AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 36: Top 10 AT Tools Expanding Independence

Episode Notes

In this week’s episode of AccessWorld, Aaron and Tony create their own bracket for the top ten assistive tech tools that have had the greatest impact on expanding independence for people who are blind or have low vision. It’s a fitting tribute in the days leading up to our own nation’s 250th anniversary of independence this weekend, and we hope you will enjoy.

Be sure to check out Accessworld for the latest in digital inclusion and accessibility. You can also access over 26 years of free back issues at afb.org/aw.

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 36 Transcript:

Tony Stephens: You're listening to Access World, 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 Access World, visit us online@afb.org aware to just jump in and. Yeah, why not? I could. What is it they used to do before? Oh, it was when television shows would end, they would play the national anthem. Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light? It's 250 years of independence. It's funny. So my youngest son, son, Mr. Elliot, graduated the other week from eighth grade, like, going on to high school. And he's been going for the past three years for his junior high to a school here in Baltimore. We're on like a peninsula in Baltimore around the harbor. And it's where Fort McKenry is, which is where the Star Spangled Banner was written.

Aaron Preece: Oh, yeah.

Tony Stephens: Francisco Key was out on the water. And it's this for. It's a national park now. It's really cool. But his school, Francis Scott Key elementary Middle School, is only like, it's on the same street that goes into the park. It's a few blocks away before you go through the park's sort of entrance. And it was so funny the other day. So he's been going there for three years, and they played the Star Spangled Banner at his graduation ceremony. And he had never known who Francis Scott Key was. And like, how can you go to Francis Scott key as a three years and you're literally at Fort McHenry. And between them and Fort McKenry is a big soccer field called Banner Field, like a football soccer field. Big park. It's a beautiful park called Latrobe park. But they have Bannerfield, and it's like, so needless to say, they've done a lot to. To brand on the Francis Scott Key Star Spangled Banner idea, hence the name of his school. And it was like this moment at graduation, he was like, oh, finally got it. Like, yeah, it's like, yeah, you go to the school named after the guy that you know. So anyways, so it means it. Of course, now that he's gone, what good is it? But, yeah, man, here we are going into the Fourth of July weekend.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And it's July, 250 anniversary sales going on. Because when I think independence and democracy, I think affordable mattresses. I wonder if, you know, I was thinking about I was going to make some cheesy pun with the Star Spangled Banner because. But I don't know if everyone has a sense of Humor. Hopefully, folks, do. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Access world of podcasts and digital inclusion and accessibility. But, you know, the anthem starts with that. You know, okay. Oh, say can you see? And I remember when I was a kid, I would make stupid jokes around that.

Aaron Preece: Oh, yeah, well, I remember that.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. But we won't go there. But it is. Yeah, it is independence. And so welcome. I'm Tony Stevens with the American foundation for the Blind, joined here with Aaron Priest, our editor in chief of Access World magazine. And we are recording this the day before it drops. Going into the Independence weekend, there's a lot of festivities taking place. We had a huge air show here in Baltimore over the weekend.

Aaron Preece: Oh, that's cool.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, well, I missed most of it. I was here for when they were practicing, and they were literally flying right over our apartment because we're all.

Aaron Preece: That's. That's crazy.

Tony Stephens: It was crazy. Yeah. Elliot, like, went outside and he said he could see the formation of the Blue Angels. And there was some. I think like a French aviation group was also there and some other, you know, Arrow. And they had all these ships in the harbor, like tall ships, old, you know, old school schooners and stuff. So it's been a lot of celebrations going on here in Baltimore. So what's up with you for the 4th? Are you going to fireworks or anything or.

Aaron Preece: We. Yeah, in the neighborhood, someone. The city puts on fireworks over the water, which is pretty cool. I don't know if it looks like we got storms this on the 4th this year, so we'll see how it goes. Oh, man. I. I guess by the time that we release this, people will know. But if we win in the World cup, if we win our match, I think Potentially our top 32, we will be playing England. If they. I think they won. I've been kind of following it with my family, but I'm not.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. I think England's games today as well.

Aaron Preece: I mean, maybe so we might both. We might be playing England on the 4th of July, which I thought was. Was pretty funny.

Tony Stephens: Oh, that is. That is. That's.

Aaron Preece: That's.

Tony Stephens: That's cool.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, the boys have really been following it and. Yeah, so I do like soccer. The first job I covered when I was a journalist, I was a sports writer at first. This is way back in the day for a small daily newspaper in North Georgia outside Atlanta. And they put me on soccer because they're like, well, you know, basketball's too fast to kind of follow. And I like.

Aaron Preece: Do you think soccer is also just as Quick.

Tony Stephens: Soccer can be quick, but at least it's got like two to nil. Right? Right. So it's, it's not.

Aaron Preece: Oh, gotcha. Yeah. On the point side of things, I

Tony Stephens: would sit by the table and just ask, you know, there was a, it's kind of a table with, you know, the managers and the scorekeepers and just be like, hey, who got the assist? Or like, you know, I would just ask questions and then I'd be writing my story during it because it wasn't. This was before soccer was. MLS was big in the States and it was a lot slower. And you know, you would get like typically a 11 or 1 nil or 3 nil if it's a really good game. And this was like college or you know, type games and it'd be like, you know, 12 to nil or something like that.

Aaron Preece: Oh man.

Tony Stephens: So yeah, so it was, you know, you had the schools that were good at soccer and then you.

Aaron Preece: The schools that were really weren't.

Tony Stephens: Schools that really weren't. And it was just blowouts. So luckily I was at a school that was okay. I would cover a college that was okay in this town. So yeah, so we're going into independence. We thought it would be cool to talk about independence and accessibility and maybe the top 10 things that have really enabled independence the most using assistive tech access technology throughout American history. And you know, thinking of the star Spaniel banner, it is kind of the first American image. Description Audio Description it was an audio description. It's music with lyrics.

Aaron Preece: But he is literally describing.

Tony Stephens: But he's literally describing. Yeah, I mean, you know, someone could have painted a painting and I'm sure there's plenty of paintings out there depicting The Battle of Fort McHenry, the battle over Baltimore harbor and. But it is nice because it is a very image ridden kind of description and AD has been on my mind a lot lately. We've released the film. Folks can check it out@AFP.org possibilities our documentary. We had the screening at Carnegie Carnegie hall this past weekend on Helen's birthday to celebrate the launch of the film, which has open Audio Description in it. But you know, we can talk if that's in the top 10. If AD does AD make the top 10 in terms of breakthroughs?

Aaron Preece: Yeah, I could see just access to entertainment for I. It's. There's some, we've, we've talked about it on here before. I think about having access to the same, the same culture that your peers do is so important, especially nowadays. But I think just Always being able to. I know being a kid and renting my. The local blindness organization had a bunch of the descriptive video and, like, a library you could rent. And I remember renting, like, the Star wars. The first Star wars or Episode 4

Tony Stephens: Star wars and Forrest Gump, I remember was a big one in the 90s. What was the. I think the first audio description film that we had. I worked at a camp for the blind in the early 90s. Like high school, summer job and year or two of college, summer job. And what was the. It was a football film with Denzel Washington. Oh, man. What was that film?

Aaron Preece: Was it not Friday Night Lights? That was a later movie.

Tony Stephens: No, it wasn't Friday Night Lights, but it was really big. Oh, it's gonna drive me crazy now. I wish I could ask. I got. Yeah, so that. That I remember was the first one and. Oh, this is going to drive me crazy. All right, hang on. I gotta ask Claude. Hold on. Okay, hold on, everybody. Let's see if Claude can tell me, because this is. Yeah, this is gonna be like. All right, hang on. What was the film with Denzel Washington that was about football? Question mark,

Aaron Preece: Stop. Send button. Stop.

Tony Stephens: All right, let's see what we got here.

Aaron Preece: Remember the Titans?

Tony Stephens: Remember the Titans. Yes.

Aaron Preece: Oh, I do remember the Titans. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: How could I forget that? That was a good movie. Yeah, that was like the first one. I remember that was, you know, and it was cool because I was never a big sports person because it's hard. It was hard to follow. Sports is hard to follow when you, you know. Which is why I say I like soccer, because it was action packed. But, you know, and it's kind of.

Aaron Preece: I think we've talked to Roy on here before about, like, how it's made and all that type of stuff.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Preece: And how much of an. Somewhat of like an art form it is. I remember one that always stood out to me is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, they're showing NDA this, like, staff thing. He has to put a medallion on top of. And he's showing him with his hands, like, holding his hands apart to show him how long the staff needs to be. And just. Just right in between that bit of dialogue, the audio description just says 5ft, and then it just. And then the. The dialogue picks up right after. Just to give you a, like, the efficiency of that. I was always. Even as a kid, I was like, wow, that's. That was really well done.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Very clever way to do it.

Tony Stephens: When it's done right, it is an art and a Science, for sure. Yeah. That's one thing about the film we've really been pushing. I've been on a lot of podcasts promoting the film, and I think the thing that's really been interesting for folks is the open audio description, how there's no any track. It's for everybody, but it is an art. So Tana Howery did the ad for the film and she was great, and Roy actually and his team did the writing for it. But yeah, it is an art. So. All right, well, let's. Let's jump in the top 10 because that's definitely one of them, right? Audio.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, for sure.

Tony Stephens: Which was kind of born in the 80s, but. Yeah, yeah, like the audiobook. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Preece: Kind of in a similar vein. But that's.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, well, that's. That's probably even bigger. I mean, you know, not to like, brag, but AFB was critical in the birth of the audio, the talking book, back in 32. We are trying to think of what are we going to do for the 100th anniversary of the talking book. But yeah, for sure, the talking book.

Aaron Preece: I always wonder too, if that gave more access, like, from a production side. I wonder how that compared to creating Braille books at the time. Because I know, like, if you look at Helen Keller's letters from back then, she would talk about, like, she would have books like commissioned almost and sent to her in Braille.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And so I wonder if, like being able to just the more wide, widely available talent to make audiobooks and just like the product, the production side, I wonder if that made not just also making it available to, say, someone that was, you know, blinded in World War I and had maybe hadn't learned Braille yet or something like just the. Both access on the giving access to consumers from the medium side, but also on the production. The amount of books you could produce side. I imagine that would be.

Tony Stephens: Well, just think of the economy. Like, I remember. I remember where did I stay at? And they had Harry Potter and Braille and it was like a whole wall, you know, it was. It was a shelf or two in Braille because what you get 26 lines and 26 characters or whatever across on a page, you know, you don't get that much even with grade two at the time. You know, it was still a ton of real estate for paper and the. The shipping involved. But then you could have a book on, you know, vinyl records, two. Two of these LP records that were created and, you know, they could be mass produced. So you're right, it wasn't like you had to commission someone to Braille it

Aaron Preece: in the transition to tape with. I remember having the, you know, you had the big yellow NLS player

Tony Stephens: that no one would. No one would ever want to steal that. So. Yeah, I always love the NLS players because you could put like regular tapes in it and play them like really slow or really fast and then, yeah.

Aaron Preece: Mess with the sliders for sides three

Tony Stephens: and four and it would be in reverse. That was always awesome. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And they. It wasn't common, but at some point I ended up getting like a little like Walkman type thing that could play those tapes. And I remember listening to some book on that and I thought, man, this is like. It was almost like the size of what, like a big smartphone size and.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, well, like the. The Sony Walkman kind of.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. Somehow could play those kind of slower

Tony Stephens: tape, variable speed thing. Yeah. So talking books. All right, so ad. Ad and talking books, they'll be like the England USA match. We'll see who wins out at the end.

Aaron Preece: At the end.

Tony Stephens: Just which is better, Audio description or talking book?

Aaron Preece: Same kind of in the same idea with the Kurzweil ocr in the 70s.

Tony Stephens: Oh yeah. Ray Kurzweil's creation of the first scanner. And I had one of those. It was like the Kurzweil 1000 in the 80s when I. Well, I didn't have it but like our, you know, team room, the room for where the, you know, students that were blind would go to. To get services. We, you know, mainstream school. And we had a tenor teacher coming two days a week. But we had a. One of those things and it was like the size of an old vcr from the 80s. Like big. It was big. It was like today like the size of a printer. You might have on your desktop a little bit longer and. And it would take forever to scan and it would do this ding. Like to let you know, like percent why and it would just. You just sit there and wait and wait and wait and you have to go through and clean it up. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And it probably. I mean, knowing how. How it still kind of struggles with stuff if it doesn't get a good view how it must have been back then to how deep, like how clear the. The print had to be in the font and all that type of stuff.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, if you can go on the paper like. Yeah. Reading very fonts. I mean, it definitely got better and gave birth to like that. Yeah, that. That was massive as well. The optical character recognition ocr, just the

Aaron Preece: level of access you would have not only to books but just like in a work environment to any kind. Because I mean everything, everything would have been on paper back then. I would think for the most part you have computers were around but not. But I would think in like an office environment most of the stuff you're going to be doing is coming off a printer or like it's being typed or something.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. And it couldn't do handwriting, but it could. It could definitely. I remember spending a lot of time in libraries when libraries started to get those. Like you'd have a talking. Usually where the talking books in a library was. There'd also be like a room like in, in New York. I remember the, the library on. What is it on 20th street down in Chelsea. Chelsea Library where you get like talking books and stuff. But you'd also have the like a little room where you could go scan documents in and so you could scan a book in and save it to a. To a floppy drive kind of thing and save it to disk and then take it out. Yeah, those were so. Yeah, definitely, definitely in the top five. The, the Kurzweil scanner ad Audio Description yeah, what other, what other stuff? When we were plotting this out, what other things were big, you think for you that would revolutionary in a sense for access technology making our life.

Aaron Preece: I was thinking like screen readers and screen magnifiers but that's such a big category and that I feel like there's the milestones there where you have the first screen readers and like the like the sort of DOS command line style computers in the 80s then you have the first. Yeah like GUI capable screen readers Magn. I would imagine like magnification then would

Tony Stephens: have been really important too like JAWS access with speech. Yeah there wasn't really zoom text and stuff before when it was all command line DOS prompts but there was Jaws. I remember my Jaws. I got what my. The first time I got jaws was in 88 I guess. Wow, I'm old. But anyways. Yeah, so 88 got jaws and it came with like like 20 cassette tapes you'd listen to and it was like TED Hinter like reading to you. How to basically explaining to you how to use this application that was still on dos. Like there was no functionality. There was. I mean there was a voiceover to jaw, you know, PC Jaws cursor I feel like. But it wasn't like we hadn't gotten Windows 3 one yet where you started to get like the you know, the more GUI based graphic user interface based. So yeah, definitely the screen reader and

Aaron Preece: was it just the evolution of that too?

Tony Stephens: Yeah, I remember I have a vague memory in third grade of going and someone had the apple to E or C and it. It was talking and that was, that was the first time I ever heard a computer talk. And it was. That wasn't the War Games movie with Matthew Broderick. I don't know if you ever saw that movie or not. It's from like 1980 about a computer. It's actually interesting War Games now. I watched it again a couple months ago with the whole AI concept. Now where we are with AI, but it's a film that came out like around 1980 with Matthew Broderick and it's about. He's like a really brilliant teenage kid that hacks into this computer and he thinks he's playing games and it turns out to be the, like NORAD in Colorado. Like the. You know, or why wherever they are, Cheyenne or whatever it is like inside this bunker, like this nuclear computer to take over the nuclear launch.

Aaron Preece: He's. He's, yeah.

Tony Stephens: Playing games against playing and. Yeah, yeah. And he's playing these war games and then he. The computer ends up starting to think it's real and he gets dragged in. But the computer talks to him on his computer. And that was like mind blowing. And then when I heard it, something similar through the Apple, you know, pre Macintosh days. But it wasn't like usable. Like there wasn't like a screen reading programs yet. Almost like a novelty or maybe you could do some basic function type stuff.

Aaron Preece: But.

Tony Stephens: But yeah, it was so premature until I guess Jaws was Jaws, probably the first widely distributed screen reader. And then I remember Outspoken came not long after that. Berkeley Systems.

Aaron Preece: And that was the first visual. Like I don't know what you'd call like. Yeah, for.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Like on computers where you would use

Aaron Preece: a mouse and have a. Yeah. GUI or GUI based systems. Because we talked to Josh about that.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, we did. Josh Melee in the episode Folks can Listen to. Wow. It was like two years ago we talked. No.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Maybe March 25th when his book came out, Connecting Dots. Josh Melee, he's now with Amazon but he was at Berkeley Systems back in the day. And that's what I had because I was a Mac kid and I had Outspoken on the Mac I had Jaws and on a college computer. But my Mac I got Outspoken and that was really cool.

Aaron Preece: I would say a milestone we were talking about yesterday is the, the first like free screen readers were you had. Narrator. Like early version people are probably used to. Narrator. Now on Windows 10 Windows 11, where it's a full featured screen reader and you could, you could use it as your screen reader if you really wanted to. Where narrator. On Windows, you know, XP or something was like you used it to install your screen reader. You had to have someone else set up the computer for you because it wouldn't talk during the setup and that sort of thing.

Tony Stephens: The early days of narrator. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And in we were trying to point it pinpoint when it came out. NVDA on Windows was like the first full feature. You could do everything. Free screen reader for Windows. And it seemed like voiceover on Mac came out around the same time frame, probably like the mid 2000. We were somewhere around the mid 2000s. 05.06 and I know that was a game. I always had Windows PCs, but that was always, that was a game changer for me. Being able to put NVDA on a thumb drive. You know, I used Window window wise back in the day being able to put when NVDA on a thumb drive and like go into the computer lab with my, you know, in high school and just like access the computer and do the, whatever activity we were doing and just like participate. And that was always super cool. Or help my, you know, help a teacher with a computer problem or something. I could just, hey, let me put an NVDA and I'll help you figure this out or something.

Tony Stephens: I have a closet that has four or five old Macs in it. And I want to say it was 05 because I remember I got a Power book and Outspoken was like discontinued. I was really bummed. But then I think that it, you know, was mute because voiceover was coming out around that same time. Who's it? Mike Shabanik and folks at Apple that really broke through with that. So I want to say like 05 was the first time I remember coming across it because I got this Power book and then that I dropped the power book and it broke. And so they replaced it with a MacBook that like 0506 was right when the. Right when the MacBook came out. And that MacBook I still have, it's an old black 13 inch, weighs like five times as much as my MacBook Pro I'm using now. But it, but yeah, it had, it had the voiceover. And that was because I don't think folks realize that, you know, Jaws was incredible and it still is a great program, but it was at a cost. So you either paid out of pocket or if you were lucky, you can maybe getting services through vocational rehab if you're in college, you know, your local VR agency, you know, they would get you a license or maybe your employer would get you a license. But just the fact that you could walk in and like I could go into an Apple Store and turn it on and like check it out and it was great like that. And the same with NVDA for Windows that, that when we began to make access technology available, built in for free or just a download, that was enormous.

Aaron Preece: And they kind of really set the, set the trend for smartphones by including voiceover on a smartphone. Because even before then, if you wanted to, we were talking about it having just again, milestones in screen reader technology. Having those old. The Nokia, like the mid-2000s Nokia phones, the Windows Mobile phones. You'd have talks for talks and mobilespeak.

Tony Stephens: But those were like mobilespeak on my. I had a Moto Q Windows Phone. Yeah. And it had mobilespeak.

Aaron Preece: And even then those were a few hundred dollars and you would get like discounts through your carrier or something. I remember getting mobilespeak specifically because I could get a discount through AT&T for it.

Tony Stephens: I remember that. Yeah. And, and it, but it would, it, it was so painstaking in that it took a lot of the memory up. So it would like crash with like when I would try to do Windows mail, like, you know, and send an email, it would just. It was so slow and would crash a lot. Like there wasn't that much I could do with it. I could go through some file file folders and I could slowly send emails. But yeah, it was the, you know, what was great was when they started to put in like the iPhone, iOS kind of mirrored the Mac. And you were able to get featured. Yeah, yeah. And that was big. That's. That's probably a huge one there.

Aaron Preece: And coming up with the gesture system that everybody else has used, because you've seen the. They use. You know, everybody uses different gestures, but everybody that uses that makes a touchscreen interface uses that type of gesture to make their system work from like Amazon Voice View for the Kindle or, you know, talkback. I think talkback came maybe in 2011, 2010, something like that around that.

Tony Stephens: I want to say was it on. It was around Ice Cream or Jelly Bean. They used to name their OS systems after KitKat and all that.

Aaron Preece: Like Jelly Bean was the, the one that would like be recognizable to people today. Like if you went back and used a Jelly Bean. Because I was like four. Four something. And I think it had the same, like the gestures where before you were There was a lot of those slide out keyboard phones and there was a lot of like keyboard navigation and that kind of thing.

Tony Stephens: Oh my gosh, I forgot about those Androids. The little keypad would pop out keyboard with the tiny buttons for your thumbs. Yeah, people were talking about carpal tunnel from thumb their thumbs like on the blackberries and all that. Yeah, people that were addicted to them. So screen readers. Yes. And then the free screen reader definitely

Aaron Preece: is in magnification, I would say. I just personally even like video magnifiers. I'm not sure when those came out. I used them more when I was younger than I do now. My vision's. I was definitely always the kind of person that like struggle. I could use a screen magnifier, but it was a lot more taxing than using speech. So I always kind of gravitated towards speech. But I know a lot of people that. But every time I see like a jump in that technology where I'm not personally using it, I'll see the updates. But then when I actually see one out in the wild or see someone using one and like the way the form factors have changed and like just that technology, like the handheld video magnifier, seeing the things people can do with those and how much like access that provides.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, I was blind. Lee Huffman was showing me the Jupiter, which the American printing house where the blind makes. And it was fan. It was like when I compare that to the, the, the VTEC system I had in like, I don't know, elementary, middle school because I was low vision before I went total, it was, it was enormous. Like those things were big and bulky. They had this big sort of like chrome frame and the, the, the little flat tray you'd put your book on and you go XY axis, like slide left, right. And I could never get into like there was a little things you could turn to lock it, but it was really hard to kind of keep it straight sometimes.

Aaron Preece: Oh, the little knobs. Yeah, lock it in place.

Tony Stephens: So that way you would only go up and down or left and right. So that way when you got a line, you would read the line. So it was still painstakingly slow for low vision, but it was, it was cool. And you could flip the contrast, which was good because I would get headaches.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, I always use the black on

Tony Stephens: orange on black I think was mine. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: When I was in elementary school I could, I had a Game Boy and whenever I first got my Game Boy in like, like 8 years old or whatever, I could actually like in Bright light. I could see the screen enough to like play games and stuff. And then as things got more complicated, my vision probably started going down without me realizing it. I would put the Game Boy under. Oh man, under on the CCTV tray and line up the screen. And so those bright lights were keeping the screen well lit and I could read the text boxes so I could make more informed, informed decisions and stuff. And that's how I would play my games. I remember playing Pokemon Gold version on my CCTV for.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah. Well compare that now to like the Jupiter. The Jupiter's like an iPad, but like a little stand and you can pivot it around and it has the camera so you can also like see what the. Is your thermostat says or something like that. But it's. But it's just so much more compact and ergonomically friendly. I mean it's.

Aaron Preece: That's distance viewing.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, for distance. Yeah, as well. But just like, you know, reading your mail or things like that.

Aaron Preece: It's.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, definitely, for sure.

Aaron Preece: And just the, the miniaturization of that tech because I remember a friend having the Jordy distance viewer in high school and we actually, he was showing me. We were at the NFB conference with AFB back in 06 and we were like up on the like viewing deck looking out over the city, zooming in with the, with the Jordy. But it was like a. You carried it in like a briefcase and it was massive. It was like way bigger than like a modern. Even like. Like the modern VR headsets are way smaller and more portable. This thing was like multiple pounds and like you had to hold it up to your face. It looked like a.

Tony Stephens: But it was still easier than medical equipment. You couldn't haul a VTEC CCT screen.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it was still like.

Tony Stephens: That was £40. Yeah, yeah, Jordy for sure. Back on the blind and Braille in side for. For non low vision, did you ever have a Braille and Speak or a Type and Speed? You know, the, the Braille and Speaks.

Aaron Preece: I had a braille light 18 and then I had the Qwerty, the first Qwerty Pacmate which I think I still have. I still have the Braille display for it and it'll still like you can still Play. Plug that PacMate braille display into a PC and it will still work, which I think is pretty amazing. But yeah, I had the pacmate and I had the Braille light and I think I saw a Braille and Speak which were significantly like thinner because they didn't have to have all the braille display, like guts in them.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Preece: Imagine that would have been really sleek. Especially when it came out in the 90s.

Tony Stephens: It had this little. I don't think it was real leather. It was probably vinyl, like a faux leather little case that you would Velcro and it would pop it in and throw it over your shoulder. Before messenger bags were cool and you could carry it around. But that's what I would use for typing my stories because it had a modem, a little phone line jack on it as well. I remember. I remember. Oh, man, I'm having a flashback. I remember sending my stories in to like the little teletype thing in the newsroom was a phone number and I could send it at like 9,600 baud. Like some really slow rate where you could hear it, like sending the signal. But yeah. Oh, man, that was a flashback.

Aaron Preece: Just that access to braille typing. Because you probably. We were talking to Perkins the other day and just like, I know I learned how to type on a Perkins Brailler and was like fast and efficient at that before I even touched a computer keyboard. And having that, being able to immediately transition to something like that and be able to output your text in a readable, you know, cited readable or like print form would have been huge.

Tony Stephens: It was like walking in heavy boots and then getting a pair of like, you know, fancy New Balance super light basketball shoes or something. You're walking around, you're like, oh, I'm floating. Yeah. Because I mean, just the pressure on those brown speaks to type it. Like, it was super easy to type.

Aaron Preece: And I remember the strap. Having that strap over your shoulder like that. You could like kind of swing it around onto your chest and let it. And like use it standing up too, because of the way that that case would just like fold over.

Tony Stephens: You could kind of just turn your hands at an angle. I'm kind of doing it now.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, just like reach down and type

Tony Stephens: with it against your. Yeah. I had a nice desk that was called a. A belly when I was in college. So a little more portly back then. Yeah. All right, so the. The braille and speak. All right, so what do we got? We got ad. We've got audiobook. We've got the Kurzweil. We got screen reader.

Aaron Preece: We've a Braille display too.

Tony Stephens: Braille display. We've got. That's five. We've got the note takers is a category would be. Well, no care. Yeah. We'll put the Braille speak in note. Yeah. Accessible notetaker Braille note takers. Well and then the, the. The. The evolution is just as significant with the free screen readers and then, and then the smartphone with screen reader just as significant.

Aaron Preece: I would say the smartphone could almost be in its own category just because of. I'm sure we've talked about it before but like the way it centralized everything that you would always have a gadget for otherwise the fact like all the, the sensors and things that it had in it made it possible to add just have an app for something versus making a whole device for like currency recognition or color recognition or OCR or any of that type of stuff you could or even just like I always love my. One of my favorite things I had was my Victor reader stream and the fact that my phone could be a victory reader stream. Maybe not as efficient, but that was a

Tony Stephens: no. Yeah. As a platform the, the idea of the form factor I guess we'd call it that you could access these apps and even just access to information like to go on a website and surf the newspaper for like the New York Times. It would take forever and there'd be ads and pop ups and things but on the app you could just boom, you write in and you can immediately get news.

Aaron Preece: And I feel like there are a lot of inaccessible apps, but I feel like the, the number of apps that were. That were accessible or mostly accessible enough out of the box seemed larger than the amount of like random software you would like if you had like a very specific task and you like grab software for it, a lot of the times it wouldn't be accessible. But it felt like if you grabbed an app there was a 50, 50 or 60, 40 chance it might. That's just my perception, I guess. But yeah, the, the level of native accessibility seemed higher and yeah, like there was stuff you just, you download an app and you couldn't do anything. You couldn't even the voiceover wouldn't even pick up buttons or it wasn't even labeled there. But no, it seemed like there was a lot more. There were to some, to some extent

Tony Stephens: it definitely shined out in terms of those when something would be made accessible vers that were not that you would. I mean it's almost like creating brand loyalty immediately. Like because it's accessible. It's like there's still stuff I kind of rely on today because in 2010 when I got my first iPhone, there were the accessible apps, you know, so like, like sort of the sources I, I go to for news, you know, it's like I'll read Them because they cared about me 16 years ago. So if we're talking about the smartphone, although this is computer as well, I think we're up to like 8. The last two probably have to be in the past 10 years of just like I was thinking through what are the most impactful things. And when Facebook. Matt King, who's an engineer at Facebook and others at Facebook sort of launched their auto image alt tagging on Facebook and like, was it 2016 around that time?

Aaron Preece: Yeah. Very major forerunners in that.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, like that was the first time that you had sort of, you know, because that was where everybody was gravitating. Facebook was huge in 2016 in terms of. There weren't many other, you know, maybe Instagram was just coming out around that time. I'm not sure when exactly Instagram came out, but. But that was it. And everybody was posting pictures and you, all your friends, you'd have no idea what they were. And suddenly you started to be like, oh, that's them on a beach, you know, that's them meeting. You know, I don't know why everybody felt necessary to post pictures of their bacon and eggs for breakfast or what they had for breakfast, but that was a time in a place when people wanted to like show the world what we ate today and at least you

Aaron Preece: would know it was. It was good enough to like give you an idea of. It wasn't a detailed description necessarily, but it was enough to like you said you would know all the. And you could like probably use context clues from there to figure out what's going on to some degree.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Preece: And it's just having that and releasing that basically for, for free to like, basically as a gift to the.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. I don't know if I want to

Aaron Preece: word it there like, but like the fact that they, they were proactive about that and kind of a. I feel like in the last 10 years or maybe more, there's been a lot more proactiveness on the, on the part of companies to make their. They want. They are deliberately going above and beyond for the blind and low vision community. And I always remember going to my first like disability in conference and seeing the enthusiasm there and how heartening that was.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And it feels like that was maybe part of the turning. I don't know if you'd call it the turning point for that, but there's definitely like the.

Tony Stephens: I guess the recognition began to come out. Like, I mean, because snowball, there was nothing like that before Facebook did it. I mean it was, I mean, yeah, we had screen Readers and stuff. But there was no seeing AI app. There was no Be my AI. There was no. Aira was just coming out. But it wasn't. Aira wasn't set up for like reading your Facebook posts. It was more for like, you know, where's the entrance to the building when I get out of the taxi or come off the subway? And yeah, it was. And it was at that time that the companies I think started to realize there's a value. Right. And the fact that listening to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Preece: And just the. If you think about it's 15 years ago, the, or even maybe a little more. But like the fact that I can use any product from Apple or Google or Amazon or Microsoft and there's a built in free screen reader now in all those, all their products, they're like first party products. And then with I can go to Facebook, I can go to like Instagram is fully. I don't. It's one thing where I'm kind of behind. A lot of my family uses it. But I, when I get sent an Instagram post, Instagram is accessible. Like the picture site is accessible, which is.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Like I remember when I was on the FCC commission, I was on for years the disability advisory committee for the FCC which was overseeing the CVAA that regulated all that stuff. Like they, when the CVAA was passed the Communication Video Accessibility act in 2010 and then it took years to get regulations in place. And then when a regulation would kick in or the, the guidelines would kick in, they would give you a window. Like by this year you had to have this ready. I remember it was maybe like 2016, 2017. The television, like anything that would play videos and would have like any of the apps, you know, had to have an accessible interface. So that's when you had like Samsung coming out with their voice guidance on their remotes and TV started to get that stuff and a petition came through for a request. They weren't trying to get out of it, they just needed more time for Honda. And I was like, Honda, you know, it's like, what. How is Honda, that's an automaker. Like I don't drive cars. But then it dawned on me, like in the Honda Odyssey, apparently they have like, you know, the built in video displays to like watch on the back of the TV. Yeah, yeah, like the TVs in the back of the van. And it was kind of cool. It's like, wow, even Honda like is thinking about us and trying to make sure their products are accessible and you know, because I guess I'M a passenger that likes to, you know, watch Netflix while, you know, my partner would be driving long distances. I could be in the back watching, you know, Rick and Morgan or something. Yeah, no, it was, yeah, that was cool. And then refrigerators, even refrigerators that would have them in it, like they had to figure out, you know, how can we make it accessible?

Aaron Preece: The touchscreen.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah. And so the touch, so the touchscreen, definitely not just on the mobile phone, but it's other integrations and other form factors and other uses.

Aaron Preece: And I think that people, like I said, we talked about like Apple pioneering in the way a lot of those manufacturers are using the. Now they probably are running some kind of form of Android. So they have, they can use like the built in talkback in the like Android TV or something like that. But everybody used similar, like gesture tech. I felt like even in like a kiosk and like the type of. Types of things.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. It's nice though, when folks come out of the gate with something accessible versus when those kiosks adding it later.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And they realize, oh, we didn't make this accessible. Like I remember there was this restaurant that opened up and there were no more. There was no check, there was no counter. It was, it was like kind of a falafel place, like quinoa and stuff. But they had since gone out of business. But it was all just kiosk. And you would go and you'd use the kiosk and then people would work behind a wall making your food and they would put in these old lockers and then the locker would like light up or tell you whatever locker was in and that was totally accessible and there was no one there. You would walk in and be like, yeah, it wasn't like, you know, I mean, some fast food restaurants, not to mention, you know, will have kiosks now. But at least I was at Times Square this weekend and I went to a place to get breakfast sandwich and like I could at least find a human to help.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And you know, so, so yeah, definitely touch screen displays and things like that. So I'm guessing, you know, we're getting close to 2026 in our sort of historical timeline. What do we have?

Aaron Preece: Yeah, AI is probably the, I would say vision. We talked kind of about like image recognition as a category and I would say kind of AI is in some ways an extension of that because of the. It like really brought home. But even like I remember the seeing AI image describer and it would do like a quick description kind of like the Facebook describing the scene. But then you could do explore scene and like if there was like I would. I used untapped. I don't know if people. I think I actually reviewed it in Access World once. But it's a site where you can like check your. Your beers in that you try your craft beer and rate them and take pictures of them, like social media type of thing. And I would take pictures whenever I'd have a beer. And I could use seeing AI to make sure I got the full glass in. In frame. And I could. And it would also like pick up the text on like the board in the back, like the. That had like all the. The beer list on it and that kind of stuff. And it would like, I could drag my finger over in seeing AI over to where that text actually was in the picture and it would read it to me and like it would. It would describe my. Like when I would touch the glass in the center of the frame, I could actually tell the dimensions of the glass because it would say beverage or something. And that was pretty amazing.

Tony Stephens: For 10 years, the Scene AI app definitely in that sense. Because too what happened after that was Apple and Google started to integrate that just naturally into their os.

Aaron Preece: Oh yeah, I have it on now on my iPhone and like scrolling social media every picture it sees. And so many people, when they quote something, they just do a screenshot.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And I have the. Both the image recognition and voiceover says a picture of a social media post and then reads the text to me. And so I can participate in social media where people are doing that and

Tony Stephens: it's, you know, where I hold my camera up and I can take selfies or I can take pictures because it's like one face centered, two faces centered, a dog centered. You know, it's.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, tilt left, tilt right.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Amazing that it's. I think that one's gonna be enormous. But it's still even. We're just tapping the surface of really what's going to happen. Like, will we eventually have the real jordy glasses that like, you know, you know, weren't just like magnification support, but really augmenting sight loss. Are we going to get to that point? Because we have the Metaglass now, which has been I think enormous in the form factor since the, you know, the fact that you can put it on your head, you don't have to hold your phone out.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it's a lot more like intuitive to and to capture things. And it's got such, I think the. Just like the positioning of the Cameras make sure you get a good, good clear image.

Tony Stephens: And the new updates are really good at images. When I ask what is this? It'll you know, in accessibility where you can say give me more detailed description for the blind and low vision users. And it. And it does really well. Yeah. So. Yeah. So. All right, let's. Let's crank through this real quick. Then we can maybe tag what's. The ones that are, you know, who gets to the final rounds. Let's say we might not be able to call an actual winner today, but in terms of our own accessibility. So if we've got. We started off with audio description and talking books, moved into the Kurzweil reader. We had the video magnifiers. We got the note takers like the Braille and Speak. We got the screen reader. We got the mobile phone. Excuse me, we got the mobile phone just like general mobile phone. Right. The smartphone we should say just in its form factor use. But then the fact that they integrated in the. The talking feature the screen readers on smartphones. We have the launch which came a few years before the free screen reader. And then we've got AI pretty much we'll lump AI kind of together from, from the face image recognition in AI days. Yeah, just image recognition. The. The use of AI to use our. Augment our site, whether it's in a smart glass or on a device, you know, but the fact that there's something in our hand now or in our pocket that can, that can communicate and translate the world to us. Which one of those you think would make it to a final round?

Aaron Preece: I would say screen readers as a whole. Definitely. Especially like the modern visual like GUI screen readers.

Tony Stephens: I remember any of the last ones without the screen reader.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that and the talking. Well, I'm a huge. I read all the time so that books for me have to be up there both for like Kurzweil and because that's how Bookshare. I remember getting access to Bookshare and how. How big of a deal that was. But also talking books nls and just talking books in general.

Tony Stephens: But the book, the scanning was great but without the screen reader and you

Aaron Preece: wouldn't even be able to hear it. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: I feel like Kurzweil had its own built in screen reader now that I think.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. Speech synthesis and everything. Or else.

Tony Stephens: So. So that kind of predates even the days of like Jaws coming out and stuff. So the Kurzweil definitely is up there because the others kind of followed in their footsteps. Right. So yeah. And maybe the Audiobook. I don't know. And here's a. Here's a question, because we're talking about. Are we talking about assistive technology that's just electronic? Because does that mean we have, like, braille, the cane? I mean, there's other things, too.

Aaron Preece: Perkins Brailer. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: That are. That are assistive. Is. Is technology. Is Braille considered a technology, or is it. Is a cane considered tech or is it a mobility aid? Like. I don't know.

Aaron Preece: I guess you could almost say. I mean, we talk about Louis Braille inventing Braille. Like it's a. Yeah, it kind of feels like. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Although he was French.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Sorry. I'm nervous about France in the World cup now.

Aaron Preece: In the World Cup. Yeah, I know.

Tony Stephens: They did actually. France, if we didn't win the revolutionary, the war of independence, until France really came in and helped us.

Aaron Preece: Helped us out.

Tony Stephens: So I guess we got to give credit to both France for their own independence and the independence that Louis Braille bought. Oh, Louie's probably in the finals, just like France.

Aaron Preece: I would think so. Yeah. You'd have to be. And we talked about I. The money. Like, just the things you could put Braille on, like the. The money brailer where you could just like, kind of stamp up, basically recognize the bill somehow. Either have someone do it help you or do use some tech to do it. And then you can stamp it with a. Basically the denomination, and then you don't have to check it every time. That's. That's super. I know. I still use. And it's a very simple piece of

Tony Stephens: tech, but in braille and environmental access space. Right. The Braille on elevators. I remember when I went to go Greece, there wasn't Braille on elevators. And it was a lot of every floor and just being like, what floor is this?

Aaron Preece: Like, braille on room numbers and hotels just being able to feel in, like, bathrooms. And like, I remember at school, I

Tony Stephens: was at the Vision Serve alliance, and they had. One of the rooms was like, a completely wrong Braille number, and I just kind of left.

Aaron Preece: Oh, no.

Tony Stephens: I was on, like, floor seven, and it was like, room 1123. I was like, that's like, even someone that can't read braille could look and be like, why is every other room number in Braille much shorter than the extra characters? 11 versus 7. So. Yeah. But no. Yeah. Well, Braille, Braille kind of tough. Yeah. Braille definitely has to be in the finals now.

Aaron Preece: I think that would consider, like, Braille displays. No.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: It's like, note takers because those are so. Those are so useful. Still are.

Tony Stephens: We wouldn't have like, the braille note takers with, obviously without braille. But, I mean, you know, imagine if it was like these thermophone letters that you would feel A, B, C. Yeah. Back in the day, when you look at all the different things people were trying to create alternative tactile reading methods for. For our community in the 1800s and early 1900s, it was all over the place. You know, even today, you still get people coming to us every now and then with this great new idea to, you know, replace braille. Good for them.

Aaron Preece: We. We. We've gone through that and we're good.

Tony Stephens: We're good, man. It's lasted for almost as long as in Independence as there's a.

Aaron Preece: The. It's not only Braille time is more January, but there's that chapter on our website from that book where the guy goes through. I think he was actually there or around. It was like. Like the. This was written in, like the 50s, and it went through that early 1900s initial, like setting of grade two braille, or like setting braille as the standard and, like, how big of a fight that was.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Really push, like, how you kind of saw, like, from an advocate. I think it's just an interesting read from like an advocacy standpoint of, like, people, oh, this is the best thing for you. And now we're like. So it's a. It was a really interesting. I'd recommend people check it out.

Tony Stephens: Well, I think as we're wrapping up here, so I think we're not at the Finals yet for the World Cup. Maybe in our own independence. We're not in the finals, folks. Listening. Let us know what you think. I think we've.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. What's the top.

Tony Stephens: We've narrowed it down. I feel like the Kurzweil reader gave us optical character recognition and scan, like voice. Right.

Aaron Preece: The talking computer, speech synthesis.

Tony Stephens: That wasn't science fiction. It wasn't Hal from 2001. It was something literally on your desk. Right. That you could use Braille. Definitely. Because without Braille, we don't get so much stuff after that. We might have to do a quarterfinal right now. We might just still be in the quarter.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: I'd say talking books and maybe screen readers or something. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And then, like, I know. I don't know about you. Like, I don't. With magnification where I don't use it and I have it for a long time. I imagine that's really impactful for people, but it's not my. Yeah, I'm speech and Braille. So it's you know it goes back

Tony Stephens: to the television and magnification's been around for centuries long before United States. And it's that it was the concept that anything with a lens will in a video. You know so I mean television cameras and film cameras zoom knowing how to zoom. You know a zoom lens changing for all that. So. Yeah. Well, listeners let us know. Leave some comments in the thread here. We'd love to know what you think. Our final round in our bracket. I guess we've got Braille Kurzweil. I've got Braille Kurzweil audiobooks and I think you're right Screen reader when the

Aaron Preece: screen I would agree with that was

Tony Stephens: more independent than Because Micah Kurzweil we

Aaron Preece: wouldn't have things like image recognition and we probably that type of stuff unless. And I would, I would. I'd be curious how similar the modern like AI image recognition systems are to ocr. I feel like it's a similar principle but I'm not sure that's my gut feeling now.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, it's. It's kind of like. It's kind of like they took an OCR and said how can we adapt this through these AI tools? Yeah.

Aaron Preece: I think.

Tony Stephens: And we'll see maybe next World cup rise to the top. Let's see what happens in four more years.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that's true.

Tony Stephens: But 250 years of American history there's been. It's definitely an accelerating ramp. It was slow at first but exciting.

Aaron Preece: So not the last 40 years, would you say? 50 years.

Tony Stephens: Definitely the last 50 years because that goes back into the 70s when you know Kurzweil and then into the 80s with the, you know the Mac and then screen readers and the all the. Yeah, definitely the 50 years. So America, you're doing good this last 1/5 kicking it. So and. And I guess we got to give a nod to France although the US will beat them if we end up in the World Cup. Yeah. Awesome. Well Aaron, thanks man. This was fun.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: So top. Top accessibility access tools in their 250 years of our history. Folks want to learn more about Access World they can go to the magazine, the quarterly magazine that's online@afb.org aw and read 26 years of back issues, not 250 years of back issues. We're not as old as the not

Aaron Preece: quite that been around.

Tony Stephens: We have over 250 articles for sure and then extra thousand so check those out. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast and share this if you get a chance and leave a comment like we said. So, yeah, Happy Fourth of July, man. Happy, happy Independence Day. Yeah. Cool. All right, thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you in another week or so. Thanks for listening to Access World, 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.