streams, and then tap the stream number I want to listen to.
It’s that simple. in the play button or anything else.
Which I’m super excited to use it during convention because as you know they’re on different channels So you can just switch back and forth between the different channels And michael, what is the exact name so people know exactly what to look for?

[38:16] Uh acb link So yeah, you’re looking for acb link and go ahead chanel. You had another question, One other thing, um, you mentioned or herbie sent me something you shared the other day I don’t know if it was you or whatever but on the new mac os you don’t have to, Did you turn on quick nav to use quick keys?
So I have not installed this. I cannot speak directly, but it is my understanding that you can just use like H to jump to headings or shift H to jump to previous headings and not have to use quick nav. That could be incorrect.
Again, that was as of yesterday’s beta one first day. So very cool. Yes.
Stuff is being done with voiceover. I can’t get into what is being done. So.
Okay, cool. All right. Thank you. Yep. No problem.
Hey, Monica, next we have Desi. Hey, Desi. How’s it going? Good morning. It’s going great, I love this call. So thanks so much for that. Um, I.

[39:13] Wanted to ask you about of an app that a friend of mine told me about and I believe she said it was called It’s called ZoomCuts.
Is that?

[39:23] What is it, what does it do, and why should I want it? So, I don’t know why you should want it.
It is an app that was released yesterday, so what I know is very limited.
It is a tool that implements about 13 different shortcut actions into shortcuts on the Mac for using with Zoom.
What that means is, potentially you could set up a shortcut that you have a keystroke that, I don’t know, that, I don’t know, lifts off the raised hands or something like that.
So I don’t know the details for it yet.
I will have more details probably by the end of this week because it is something I am very intrigued by.
And it’s made by a company that was purchased by Zoom itself and that company released a software because Zoom has become more synonymous in the broadcasting industry.
A lot of your broadcasters use Zoom to bring multiple sources together now, both in audio and video.
And so there’s been some companies out there that have created more advanced interfaces to Zoom.
So for example, if you’re in a live environment and you wanna take Desi’s audio and separate it from everyone else’s audio and send it to the overhead speakers, and then while the host is getting other people muted, the only person you hear is Desi, you have that type of flexibility with the Zoom ISO tool.

[40:45] I can’t speak to accessibility. It does only work on the Mac.
I will say that from the tests that I have done with it and played with it, it looks like it’s fairly usable if not with just voiceover, but using tools like VLCR and other tools out there to make things that aren’t the most accessible accessible.
So it’s something I think you’ll start hearing more about in the near future, Zoom cuts and Zoom ISO.

[41:10] Okay, and then my only other question is because I have returned to the Mac, which I’m so delighted about. Welcome back.
Yay! Well, you know, I got the Mac mini M2 and yeah, it’s going really well.
Although I am finding it not as intuitive as I thought I remembered it being several years ago.
Some of the things that I try to do don’t necessarily work and I find myself getting frustrated sometimes and having to walk away and come back later.
And sometimes that does work. But I was curious to know if you know where I can get a comprehensive listing of Mac commands, you know, just general Mac commands for I, I mean, I know that it’s possible to go through the menus and look at all the commands there, but I would, I would love to have just a compendium, if you will, of Mac commands.
You’re talking about just in general, or are you talking about voiceover?
Well, well, in general, but I mean, all those commands work with voiceover as well, right? And voiceover commands, too.
So, Desi, all commands. I’m going to give you the obvious answer.

[42:22] I Googled it, Mac keystrokes. And the first thing that came up is an Apple help center article that says Mac keyboard shortcuts. So there’s that.
And then there’s also an article from computer world that has 30 Mac keystrokes.
Um, so that might be helpful for you as well. I have some too, which if you want to email feedback at unmute.show, I can send those over to you.
Great. And I will make one other recommendation. If you really, really want to get familiar with your Mac and get more fluid with using your Mac, Chanel has a great class that she teaches. So you should reach out to her and get all the details and do that class. You’ll definitely learn a bunch. Chanel and I have been talking and unfortunately the next one of those isn’t until September, but I’m ready to be there when it is.
Very good. All right. Thanks a lot. We’ve got about 12 minutes left.
Who do we got next, Monica? We have Debra.
Hey, Debra. How are you doing? Hi.
I got an iPad Pro and I use the wireless keyboard. Would it work almost like the Mac?

[43:30] So did you get the keyboard that plugs into the little magnetic piece on the bottom of your iPad or is it just a regular Bluetooth keyboard?
The Bluetooth. I did order the one that’s attached to it, but it’s not an amplifier, but I can’t see where the, you know, the keys are so I end up using the wireless.

[43:52] Right. So a Bluetooth keyboard will work on a Mac, but you have to make sure that the Bluetooth keyboard you have will work on multiple devices. Otherwise, if it does not work on multiple devices, then you would have to re-sync it to the new device. So you would want to make sure that the keyboard you’re using would be able to work on multiple devices, if that’s what you want to do.
No, what I’m saying is instead of buying a Mac computer, does the iPad Pro, can it function the same way?
Gotcha. So there are keystrokes that you can use on the iPad that would let you navigate it as fluidly as you could on a Mac and, you know, use like Command S to save.
What I’d recommend you doing is, are you a voiceover user?
I’m trying to learn to do that, yes. Trying to learn some of the hot keys and I don’t know all of them yet.
Gotcha, so there are some great resources Marty may know one or two that can give you some, Keyboard commands to use on the iPad But yes You can you can do a lot of the things you can do on an iPad Pro is what you could do on a Mac with a Bluetooth keyboard Okay, so how I get some of those hotkeys man.

[45:04] So the best way so I’m gonna go ahead and do it right here is if I go and I type in best keystrokes for iPad it does bring up a help article looks like from Apple and it gives you a couple of common support or a common commonly supported keystroke so if you’re able to get to Google then just type in keystrokes for iPad and Google gives you five right here that you can start using in your workflow, Hello. Thank you.
No problem. Hope that helps. Best keystrokes.
Yep, best keystrokes for iPad. Make sure to put for iPad on there or it’s going to give you all types of keystrokes.
Okay, thank you. No problem. Monica.

[45:49] Lisa G. Hey, Lisa. Hi, I just had an idea of what I use for the past two people.
Whenever I want to know anything about strokes or shortcuts, I call up Apple and I like to call it the accessibility and I’ll ask them if they could email it to me because they can email me the strokes if I tell them, especially if I’m looking for something in particular, like if they have a list of basic strokes or things that would help me.
And I always ask them, I say, so do you have any little tips or tricks that you know for people with vision issues?
And when you get new people, sometimes they have no idea, but you’d be surprised at what you learn just by asking that question.
I find it kind of cool.
So it’s just my two cents. Thank you, Lisa.
I appreciate you bringing that up, because sometimes we don’t think about the obvious, and that is just picking up that phone.
Call the either general support team because, you know, sighted individuals use keyboards, too.
So there’s no need to just say what are the the keystrokes for blind people or contact those accessibility numbers, because that’s a good resource to have as well. So thank you, Lisa. Really appreciate that.
Yep. And I’ve actually had them send keyboard shortcuts to, you know, by email and they do do that. So that’s a great resource. Who do we got next, Monica?
We’ll go to Eugenia. Hey, Eugenia.
Hi. For the person that was asking about the keyboard for the iPad Pro.

[47:16] There is a class that is starting now in June at Braille Institute, Laguna Hills.
So if you can find the class catalog for Braille Institute, they will have there, they have the keyboard with the iPhone in the afternoon and on Mondays at 10 a.m. they have the keyboard uh, for iPad and they teach that class twice a semester.
So I’m taking it. That’s what I know about it.
Well, good. Thank you for that. And see, we can’t know about all these resources.
So that class is available. So search for Braille Institute and, uh, classes.

[48:00] Laguna Hills. Yeah. Yeah. They have several centers, but this one is from, uh, this person in Laguna Hills center.
That’s in Southern California. Yeah.
Perfect. And do you know if they do virtual classes or are they only in person?
Oh, that’s virtual. Oh, no, totally. Yeah, it’s too far from me.
Yeah. Okay, good. Good. So, so that is a good resource. And thank you for bringing that up.
Appreciate it. Thank you.

[48:24] And our last hand for now is Kim. Hey Kim. Hey Kim.
Hey. Just for the person who was asking about keystrokes and all that, I, you know, I’ve taken the Apple class and, but there’s times when I still forget and I look back at my notes and I’m like, boy, I took rotten notes this time.
Anyway, National Braille Prints have the Mac reference cards that, that probably, I don’t think it has all the shortcuts, but it has the basic command for the Mac.
And it’s just, um, the Mac reference card. Yeah. I see it.
I see that right here. It looks like it is for Big Sur, but that would give you some getting started details for using the Mac.
Cause a lot of those keystrokes haven’t changed. They’ve just added new ones.
So thank you, Kim, for bringing that up. That’s nbp.org, you can get that at nbp.org, and that’ll get you over to the National Braille Press.
And we are getting tight on time, so let’s try and… Let’s do one more hand here, Monica, and then we’ll close it up.
We’ll take Lori.
Hey, Lori. Hey, Lori. Okay, hi.

[49:39] To keep with the theme of the keystrokes, don’t forget that you can still go into VoiceOver, commands and you can touch keystrokes and it’ll give you a whole list of keystrokes. The keyboard, the iPad also, if I remember correctly, it used to work. I haven’t done it in a long time. You can either hit the command key or the control key and it’ll pull up those shortcut keystrokes for that app that, you’re in.
Oh yeah, that globe key hit that in the back in the bottom corner. Right.
Perfect. All right. Thank you very much. No problem. Michael D has his hand up. Do you want to throw something in really quick, Michael D?

[50:20] I’m guessing not. So. All right. Oh, real quick. I didn’t know I was muted on both places.
The holding the command key on the iPad is currently bugged with voiceover, so it will bring up those keystrokes, but it does not read.
Good to know. Yeah. Plenty of other resources out there to get the keystrokes for sure.
And with that, I want to thank Michael for coming and sharing information about what what we’ve got going on with ACB link.
Go check that out if you haven’t yet and Monica for hosting us, Marty, you want to close it up?
Yep. Thanks everyone. We appreciate you coming. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and email us feedback at unmute.show and we’ll see you next week. Same time, same place. Have a good one everybody.

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Episode Notes

Join Michael Doise, Lynn Schnyder, Taylor Arndt, Angie Fisher, and Michael Babcock as we discuss the following topics.

News

• Reddit proposes new API pricing
• WayAround version 4.3 is now available. Learn more about this release, and listen to how you can use WayAround in your home, office, or while out in public spaces.
• CrossOver 23 will support some DirectX 12 games on macOS and Linux

Topic

We discuss what we think will be released tomorrow at this year’s WWDC 2023 conference.

• Apple AR/VR Glasses
• Changes to Siri
• iOS and iPadOS 17

Picks

• Michael: Ubiquity DreamRouter
• Taylor: MacBook Air M2
• Lynn: Aiko app for audio transcription
• Michael: Diablo IV for PC and Xbox

Providing Feedback

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Read transcript

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Transcript

Michael:
[0:04] In today’s Sunday teaching episode, I’m going to show you how to configure your numpad commander, and then I’ll give you a little bit about how I have my numpad commander configured.
So this will work if you’re a voiceover user on Mac OS. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to start by tapping VOF8. This’ll bring us to…
VoiceOver Utility, VoiceOver Utility, VoiceOver Utility, Window, Utility Categories.
Now, when you’re in the Utility Categories, you can simply tap Command 8, which takes you to the Commanders tab, if that’s what you’re looking for, and then press your VORide arrow key, and choose Numpad. I’m going to select that.
If you press VORide arrow, you’ll find a checkbox that says Enable Numpad Commander.
Yours might be unchecked. Go ahead and check that. Now let’s press VORide arrow.
This is important. This is the modifier, which you can press with numpad keys to be able to perform different commands.
If we press our spacebar, we have a menu with several different options.
I’ll down arrow through those real quick.

[1:15] So as you can hear, there’s several different modifiers. Now, once you have the numpad commander, if you press VL right arrow, you’ll hear a table that you can interact with.
When you interact with this table, you’ll find two rows.
One is the number associated with the command that you’d like to modify.
And the second one is the command that you’d like to associate with that number.
So let me give you a quick rundown of how I have my numpad commander configured.
And I recommend you take a look at all of the options that are available because there’s a lot there.
I think there’s 13 different categories of different items you can set.
So the number one is associated with item chooser for me. The number two is a down arrow and the number three is my tables.
So it’ll jump to the next table. Four is VO left arrow for me.
Five is VO space and six is VO right arrow.
Seven is stop interacting. eight is up arrow and nine is start interacting.
Which means that I don’t have to press V o shift up arrow or down arrow, but here’s where it gets really fun.
The clear key for me is my applications chooser, which means I don’t have to press V o F one F one.
I can just reach over and hit the clear key. The slash key is my window chooser.
So I don’t have to press V o F two F two, or remember that I have to press that twice quickly in order to pull up a list of windows that are active in the current application.

[2:40] Now, the enter key for me is my actions button.
That way, when I’m quickly navigating through notifications, I just hit enter to five, enter to five to clear them out, Apple, that’s what I want in the next OS, a button to clear all my notifications at once, one last command that I’ll give you that can be helpful is you can also assign voiceover numpad commanders to shortcuts.
So if you’re using a shortcut that maybe tells you what hosting opportunities you have available You could assign that to a keystroke That’s available on your numpad with one of your modifiers and trigger that or any other shortcut that you use slash automation service Hopefully this has inspired you a little bit to go take a look at the numpad commander available on VoiceOver on the Mac and if you have any questions reach out to us feedback at unmute dot show and you can also Also, connect with us every Tuesday, 10 a.m.
Pacific Time, that’s 1 p.m. Eastern. Visit acb.community for more details or tune in live. ACB Media. Bye.

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Welcome to a new episode of Unmute Presents, where we dive deep into the ever-evolving landscape of AI and tech innovations.
In this episode, we discuss Everett Bacon’s new role as vice president of blindness initiatives at AIRA, a leading organization in providing sighted assistance to blind individuals. We also ponder the reliability of AI chatbots and their potential risks, as evidenced by the recent controversy surrounding an eating disorders hotline chatbot.
Marty and Lynn delve into AIRA’s revolutionary service that pairs technology and human assistance, helping visually impaired individuals with everyday tasks. They also explore the backlash against recent subscription rate hikes and highlight free usage opportunities at locations like airports and Starbucks.
The conversation shifts towards the fraught topic of AI chatbots, specifically addressing the problematic advice given by an eating disorder hotline chatbot. This raises vital questions on the reliability and programming of chatbots, the role of AI in critical health support, and the necessity of human oversight in these AI systems.
Finally, we eagerly anticipate the upcoming WWDC event and speculate about new Apple products, from larger screen MacBook Airs to AI-powered virtual reality goggles.
Join us as we navigate the promises and pitfalls of AI technology, the groundbreaking advancements and critical ethical questions they bring to the table.
Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe to stay updated with the latest tech trends and AI developments!

Transcript

Marty:
[0:05] Hey all, Marty here and we’re back with another Friday Finds and with me, as always, I have Lynn. How you doing, Lynn?

Linn:
[0:11] Hey, how’s it going, guys? So meet Mr. Everett Bacon. You may not know him, but he is new with AIRA.
Been named vice president of blindness initiatives.

[0:29] And what is that exactly? So, of course, we know, most of us do know what IRA is, but for those who don’t, basically what it does is it provides sighted assistance to a blind person.
Say, for example, you dropped a pill on the floor, you need help locating it, you are not sure that two pieces of clothing match, or maybe you think you have a stain on a piece of clothing and you’re not really sure, you can actually call up and talk to a real human and they can do all kinds of things.
Like they can, they will tell you where to point your camera.
I’ve used it sometimes for like, if I have a box of, say I wanna make a cookie mix or something and I want real quick help to know how to actually do it.
What’s nice about them is that they are bonded. So all the people that work there are bonded.
So there’s a little bit more safety, like if you need to do personal things where you need to use a credit card or a social security or whatever, they are trained.

[1:43] So there’s just a lot of nice things And they’ve had a little controversy because of some, well, like everybody else, they were raising rates, you know, raising the amount that we had, that people have to pay. It’s a paid service.
You get like five minutes for free. and, So, you know, it’s a great service if you can afford it, which I really can’t.

Marty:
[2:09] And a couple of things I will say also right out of the gate that’s really cool.
First of all, it is an app, you put it on your phone and then you use the app to contact a person to help you. And then the camera on your phone, they’re able to see through your camera and tell you what you’re looking at or what you’re trying to look at.
So that is pretty cool.
Also, as Lynn was saying, yeah, there was a little bit of controversy earlier because they were raising their subscription fees and everyone’s getting subscriptioned out as we’ve talked about here quite a bit.
But there is some cool stuff also. For example, they’re working with a lot of the airports and if you’re within an airport, if they offer it, which a lot of airports are jumping on board, you can use it for free within the airport if the airport you’re in offers it.
Also all Starbucks offer it so if you’re inside of Starbucks you can use it for free. So there’s a lot of places all over that you’re able to use the service for free which is pretty cool.
And like Lynn was also saying you get I believe a free five minutes I think it’s every couple of days or something like that. You’d have to check and find out exactly but they also have other plans that you can get for amount of minutes.
So cost you know something for you know like a 15 minutes and a little bit more for 30 minutes and so on and so on.
So, all right, Lynn, sorry.

Linn:
[3:32] This gentleman, he used to be a sighted guy, and he started to lose his sight. He is now blind.
And he’s being put into a leadership position, which I think is a great thing.
He worked where he kind of gained some leadership skills.
And as he lost his sight, he started to realize that he was going blind.
And he did have some managerial experience.
He was a district training store manager for Blockbuster Video, both Dallas and Houston.
And so he really does come with some managerial experience.
He successfully managed 10 stores with an average operating budget of $20 million. That’s pretty good.

Marty:
[4:30] Yeah, that’s a couple of dollars there.

Linn:
[4:32] Yeah. So, you know, he worked in a fast-paced, customer-driven environment.
And he said it gave him the confidence to multitask and do other things.
So he started to need video magnifiers and low vision tech as he was losing his sight.
And then eventually he did need screen reading software.
He said he learned how to be a blind person using braille and a white cane.
Awesome. Yeah. He then went on to earn a master’s degree in vision rehabilitation therapy from Western Michigan University.
So, you know, he has a CV. He has a pretty good CV.

Marty:
[5:23] Well, we’ll have to see what he does and how things move forward with them and what kind of things he can bring to improve and make Aira different, better in the future moving forward. So we’ll see.

Linn:
[5:37] Last week, we did a story, about AI chatbots becoming an option for people who need mental health assistance and can’t get it for some reason.
And we sort of pose the question, you know, is this possible?
Is this a good idea?
Just this morning, there was a story in Yahoo, this is Thursday morning that we’re recording, there was a story about a chatbot that was supposed to replace a human-operated eating disorders hotline.

[6:27] And the funding ran out for this hotline and they were going to eventually shut it down.
So it’s the National Eating Disorders Association.
And so they had this chat bot named Tessa.
And what they were going to do was to replace human hotline workers with this chat bot. So it was, you know, really designed to to provide body positive information.
This is an article from Yahoo to aid those with eating disorders.
But what happened was it sort of got caught giving wrong advice.
It got caught, there was an Instagram user that reported how the chatbot gave weight loss advice to eating disorder sufferers.
And apparently, um, it was the, they’ve actually taken down the, the bot.

Marty:
[7:35] Um, do we know what the bot said to the person?

Linn:
[7:40] Um, so it’s instead of providing advice that could be, you know, That could be safe for someone with an eating disorder or you know somebody that’s dealing with this issue the bot.

[8:03] Actually argued that. That intentional weight losses and eating disorder recovery could safely coexist.
So the person was typing in some stuff and apparently the chatbot said, well, sure, you can still be on a diet and deal with eating disorder recovery.
So this Instagram user claimed that the chatbot advised a goal of shedding one to two pounds per week alongside weekly body measurements, counting calories and aiming for a daily 500 to 1,000 calorie deficit.

[8:48] So obviously, there was apparently they said it was a bug in the software, I guess, that allowed the guardrails to be breached.
And when we talk about guardrail, that’s something in AI that really means rules, okay?
Just rules about what it’s allowed to say and what isn’t.
And there was a lot of controversy about this eating disorder hotline shutting down the human part of the bot or the human part of the hotline.
And I guess they didn’t have the resources or the budget or whatever.
So they just kind of of figured that this chatbot could replace the human touch. Obviously not. Yeah.
So, I think that…

Marty:
[9:38] It just goes to show you that, you know, as cool and as awesome as this technology is, it still has a long way to go without needing a human still there to oversee what this chatbot says or does or the way it acts because it sounds like…
And this is not the only story like this. There’s been a ton of other stories out there where the chatbots are just saying weird, inappropriate things for at a left field, you know, so it sounds like there’s a long way to go still.

Linn:
[10:12] Yeah. And the guardrail part of it is, is something that they apparently they, they said they tested it and they really tested it. And they were in the process of phasing out the human part of it.
Um, I think that’s a dangerous move to make. I love AI. I’m really into AI, but I don’t think I would be so confident in it that I would…
Eating disorders are, especially anorexia, has one of the highest fatality rates of all mental illnesses.

[10:47] So I don’t think it’s safe to leave that in the hands of an AI chatbot, because it has such a high mortality level.
So, you know, I mean, I think this is where we all have to step back and take a deep breath and say, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s get a grip, let’s do a reality check about what AI is and is not capable of doing.
Of course, we had a few more AI is going to ruin the you know, destroy humanity.
We had a few more of those stories this week where leaders like Sam Altman have signed statements about what what’s going to happen and how AI is like a threat to humanity.
I, my problem with these kind of statements is these are the people that created these systems.
So could you instead of giving us these statements, could you maybe give us some possible solutions?

[11:57] Instead of, you know, instead of saying, Oh, well, this is, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re headed for an AI train wreck. Yeah, can’t we?
I would like it if I mean, these are scientists, these are the people that built these systems and work on them for a living.

Marty:
[12:15] Do they what did they think would happen i mean they create these systems and um i feel like these statements are a little too late um i mean the the horse is out of the barn where they say that the horse is out of the barn or whatever you know it’s the genie’s out of the bottle it’s too late um, i don’t i mean and to go back to what you were saying about what did they think would happen i’m not sure they totally knew what would happen when it got released to the masses i mean I mean, you’re talking about trying to program something to do certain things, but then at the same time, you want it to have a personality of its own, to be able to act similar to what a human would act like, but not actually be a human.
And sometimes it just goes south, obviously, with all of these stories, in the way these chatbots are acting, is out of left field, some of the things they say and come up with.
So, you know, they obviously have a lot of work to do still.

Linn:
[13:13] Great, and I would like to know how, I guess, see, I believe you can get an AI chatbot to say anything.
If you want to, I guess, engage in some malfeasance or, in other words, I think if you know enough about chatbots, you can make them say whatever you want them to say.
You just have to know how to- Yeah, you’ve got humans programming them, so, you know.
Yeah, and you have to know how to prompt that correctly. Some people are really good at prompting, and prompting is where you’re actually engaging with the chatbot.
You’re asking it questions, and if you, you know, kind of make the prompt in such a fashion that you can make it say anything.
And I just, yeah, it’s an interesting, we live in interesting times, that’s for sure.

Marty:
[14:07] That’s true.

Linn:
[14:08] Yes. Okay, so we’re all waiting with bated breath for the big WWDC next week.
Are you guys- That’s true. Yes.
Everybody.

Marty:
[14:23] Yeah, I’m super excited. I mean, it’s Monday, so just a couple of few days, and we’re going to be there having the keynote, and there’s so many rumors that it’s hard to keep track of everything, but I know they’ve talked about new Macs.
They’ve talked about new MacBook Airs, maybe a new MacBook Air with a larger screen.
Right now, they’re only in 13-inch, the MacBook airs and so they’re talking about releasing one with a 15-inch screen which would be super cool I think a lot of people would really like that a lot they’re talking about coming out with AI or artificial intelligent type goggles you know where it’s like virtual reality that’ll be really interesting to see is everybody really excited about all these virtual reality things I mean I mean, I guess people are, but I don’t know, it’s just…
Yeah, I mean, you put on the goggles and it transforms like a whole room and now you’re in a whole other environment kind of a thing.
And so depending on what you want to do, whether it’s playing games or being in some kind of an educational environment or whatever, I mean, it’s kind of endless what you can do with it, you know?

Linn:
[15:38] Yeah. I wonder, I guess for blind and visually impaired folks, I don’t know how much we really benefit from them, but I guess we could if they had like image description type things, well, the glasses, like I’m trying to think of the name of the company that does the glasses.

Marty:
[15:59] Yeah, forget it.

Linn:
[16:00] Envision.

Marty:
[16:01] Envision AI.

Linn:
[16:03] Yeah, they do the glasses.

Marty:
[16:04] It’s still though, if you’re someone who’s not sighted at all, if you don’t have any vision, you’re depending on audio.
And so, unless the glasses have some other purpose, I mean, almost, well, I guess if you have the glasses on, there’s the camera and the camera is looking at what’s in front of you.
And then the audio describes what it is that the camera is looking at to you. Yes.

Linn:
[16:31] I mean, that certainly is. We’ve had glasses in the past that do that.
Like I said, InVision has glasses. I think there are a couple other companies, but we haven’t really seen wide adoption in the blind community.
I’m not exactly sure why. I know cost is an issue.

Marty:
[16:53] Yeah, cost is huge. I mean, they’re super expensive.

Linn:
[16:56] Right. But wouldn’t it be nice? Although every time I wear glasses, they just irritate me. I don’t really like wearing glasses.
I’m not used to it, but yeah.

Marty:
[17:11] Yeah, so we’ll have to see there’s lots of really cool stuff coming.
So, you know, yeah, I’m excited.
I hope they announce a 15 inch MacBook Air. I think that would be super awesome.
And there’s so many other things I can afford.

Linn:
[17:25] That would be nice.

Marty:
[17:27] Yeah, definitely.
Well, all of that news is going to hit Monday. So we’ll relay all that stuff once we see what comes out and what they announced.

Linn:
[17:37] So yep, you have to get your beverage of choice and your little snack and sit there and I’m sure that we’ll be covering, um, you know, on this network we’ll be covering.

Marty:
[17:49] Yes, we definitely will be.

Linn:
[17:50] And so you’ll have to, you know, we encourage you guys to join us for that.

Marty:
[17:56] And one way or another, we will definitely be doing it. We don’t have exact details at this point, but we will soon enough.
And one way or another, we’ll definitely be talking about all the things that happened at the keynote and the event is all through the week.
There’ll be kind of other things coming out all through the week.

Linn:
[18:12] So yes, so you have a lot to look forward to and a lot to be afraid of too, if you’re afraid of AI.

Marty:
[18:21] That’s true. All right, and on that note, thanks so much, Lynn. We appreciate it.

Linn:
[18:26] Thank you and thank everyone for tuning in. I hope you all have a great weekend.

Marty:
[18:33] Yep, everyone have a great weekend and we’ll see you next time!

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Below is the transcript.

Marty and Michael sat down with Allison from Podfeet to have a conversation about her history with tech and how though she doesn’t use VoiceOver she knows a lot about trying something to help others.

Below is a list of links Allison shared:

• Macworld | iWord 2012: Blindfolded!
• Interesting Audio Hijack Sessions
• Stream Deck — Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 3
• Making Digital Confetti Accessible

Episode Transcript:

Marty:
[0:04] Hey y’all, Marty here and welcome back to another Unmute, Michael, how’s it going?

Michael:
[0:10] I think me coming back to these Thursday episodes is starting to turn into a more regular thing. I’m doing well, Marty. And you havea friendly guest to introduce.

Marty:
[0:18] We do friend of the show and super awesome person. And also 18 years, you’re going to have to talk about that. 18 years of doing herpodcast.
Allison from Podfeet. How are you?

Allison:
[0:32] I’m doing great, Marty. It is it is such a pleasure to come on with both of you. I’ve been at least texting with the two of you in someform for as long as I can remember. I mean, I feel like it’s been a decade, but I haven’t actually checked and gone back to see how far we’veknown each other.

Marty:
[0:46] It’s been a while. I was a cast away, Michael was a cast away, and then at some point we contributed and to And then we started ourown podcast and here we are, you know.

Allison:
[1:01] I think you introduced me, Michael, if I’m right. I have an email from you on October 12th, 2017. You sent me something about a,uh, a, uh, it was entitled transmitting ducks.
Cause I was using, uh, I was using cyber duck at the time and you wanted to know if, uh, you were interested, I was interested insomething else.
And I think you sent me a recording. Yeah, that was, uh, Demasi and I recording the DM series.

Michael:
[1:23] Demasi and I are recording the DM series on our old show and I was talking to you about checking out transmit, I think.

Allison:
[1:31] Oh, was it that? Okay. Let’s see. Marty, I go back as far. Let’s see.
That might be Marty. Did you write to me about circus ponies, baby? No, that might be somebody else.

Marty:
[1:41] I can’t remember. God, that sounds horrible.

Allison:
[1:42] But everyone on my show blames you for the money you make them spend that all of us bought the Elgato Wave XLR after you dida review for the no silica cast on that.

Marty:
[1:50] Yeah. And everyone still has it.

Allison:
[1:52] Oh yeah, I mean, I love this thing. I bought one for my husband, I mean, everybody’s got one. Everybody says, Marty spent mymoney.

Marty:
[2:01] Yeah, well, sometimes less is more. You don’t always have to go out and buy the giantest, largest thing with all the buttons in theworld on it, you know?

Allison:
[2:08] Well, that’s what I wanted was something with far fewer buttons.
I wanted, in fact, this has one more feature than I’d like. I would like it to have one fewer feature.

Marty:
[2:17] Well, actually, the main thing that you love the most about that is that the XLR cable, jack and the headphone jack were on the backof the device, which was something you really, really wanted. And no other device had that. Yeah.

Allison:
[2:31] Why do I want it coming out onto my desk? Why would I ever want that? Ever, ever, never.

Marty:
[2:36] Yeah. And still it’s hardly ever do you see the ports on the back of the device.

Allison:
[2:41] Yeah.

Michael:
[2:43] Allison, let’s go back to the beginning. Marty mentioned 18 years, which is awesome.
What can you tell us about the beginning of podcasting and how things were like podcasting then?

Allison:
[2:53] Oh, that’s, that’s a fun story. Um, so podcasting started in October of 2004 and I started in the middle of May in 2005.
And, uh, part of the reason I, I brag so much about the 18 years is it’s not just that I’ve been doing it for for 18 years, I haven’t missed aweekly show in 18 years.
Now, there’s a little asterisk on that. I gotta admit to you guys, there, see, I said guys.
I have to admit to you and your audience that there’s a little asterisk.
I did four episodes, and then I podfaded, and a guy named Neil wrote to me, Neil from Florida wrote to me and said, hey, where’s thepodcast?
And that’s when I found out somebody was listening, and I came back, and since then, I have not missed an episode. So it’s actually a fewweeks after the beginning of the show, but if you back up to the very beginning.
Lila port was on the radio here and then he started a podcast and i was that i was hooked on that and so i had to figure out this thing calledthe rss feed which for people who don’t know it’s a small text file that identifies exactly everything about the show that’s gotten deliveredto you so it’s an rss file like you would read in a in an rss reader But it defines an attachment and the attachment for an audio podcast islikely an MP3, maybe an M4A, if you’re getting kind of wacky.

[4:20] And the way I figured out how to do a podcast was I downloaded Leo’s RSS feed, which was this giant text file, and I figured outwhat all the pieces meant, and I built my own, literally typing it from scratch.
And so I was typing in, okay, it says title. Okay, that’s probably the title of the episode.
Okay, let me type that in, you know. And then it got to the attachment and I was completely baffled because it said length equals and it wasthis really long number.
And I sat there looking at this number, I mean, it had just a ton of digits and I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was the number of bytes inthe file.
And it took me the longest time to figure that out. But I was very happy when Steve Harris started the app from Reinvented Software.
He has an app called Feeder, which does all of this automatically for me now.
And I’ve been using that ever since. I don’t even remember how far back it goes, but it was really shortly after I got started. But yeah, weused basically a stone and a chisel back then.

Marty:
[5:20] I would love to know what the setup you had when you first started podcasting and over the years to what you ended up now,because I know how much you care about sound.
So, if you go back to the beginning, what was it like when you first said, hey, I’m going to do a podcast and how did you decide what tobuy and get going with it. And then over the years, I’m sure it’s changed a lot.

Allison:
[5:43] Oh man you should add i could come out with like probably photos of it of where it came from what i started with i’m pretty sure ihad the titanium power book when i started.
I’m in a simple usb mic i don’t i don’t remember which one was it i’m sure i’ve written about it because one of the interesting things aboutmy podcast is every single thing you hear me say is also a blog post everything you hear me say on the podcast so it’s, It’s got, I’ve gotzillions of blog posts over the years, and anytime I can’t remember anything, I know I’ve already written it down.
So it’s in here somewhere, if I could find it.

[6:22] But I did do the classic thing of upgrading a few times on microphones.
I didn’t take a lot of steps, because my husband Steve is a huge supporter of the podcast and absolutely could not do it without him.
I mean, he does all of the cooking, he does all of the laundry, he does all the grocery shopping. That’s part of why I’m able to do this.
And he also likes buying me toys.
So I bought a Heil PR20 at one point, and then he upgraded me to a Heil PR40, which is why he has a Heil PR20 now. And this Heil PR40has been running absolutely forever.
I’ve gone through a few interfaces. We were talking during the pre-show, Marty did the review for my show for the Elgato Wave XLR.
And that is a beautiful little interface that’s just got, it’s got one USB cable and the XLR goes in the back and it’s got a big button on thefront that you switch between the mic and the headphones to turn it up and down.
And most importantly, you tap the top of it and it mutes and unmutes.
And that is my favorite device. I’ve gone through, like I had a mixer at one point where this guy Victor Cahill was really into audio. Hecame to my house and he set it up and it had so many dials and sliders.
I mean, you know, housekeeper came through and all of a sudden you couldn’t hear me.

[7:39] So I actually ditched that for Audio Hijack and ironically, Audio Hijack, I have something set wrong, it’s not working for me at thisexact moment, but Audio Hijack is software that allows you to do routing very much like a mixer would, but it’s all done in software.
And when I got that, I was like, yep, that’s the end of that mixer and that was the last day I ever looked at that.

Marty:
[8:02] Yeah, it’s awesome. how things change over time.

Allison:
[8:06] One of my fun stories to tell, by the way, is I’ve taught not one, but two people how to use Audio Hijack who are blind, and one ofthem is Demase.

Michael:
[8:16] Hmm. So that’s where he got all of his knowledge from. Pretty sure he’s told me that before, but he’s who I go to when I need helpwith loopback or audio hijack. And I love what Roku has done with their software and voice over you for sure.

Allison:
[8:28] They just I mean, it’s it’s foundational to what they do. It’s not even it’s nowhere near an afterthought. It is the basis of the way theywork now.

Marty:
[8:37] Sometimes I wish Apple would actually, I don’t know, observe what they’ve done with voiceover and the interactions and make thatpossible throughout the operating system to something really cool that they did recently is they have a piece of software that’s digital thatallows you to virtually have the triggers where you can activate a sound and it will put it into your recording so you can have you knowpeople applause or horns or whatever you want you can just load the triggers up with whatever you want.
Now, at one point, I got a stream deck because it’s all triggers.
And I thought, oh, man, this is going to be so much easier to be able to activate things really quickly on the fly just because you have thebuttons right there.
And the problem that I had with it was that the software is not accessible at all. So the device became completely useless to me. I couldn’treally do anything with it.
And so now what those guys did was they made this software and they made it so it’s accessible and that it works with the Stream Deck.

Allison:
[9:52] To be clear, you’re talking about Ferrago that Rogamiba make?

Marty:
[9:57] Exactly, that’s exactly. I could not think of the name of the software, but that’s exactly what it is.

Michael:
[10:01] I cheated, I looked it up.

Marty:
[10:03] You too.

Allison:
[10:04] Yeah. Mm-hmm.
So they, so Rogamiba made Ferrago work with the Stream Deck?

Marty:
[10:09] Yeah, just in this last update, they redesigned the software and put out a new version of it. And one of the features is that it workswith a Stream Deck now.

Michael:
[10:16] So you can trigger your sound effects with the Stream Deck, which gives you tactile buttons you can feel.
Because the Stream Deck software is not accessible with VoiceOver and Intuitive.
So I ended up with Marty’s Stream Deck and we’ve been playing with BitFocus.

Allison:
[10:33] Another thought, have you looked at a better touch tool with Stream Deck?
Because I know people have completely replaced the Stream Deck interface with better touch tool.
So if that’s accessible, that might be a better way for you to actually use the Stream Deck.
Like they build all the buttons with better touch tool.

Marty:
[10:49] And of course, I don’t have a Stream Deck anymore because Michael has it.
So you’re going to have to test that out and see if it works.

Allison:
[10:58] There was something else I wanted to tell you. Oh, one of my favorite things, and I just love RogaMiba so much, I was on ACBradio and we were talking about how the accessibility of the RogaMiba software, and I brought up one of my favorite things is that whenyou enter your license key, they throw confetti on the screen.
And as I’m describing it, I realized, oh my gosh, you guys don’t get to see the confetti.
It should really make some sound. And so I wrote to Paul Kaphasis, the CEO of Rogamiba, and I said, why doesn’t it make sound for theblind people?
What’s wrong with you? And he wrote back, he’s like, oh my god, you’re right, I should do that.
And then he forgot about it for a really long time.
But that turned out even more funny because he wrote this fabulous blog post referring to me telling him about this idea and how he forgotto do it.
And so it became this amplified message that they have now put it in.
You hear applause and happiness when you enter your license key.

Michael:
[11:55] That is awesome. So you mentioned you started on a power book.
I think that’s what you said. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So your show has an ever so slight Apple bias. And I think that’s what attracted Marty and myself in the beginning because I started using.So my first experience was an Apple 2e.
My school was cleaning them out.
I am young. I’m only 35. So my school was cleaning out their Apple 2e’s and they said, Michael, do you want this?
And we had an extra echo, which was a external hardware synthesizer that you can attach to the Apple two week.
And so I said, yeah, let’s, let’s, uh, take that home and I’ll play with it.
I don’t remember what happened to it, but I went to windows and then I switched over to a Mac book in 2006 with tiger because that’swhen voiceover came onto the Mac.
And I’ve been off and on. I always come back to the Mac, although I do real, I play in both worlds, but I find it interesting that you’reYou’re an Apple centric podcast that reviews and talks about accessibility importance.
Can you share a little bit about how those discussions come up?
Cause you’re not only about accessibility and that’s what I really like.

Marty:
[13:03] No, but I will say though you it’s in your DNA and I know this because I saw a very funny post from you just a couple of days agowhere you were wearing a clockwise t-shirt, but you explained, oh, I have my clockwise t-shirt and I’m got short curly hair with glassesand I was like, see, it’s in your DNA.
You explain everything so that even if someone couldn’t see, they get an idea of what it is you’re showing off, you know.

Allison:
[13:29] So you’re talking about in the alt tags. I like to throw in Easter eggs for you sometimes too. Not super often, but every once in awhile I’ll just do something goofy.
But you know, this is a problem with Mastodon. With Mastodon, it makes it obvious that there’s alt tags and now the sightlings are readingthe alt tags. So they’re not secret Easter eggs for you guys anymore.
Their regular sightlings can see it too. I was kind of disappointed because I had kind of a riddle going except I had to explain it, the image,I had to explain it in alt tags and then everybody just read the alt tags and they figured out what I was was talking about, I was kind of sad.
But it is, that is my way of saying it’s really great that all tags are front and center in Mastodon.
Definitely. In answer to your question, when I was 11 years old, I read the book Follow My Leader by James B.
Garfield. And it’s a story of a little boy who’s playing with fireworks with some friends and he’s blinded.

[14:29] And he ends up learning braille, he ends up getting a seeing eye dog, he goes to a blind school where he learns how to navigate witha cane.
And I was fascinated by this, and on page 46, 47, and 48, they showed the braille alphabet.
I happen to know that because I’m holding the book in my hand as I’m telling you this.
And I was fascinated by this, so I went and got a piece of cardboard and a punch, and I made myself a braille card.
And so it’s like you say, in my DNA, I was like, this is like a secret code.
I want to learn this too, you know.
And so I’ve always been interested in assistive tech. You know, it just seems like a fun, there’s so much fun to be had.
So when I started doing the podcast, I realized that I got a lot of feedback from people who said, by the way, I’m blind.
And I started realizing that I had a lot of blind friends now because of the podcast and then started learning about, you know, hearing aboutvoiceover and what it meant.
And so in, let me see, I brought the video up and I can give you these links if people are interested. In 2012, I did a tech talk at Macworldup in San Francisco and I did it blindfolded.

Marty:
[15:39] Oh, I remember this. Yeah.

Allison:
[15:41] I, so I taught myself voiceover on the, on the iPhone and then on the Mac.
And it was, the iPhone’s like super easy, right? you just slide your finger around, double tap, everything, you know, it either works or itdoesn’t.
There’s not that much to it. The Mac’s really hard though. It’s really hard.

Marty:
[16:02] I know it’s a deterrent. A lot of people who are losing their vision or who have lost their vision, they stream to the iPad or to theiPhone because not only do you have to learn how to use the Mac, but then you also have to learn how to use voiceover.
And for some people, it’s just too much. They’re not techie people and it’s overwhelming and too overwhelming.

Allison:
[16:26] I think there’s just so much variability on the Mac.
When I did my presentation, I nailed it on the phone. I practiced this thing probably 400 times.
I mean, I had a very narrow set of things I was going to do.
I was going to create a calendar invite, and I had a specific person I was going to invite, and it executed perfectly.
But I did the one thing you should never do right before a presentation. I changed something.

[16:54] I decided literally right before I went on stage that it would be easier to open the keynote presentation if I had it on my desktop.
And I got it stuck to my cursor and I couldn’t get it off.
I don’t know. I still don’t know what I did, but no matter what I did, it was just like opening, closing, opening and closing, opening.
It was like somebody with glue on their foot stuck spinning around in a circle.
And my husband kind of yelled at one point because I was starting to just open random things or just open up my screen. He was like, youknow, you might open some personal documents here.
So sadly, I did have to take the blindfold off for a minute or two, and then I put it back on for the rest of it.
But it was really fun to exercise my brain and try to learn it to where I could actually execute some maneuvers.
That turned into, now that I know, and I would put me as like a low intermediate, like I’m I’m not, maybe I’m a little above bunny slope,but I’m pretty low on the skill set.
But I can look at an app that I’m reviewing, and I can very quickly tell you it’s not accessible.
Whether it’s goodly accessible is another story. I don’t know how to do a lot of the trickier stuff.
Never understood what the rotor is to this day, but I can tell if the buttons are labeled, I can tell if you can open menus, or if somebody’sdone something stupid and done something with a graphic.

[18:16] I love doing that because I can tell you whether you should waste your money on it, should you even look at it?
But I also then will just shoot a note off to the developers to find out if they can fix those things.
Because a lot of times they’re close, but they’re just missing some fundamental piece. And a perfect example, I did a review of an appcalled Hush that removes background noise.
And it’s an amazing app by Ian Sampson. And I realized that it had a drag and drop interface. You had to drag your file into the center ofthe screen.
I thought, well, how the heck would you do that?
It’s probably hard in voiceover. So I went on Mastodon, I asked people and a bunch of people said, yeah, that’s a real pain that doesn’twork very well.
So I wrote to Ian, and he said, oh, this is great feedback.
I’m going to work on this. I have a couple other people who know voiceover helping me. And just a couple of days ago, he sent me a newversion said, okay, I’ve got the drag and drop part working. It’s not all working right yet.
But he actually changed his software because I knew enough to just ask and say, hey, can you fix that?

Marty:
[19:17] We were helping someone just yesterday, actually. And it was a Slack thing.
And he had downloaded the Slack DMG.
We got him to open up the DMG. And then he said the same exact thing.
It is so hard to drag and drop with voiceover.
And what we ended up saying was, well, once you get the DMG open, and you get to the thing where it says, drag the app to theapplications folder, just copy and paste it.
And he went, oh, that’s much easier. So you could copy and paste it if you ever have to.

Allison:
[19:53] Actually, we should give him a shout out. That’s Ed Howland, who’s a castaway. He’s super into our Programming by Stealthpodcast, which is one of the shows I do.
And he’s been super helpful. Great nerd, man. He’s he’s real nerdy. He’s awesome.
But he was really struggling with that piece of it. You know, I just think it is something he could have just opened the terminal and said,said, uh, you know, move through install Slack too.

Michael:
[20:15] We, we talked about that after we went through everything and, and we’re like, yeah, we could have just did that too.
Um, and Marty, he did get Slack working and it did get opened.
He had to, uh, uh, enter a code or click a link or something that Slack wanted him to do, but that screen to tell him that wasn’t reading verywell, and that’s where sometimes accessibility, just making a slight change or, or, uh, making some alteration can make your app accessibleor your tools accessible to anyone.

Marty:
[20:42] Right.

Michael:
[20:44] That fixing it starts with the conversation with the app developers.

Allison:
[20:49] Yeah yeah the nice thing is i’ve never had anybody just go no.
Right everybody i’ve talked to is gone you know at worst case they go well i’ll think about it but i never get anybody who just says no.
People seem to be interested in making their app better and one of the reasons i did.
I did a talk at the Podcast Expo.
It was Blog World Podcast Expo at the time. And my talk was how to increase your audience size through accessibility.
And because that’s where I look at it is why would you want to put up a wall that keeps anybody out from listening to what you’re reading,what your content is? That doesn’t make any sense, right? Yeah.

Marty:
[21:31] But yeah, you’re right. It was.
And he was an awesome guy. We had a lot of fun with him. He was great.
So we’ll keep in touch. We got his info. So, you know, we let him know if you ever need anything to let us know, and we’ll do what we canto help him out.
So, yeah, he’s a great guy.

Allison:
[21:44] I really appreciate you guys hooking up with him and helping him.
Now, you did that through Zoom?

Marty:
[21:49] Yep. That’s interesting. Well, actually, I cheated a little because he did email me his phone number and I called him first.
Okay. And then once I talked to him for about 15, 20 minutes and kind of got the lay of the land a little bit, then we got him in Zoom andgot him sorted out the rest of the way from there. Okay.

Allison:
[22:06] And you used Zoom so that you could hear voiceover?

Michael:
[22:08] Yes, so what we did, and I’m going to tell you what we did and what we can do in the future because of a new tool that I keepmeaning to send you, but we’ll tell you about it now.
So what we did with Zoom is he had headphones not plugged in so we could hear voiceover and what voiceover was saying, which is anadvantage to using a screen reader is you can troubleshoot over the phone.
And then we directed him with the keystrokes for what you need to do to go to the places is to do it and it’s just complete hands-off, useyour keyboard, don’t use a mouse and we were able to help copy the file over and stuff like that.
That works and for the longest time, remote desktop access to be able to remotely control his computer, just using as an example and wedid not do that yesterday, has been not obtainable for a completely blind individual using voiceover over the time that voiceover has been athing.
So there’s a new app from NUMA solutions called RIM and you can get it, getrim.app.
And what that will let you do is as a completely blind person, you on a Mac or Windows can remotely access someone else’s computer.
And it doesn’t matter if they have a screen reader on or not because it comes with its own screen reader.
So it works like TeamViewer, except for instead of you using TeamViewer, you’re using RIM so you can control that person’s computer.And that’s another way to help people troubleshooting if they have access technology.

Allison:
[23:35] Oh, that’s really interesting. Yeah, one of the things I did a blog post about listing all of the, what I consider interesting, audio hijacksessions that I’ve created to solve interesting problems.
And one of them I worked out for a conversation with Shelly Brisbane to allow two people to have have a conversation in, at the time itwas Skype, where both of us could hear each other’s voiceover.
So she was demonstrating things in voiceover and I was able to hear voiceover through the, I was able to record our conversation with thefull digital high quality audio of voiceover along with her voice.
I should send you guys that session.

Marty:
[24:22] Yeah, that’d be cool.

Allison:
[24:24] I gotta find it.

Marty:
[24:26] So here is a question for you. since you look at apps and test them for accessibility and things like that.
Someone who’s going through the app store looking for an app or maybe someone recommends something, what would be, you think, thebest way for someone to determine whether there’s an app, and this could be on the Mac or iPhone, iPad, whatever, that works or doesn’twork with voiceover?
And one other thing.

Allison:
[24:55] Trick question.

Marty:
[24:56] I have my own opinion, but I’ll ask you first, of what you think could be improved in the future so that people would know whetherthe app that they’re trying to download, install, will or will not work with VoiceOver. But I wanna hear what you have to say.

Allison:
[25:13] Two very different questions.
The answer I would probably give, and I don’t know if this is a good answer, but in my experience, I have seen that Apple Viz tends toreview software on whether it’s accessible.
So I send people to Appleviz. If it’s not there, I don’t know what to tell them.
Is that a bad answer?

Marty:
[25:33] No, that’s a good answer. Okay.

Allison:
[25:36] As far as the other thing, you’d have to come out with a standardized rating system that people had to pass a certain level of test withtheir app to get it some sort of number, right?
To be able to say, because there’s accessible and there’s, yeah, that’s kind of accessible.
And there’s really accessible with, the Rogue Amoeba’s at the top and other apps a little bit lower down. So I would think it’d be almostlike a safety rating of, you know, you get a seven out of 10. I don’t see how you could do it otherwise, because the developer could go,yeah, yeah, it’s accessible.
I didn’t break the API when it said to leave it alone and it would be accessible.

Marty:
[26:15] And so developers who are really on their game and who really pay attention to that, they take the extra time and in the descriptionof their app, they say it works with voiceover.
Not everybody does that. Few people do that, but I’ve ever seen it.
Yeah, there, there are, uh, some that do it.
It’s not real popular, but those who do it, it’s much appreciated.
I will definitely say, um, what I thought would be really cool.
And I, I’ve talked about a lot of people with this and they’ve always had kickback because they say the process would take too long to getit approved, But adding a space somewhere in all of the things that they put, you know, in the app store, does it work with voiceover?
Yes or no. You know, I mean, then you would at least know straight away whether it does or it doesn’t, but yeah, but there isn’t a yes or noanswer.

Allison:
[27:11] It’s a gradient, right?

Michael:
[27:13] Yeah, it could work with voiceover, but none of the buttons are labeled, but because voiceover has the image recognition, voiceovercan recognize Recognize those images, but is that app accessible then?

Allison:
[27:26] Yeah, let’s give the hush example since Ian is open minded and fixing it is sure all his buttons were labeled.
They’re all great. You just couldn’t use the app because you could if you were really good at this, you know, figure out how to do it.
But I wouldn’t have called it accessible, even though all the buttons were labeled, but he may have looked at it and thought it wasaccessible because he didn’t know that that piece wouldn’t work easily.
So that’s why I think it’s a continuum, Marty.

Marty:
[27:53] Yeah, they also say a lot of people, um, that the process to approve the app would just take way too much resources.
And so that’s why they don’t do it. Yeah.

Allison:
[28:05] I mean, you’d have to invent a way to do that and I don’t know how, how you would do that, but it seems like a reasonable goal.

Marty:
[28:14] I would think so.

Allison:
[28:15] But I mean, there’s also, uh, we can’t forget things like color contrast for people to, you know, that would be a thing.

Marty:
[28:23] Oh, yeah. And there’s a lot of other accessibilities, you know, you could go down a whole rabbit hole. So maybe that’s why theydon’t do it. I don’t know.

Allison:
[28:30] I don’t know. That’s a good, a good thought, though. I would definitely support trying.

Marty:
[28:36] Yeah, definitely. I would, uh, I would second you on that.

Michael:
[28:40] So I have an easy but maybe hard question for you, Allison, to transition.
In your 18 years of not missing a week of podcasting, what would you say has been the most unique opportunity podcasting has presentedyou with?

Allison:
[28:56] I did a talk at MaxDoc a few years ago that I called it a make your own adventure game.
And I was really proud of this. I figured out that in Keynote, you can add buttons to a slide that change to a different number slide.
So like on slide one, you could have a button that takes you right to slide 32.
So I put five pictures in the middle of the first page, and depending on which one the audience selected, it would take you on an adventurethrough a bunch of slides showing you how I ended up standing in front of them, or how a certain event occurred.
So for example, one of them was a picture of a total eclipse of the sun.
So if you press that button, it always started with, Alison picked up a microphone.
That’s the first slide in every one. the way I end up seeing a total eclipse of the sun is a different path through the slides than how, forexample, I got to know Gene Roddenberry’s son, the maker of Star Trek.

[30:02] I like that set of slides because it kind of described a lot of what opened up in my life because of podcasting, all because I picked upa microphone, the Total Eclipse one, for example, was, I was on the Mac Roundtable and on the Mac Roundtable was Don McAllister.
Got to know Don McAllister, started working screencasts online for him.
I do video screencasts for his tutorial service.
And then through him, he recommended me to be one of the speakers on a Macmania cruise in Australia to see a total eclipse of the sun.

Marty:
[30:36] That would be awesome. I’d love to go on a cruise like that.

Allison:
[30:39] Yeah, it was really cool. They stopped doing them. Unfortunately, when Macworld fell apart, it was Macworld sponsored, But it wasduring the day when there was nothing to do on the ship, you know, we don’t gamble or anything like that.
So during that time, they had, we had classes.
And then when we would go ashore and go snorkeling or scuba diving or whatever it was, we would, we would all disband and go do that.And then you’d come back and go back to class again.
And I absolutely loved it, but they made me do nine, no, eight 90 minute talks on that Whoa, that’s a lot. Unique talk. That’s insane.

Marty:
[31:17] I mean, You accepted it, and you obviously did it, right?

Allison:
[31:21] I got a free cruise to see a total eclipse. Of course I said yes, and I would do it again, but I mean, I had to start working on thoseslides in February, and the thing was in October.
I remember being so stressed out, a friend of mine went shopping for clothes for me because I needed new clothes, and I just literally hadno time for seven months.
But Don told Neil, the guy that ran it, said, don’t ever do that to anybody ever again. It was too hard.
But that was certainly a big event. But again, if you go, Allison picked up a microphone, ended up on the Mac Roundtable.
On the Mac Roundtable was Adam Christensen, who I believe is the first Apple podcaster, and he’s still going. So he’s been going longerthan I have, but he misses a lot of episodes. So anyway, he was.

[32:09] At.
The sale of one of the new iphone so i don’t remember which one is called iphone four and he was in line and a guy overheard his voiceand came running up to and said oh my god i love your show let me introduce myself my name is i ride riding very.
And so it is like you know i was like oh my gosh this is amazing and adam says rod says look i listen to all the mac podcast i love all oftheir all great invite all of them and all of the podcasters I want them to be my guest at the screening of the new Star Trek reboot.
And we’re going to do it on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles.
Oh, I was invited. David Sparks, Victor Kahiao, Adam.

[32:52] None of them came except for me and Steve, my husband, Steve and Don McAllister flew over from England to go to it.
It’s like you guys live in Orange County. I mean, it’s like a 20 minute drive to the harbor to get on the boat to go over to the island. And soit was ridiculous that they didn’t go, but we ended up getting out to hang out with Rod.
I ended up getting him on my show. He is a lovely, lovely young man.
He’s just absolutely delightful.
And then at Macworld, I ended up having, I used to do a, have a party for the Nocella Castaways, a cocktail party at a place next to the, tothe theater there.
And I invited him to come and he not only showed up, we had set up a, so everybody was thrilled to get to meet him because, you know,minor celebrity and all that, big celebrity in our nerd world.
We had set up a laptop with a camera on it and had an open Skype session for people to call in who couldn’t be at the event. And Rod spent45 minutes talking to those people.

Marty:
[33:53] Wow. That’s amazing.

Allison:
[33:55] Just, yeah, you know, so those are the kind of things that just happened because I picked up a microphone. You.

Marty:
[34:02] You’ve made it lots of friends doing your podcast from all over the place.
And I think that’s pretty cool. You’re such a people person.
So I would probably say…

Allison:
[34:13] I don’t know my own neighbors. I’m serious. I know the names of the people directly across from me on either side, and I don’tknow anyone else on my block.
But I know people across the world.

Michael:
[34:23] I can relate to that. I don’t know any of my neighbors. I don’t even know their names.

Allison:
[34:27] Yeah, I mean, that requires talking in person, like going to a party or something.
I don’t know. I doesn’t sound right.
By the way, I should qualify my statement about 18 years without missing an episode.
The show has not missed an episode, but people stand in for me when I go on crazy vacations, like going to Australia for a total eclipse orwhen I went to Antarctica recently, Bart Bouchat’s from England, from Ireland, whoops, he’s going to kill me for that.
And Alistair Jencks from New Zealand are probably the primary suspects who carry the load when I’m gone. And it’s so I can’t take fullcredit for it.
It takes the support of everyone.

Marty:
[35:05] But now with all this new technology we have out there, we can just make a virtual you while you’re gone and make like it’s yourpodcast and it’s really you.

Allison:
[35:13] I did that. I had, I lose my voice pretty much once a year or so, sometimes twice.
And in February, March, I lost it just continuously. I mean, it just was not coming back and it was getting worse.
And so I went back through a bunch of episodes and I taught 11labs.io my voice.
And since I script everything, I was able to have 11labs.io read my podcast for me that week.

Marty:
[35:42] And it seems that it happens always around the beginning of the year kind of thing with that loser voice thing.

Allison:
[35:48] Yeah, i’m thinking I should go back through my through my podcast, uh through my scripts to see How often I say it and whatmonth it is.
Maybe I could just prepare for it Now you have 11 labs just planning.

Michael:
[36:00] Yep You’re gonna record my podcast for me because you know, I tell people with this ai and technology that we are right now Weare at the worst that it will ever be which means it’s going to just improve from here on I don’t remember who said that, but it’s somethingthat’s just stuck with me. This is the worst.

Allison:
[36:14] Oh, Michael, that’s, yeah, that’s fabulous. This is the worst it’ll ever be.

Marty:
[36:20] Yeah, he, without telling me, made a virtual me like it was him and I. And it was pretty funny.

Allison:
[36:26] That’s awesome.

Marty:
[36:29] So you had a book you wanted to talk about.

Allison:
[36:31] Oh, I did already. That was Follow My Leader.

Marty:
[36:34] Ah, there we go.

Allison:
[36:34] When I was a little kid.

Marty:
[36:35] Cool.

Allison:
[36:36] I recommend it.

Marty:
[36:38] We’ll have to see if that’s around anywhere still to get it.

Allison:
[36:41] Yeah, it was written in 1955. I’m old. I think there was a reprint.
I actually don’t have my original copy.
I talked about it to a friend of mine and she went and found me a used copy of it from, let’s see, 1985, which is now, what is that, 40 yearsago?
So anyway, it’s a fun, you know, young adult book.
But what should I learn beyond what I can do now? Do I really need to learn that rotor thing to be helpful to y’all when I’m trying toreview something?
Or can I just keep skipping learning that?

Marty:
[37:18] You probably can get away with not learning it.
It’s a lot of people customize it because people who don’t know how to use the rotor real well, sometimes they’ll do something and then allof a sudden it will speed up their voiceover.
And it’s all of a sudden talking really, really fast and they don’t know how to fix it.
Or it’ll turn the volume up on their voiceover because the volume for voiceovers, the same as everything else.
It’s a separate volume. So you can actually turn up or down the volume on voiceover by itself, Siri, you know, and the same with the wholephone.
So I tell people if they have issues with those to remove it off the rotor so they don’t continue to turn the volume way up loud or way downlow or speed up the voice.
But I also will tell you, they’ve changed it a little bit where you can go in now and you can customize the rotor so that you can do adifferent gesture than trying to take two fingers and turn your phone like all weird, you know, in a circle, you can do like two fingers andswipe right or left and it will go through the rotor.
So there are ways that they’ve made it easier to use now, but people still don’t like it. It’s not the easiest thing to figure out.

Michael:
[38:32] So I guess my question for you, Allison, is what is it about the rotor that you don’t understand?
Is it the concept of using the rotor to change the granularity of navigation or is it actually doing the rotor gesture?

Allison:
[38:46] I don’t even know how to turn it on. Okay.

Michael:
[38:48] So the rotor is always on by default when voiceover is there, you always have things in the rotor. And so.
As Marty was saying, you can change the gesture to change between the rotor.
Um, and, and I know that’s probably making a little confusing, but, uh, so for, for example, you can navigate by character word or line byflicking up or down with one finger with voice.

Allison:
[39:12] So are we on the Mac or the iPhone?

Michael:
[39:13] This is on both, but we’re talking about the iPhone right now. Okay.

Allison:
[39:17] Cause I mostly use voiceover on the Mac cause that’s where I’m usually testing apps.

Michael:
[39:21] Okay. Okay. Well then you don’t need to worry about the rotor on the Mac.

Allison:
[39:25] Okay.

Michael:
[39:26] Yeah. If you’re thinking about the iPhone, it’s more advantageous to learn about, but the rotor, I think you can.
So, so the rotors, when you press V O U like uniform, I don’t know if you’ve ever done that, but that brings up a list of all the links on apage, or you can tap your right arrow and that’ll give you all the headings on a page or all the controls on a page.
So you can get those all in a list view while using voiceover.
And that’s what the rotor is, is you’re just changing between what am I going to navigate when I’m using up and down arrow keys after Ipress VO plus you.

Allison:
[39:56] So is that mostly for navigating the web or does that work inside of apps?

Michael:
[39:59] That that is mostly in the web, but as you know, a lot of times apps can also pretend like they’re fake web pages too, which means itcan work that way inside Okay.

Allison:
[40:09] But its main function would be in the web. Yes.

Michael:
[40:15] If you were to want to, so I think you’re doing a great job with how you explain things with voiceover.
If there was one thing on the Mac that I would tell you that could help either make you more productive with voiceover on the Mac or helpyou with, uh, my favorite thing, which is automation on the Mac while using voiceover, uh, spend some time in the voiceover utility withVO plus F8 after voiceover is enabled. And then go down to commanders.
And I believe I’m doing it right now. So I can make sure to tell you the correct keystroke because I’m all about keystrokes.
Command eight will actually take you to the commanders tab inside there.
And then you can use, uh, you have three different commanders and I recommend looking at the numpad commander because withnumpad, if you have a numpad, you have access to putting all of the buttons on your numpad to perform different actions while runningvoiceover, but there’s also a dropdown. What was that?

Allison:
[41:10] I don’t have a numpad.

Michael:
[41:11] Oh, okay. Then nevermind. Ignore me. Shoot.

Allison:
[41:15] I was writing all these great notes down.

Michael:
[41:16] I was going to say, cause what you can do is go in and trigger shortcuts or trigger automations just from your numpad, just byhitting it.
And then you have modifiers cause you can use control option, command shift and zero as different modifiers. So you have six differentlevels of commanders you can use from the numpad.

Allison:
[41:32] What’s a commander.

Michael:
[41:33] So commander is, um, we’ll use it in, in reference that you can relate to without a number pad.
In the same section under here, if you choose keyboard commander or track that, but we’ll say keyboard commander and you turn that onwhen you hold the right option key down specifically, and you can pick what that key is, but we’ll say the right option key and tap the letterS with voiceover by default, this open Safari or tap the letter M this will open mail, but you’ll see on here, you can pick all your letters andthen there’s a dropdown with hundreds of different actions you can make VoiceOver do, including for example, if you wanted to, youcould have VoiceOver turn on or off its visuals with the commander.
You can explore different parts of the screen, but under custom commands, there’s an option that says run automator utility, you can runshortcuts.
And so commander is do one thing with VoiceOver and a modifier to do something else, either in VoiceOver or in macOS.

Allison:
[42:34] So I have to say the one one thing that stops me in my tracks is when there’s hundreds of things you can do.
I need there to be like three. I could learn.

Michael:
[42:45] I get it. Yes.

Marty:
[42:46] Like, let me give you a couple of things that might make using voiceover a little bit easier. OK, the first one and a lot of people don’tactually realize this.
But when you’re using voiceover and you’re navigating around, There’s what’s called the VO keys and that’s control and option.
And then if you use the arrows, you know, you navigate around and if you use those two keys and the space bar.
It’s selection. Right. Now, it gets a little crazy when you got to then interact and un-interact because now you’re trying to do finger twistergame when you’re trying to do all that.
So you can use the cap locks key in place of the control and.

Allison:
[43:29] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I believe in the caps lock key as as nature intended.
I learned when I was in sixth grade, and you will never pry that caps lock key out of my cold dead fingers.

Marty:
[43:43] No, it helps you in the voiceover because it takes away those two keys.
So when you go to interact, you just do caps lock shift and down arrow.

Allison:
[43:51] And when you want to have caps lock anymore.

Marty:
[43:54] Yes, you do still there.

Allison:
[43:55] How do you how do you type NASA?

Marty:
[43:58] Just type NASA. I mean, it doesn’t take away this. It doesn’t change anything.

Michael:
[44:01] So you’re missing an important part, Marty. You, instead of just pressing Caps Lock once, double press it. So Caps Lock, CapsLock, and then you type NASA, Caps Lock, Caps Lock, turns it off.

Marty:
[44:15] There you go.

Allison:
[44:15] Ugh. Ugh.

Marty:
[44:17] The other thing I was going to say was you could use your trackpad.
If you use your trackpad, then it’s swiping like on your iPhone and you can do it that way.
So a lot of people who have issues with being able to use all the key commands, what they do is if they have a computer like a desktop,they buy the magic trackpad and you can use that.
If you have a laptop like you do, then you can use your trackpad and you can then do all the gestures with swiping and all of that stuffinstead of doing all of the key commands. Okay.

Allison:
[44:50] Okay. You got me there. Now that that one I’ll get along with.
A lot of people use the reason I had such a vehement response to reassigning the caps like he is a lot of the automation nerds specificallyfor keyboard maestro all think that the best thing in the world is to reassign the caps lock key so that you can, it basically means mashdown all the other keys.
And I just, no, caps lock is made to do caps lock. And I just can’t imagine, I’ve had so many arguments with people about this, like, how doyou type something in all caps?
I had to write Wonderboom 3 last night, or last week, about 45 times, it’s all caps. How do you type that all caps without going shift W,shift O, shift N, shift D, shift Oh my gosh.

Michael:
[45:39] No, you need a caps lock. Yeah. So I like you. I have to have that caps lock key in some instances for sure.

Allison:
[45:47] I have, when I tell these stories, I realized that I just sometimes like to learn something that maybe not everybody else knows how todo.
When I was in sixth grade, I had the Hong Kong flu and pneumonia at the same time. So I was sick for a long time.
No, it wasn’t, but I was laid up for a long time. My mother gave me her 1945 secretarial typing book and an old, you know, real old-fashioned typewriter back then with it, like before the Selectric was even invented, kids, if you know what that is.
And I taught myself to type and I was sick so long that I started going through the book a second time learning to type with my toes, butthen I got better.
I just like to learn stuff. Wow. Yeah.

Marty:
[46:30] That is, uh, would be a sight to see. I’d love to see you type a blog post with your toes. That would be interesting. Yeah. I haven’ttried it.
How would you do the caps lock?

Allison:
[46:39] Yeah, there you go. Actually, I wonder, was there even a caps lock on this?
I don’t remember. I think there was. I know when I leave.

Michael:
[46:49] Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Allison:
[46:50] Go ahead. Follow my leader.

Michael:
[46:51] I was just going to say, and, uh, and I was going to start to wrap it up and say that follow my leader is available on bookshare. I’vedownloaded it, and this will be a book that I’m going to read in the very near future.

Allison:
[47:02] Oh, cool. It is a young adult book, but I liked it. It meant a lot to me.
Eventually, my mother ended up going blind, and so she was awesome.
When she started to lose her vision, she immediately went to Braille.
I remember she came home, and she took all of her cookbooks and threw them in the trash, and she said they told her to do that becauseshe says it’s just going to depress you because because you’re not going to be able to read them anyway.
So just clean it all out. So she bought a bunch of gadgets. She was a real gadget hound and loved accessible tools. She wasn’t very good attech, but she really enjoyed it.
And I ended up going, I go to the CSUN Assistive Tech Conference every year and get to learn about all the coolest new tech gadgets forpeople with assistive needs.
And I think it’s really cool. You guys get all the fun stuff.

Marty:
[47:51] Yeah, I’m going to try and make it to CSUN next year. I didn’t get to go this year.

Allison:
[47:56] Oh, well, hang out. I do lunch every year with somebody.

Marty:
[48:00] All right, we’ll definitely do that.

Allison:
[48:01] Whoever’s up for it.

Marty:
[48:02] I’ll have to drag Michael down and we’ll all go.

Allison:
[48:05] That’d be cool.

Michael:
[48:06] There we go.

Marty:
[48:08] Awesome.

Michael:
[48:09] I really appreciate you jumping in with us today and hopefully you had a little bit of fun. I’m going to let Marty wrap it up and thankyou again for joining.
And I’m glad to know that it was October of 2017 I first emailed you.

Marty:
[48:21] Yep. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it and love having you on. So thank you. Thank you.
And why don’t you tell everyone how they can find you wherever you want them to find you at?

Allison:
[48:35] Absolutely. The best place to go is podfeet.com. P O D F E E T.com.
I designed the name of all my shows and my website to have zero SEO, no search engine optimization possible. You’ll never find me.
Podfeet, my husband says I have feet like pods, and that’s why it’s called podfeet.com.
But you can find me on mastodon at podfeet at chaos.social.
And I don’t do much on Twitter, but spam people with blog posts and such.
But you can still find me there at podfeet.
And as I like to say, everything good starts with podfeet.com.

Marty:
[49:08] Awesome. Thank you so much again. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Allison:
[49:13] I really had fun.

Marty:
[49:14] All right, everyone. Thanks so much. much and we’ll see you next time.

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