AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 35: Checking Out the Perkins Braille Bloom

Kim Charlson and Meghan Gagne of Perkins breakdown the Braille Bloom — It's not just your old-school brailler anymore

Episode Notes

Welcome back to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. We've been gone for a couple of weeks as we kick off summer in the heat with a hot new product from Perkins. This week, Tony and Aaron are welcome Kim Charlson and Meghan Gagne of Perkins. Kim is executive director of the renown Perkins Library and Meghan is the director of products for braille innovation. Together, they breakdown an innovative new product from Perkins that makes that classic analog brailler — the one we all grew up with — a high-tech brailling machine. The Perkins Braille Bloom is an affordable device that anyone can attach to their Perkins brailler, which will allow you to then connect it as a wireless braille keyboard. It fuses old with new, and presents an affordable option for those who are looking to have connectivity and still type in braille.

You can learn more about the Braille Bloom at: www.perkins.org/bloom

AccessWorld is produced by AFB Studios at the American Foundation for the blind. A companion to the quarterly publication AccessWorld Magazine, the podcast dives in each episode to news and reviews on all things digital accessibility and inclusion. Aaron Preece is editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, and Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB. To learn more about AccessWorld Magazine, and to access over 26 years of back-issues for free, visit: afb.org/aw. And for more details on this program, check out the podcast page HERE!

Produced and edited by Tony Stephens at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland with digital media support from Kelly Gasque and Breanna Kerr.

Questions and comments can be sent to communications@afb.org. To learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), or to make a tax-deductible gift to support our work, visit us online at: www.afb.org.

AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 35 Transcript:

Introduction: A-F-B. You're listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of AFB Studios at the American foundation for the Blind. To learn more about AccessWorld, visit us online at afb.org/AW.

Tony Stephens: And welcome everybody, to a new episode of AccessWorld, a podcast on digital digital inclusion and accessibility. Tony Stevens, here with the American foundation for the Blind, joined as always with Aaron Priest, our editor in chief of AccessWorld. Aaron, how you doing? Hopefully not sweating it out too much this summer.

Aaron Preece: Not too bad. How about you, Tony? It's been pretty good here.

Tony Stephens: You're lucky up there in the mountains of West Virginia. It hit hard down here in the Chesapeake. So we are sweating it out. But the nice thing about podcasting is you find yourself in a nice cool studio and we have two cool people here in a much cooler part of the country, hopefully calling. Well, not calling in, I guess, dialing and zooming in whatever we say for the interviews. But we are very much lucky to be joined today with Meghan Gagne, the director of products for Braille Innovation with Perkins out of Waterton, Massachusetts. And with her joined is an old friend who I always love to connect with and a former Miguel Meadow winner herself, but in her day job when she's not fighting crime at night, it's Kim Charles and the executive director for the Braille and Talk Talking Book Library at Perkins Perkins, one of the institutions in the United States. I can't think but not think about Perkins as we go into 250th anniversary of our own independence and thinking about all the work Perkins has done since the early 1800s, I guess, in creating more independence for people that are blind or low vision, which is exciting. So, Meghan, Kim, welcome to AccessWorld. It's nice to have you both joining us.

Kim Charlson: Thank you.

Meghan Gagne: Thank you so much for having us.

Tony Stephens: So we are very much excited to be talking about some new technology. In looking through what we're going to be talking about today, you know, two people that are really in the know and on the development side of the Braille bloom, which is I think when I think back to independence for me as a child in my school days and walking through my halls, Aaron, Kim wondered. Kim, probably you as much. Aaron, I don't know if you had to do this or not. Oh yeah, Much younger than me, but hauling that Perkins brailler along in the classroom and knocking out kneecaps in the hallway. Cause those things were built like tanks back in the analog days when we would clickety clack our way through our six cells across the Page.

Tony Stephens: There's been so much exciting technology over the years in terms of making Braille more accessible and making it easier for people to access it, but also people easier to write and communicate with it. And so we are going to kick things off with, I think, Meghan, because this is a new product, the Braille Bloom that Perkins has release east and you know, just sharing a little bit about what, what is the Braille Bloom. And, you know, we're going to be talking about. I think it's important, Kim, when we'll, you know, loop you in as well in, you know, in just a moment, I think, as well, to talk really about its, its impact and, and the possibilities that it can maybe yield for people to sort of still embrace, you know, a real sense of literacy through, through those that read braille.

Tony Stephens: But tell us a little bit about what is the Braille Bloom, Meghan.

Kim Charlson: Sure.

Meghan Gagne: Thanks, Tony. So the Braille Bloom is a new device. It brings braille to life on a screen immediately and accurately. So it's actually designed by the experts at Perkins, and the Bloom simply clicks onto the bottom of your Perkins Classic Brailler. To your point, those braillers are built like tanks. They are from the analog days. They stand the test of time. We have 400,000 of them around the world. And now by connecting the Blum to the bottom of those braillers, the Blum now becomes a connected device with a phone or a comp. And as a person is brailling on their brailler, it translates that braille to English text on that connected device.

Tony Stephens: It's completely fascinating. As much to say that. And Kim, for yourself, the Perkins Brailler is probably one of the most familiar things to anybody that has gone through learning braille. Right. It's one of the first things that, when you really start to get into it, and start to write it is it is one of those iconic things in the blindness space, probably one of the most iconic things in our space up there, probably with a white cane some folks may think of, you know.

Kim Charlson: Definitely, definitely. And one of the things I think about when I think about the Bloom is that it, it takes a treasured device that most blind people use, have used, learned, but maybe don't use it as much anymore. And it connects it to the age of the Internet because it provides that Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity to the brailler. And it functions as a braille input keyboard. Basically, once you attach the Bloom, which is really pretty easy to do, you have to remove the bottom cardboard board, the bottom of the brailler there's 11 screws. You take out The. The whole Bloom kit comes with a little screwdriver to remove those screws, put them in a safe place, keep them around in case you want to reattach that cardboard someday. But the bloom is well made. It's very solid. It has guides to kind of help you slide the front and back corners. You slide them up into the bloom and it guides you. And then you press down with your brailler on the bloom, lining it up, and it clicks into place. And that's when the magic begins, where the device actually begins to communicate with whatever Bluetooth device, smartphone, computer that you have, a tablet to make that kind of communication possible. And I'll hand it off to Meghan because she is the expert on the design manufacturing of the bloom itself.

Yeah.

Tony Stephens: With that, like. Yeah. How did. How did this come to be thought of as a thing like. Like, without having to change the Braille? The idea that someone could add this to their existing Perkins Braille or that they don't have to invest in something that's, you know, completely new and foreign to them.

Tony Stephens: Where did that seed even get planted?

Meghan Gagne: That's exactly it, Tony. So because we have such a strong, solid install base around the world, we knew that there were users. And as you've discussed, where the Perkins Braille is the staple device, it's either how they learn to write Braille or is still how these users are writing Braille. And we didn't want to do is put a burden of learning new technology on these users if the. If the Perkins Braille is still the primary device or put a financial burden on the user to have to buy a new device that would connect them to the Internet. And that was really the origin of how can we support our user base today who have been using the Perkins braille either from 1951 or just got their first Perkins brailler in 2026 and get them connected as low as cost as possible. So Dan Roy, who invented the Perkins brailler, he actually works at Perkins. He runs brailler operations here. He started to put this together in his brain. He understands the mechanics of the Perkins brailler because we manufacture it and make it and thought we could do this. And so what he did was design the Bloom to fit perfectly onto the bottom of the board. As Kim mentioned, it's easy for a prod developer to say it's easy. It just clip. But it was really important that we put it through testing and that Kim. We got feedback from Kim's team To ensure that it properly was easy. Not just product developer easy, but user easy. And what we really spent the focus time on, aside from the industrial design piece of it, was designing the on device translator. And the reason that part is so important that this means if I were to type in my brailler right now, the Bloom immediately can capture those keystrokes, do the translation on the board itself, and then send that, that converted translation over connected device. So we don't rely on any software on the laptop or the phone or the tablet to do the translation for us. And because of that, it allows a user to use it however they want. They can connect to the Internet and fill out a web form or send an email or join a Google Doc, or you could just open a word doc on your computer to take some notes, or you could send a text message on your phone. It really is up to the user. And so that onboard translation is where we have spent so much time perfecting and ensuring that we use all the Perkins expertise, the hundred years that we have of how to teach braille and use that to inform and build out that translation engine.

Tony Stephens: So you literally would just like, it would be like connecting to any Bluetooth keyboard in your device.

Meghan Gagne: That's 100% correct. Yep. It just turns the Brailler into a connected keyboard without having to learn any new technology. You just continue to use the brailler exactly as you would today. The Bloom has a switch on it that allows you to choose if you want to be in contracted or uncontracted Braille. So the user can decide what they want and then just continue to braille. It will still output the tactile braille on paper while also translating it and sending it off to the connected device.

Tony Stephens: I mean, that's incredible that you all were kind of able to, I don't want to say crack the code with doing that, but just the idea of getting it to just be that. I mean, it's such a mechanical device, the, the physical brailler like I'm thinking of, you know, it's, I have an old royal typewriter from the 40s as well and, and it's, it's such a tactile experience in that typing experience.

Tony Stephens: Here's a silly question.

Kim Charlson: That's right. It, it is. And the other thing that's really nice, I mean, you mentioned earlier about, you know, carrying your Perkins brailler down the hallway. Well, the. Once the Blum board is connected to the bottom of the Brailler, there is a rechargeable battery in it. So you can't, you don't have to stay. It can only work in one spot. It's got to be plugged into electricity. You can disconnect the power. You can move from place to place just like you used to do with your Brailler, but also have that flexibility that it's going to allow you to connect in a different room to a, maybe a different device, a tablet or a smartphone. So that's, that's definitely something that is. Is nice to be able to move it around and, and you know, it still weighs what it's going to weigh. It didn't go on a diet. It's still the same Perkins Brailler. But you do have that added flexibility. The, the boards, you know, a little bit more weight, but not, not that much. A little bit more than cardboard. But, you know, you get so much more power for that, that new bottom board.

Tony Stephens: And I was joking at the beginning about the weight of it and kneecaps and things like that, but it is, you know, I still have mine from 1988 and it's still, it is built to last for sure. Right. And I'm not going to say the name of some of my expensive Braillers that I've bought. You know, there's one I have particular that, you know, you spend a lot of money sometimes on some of these other devices and they're plastic, they break, it's, you know, the physical use and yeah.

Meghan Gagne: Yeah, that's exactly right, Tony.

Meghan Gagne: And we wanted to make sure the Bloom could connect to a Brailler whether it was manufactured in 1951 or manufactured in 2026. That was really a part of ensuring that this Bloom could connect any Perkins Braille or any Perkins Classic brailler to the Internet. So that way if, if you've been learning on your bloom from 1951 and that is still your trusted device, you can now become connected. And that was really important for us. We think about the outreach with the United States as well as globally and the regions that we have been able to send braillers to.

Tony Stephens: I was going to ask earlier a silly question and then Kim, you got serious on me, but I'll go back to it just real quick, like backspace functionality, like things. I mean, it pretty much does whatever a keyboard can do in that navigation sense. I'm just having flashbacks as well to how I would have to backspace scratch the dots down on my Braille paper and then, you know, with that, you know, sort of paper now.

Kim Charlson: Exactly. When you hit backspace, it will backspace on the connected device and eliminate that letter. So you're still going to have your letter there. You're still going to have to scratch it out on your piece of paper.

Tony Stephens: But I don't even need to pay for that.

Kim Charlson: But it disappears on. On the Bluetooth device, you can make your correction just move right on.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, I mean, if I'm trying to type a note to a friend, I don't. I don't need the papering anymore.

Kim Charlson: You don't. Absolutely. You still have to return the carriage when it goes ding at the end of the line, but, you know, so it'll keep moving. But you don't have to have the paper if you don't want to have the paper.

Meghan Gagne: And as we think through how this will work in a classroom, Tony, if you are a child in a general classroom, you can both create the tactile braille paper, but also now be sending the English text of your braille paper to your teacher's tablet so they can see in real time and give you feedback in real time on how you're brailling out the assignment, even if they don't know braille themselves. And so that's why we wanted to make sure we could work with paper, without paper, with whatever connected device they so choose, so that we are really allowing this to meet whatever the user need is in whatever scenario they are in. And, Tony, I do need to apologize. I believe I. When I said Dan Roy invented the braille bloom, I might have said he invented the brailler because I was speaking so quickly. So that is one correction. Dan Roy is the inventor of the braille bloom, not the Perkins brailler.

Tony Stephens: No, I figured, yeah, he would. I think he would have hit his pension a long time ago.

Meghan Gagne: So I apologize for that misstep. I didn't even catch it myself.

Tony Stephens: No, I think I got no correction. But yeah, I mean, Aaron. I'm just trying to think. Aaron, you know, to bring Aaron in, like, experiences in school and things like that. Because you're much closer to school.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. I remember being in school and I would take all through, especially elementary school, I would, in part of middle school, high school, I would oftentimes take tests and things in the 90s on my Perkins brailler. But then I would have to send that braille off to my TBI to translate it and then hope that, you know, they got the translation right and didn't give me a wrong answer because they didn't translate it correctly or something like that. So being able to output that so I can actually see and read what I'm looking at and know what I've typed very intuitively, but also be able to output that print or digital document for a teacher would be really helpful. I'm personally very curious how, essentially, how does the. How does it work? Like, the mechanics of it? Does it. I guess it's where it's attached to the bottom. Is it. How is it picking up the key presses and things like that? And does it pick up, say, the scroll wheels on the side? And does it. How. I'm just curious how all that works.

Meghan Gagne: If you can say, yeah, absolutely. So I can start this and then, Kim, please feel free to jump in. So the way that the brailler works with the bloom attaches the bottom, and we have the sensors aligned with each of the keys on the Brailler. So it'll work for the backspace, the enter space and as the keys are pressed down. So for each key strike, we capture the keystroke up and down, which allows us to then capture which dots were pressed, and then we handle that translation in the embedded firmware that's on the bloom. Because of how we capture it with the down and up strike, we are actually able to support speed brailing as well. So you aren't limited to brailing at a certain speed. We can capture the strikes whether you are brailling at a slower pace or a faster pace. And then, as I mentioned, we have this toggle on the side that allows us to determine if you are brailing in contracted or uncontracted. And it is just a little mode switch. You press it once and you'll hear one beat for uncontracted. You press it again, you hear two beats for contracted. So you'll know which mode that you are in.

Aaron Preece: That is very cool.

Tony Stephens: It is extremely cool. I mean, just. I mean, figuring that out, do you think this is maybe even going. I would think this could even bring more people to the Perkins brailler as an option. Like, you know, for people that maybe, you know, maybe they had one in school, maybe when they were learning, you know, when they were learning Braille, maybe after, if they went blind later in life and needed to learn it. But. But have you all got a sense that people have made, you know, I mean, my kids love my turntable and I really get into the turntable. Like the idea of the analog

Meghan Gagne: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: becoming fashionable in our community again. Are you getting the sense that this is kind of embracing the people to not be afraid to have their Perkins out on their desk and stuff.

Kim Charlson: Oh, I, I think it. I think it is, and I think it will, as it gets to be more recognized that it exists. Because sometimes people are concerned that they don't remember enough of the braille to get it right. And it's a great way to learn. We've had so much success, you know, talking about and demonstrating it with parents who have young kids who are learning their Braille. And, you know, my, my mother tried to learn braille. She just was not particularly good at it, but she really wanted to. But she wanted to support me, you know, however she could, but it just wasn't going to be Braille. It wasn't something she took to. But, you know, having a device like this, a parent can sit with their kid, they can see exactly what they're writing, they can coach, they can encourage, they can insist they finish their homework, whatever they need to be doing, and have a good understanding that, you know, Tony, I see a mischievous little streak in you that you might have said, I'm all done. And, yeah, how is your mom going to know that you're all done? So the braille bloom might give parents that little extra confidence that their kid actually did finish all their homework.

Tony Stephens: So I'm not going to lie that, you know, the fact that you can have only, you know, one braille page to a parent looks like a lot of stuff on that page and in reality, it's about what, a third or a quarter.

Meghan Gagne: And to your. Your other question, Tony, about sort of the nostalgia piece of it. I was at a conference and I spoke with a woman who I learned on her Perkins Brailler, and that was the only device that she continues to use today because the device that she is most comfortable with. And she got emotional at what the bloom could now do because now she could continue to fill out web forms by using her braille, something that she wouldn't have been able to do before. And it doesn't require her to learn a new technology or buy something expensive. But it was really the having to learn new tech that was concerning. And this doesn't put that burden on her and allows her to continue using the device that she loves.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Wow. I was talking Kelly on our team, Aaron, we were talking the other day. Kim knows Kelly and she was telling me, I think it was an Instagram with someone was on a subway in New York and they had a conference call, but attached to their smartphone was an old analog headset. I'm putting my. My pinky to my Mouth and my thumb to my ear right now like an old telephone handset that you can plug into your phone like a USB charger, I mean on, you know, in the USB charging port and use it as your microphone for your phone. And it's just making me think again about these old, again going back to the retro kind of becoming cool and hip in a way. But now I just, I, I can't wait to get, I'm, I'm guessing you all will be at NFB and ACB. Will Perkins have a booth at the exhibit halls at the consumer conference in this summer showing off the Bloom?

Kim Charlson: So there's so many conferences out there to go to. And right now I would say that the majority of our outreach and marketing is targeted at teachers of the visually impaired, educators, parents. But down the road that is the next phase of our outreach is adult Braille users and introducing the Bloom to them. But there's just so many exciting possibilities out there with the Bloom and with educators and you know, we all live through the pandemic. And just imagine if you were a 12 year old kid learning braille and your, your teachers were on zoom with you and trying to work together to teach braille remotely has been a real challenge. And there's not enough Braille teachers out there to, to do that kind of work to, to go to everybody's homes and teach them braille and having the ability to connect, have a Bloom connect to the Internet, go into a shared document space, maybe a Google Doc and be able to write and the teacher can prompt the student and they can study together and the teacher can provide immediate feedback based on what appears on their smartphone or tablet.

Tony Stephens: No, it's definitely a greater sense of inclusion in the classroom, which is enormous because Aaron, I mean you were mentioning a minute ago, Aaron about, you know, we used to have to take our, what we wrote and then get it transcribed. You know, for me, my, my TVI didn't come in every day of the week.

Aaron Preece: Well, I was thinking about that, that being able to, not to, to be able to continue using what you're familiar with because I know I had to trans. I transitioned either it was somewhere in like middle school, maybe high school, my TVI wasn't around as much so couldn't do that type of thing. And I had to shift to a digital format to submit my assignments and learn, in this case learn a QWERTY keyboard. And then even when I would use Braille devices because I was thinking about the, even though a lot of the Braille like note, takers simulate a Perkins style keyboard that's still very different from the feel of a Perkins Brailler and being able. So I know I personally always sought out devices that had QWERTY keyboards because that was the other type of keyboard I personally was familiar with and could use efficiently. But being able to continue using that Perkins keyboard in transition and like the real Perkins keyboard, so to speak, and something that you're familiar with, you're used to how just the physical aspect of it. And if you're efficient with it, being able to continue using that and also use it for digital content would be really useful. I know I would have loved to have something like that when I was younger, for sure.

Meghan Gagne: Yeah. Aaron, I think. Oh, I'm sorry, Tony.

Tony Stephens: No, no, go ahead.

Meghan Gagne: I was going to say to your point about being younger and having a Perkins brailler before you potentially hit the later stages of schooling in the education system. Today in the United States, most children in a classroom are given a tablet in kindergarten because that's how they handle their work. Everything is digital. They collaborate on class projects digitally. And so now if you are in elementary school and the Perkins Braille is what you're learning on with the bloom attached to it, you can in kindergarten and first grade and second grade be connected to your peers, your classmates, tablets, and be part of those class assignments. Because as you're brailling on your Braille, the text is going to their tablets or to your teacher's tablets. So the idea is even at this younger age where the Perkins brailler is the stable device that's being learned on, we can get you connected. And Tony, to a point you made earlier, really try to build that inclusive classroom setting.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, no, it's fantastic.

Kim Charlson: And the price point is affordable. It's not the expense of a whole new brailler. It is $300 to get the board with all the translation software built in and everything and to make that device, you know, the next generation Perkins Brailler, which is just, you know, the 21st century Perkins Brailler is really phenomenal, I think.

Tony Stephens: And that is very affordable and very cool. It is. And it is. I have found the more I use a Brailler now because like you were talking, Aaron, I mean, the QWERTY keyboard, I got lazy and it was harder for me to read Braille. The more I wrote, the more I returned. It helped when I went over to ACB, the American Council of the Blind, which is where I had a chance to know Kim, when you were back in the president days and at ACB. But that was where I kind of dove back into it and embraced it because I was using Cordy in a lot of places otherwise. And I mean, I'll still use Cordy now, but when. When I'm needing to braille stuff in the office and things like that, like it's the physical act of writing it that also makes me better at reading it, you know, because I find I'm, you know, I feel more comfortable now through writing when it comes time for me to actually have to go back and read it as well. Because we can get lazy in this digital technology space. But, you know, I think it's important for folks that have had a chance to, you know, be exposed to braille and learn braille. You know, the more you use it, the better you are at it. Almost like speaking a language in a sense.

Aaron Preece: Just thinking from like a note taking perspective and like a talking about like writing and like a retention. I know personally, I always felt more like I was writing whenever I would type in braille because you are forming the. You, you're forming the characters. And for. So it feels like there's more of a connection or I don't know if there's any, you know, research on that or how that if there's any kind of one to one with that, but I could see that being the case and just my gut feeling would be that, that that might be beneficial to. To have that more versus, like you say, using the qwerty.

Tony Stephens: I think a lot of reasons why people still use manual typewriters that are like the real writers is you need to think. You know, traditionally with the. The physical braille, you would need to think and be more cognizant of what you're literally putting down so you don't have to go back and you know, with a physical traditional typewriter that's like the, you know, Remington and Royals from back in the day, you'd have to get white out and white it out with us. We were talking about scratching the dots out and backspace, but it is. There's a certain economy you learn, and I think that makes you a better communicator when you're actually thinking versus, you know, when my kids are texting me and they're just spitting whatever out in random letters that are supposed to mean things. What does this mean? So it's an interest. It's a. It's a fascinating pairing of the two universes and bringing the Perkins into the digital world. So, I mean, Meghan and Kim, congratulations. This is A really cool device. And wherever it may be, if it's, if it is at a teacher conference or like an AER or whenever it does come to NFB or I mean 300 bucks, we can get it now. Like I could could probably just. Yes. You know, make the plunge now and you know.

Meghan Gagne: Yeah, you have to, if, if folks who are interested in buying it, you just go to perkins.org/bloom and you can order it directly on our website.

Tony Stephens: Well, that's awesome. Well, you know, Kim, Meghan, thank you both so much for coming and sharing. Sort of, you know, really modernizing, bringing into the digital revolution the, the Perkins brailler, which again is like one of those most iconic things for those of us that, that have grown up in, you know, you know, with braille. And it's going to be exciting to see kind of what other innovations you are thinking of up there in Perkins and Waterton. So congratulations.

Kim Charlson: Thank you, Tony. And you know, their innovation is in Meghan's title for a reason because you know, she's a, she's an innovator and Perkins is an innovator. And I think you'll, you'll have opportunities to see other kinds of companion products, perhaps those kinds of things coming because I think this is just the beginning of what I really hope will be, you know, more of a revitalization of the Perkins brailler and the use of braille. Everything we can do to promote braille and revive braille to that status with blind people and make it easier to learn and not such a mysterious thing will all be to the good of braille literacy.

Tony Stephens: I'm an old dog that still struggles with ueb, so I think even from that vantage of knowing where I'm making mistakes in real time will help me so well. Congratulations Meghan and Kim.

Meghan Gagne: Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Aaron.

Tony Stephens: Let us know when the next cool thing is coming out and we'll, we'll bring you both back on. This is cool. It's wonderful catching up.

Kim Charlson: Certainly will. Thank you.

Tony Stephens: So folks again can go to perkins.org/bloom to check more of that out. We'll have it down in our show notes and you can go to afb.org/AW to maybe read other innovations that Perkins has been doing over the decades of 26 years of AccessWorld and all kinds of other at articles and digital inclusion accessibility information there at afb.org/AW. So as always, thanks everybody for listening and we'll talk to you again soon.

Outro: Thanks for listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. A production of AFB Studios at the American Foundation for the Blind. AccessWorld is edited at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland, with digital media support from Kelly Gasque and Breanna Kerr. Questions or comments? Email us at communications@afb.org.