Editor's Page: Closing out the Summer with AccessWorld
Dear AccessWorld Readers,
Welcome to the fall edition of AccessWorld! Before we dive into what this issue holds, I wanted to draw your attention to a podcast we recently published with our Public Policy and Research Institute team. They recently released a report called Innovation for Access, which analyzes data regarding AI-powered visual descriptions, captions, and AI-driven augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) from our spring AI research. Members of the team discuss the analysis with us, breaking down the most important points; I highly recommend giving it a listen. You can find the episode here or through your favorite podcast listening app.
In this issue, I've also included a new article category called Editor's Experiences. Frequently, I find that I begin using a technology or diving into a specific area of accessibility in my personal life and think it would be interesting to share with the AccessWorld audience, but don't have the bandwidth for a full, comprehensive review. This new category will allow me to share those experiences with you: what I find works and what I find doesn't, without the expectation that the article will cover any and all possible aspects of the technology. In this issue, I've included two of these articles.
This month, we begin the fall edition of AccessWorld with an article by Steve Kelley regarding the EZReader Suite of Windows apps. EZReader is designed to make computer use more approachable and straightforward for seniors and others with low vision who are new to using a computer.
Next, Janet Ingber reviews the Be My Eyes app, now available on Mac. If you're unfamiliar, Be My Eyes, and specifically Be My AI, allows you to take a picture, receive a description from an AI model, and ask follow-up questions about that image. Be My Eyes has now come to the Mac with a focus on the Be My AI feature, specifically in regard to describing information and screenshots from your computer.
Next, I introduce you to the pitfalls of PDF accessibility. PDFs are a ubiquitous file format and, if created correctly, can be quite accessible, but there are many pitfalls of which to be aware to avoid major accessibility issues.
Next, we have two articles in our new Editor's Experiences category. The first serves as a reflection and update to our 2019 piece on Dungeons & Dragons accessibility. Over the past seven years (time flies), I've taken part in a full Dungeons & Dragons campaign and currently play in three separate campaigns. In this piece, I revisit Dungeons & Dragons, as well as tabletop role-playing games in general, exploring what has changed in the space in regard to accessibility from my perspective.
Finally, I have recently been designing my own small utilities as well as creating an accessibility mod for a completely inaccessible game using the magic of vibe coding. If you're unfamiliar, vibe coding describes the act of working with an AI model to program on your behalf, and at this point, this can be done even if you have little to no programming experience. The article takes you through my experiences using vibe coding over the last six or so months, the strides the industry has made in regard to the capabilities of vibe coding agents from my point of view, and the way I personally use my QA and design experience when working with AI, even though I am no programmer myself.
I hope that you enjoy this issue, and thank you for being an AccessWorld reader. We'd love to hear your feedback or comments on the articles in this issue. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so on our social media channels. We announce AccessWorld across LinkedIn and Facebook and would love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Aaron Preece
Editor in Chief, AccessWorld
American Foundation for the Blind