AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 38: St. Louis Shoes

Episode Notes

Aaron and Tony Recap Access Tech at ACB 2026

Welcome back to another episode of AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. In this episode, Tony and Aaron recap their visit to the annual convention of the American Council of the blind (ACB). They share their take-aways from hitting up the exhibit floor and access-tech sessions. Tony wishes he brought his dog shoes for his guide dog Nougat as they were sweltering under a heat dome in Missouri and dancing over the St. Louis streets that week. But, more reason to stay inside the super chilled convention hotel and get caught up on some of the latest new tech and gadgets. From the high-tech yet retro throwback devices from Blazie Technologies, to the latest cutting-edge AI integrations rolling out from Vispero, Aaron and Tony share their favorites for 2026. Additional shout-outs go to Tactile Engineering's Cadence braille displays and HapWare for their innovative designs in wearable smart wristbands.

Feel free to give your own shout outs on the coolest gadgets you've come across this year at the consumer conferences if you were able to attend NFB or ACB. And if not, still give a shout out on what your own favorite tech is these days. There is definitely a lot of new tech riding the AI wave the past couple of years, and more to come we're sure as we move closer to the holiday shopping season and the CES conference coming in January.

Aaron Preece is editor-in-chief of AccessWorld Magazine, a quarterly e-pub from the American Foundation for the Blind, and Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB. Together, they enjoy geeking out each month on the latest happenings encompassing digital inclusion and accessibility. You can check out AccessWorld Magazine at www.afb.org/aw. And be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and you can even support the work of AFB by visiting us online at www.afb.org.

AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 38 Transcript:

Intro: AFB. 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.

Aaron Preece: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the AccessWorld Podcast, a podcast on technology and accessibility. I am one of your hosts, Aaron Priest, the editor of AccessWorld, and I am here with my co-host, Tony Stephens. How's it going?

Tony Stephens: Doing good, thank you. Doing well. A little weary, haggard after traveling, but—

Aaron Preece: Yeah, same.

Tony Stephens: I guess we're going to jump into some of our travels, aren't we, today?

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, cool. Yeah, man, I hope everybody's doing well listening out in podcast land. And, uh, Aaron and I got back from muggy St. Louis.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: How was your flight back? Because mine took 11 hours.

Aaron Preece: That sounds miserable. Mine was actually only like 10 minutes late, and it was, it was Pretty solid the whole time though. As I was going through security, every step of the way, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I got home late, late Tuesday coming back from Columbus.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: No, it was, yeah, they had storms that day. So there were a lot of closed flights because it was crazy. I got to, I left for the airport that morning after our annual AFB breakfast. It was fantastic running into so many people. And you hadn't been to a breakfast in a while, had you?

Aaron Preece: Yeah, I haven't been since before COVID; So I think the last one I went to was actually in St. Louis, and that was back in 20— I'm pretty sure 2018, at the train station hotel. If people, anybody from going then, uh, remembers that.

Tony Stephens: Uh, yeah, that was the, the, the, the one of the cooler places they've done a conference, but I was working at ACB then, but one of the more frightening because it was full of death traps, like marble staircases with no railings and things. It was—

Aaron Preece: Very labyrinthine. I remember like you really had to memorize your routes to different places, but it was a cool hotel. But this one was significantly easier to navigate. You could just, if someone just told me where something was, I could usually find it, which was really nice, I thought.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. And it was like a block from the Arch, which I thought was cool.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. Lots of green space for dogs and—

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Did you take Dunsmuir down there to the Gateway?

Aaron Preece: I didn't go to that. I went to the forest type area across the street and there was like a block with a more wooded, uh, kind of a park thing. There was like a bench and stuff over there, but it was more, a lot more trees. I always, every time I'd come back, I think I was, I was always coughing a little bit because I would get in, she'd go under those trees and then I'd have my face full of leaves the whole time. And then I'd come back in the afternoon.

Tony Stephens: No. Yeah, it was, uh, well, I didn't take Nugget out that much just because it was so hot.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. I'd try to get her out and back in because Dunzo was a black lab too. So especially when it was heat of the day and the sun's beating down, that fur heats up quick.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Yeah. This was the first time Nougat had the dance where he couldn't— I didn't bring his booties.

Aaron Preece: Oh, the, the pavement was so hot. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. And he— I felt so sorry. I was like, oh my gosh, we gotta find you shade. And because he was— he just couldn't. It was so— although they had like this weird— I don't know if it's some, you know, trying to be like art installation, but they also do things with the, uh, sidewalks where it's like not normal concrete. It was like this—

Aaron Preece: Oh, gotcha.

Tony Stephens: Slab stones that were just baked in the sun.

Aaron Preece: Oh.

Tony Stephens: And he was just like, as soon as we hit it, he was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. Go mush, mush, get out of here. So, but, and just the humidity. So yeah, St. Louis, great town. Um, yeah, you know, I took the light rail down. It was nice. The transit from the airport was not too crazy, question mark. It was a little hard to find, or not hard to find, hard to figure out how to pay. I was like, take my money, somebody. And I, I never could pay for the ride in because no one told me how. Like, I asked the conductor.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And they were like, I don't know. So it's like, all right, if you don't know, then I guess I'm okay here.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And then I finally found a cop and he's like, oh, it's broken, you can just get it. And I'd missed 2 trains by this point, right? Like, because I'm trying to feel around all the poles and like find—

Aaron Preece: feel— trying to find the—

Tony Stephens: yeah, or you have to like validate your app kind of thing.

Aaron Preece: Oh, so probably a QR code somewhere.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, it was a QR code. And I'm like feeling all around for their Metrolink, I think they call it. And, uh, for the Red Line. And it's like, you know, I can't find anything. And I asked the conductor and that train left, you know, after he was like, I don't know. He's real surly about it too. And then I finally found a police officer and he's like, he's like, it's down there on so-and-so, but it's broken. So don't worry about it. And I was like, really? Like, you could have announcements or something. But, but yeah, but I rode the light rail and it was, it was, it was remarkably nice way to get into downtown St. Louis.

Aaron Preece: I wish we had something like that in Huntington because we— which Huntington's small enough, you know, you can just— it's only a couple miles across. I don't know if it would be, uh, I'd like to—

Tony Stephens: I mean, with Marshall University, there would be great for the students.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, to get downtown, get to the like different parts of town.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, and or like get down to the river or to the train station, you know, because we do have the Amtrak train going right through town.

Aaron Preece: It's actually just a couple blocks from me, but Uh, no, in inner— intracity or inner city, I guess, trains here. Buses.

Tony Stephens: But yeah, well, the buses I guess are good too. I mean, it's— yeah, every time I've been to Huntington, it's not massive traffic jam. So yeah, but yeah, so, uh, but yeah, it was— I, I could have took a bus home and made it in time compared to waiting on the plane, I feel like.

Aaron Preece: Oh yeah, I could imagine that.

Tony Stephens: At the airport, I got to know St. Louis International— was it Lambert Field? Very well though. which is exciting. I now know where all the places—

Aaron Preece: Now where everything is when they— some other conferences there, ACB's back there.

Tony Stephens: You want a custard from Shake Shack? I got you covered. So yeah, so anyways, but yeah, man, uh, ACB, it was great. We're— today's episode, I think we're chatting a little bit about hitting the exhibit floor, some of the cool exciting stuff we saw on the tech side.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, lots of cool sessions, the cool stuff in the exhibit hall.

Tony Stephens: What was your conference convention? Uh, experience like?

Aaron Preece: You know, I really went till and, and checked out a lot of the blindness-specific tech that I hadn't looked at in quite a, like a while. We've been really kind of focused on the mainstream side of things in AccessWorld or things with like Meta Glasses that are, have accessible or blindness applications, but are, are more mainstream. We do do some low vision stuff. We hadn't really touched like the Braille side in a little while. So I was getting caught up on things like the Braille Sense and the BrailleNote, um, the I think the BrailleNote Evolve and then the BrailleSense 7. So those were very cool to see. APH. So things like the, the Monarch and they've got a couple other products. I'm not— I assume anything there is public. I'm not sure. I know there was some, some cool stuff. I think that'll be coming out soon on the education front. I'm not sure if I can say after.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And then the, uh, one of the coolest things I thought that I saw that was very cutting edge is, uh, Vespero had a whole room where you could just pop in anytime for training, or you could also get demos of what's coming up in JAWS and Fusion and that sort of thing.

Tony Stephens: That was one of the cooler parts I thought of the conference, how they integrated that in. That was really nice.

Aaron Preece: It was cool to see people getting like, just bringing their laptop in there and, hey, I'm having this problem with JAWS, and they had people in there that could help you out and And yeah, not just people, but like Ryan Jones was there, like, you know, like— Yeah, big time.

Tony Stephens: Like true, like, you know, geniuses in this space that are on hand and can answer questions as well as take comments. You know, it's good feedback from the consumers.

Aaron Preece: One of the things they showed me is there's been some AI features in JAWS for a while. You've got the PictureSmart. Um, a cool one is that you can do, I think it's called Page Review or Page Overview, where when you're on a new website, you can ask JAWS, it might even just be a keystroke, like, what is this page like? And it tells you like, It has navigation with these items in it. The main content has this in it. And like, it gives you an overview of the page so you don't have to necessarily go line by line with your screen reader to find, make sure you don't miss anything. So that was pretty cool. But what they've got coming out soon is an A— like an AI agent that can actually do things for you built into JAWS.

Tony Stephens: I was checking out that. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: That is, I thought, super cool because it seems like it's very, uh, at the moment, like very immediate. So like if you're on a website, you can have it fill in a field and like look up information and return to you with that information. Like the example I got was they had it select, like automatically go select a specific date on a calendar picker and then tell them like what populated. And it was able to go one, do those actions, but also read the page and report back. And you can do it in things like Excel. And it's really, I think it's across the operating system. So I thought that was very cool. Very, um, I would think very helpful for like seniors or people new to screen readers that aren't familiar with how you use a computer as a blind person to like kind of fill in the gap while you're still learning to do things. Or on like an accessible device.

Tony Stephens: They know how to use their Alexa device, right?

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: They know the idea of just talking or asking questions. And then, yeah, that's, that's interesting approach towards seniors and older age adults. I didn't think of that.

Aaron Preece: And it— when I was asking, it sounded like it could potentially do things on an inaccessible site that you might not have access to directly with like the, the screen reader virtual buffer, like virtual view, uh, like web view where it is reading the underlying code. So I thought that was pretty cool that if you run into like all this, I see a button here, but it's just like, for some reason I know I oftentimes I'll find a button. screen reader can see it and it should be clickable, but it just doesn't. Somehow the— it's expecting like a mouse click, so it's not registering the click. So it can go and do things like that, which I thought was pretty cool.

Tony Stephens: Cool. Yeah, we had a couple booths we hit together, which I thought was really neat in the exhibit hall. Uh, what was the one that you put me into? The Cadence?

Aaron Preece: Yeah, the Cadence. Before, but I was really impressed with Yeah, the multi-line Braille display that's like modular and you can, it has like really fast refresh rates. So you can do very pretty solid, like animation.

Tony Stephens: That was what blew my mind was the rapidness of like, what was it? A running dog, I think.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. And it would like move across the, and they like track, I think some, uh, is it a base— did they do baseball or some kind of sports game where you could track?

Tony Stephens: Almost like the OneCourt. device that we had premiered at a lot of sporting events this past year. But yeah, where it could follow the, the players on the field and the ball and stuff. That stuff's exciting because that, that stuff's— I've all— I've never been able to follow basketball, and I feel so bad because my son loves to play it and I've never been able to really follow it.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, so I— and that could kind of give you a feel for even like the movement, how like the formations and that. I know like with the World Cup this year, my, my brother's really into soccer, so we watched a lot of World Cup. I hung out with them and just trying to figure out what things mean and like how the game is, uh, like behind it. Yeah, like how the game is played, if that makes sense. Like the— what the actual positions look like on the field. Um, trying to figure out like what does offsides mean and that type of thing, like trying to mentally visualize that.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, my sons play soccer and they, they tried to explain that like There's like a, like Manchester in England has a certain strategy where the players take a shape on the field and like, it's like the thing to do. And I, I don't, he's trying to explain it to me and I'm like, I wish I had a tactile way to like visualize that. And this sounds like this could do that.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. And like, give you more of a direct, cuz you're, some games I noticed, like, I feel like baseball is fairly followable or, or understandable with, um, With commentary or like golf or tennis. And those, some of those games are more easy to follow than others, but soccer, football, basketball, a lot of the faster-paced things that are more, um, positionally complex are a little harder for me personally to follow. So I like the idea that there's more options here to, to see these things.

Tony Stephens: When we do like Formula 1 racing, I'm— there was a game as a kid where it was like a track and these little things would race around it, but they were connected by magnets below. And you would like slide the magnet and it would move around the track.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: And, and, you know, it's almost like, oh, that's like a primitive way of like the Braille literally moving across this platform. But again, yeah, the refresh rate for the cadence, I was— that was— I mean, it reminded me I don't know if you ever did this when you could see, but like, I remember I had to buy a dictionary in 8th grade because I went and drew little stick figures on every page of the school dictionary that they assigned to us. And they would like race cars and crash and like, but it was like one page, you know, it was animation, like the flip animation where you would do one page and then you would move them a little bit more the next page and a little bit more the next page. So it was—

Aaron Preece: And then you flip through real fast.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, then you flip real fast and it looks like a movie, right? It's that illusion of motion. And it had that sense, like, you know, you could definitely tell it, you know, it's primitive in that sense, uh, where it's not as fluid, but it's still extremely impressive to think that, you know, this is the beginning of maybe a use case for tactile refreshable imaging on displays that are tactile displays that could, you know, do, do a lot more down the road with innovation and stuff.

Aaron Preece: And where the cadence is modular too, I thought that was a cool aspect of it that Kind of makes it unique, I think, cuz you, it's like 4 quadrants essentially, like 4 different units that you then connect together. So you can, you can even use like one quarter of the, the units and just, and it still is like a multi, it's only like a few cells by a few cells. I think, I forget the exact number.

Tony Stephens: Mm-hmm.

Aaron Preece: But you've still got a multi, a little mini multi-line braille display, like maybe 10 cells across, 8 cells across, something like that.

Tony Stephens: It, the kind of thing you just throw in your, messenger bag.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it's like smartphone size.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah, it was cool.

Aaron Preece: And then you can connect it together with just a, like, a single other one, and then it makes like a maybe 2 or 3 line Braille display. And then if you want the really full tablet, you connect it to 2 more and you've got the tablet, which I thought was pretty cool.

Tony Stephens: I got excited. I haven't been to the exhibit halls for a couple years now, and I, I got stoked on the Speaking of Braille displays, that Blazey technology, that Blazey's back, baby.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: I mean, Blazey's probably, I feel like Austin Powers, but actually the big boy's never left. He's been here with the same quality of high food service for long, you know. But, um, but I mean, you know, Blazey's been around. Dean Blazey has not been anywhere, but like, just, just the presence they had and the new, what was it? It was, it was when I was a kid, it was Braille and Speak.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, BT Speak, I think.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. But that was such an incredible tool I had in college, was the Braille 'n Speak in the '90s. And it was blazing. And it just like, you know, it was mind-blowing back then because it was so much more compact than laptops were huge back in the '90s and bulky and weighted and batteries didn't last forever. And this little thing without a screen was incredible. And then I had the typing version, the regular keyboard version as well. And it was just, It was such a great thing. And, and to see that now on steroids, like with the way they've just maxed it with tech involved and the guts on the inside, um, I was, I was, I was, I was like a kid again checking that out.

Aaron Preece: And it's still tiny too. I, I don't think I'd seen one, um, before this, but it's like roughly smartphone size, Victor Reader Stream size, if people can like think of it that way.

Tony Stephens: Half the size of a regular keyboard for your computer, like a little And it still had the little case. I remember with the strap you could throw around your neck so you could kind of type on your, uh—

Aaron Preece: Yeah, I remember doing that with the BrailleLite way back in the day where you could just open it up and, yeah, and type on your chest basically.

Tony Stephens: And for those that have a naturally occurring, um, uh, place to set it on, i.e., a stomach, gut, that's nice, you know, good ergonomics. So yeah, that was cool. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: So that— yeah, the, the Hapware was interesting. That's something I'd never seen that concept for before. Uh, that people—

Tony Stephens: Yeah, go, go dive into it because it was definitely a new take on haptic technology. Like, I've— there's been a lot of stuff over the years haptic-wise, you know, wearables and things like that, but this was, this was an interesting new use case, I guess. Yeah, I'm into it.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. So if I understood it correctly, it's a wristband that you wear like a watch, and then it has haptic feedback and it's using Meta glasses to recognize like facial expressions. If someone's waving at you, if someone's like reaching their hand out to shake your hand, and then it like makes a pattern on your wrist to indicate what it's seeing. Uh, so it'll make like a smile shape for a smiley face, or like if someone's smiling at you, or if someone's waving, it does like a wave-like motion up and down, like across horizontally.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Um, so you'd have to learn the different patterns, and then you'd also have to trust that the Meta's act— like accurately doing it. But I thought it was a really cool use case and one that I can see. It's so— it's subtle too, so I like that people don't necessarily— like, it's a— I could see it being used seamlessly without like drawing attention to itself, which I thought was a nice thing, especially like for a business setting. If you need to be focused and you— and it would be— it wouldn't like make a distraction because people, people are— it's not like buzzing or making noise, so it's not going to draw attention to itself. If that makes sense.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: You can still hear them talk.

Tony Stephens: It's not interrupting your voice with like AI. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: So I liked that part of it, that people wouldn't even know you're using it necessarily, which I think, especially in the kind of situations where they're kind of aiming it for, and like, especially if you used it in like a business setting, is useful.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Like a high-power meeting presentation or something. And is the audience deadpan or are they looking happy kind of thing?

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Like how that old expression, read the room. It's like, well, I could, if I could. You know, I would if I could. Yeah, it was because it'll be interesting to see it in use in more crowded settings. I think it was— was I talking with Kelly? Maybe, maybe it was. I think it was Kelly that said, you know, often she feels embarrassed because she'll see someone waving at her and she'll wave back, but then realize, oh, they're waving to the person next to me. You know, that kind of phenomenon. So yeah, so we'll be interested to see, you know, how well it is in the wild, so to speak. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, because I was always thinking too, like, I'll be curious how well the recognition is, because if it's— if it misrep— like, misidentifies a smile when the person's frowning, or they're not, you know, like, they could— that could put— if you relied on it too heavily and trusted it, there could potentially be issues there if it's depending on the accuracy. But—

Tony Stephens: Well, what's interesting— what was most interesting about the Hapware for me was, I mean, I was, you know, I can see how they can create technology that can read things. I mean, you know, you can take a Be My Eyes picture and it'll be like, it's a person smiling. Yeah, jinx. But the, the band itself, do we call it the, you know, the resolution, I guess, even though it was tactile?

Aaron Preece: Oh yeah, I see what you mean.

Tony Stephens: That was interesting in that, and I'm even wondering other case situations for like navigating or something. Like the fact that it was, um, I could feel the smile. Like all the haptic tech, the, the canes and everything that's come across my desk over 10 years of having people just randomly send you stuff and say, hey, what do you think of this? It's gonna save the world for you all. And, and it's always just the, you know, short buzz. Like it's like a mobile phone, right? The buzz, right? The, you know, or long, short, like Morse code or something.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: This had like a resolution to it that was really— it felt strange at first, but like that feeling of the smile, it took me a second to be like, you know, there's these paintings that sighted people can see where you look at it for a while and you're like, I don't know what that— oh, and you're like, oh, it's Abraham Lincoln, but it looked like a bunch of blobs at first, you know. And it took me a second to kind of get used to it, but once I figured that out, I was like, Hmm, I wonder how else we could use this just in like wayfinding or other, other, other ways to move around freely and not have to have something talking to you. But, um, you know, uh, get a sense of like a hand gesture that you could wave and then it'll present to you all the obstacles in the room or something.

Aaron Preece: That's what I was thinking, like down the street and like identify the light poles and trash cans and things like that on the, on the way and like track, track that along because it was very like high resolution, as you're saying.

Tony Stephens: Because, yeah, everything to this date that's been that is kind of like a 2-bit. That's like the Morse code, right? Um, different types of singular vibration, not, not almost like a 3-dimensional vibration almost, or a vibration that covered, um, an XY axis basically, right? And, uh, yeah, even though it was more narrow because it's a wristband, but I mean, I'm sure you could probably get something like a patch or something even, you know, that would cover more of a squared space that could get more resolution. Like, it's It's exciting to see people sort of pioneering in this space, and I'll be curious to see how that, you know, changes over time. More people taking this technology and finding more uses for it.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, and I think a lot of that too is coming from the, like, the higher resolution, like, technology is coming from somewhat of the mainstream. Because I noticed I had a game controller, and old-school rumble game controllers, like, just the whole thing just shook, like, very, uh, basic.

Tony Stephens: Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And I noticed that like it would, the haptic feedback would come from like the side of the controller. If something was off to the left, it would come from like a, a, it would very lightly shake the left side or tap sort of the left side or like the way that the, uh, the iPhone haptics work when you're doing the—

Tony Stephens: Almost 3-dimensional, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Or like the, uh, the AirPods, if you, um, and when you click the stem, the fact that it feels like you're pressing a button, but you're really not, that's just haptic feedback From the—

Tony Stephens: still blows my mind that AirPods, because when they die, you're like, wait, it won't do the click. Why is it not?

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it won't do the click because it's, it's like trippy.

Tony Stephens: You think it's mechanical and it's not.

Aaron Preece: So I wonder if that'll also make it like— because I remember the— I don't know if you ever saw stuff like the Iris Vision where they took a VR headset and turned it into a head-mounted video magnifier. And in some ways that let them keep costs down because they're using production equipment to do it. And I wonder with these types of technologies, because the mainstream is pushing in that direction, that'll make this tech more affordable to produce versus having to really customize something and, and like make something really bespoke. You can just use off-the-shelf parts, so to speak.

Tony Stephens: Does one booth I didn't get to check out was Glidance, but you've checked that out before. You, you checked them out at CSUN. Do they do haptics involved in their thing too?

Aaron Preece: How does—

Tony Stephens: what's the haptic experience for that?

Aaron Preece: I don't remember. I think maybe a little bit. It feels like more that it like, um, it almost feels like a guide dog pulling it, uh, guiding you. And one thing that surprised me about it is that it's like, it's a lot more low profile than I expected. It reminds me—

Tony Stephens: it's not like if something's in front of you, it's going—

Aaron Preece: yeah, yeah. It's like the wheels actually turn, um, automatically. There's like motors, I think, that turn the wheels.

Tony Stephens: For folks that don't know, this is like the AI solution to the guide dog.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it's like a— it almost looks like you're pushing like a, a mop or a— it reminded me a lot of like a— the, the, the dimensions and weight and feel of like a battery-powered vacuum, like very lightweight. I, I was expecting to be pushing like a suitcase in front of me or like an R2-D2 kind of trash can shape.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: Uh, and this was significant, like There's like a little round thing, uh, at the bottom with the wheels on it and big old, big old wheels if I remember correctly. But then it's just like a pole that comes up that you hold onto that's attached to like the ball joint connected to the, to the bot, the base of the device, which was, makes it really nice and portable seeming. And also just like, um, what word am I looking for? Like more finesse than I was expecting, which is pretty cool.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, that sounds cool. I gotta find a way to try to check one of those out next time I'm at a conference, probably. Or they can send it to AccessWorld for review.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, for review once it goes live in production. Yeah.

Tony Stephens: Well, you know, I still tend to hit all the guide dog tables more though. I'm still, we'll see. We've talked about this before. I don't know if I would make the jump from my guide dog, but You know, I doubt an Uber driver is going to drive away if he sees me with a broom.

Aaron Preece: That's true. Yeah, I know. I, on the way back, I just did Uber Pet just to— I didn't really— theoretically, I don't need to, but I thought, you know what, it's about the same price. I'm just gonna save myself the hassle, the potential hassle, and then did that instead.

Tony Stephens: I know, it's, it's the disability squeeze, man.

Aaron Preece: Like, we've—

Tony Stephens: yeah. NFB. Yeah. So, well, very cool at the conference. It was some good stuff. Great, great work to ACB. And I know some other members of our team were at NFB. Um, Sam the Blind Life, who we talked about last episode, uh, just launched a thing about the NFB stuff. Uh, so I'm going to be checking that out probably this week. Uh, it's on my YouTube queue to watch list because he went through the exhibit hall for NFB. So I'll be curious to see.

Aaron Preece: I'm sure it's a lot of usual stuff. Similar stuff.

Tony Stephens: Meta was there. I know they're giving their glasses out to blinded veterans, which is cool.

Aaron Preece: That's very cool.

Tony Stephens: But, um, yeah, I stopped by the Meta table and chatted with them for a while. They have some cool stuff. I imagine more for the deaf, hard of hearing community, but like the live captioning on their Oakley glasses, like it sounds incredible. Like the latency, you know, just the ability to turn around quickly and have captioning in front of you. Um, I imagine they'll be— I would imagine that— I don't know. I mean, maybe it won't take off as much as the Google, as the Meta glasses have for the blindness community that has embraced them and everyone's waiting for Google or Apple or others to come out.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: But, um, it was exciting to see, particularly too, just for low vision people, if, if, you know, the font can be big enough for them to read or the contrast and stuff like that, that, you know, some technology for folks that maybe, um, you know, the deaf, the deafblind community often like the visual, you know, side of things with the blindness, low vision community. not everybody's just a binary, all or nothing, you know. There's so much in between. And the same is true for those that are deafblind as well. So, so interesting. Yeah, man, I didn't get to check out Waymo while I was there. Uh, they were— they had a car on display.

Aaron Preece: I remember hearing that, that they had like a test unit there or something like that.

Tony Stephens: Yeah, yeah. So hopefully maybe some folks from city government in St. Louis were there and checked it out and could think about how good it would be. It was nice having the audible pedestrian signals a lot. They've done that in St. Louis.

Aaron Preece: And they would tell you what street you're crossing too, because I know sometimes around here, like, if you— some of them just like block off the whole street, but like some of them there's like 2 different arrows and like if someone else hits the other arrow, it's on the same pole. So you don't necessarily know, is this alarming for my street or their street? So it was nice to be like, you're crossing Chestnut Street.

Tony Stephens: Yeah. And some of them too have it where they count down.

Aaron Preece: Mm-hmm.

Tony Stephens: It's like 15, 14, 13, and you're like, I'm gonna die. You know, that kind of thing.

Aaron Preece: I tried to rush across.

Tony Stephens: Nougat, run!

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Tony Stephens: So, but no, yeah, thumbs up for St. Louis. As hot as it was, uh, there were some cool things going on. Hey, I'm such a dad.

Aaron Preece: I didn't even— I didn't pick—

Tony Stephens: I was sorry. That's, uh, no, man. Yeah, it was great. Folks can check out, we got more in August. We're going to have 2 more reports dropping early in the month and later in the month, any day now for the access technology one. So we can maybe get them involved and bring on the public policy research team to talk about that report. Yeah, it'd be nice to drop it in early August about AI in assistive technology space. And then another report coming out later in the month around AI and specifically focusing on the blindness, low vision community because our major survey that they did with the Quagmire, AI Quagmire report earlier this year was not just disability, but all persons, including all disabilities and all non-disabled people. So this report coming out at the end of the month is also just focused on the blindness community and AI. So folks can go check that out at AI Research, afb.org/airsearch. And we're going to have later this month the AccessWorld issue dropping.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, dropping on the Around the 25th. So it should be on the 25th, maybe that Wednesday or Thursday, but usually on the 20th, on the 25th. All right.

Tony Stephens: So yeah. So thanks everybody for checking out AccessWorld podcast on, I like how you said technology and accessibility, because usually—

Aaron Preece: I'm so used to you doing that. I don't know if I did it right or not.

Tony Stephens: Digital. I don't even know.

Aaron Preece: Right.

Tony Stephens: Digital, digital, digital accessibility and inclusion, digital inclusion and accessibility.

Aaron Preece: Who knows?

Tony Stephens: Check out AccessWorld, the podcast.

Aaron Preece: Period.

Tony Stephens: There you go. I don't think there's any other AccessWorlds out there, so you'll find us. Uh, you like and subscribe, uh, share this if you want, that'd be fantastic. And you go to afb.org to learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind and the work going place. I'm Tony Stephens, and our editor-in-chief Aaron Priest. Thank you as always, man. And, uh, I'm gonna go find something cold to drink because it's getting hot again.

Aaron Preece: So yeah, same.

Tony Stephens: Sweet. All right, man. Talk to you next time.

Aaron Preece: Yep.

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. AFB.