Episode Notes
Welcome back to another episode of AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. In this episode, Aaron and Tony get geared up for summer, grabbing their sunglasses and getting ready to hit the water. Needless to say, access in outdoor recreation is a theme for this month’s episode, from navigating independently on the water as Tony reflects on his years of accessible sailing, to their choice of sunglasses as Tony and Aaron breakdown the latest update to the Ray Ban Meta glasses. They then remiss as well over 25 years of AccessWorld, and Aaron provides a rundown on articles from the latest issue published in late May.
About AccessWorld
The AccessWorld Podcast is an extension of AccessWorld Magazine, a quarterly publication from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). Published each quarter, AccessWorld Magazine offers news and reviews encompassing digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and we’re excited to share all of our back issues online free for readers. Visit www.afb.org/aw for the latest issues and to access our archives online.
Aaron Preece serves as editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, and Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB. Together, they enjoy meeting up each month to discuss the latest happenings around accessibility. Visit the AFB website to learn more about our exciting work like our groundbreaking research on the impact of AI for people with disabilities. And consider making a tax-deductible donation to help support this podcast and all of our work at AFB. Your support helps us create a world of endless possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision.
The AccessWorld podcast is produced and edited by Tony Stephens at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland with digital media support from Kelly Gasque and Breanna Kerr. Theme music is by CosMonkey, compliments of ArtList.io, and the podcast is proudly hosted on PineCast. Transcripts are available through Apple Podcast, and AFB provides additional transcripts on the podcast page shortly after each episode drops.
AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 20 Transcript
Intro (00:00):
AFB, you are listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind. Learn more at www.afb.org/aw.
Aaron Preece (00:34):
She got her vaccines and she got her blood work done today and she's a geriatric dog now. She's seven.
Tony Stephens (00:46):
That's crazy to think, Nougat is only a year away from that. He just turned six.
Aaron Preece (00:51):
Time flies, it feels like it. I don't feel like I've had her forever, but
Tony Stephens (00:55):
Yeah, I am. Only three years in. We're recording by the way. We'll just go ahead and say hi everybody. Welcome to AccessWorld, a podcast from the American Foundation for the Blind, and we are rolling with it. Here we are. Welcome everybody.
Aaron Preece (01:08):
Yeah, episode 20, I believe.
Tony Stephens (01:10):
Episode 20. That's crazy. We need to do a top 20 list or something sometime.
Aaron Preece (01:14):
Yeah,
Tony Stephens (01:15):
It'll be a top 21 list. Not that AccessWorld can get a drink next week, next month, whenever the next one drops, but yeah. Hey everybody. Welcome back to AccessWorld podcast from the American Foundation for the Blind. We're just chatting about our summer plans. You're heading south soon, is that right? Tonight, right.
Aaron Preece (01:33):
Yeah. My family built a house in Tennessee near a lake and I'm going to take advantage of that as much as I can and I love the lake and the water, so I'm looking forward to having access to that. This summer we were talking and I was asking you about your sailing. I've done in the past. I've done a lot of hiking and I did a backpacking trip in the mountains back when I was in high school and that sort of thing, but I
Tony Stephens (01:58):
Love that backpacking trip. You're an Eagle Scout, Mr. Just your
Aaron Preece (02:02):
Backpacking
(02:02):
Trip. Yeah, and I was thinking, I don't know about you, but I noticed with myself that I am just when you think about blindness skills, they always told me when we were hiking, it was in the mountains and it's just rocks everywhere. And they told me that it looked like I had rubber ankles because I would just step on a rock, twist my ankle one way and just keep on going. I'm just used to it. I'm used to stepping on weird angled sidewalks or things that tripped me up without noticing and I'm just ready to catch my balance basically and not fall or something.
Tony Stephens (02:39):
It's funny you mentioned that. I mean literally folks, Aaron, it was an Eagles. You're actually an Eagle Scout. You went all the way. I was a Cub Scout for a week, one whole week, but I'm a city kid, so there's not a lot to do in the city. Scouting for me was cutting a piece of tin with pliers to try to write my name in 10 letters. We didn't get to do much adventuring, at least I only stayed in a week, so maybe I would've right, my boys
Aaron Preece (03:10):
Later on. Yeah,
Tony Stephens (03:11):
They did camp outs and stuff. It's nice to get out of the city with them, but I'm not a hiker. You've done serious hiking and it's interesting you mentioned the balance. I do have that same skillset, but it's riding the subway to keep your balance on trains. I pride myself in that. It's like you are acutely aware of your surroundings in that sense.
Aaron Preece (03:34):
Yeah, kind always prepared to have something unexpected happen and be ready to react. Your body's always prepped for it or something. That's kind of what it felt like to me that I stumbled over every rock on the trail, but I was ready to, so I was able to catch myself.
Tony Stephens (03:49):
Well, that kind of gets around our theme today of what we want to talk about on AccessWorld, about getting around. There's a lot of stuff to talk about in the access space, some of it AI related for folks that checked out last month when we talked with Jim and I, we're not going to be having any other guests here today. It's just Aaron and I kind of looking ahead to the exciting things for the summer, but ways of using technology to get around, or even just old school technology. Going back to you referenced my sailing, which I love. You're in the mountains. I'm down by the water. I live a couple blocks from the harbor here on Baltimore and have been in Abbot. I even lived on a sailboat for a while. That's cool. A 45 foot sloop named Allegretto. She was a nice boat, but then my boys outgrew it and when I got my fourth guy dog, yeah, Noga number four, he was too big to fit through the companion way hatch. So he's a big German Shepherd, not a, I don't know how big Dunsmere is your lab, but
Aaron Preece (04:53):
Yeah, she's much smaller for that exact, because my first dog, Joel was a big giant yellow lab and just traveling for work a lot before COVID. I was like when they said, what do you want when you're any preferences? And I said, I'd probably prefer a little bit of a smaller dog this time.
Tony Stephens (05:08):
Yeah, I should have thought of that, but I was looking to probably sail the boat anyways, the boys were just getting too big for their quarters on it. They grew.
Aaron Preece (05:19):
Gotcha.
Tony Stephens (05:21):
But with Noga too, it was just like, I can't do this for 'em where we have to pick him up and squeeze 'em through and put 'em in the below and it was comfy living, but he was just kind of trapped in a very narrow space. But it was old school technology talking about access. It's a very hands-on way to get around you. A lot of people are like, oh, you can sail. And I mean obviously when I would run the boat out, I would have another captain that could see, because Baltimore is a very busy harbor.
Aaron Preece (06:00):
I would think so. Yeah. All kinds of boats
Tony Stephens (06:01):
And giant navy ship or a container ship from Taiwan, that's a pretty bad situation to get into, but it is very - thinking about balance you were talking about because sailboats what's called healing, where they lean over.
Aaron Preece (06:18):
Oh, whenever you're turning,
Tony Stephens (06:19):
Not just when you're turning, but when,
Aaron Preece (06:20):
Oh, just in general.
Tony Stephens (06:21):
When the wind powers a sailboat, if it's a type of sailboat that's called a mono hole, which is just your classic sailboat, what you think of the wind will push you forward and you have what's called a keel on the bottom, and so the boat will literally lean and kind of, not a pendulum, but probably 18, 20 degrees in a good wind, you'll literally lean and that's the way you propel forward. It kind of pushes you by pushing on the side and pushes the boat to the side, but by pushing you down the side, it's also kind of driving you forward,
Aaron Preece (06:55):
Driving you forward kind of at an angle, I guess.
Tony Stephens (06:56):
Yeah, yeah. Kind of like an airplane wing has to turn into the wind sometimes or not you how kind
Aaron Preece (07:04):
Kind of tilt over to the side to turn.
Tony Stephens (07:07):
Yeah, yeah. So you kind of literally ride the wind, so it put you forward that way anyways, but just feeling a lot of it was using the feel, your sense of feeling and your sense of balance and just knowing where all the lines are, the lines being the ropes that control the sails and you kind of tick tack your way into the wind. You don't go right into the wind. But yeah,
Aaron Preece (07:32):
You can probably feel all of that, like you said.
Tony Stephens (07:34):
And it was cool. Yeah, was a very, and that's why it was an exhilarating sport recreation. I'm a member of a sailing center. There's actually a bunch of sailing centers around the country for adaptive sailing. I ran a small sailing center here in Baltimore called the Downtown Sales Center. We would have sailing days for people with disabilities where they'd take 'em out in the water and teach 'em how to sail. But yeah, I mean it's like old school navigation like Homer and the Ulysses Homer was blind and a lot of that was adventures of Ulysses out at sea. And I can only imagine this is something that blind people were probably enjoying thousands of years ago being out on the water.
Aaron Preece (08:13):
And I would think once you get out there too, that there is fewer obstacles in the water to get in your way in a lot of ways.
Tony Stephens (08:21):
And one of the things we were working on when I was at a B and I wanted to always practice this, I never got to the point where I could do it. And then when I was running the sailing center, I had some summer interns go do remember soundscape? The Microsoft?
Aaron Preece (08:37):
Yeah, the 3D. That was very cool.
Tony Stephens (08:39):
Exactly. So I would send them out into the harbor. And so you have buoys that are your signals, you have to keep between 'em to active harbor or they're just for orientation. So then they have or letters or the code type things. And I was getting them to drop the pins for soundscape so that way you could navigate using soundscape, you would hold the phone and folks that might not know it was a free app from, they've now made it, I think open source. But it was a cool app like 3, 4, 5 years ago, I guess.
Aaron Preece (09:10):
Yeah, it was like right around 20 19, 20 18 I think.
Tony Stephens (09:12):
Did we ever review it in AccessWorld?
Aaron Preece (09:14):
Yeah, I wrote a review on it back in, oh August, 2019, I think. Maybe 2018, something like that.
Tony Stephens (09:21):
It wasn’t around for a while, but it was neat. It was using your internal compass of your iPhone or I guess it worked on Android maybe. I don't know. I know it was on iPhone. I used it and pitch would change and so you could orient yourself according to that. So it was really neat. Now the challenge is you still need someone cited because you could also have a beer cruise swinging by with a bunch of people, not paying attention, going out to party, some party boat cutting in front of you and make it a big wake. But yeah, it was just neat in the sense of thinking that there's not a lot to hit. It's a lot harder to get autonomous vehicles to work on the road than it would be for an autonomous sailboat
Aaron Preece (10:04):
A lot more. It can just go anywhere. And the obstacles are a lot more easy to detect, I would think.
Tony Stephens (10:10):
Yeah. Yeah. Freighter ships are a couple hundred meters long, so
Aaron Preece (10:15):
Yeah,
Tony Stephens (10:16):
That can pick up a lot easier than
Aaron Preece (10:18):
I was thinking on the lake. I think I'll have access to a kayak and maybe a canoe type of thing. And I was thinking that's a pretty excessive, I haven't done it in a few years, but I've taken little water self-propelled water vehicles out in the past and even with the low vision I have, I figure I can hear people following, especially in a kayak, you're not really going super fast, especially on the lake. And I was thinking I could do this. I can hear people ahead of me to know to follow the other boat, that kind of thing.
Tony Stephens (10:54):
I'll have to try next time. I'm sailing with the meta glasses. They just did the big update in April may live, folks that haven't already updated, you got to update the app to meta ai, but then use the glasses. I used them yesterday in DC to find a restaurant. It was really helpful because I would stand in front of a place and be like, what's that? And it would read the sign and I'm wondering if I could even get it to say, what's this on the water? What's this buoy marker say?
Aaron Preece (11:23):
Yeah. And it should, I would think be able to see other boats and that sort of thing to be able to tell you
Tony Stephens (11:28):
Are there any boats in front of me or anything like that.
Aaron Preece (11:31):
Yeah, and it's pretty, I've messed around with it recognizing different things and it's with the new live live video feature is what I've had a pair for a while and I've been really wanting to, we might've talked about this before, but I don't remember on the podcast, but I've been wanting to review them for a long time and I was really waiting until the live audio came out because I thought that would be a game changer. And it's amazing how low latency it is and how quickly it responds to you. It really does, especially there on your face. You can really walk around and talk to it. You're talking to a person and it feels very natural to do so.
Tony Stephens (12:08):
It's funny you mention that. I was at this restaurant for lunch yesterday. We had a lunch meeting and I was talking to it and I think I really confused the water person that was delivering the water to the table because I was talking, right? I was asking it what the menu was. I was like, can you tell me what's on the menu? And it was neat. I was like, it was like appetizers, there's pasta, there's entrees. And I was like, well, tell me more about the pasta. And it would read off the pasta and then I was like, oh, tell me about the Noki. And then it would describe the Noki description. It would read that description. So it was really working well for me. I know you've mentioned it can still have hallucinations. It's a learning curve. We're still early for all this stuff.
Tony Stephens (12:43):
But I was very impressed, but I'm sitting there talking and I think the water person thought maybe I was talking to him and then I was like, no, no, no, I'm not talking to you. When I said I'm not talking to you, the glasses were like, because still listening with you have to push the button on the side to pause or say stop live AI or Hey, meta stop ai. But I just distracted started talking to him and it started to think I was talking to it, that computer conversation, now I have him talking to me, I have meta talking to me and I'm just kind of like, wait, no, what? It's still weird to have a voice in your head you're not wearing.
Aaron Preece (13:26):
Yeah, the headphones are like way the earpiece is positioned is, it's not in your ear, but it sounds like the headphones are in your ear. Basically.
Tony Stephens (13:35):
The glasses for folks that don't dunno. So these are folks that maybe don't know the meta glasses are Ray Band. They partners with Ray Band, so it's like the Wayfair, the cool hip eighties. I think They have other designs too, and they have these little speakers and so you can use your voiceover with them too, and you can't really hear 'em if you're sitting next to the person. They're pretty private.
Aaron Preece (13:52):
Yeah, very directional.
Tony Stephens (13:53):
Yeah, very directional. Right down into your ear on the little stems on the side of the glasses. But because it's in stereo, it is like this voice just magically appears. And so I'm still getting used to that, but I am talking to my glasses and telling it stop and the guy's like, huh? And I'm like, no, no, not you. And the glasses are like, not me,
Aaron Preece (14:13):
Not me,
Tony Stephens (14:15):
Not me. I was like, no, wait, no, stop that. Yeah, first word problem. I'm looking forward though. The live AI is cool. They also have live translation, and so my big summer adventure while you'll be down at the lake in Tennessee, which sounds actually very relaxing. I'll be taking my boys down to Mexico City for a week in
Aaron Preece (14:34):
June. Oh, that'll be fun.
Tony Stephens (14:37):
And we're leaving a couple of days after this drops, but they have the live translation that's going to be interesting to try it out where someone can literally just be you say, Hey, meta enable live translation, and you download this little Spanish package or French Italian. So I downloaded the Spanish and I was doing it with my boy, my son the other day. I lived in Mexico for a while, so I speak Spanish, but it's still rusty. And when people were talking really fast, it actually works really well. So they'll be talking to you and then the meta glasses will just start speaking to you what that person's saying, and then whatever I say appears on my phone and then they could read it that way.
Aaron Preece (15:15):
That's very cool.
Tony Stephens (15:16):
So yeah, so it's going to be neat to try 'em out in Mexico
Aaron Preece (15:19):
And just the low latency compared to other options that have been,
Tony Stephens (15:23):
That's what's great. Yeah,
Aaron Preece (15:26):
The glasses form factor is great because of just how natural it is to turn your head and look at stuff or look up or look down or just point at things and it can see, because it's got a camera on each side of the glass that's next to your eyes, and so it can really see what you would normally theoretically be able to see, which has been sometimes easier than remembering that the camera is in the corner, they're like the right corner of the phone and making sure you're positioning it right and all that sort of thing.
Tony Stephens (15:58):
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. There's going to be some competition this year. The Gemini folks that listened last month when our guest was Gemini. Gemini at the end of May did a major update. I think it was it 2.5.
Aaron Preece (16:13):
Yeah, I've been messing with that with the YouTube video descriptions. You might be able to do other videos, but that's what I've mainly done
Aaron Preece (16:19):
And it's pretty amazing. It'll look at the video and it'll give you timestamps and what's happening at the different timestamps and you can kind of tell it, focus on this, focus on that. And I'm not sure what the actual limit on the video length is. I tested one that was an hour and a half and it said that it had exceeded the context limit, but I'm not sure how it'll show you
Tony Stephens (16:39):
But where there's some sort of pro version. You can pay for that
Aaron Preece (16:42):
To get longer context or something.
Tony Stephens (16:45):
It'll be interesting. They're going to come out with their, it's almost like the Google glass was 10 years too soon, but they're going to be releasing some glasses to compete. I think probably with Meta glass. It'll be interesting, the Ray bands. But just with that Gemini, I was so tempted after I watched the IO thing on YouTube, their IO big event where they revealed everything. And I'm so tempted to get a pixel now, and I'm like, I can't. I just got a 16 pro iPhone six, seven months ago and I'm like, I can't go get a pixel nine now. Pixel now.
(17:19):
The integration of Gemini in it is just genius where one of our folks that we know in our office in Huntington, next time I'm in Huntington, she has a pixel nine. I'm going to keep bugging her. Hey Kate, do this on your phone. Do this on your phone, your phone. It's supposed to be really seamlessly integrated, which is what's great about the meta glasses and which is why it'll be interesting to see if Google releases something Gemini will be built into it if it'll be a similar form factor where it are. These agents are balling us around, so I dunno. Makes me a little paranoid.
Aaron Preece (17:54):
Yeah, they're always watching. Yeah.
Tony Stephens (17:56):
Yeah. And what's happening in all the data? That's the big question.
Aaron Preece (17:59):
Yeah. Training is what it says in the description. It's pretty open about that. But
Tony Stephens (18:07):
I made sure I chose don't share this data when I did do the update.
Aaron Preece (18:10):
Yeah.
Tony Stephens (18:11):
I kept it private.
Aaron Preece (18:12):
You never know who could get databases get breached and you never know.
Tony Stephens (18:17):
I heard a horror story the other day about someone that just, you know how the sky is falling AI conversations and there's serious stuff to consider. What's it going to do to our economy and our job opportunities or things like that. But they did this scenario where it was AI videos of being abducted and then trying to extort people saying, we've taken your son, give us money now. And it's all like AI created because they've taken our image off Instagram or something.
Aaron Preece (18:44):
And I think that's the AI video generation is getting better and better and it's able to integrate sound now and we're getting closer and closer to that now.
Tony Stephens (18:56):
Yeah, it's a big concern in Hollywood, which I mean, that was one of the big things around the big writer strike two years ago. There was a year ago or two, I think it was two years ago when they did the big rider strike almost two years. And Hollywood was about like, what's going to happen with ai, our actors entirely. So already with the Google. No, the meta, you can have John Cena be one of your
Aaron Preece (19:20):
As your voice sucked.
Tony Stephens (19:22):
Yeah. It's like, oh, if only I was into wrestling. He's a wrestler, isn't he?
Aaron Preece (19:27):
I think so.
Tony Stephens (19:28):
Yeah. I don't know. Which reminds me of, maybe I'll try the meta glasses too. We're going to the Lucha Libre, the wrestling.
Aaron Preece (19:35):
Oh, that'd be cool to get descriptions. Yeah,
Tony Stephens (19:38):
Interesting. Because all the
Aaron Preece (19:39):
Cool outfits and
Tony Stephens (19:39):
Stuff. Yeah, exactly. Like what is this person wearing? So, oh man. So much to do. So yeah, so that's going to be my summer. And you'll be down at the lake house.
Aaron Preece (19:50):
Yep.
Aaron Preece (19:51):
Very cool. I hear some birds every so often on these recordings. I spend a lot of time, I've got a plug on the front porch, so I just sit in my chair on the front porch and take my laptop out there
Tony Stephens (20:01):
With your mint julep. Yeah, cooling yourself from the Southern Heat, man. That'd be nice. Yeah, no, what else is going on this summer? We'll have our conferences. We're going to,
Aaron Preece (20:15):
Yeah, then NFB and ACB conferences in July, early July.
Tony Stephens (20:19):
Yeah, I know our PPRI team's going down to NFB and they're working on that program now, so they'll be there folks. Listen, if you're going to be in New Orleans on July the 11th at 12:15, I think we're in Studio D at the Marriott Hotel in Canal Street in New Orleans, so AFB will be there and they'll actually be talking about our AI research and even probably trying to recruit some people for the next phase of our research. And then what else we got going on? We'll be doing our annual ACB breakfast on the 8th of July at I think at Hyatt in Dallas, Texas. So I will be sweating it out in Dallas in July.
Aaron Preece (21:01):
Fun times.
Tony Stephens (21:04):
And then folks that want to think of our own conference, which will be in November when it's nice and cool, not nearly as hot, November 12th through the 14th, but our registration opens this week. So go to afb.org and click the leadership conference if you're looking to check out our leadership conference and find out more about it.
Aaron Preece (21:22):
And this will be AccessWorld's 25th anniversary.
Tony Stephens (21:26):
We’ll have a celebration, we have a little reception, so come out and meet Aaron. Maybe we could do a live podcast or something or
Aaron Preece (21:36):
A live studio audience technically, something like that.
Tony Stephens (21:40):
I'll think of something like that. But yeah, so we'll all be together in Crystal City, Virginia, right outside across the Potomac, literally right across the Potomac from the National Mall in Washington DC. So that'll be November 12th through the 14th. And technology will be, it's one of the tracks. The themes is navigating the digital revolution. So a lot of the AI, so a lot of folks on hand if you're looking to learn about this stuff more and network and just meet folks from both the corporate side and nonprofit side, the blindness side, researchers, scholars. I think our issue in the journal for visual impairment and blindness on technology should have dropped by then. I think that's coming out in the fall. So
Aaron Preece (22:19):
I think, I know there was a call for submissions recently
Tony Stephens (22:24):
And a record number of submissions, there's going to be some great articles in it. I think it's going to maybe even be, I don't know, I'm not going to speak on behalf of Rebecca, the editor, managing editor on, and then Rob Emerson, the editor in chief there, but there might be enough for two issues or maybe a really dense issue. But yeah, so they're working on that. JVIB that'll come out later and we publish some of the articles. You have to have a subscription, but we publish some articles for free. But AccessWorld is all free all the time,
Aaron Preece (22:54):
All free all the time, all the way back to 2000.
Tony Stephens (22:57):
I know. That's crazy. 25 years.
Aaron Preece (22:59):
It's a great, I think we've mentioned, we've probably talked about this before, but it's interesting to see you can really track the development of technology like assistive technology or even the increasing accessibility of mainstream technology just by looking at AccessWorld articles. You can go back to 2005 and we're reviewing a bunch of phones and e-readers and whatever else, and most of the time it was, this is entirely inaccessible, and I can't remember the last time we had an article where the focus products was entirely inaccessible in AccessWorld.
Tony Stephens (23:34):
You just sent me down a long night rabbit hole of like, oh, let me go look up mobile speak.
Aaron Preece (23:42):
Yep. We reviewed that in talks back in the day. I remember my N 75 Nokia with talks on it, proto smartphones back then.
Tony Stephens (23:52):
I know when they were still flip phones with Giant Button.
Aaron Preece (23:55):
Yeah.
Tony Stephens (23:57):
Flip phones. I never tried the What's, I know there's been a couple of phones. Wasn't there like a razor flip or a fold?
Aaron Preece (24:08):
Yeah, the Razor was a really popular one that you could run over with a car, and that's what my brother had.
Tony Stephens (24:13):
But they made a new version a couple years
Aaron Preece (24:15):
Oh, like an Android version of it.
Tony Stephens (24:17):
But it was all flat screen, but it would fold or something. I don't know, maybe it was Razor, but I remember Razor was the hot thing back in the day. All my friends in New York, they would get the new cool phone and I was like, I can't do that one.
Aaron Preece (24:31):
Yeah, there was like you would get a Windows Mobile phone or a Nokia phone, the ones that had the screen reader built or that you could install the screener on.
Tony Stephens (24:38):
And then Apple changed it all, changed it all. And then Android too, I guess. So yeah, man, check out. Yeah, for folks afb.org/aw. You can check out all the issues. So walk down
Aaron Preece (24:55):
The latest one just dropped.
Tony Stephens (24:57):
Yeah, two
Aaron Preece (24:57):
Two weeks ago.
Tony Stephens (24:59):
What have we got in it? I know our guest, Josh Mele, Dr. Mele, you did a book review on him, right?
Aaron Preece (25:05):
Yeah. Kind of a book review reflection. I would say I was very enamored with the book. I was a major fan, so I would highly, highly the review or the verdict of the review is definitely go read it if no matter who you are, I think anybody could get something out of it, for sure.
Tony Stephens (25:22):
Yeah. Not just blindness, but I mean just as a site,
Aaron Preece (25:25):
Just as a memoir in general, it's really well done. There's just a lot of things to consider in it. It's a very accurate to the blind experience I felt. And it was interesting to kind of reflect on my own experiences with blindness and how they were similar or different and the cultural aspects. He kind of goes through the seventies and eighties up through today, really up to 2021. So there's a lot of interesting history there. And I think on the podcast, if people remember back a couple months ago, the accessibility and the disability rights movement work at Berkeley and that sort of thing. So
Tony Stephens (26:12):
Yeah, that whole chapter was not, I mean, chapters,
Aaron Preece (26:17):
It was a pretty good chunk of the book.
Tony Stephens (26:19):
It was a good chunk of the book, his time in Berkeley, rise in Berkeley into the accessibility. But Berkeley Systems, I remember when I got my Mac Performa in 93 or 94, performa, 9,600 from Apple, which was cool. It was like these all in one built in Max, and it had outspoken Berkeley Systems created Outspoken, which a screen reader that was used on that was it for Mac. And it was the first gooey sort of capable screen reader for graphic user interface. And it was just like, I dunno, that's when I became, I mean my first computer was when I was a kid at Apple two C that my dad had
Aaron Preece (27:02):
Command line type of thing.
Tony Stephens (27:03):
I had Jaws and stuff on a sharp laptop. I remember that weighed a ton. But it was neat with the Apple, it was this whole new sort of environment and feel, because it was before really Windows three one, I think it was just becoming more accessible as well. And it's gooey, but it was just, I dunno, outspoken Berkeley Systems did just this fantastic job at just sort of opening the world as computers were just starting on their major rise in the nineties.
Aaron Preece (27:33):
When you think back to that, do we still, because I know a lot of the times, I know that a lot of what NVDA does now, I was doing 25 years ago in window eyes 4.1, that was kind of when I window eyes three four with Windows 98 is kind where I started with actual assistive technology. But if you think back, are some of the controls the same or is how has that changed a lot or?
Tony Stephens (27:58):
It's hard to remember because it,
Aaron Preece (28:00):
Yeah,
Tony Stephens (28:01):
Only because it's, I also think back to when voiceover was first put out when Mike Shamanic at Apple and then everyone at Apple, they released voiceover in 2005, maybe
Aaron Preece (28:15):
On the Mac. Yeah,
Tony Stephens (28:15):
The Mac, it was on the Power Books. And then they discontinued the power books and came out with the MacBook. But I had an 11 inch power book that I loved and mainly loved because it had voice. It was suddenly, it was free because Outspoken was affordable. It wasn't super expensive. It wasn't back in the days of when I had to get an A and stone scanner, that was $3,000. But the idea that Apple blew the door open with this idea that we'll give this to you for free. Yeah, enjoy. And it was just such a small, outspoken, I do remember was compared to the Jaws that had several discs, you had to upload, and it was a big robust program on my pc. Outspoken was just like a control panel lap. You threw it in your control panel, which was kind of the settings preferences on Max nowadays. And it just worked almost as this extension.
Aaron Preece (29:08):
And that's way ahead of its time, I guess, because even you had narrator, I'm trying to remember when narrator was added to Windows, but at the time you could kind of use it for some things. But really, at least when I would use it, I would use it to install the screen reader, the third party screen reader I was going to use on Windows
Aaron Preece (29:27):
Until Windows 10. Really it, it's slowly improved over the years, but I would say Windows 10 was when you can really now use narrator as your screen eu, and it has just a shortcut that you can turn on during setup and all. And that's 20 14, 15, whenever Windows 10 was released,
Tony Stephens (29:44):
I mean, it was its own program in a sense, but it was just so much lighter by
Aaron Preece (29:50):
And built into the operating system.
Tony Stephens (29:52):
It was just sort of integrated into the OS. So it still had some glitches. I mean, Jaws was still premier in a lot of ways to go into a lot of spreadsheets. Like in grad school in the nineties, I was working on SPSS and I had to do that on a pc, just it was more accessible, my statistics and stuff like that stuff. So I was walking the fence on both. I had my Jaws on one machine, but my fun computer that I would pop in a DVD and watch movies on and stuff. That was on the performance. Yeah. Oh man. Nostalgia. So that's Josh's book though, folks. Check it out and you'll be nostalgically just like you'll be nostalgic going through 25 years of AccessWorld
Aaron Preece (30:37):
Of AccessWorld issues. Yeah,
Tony Stephens (30:40):
Come out folks. What else is in this issue though, other than,
Aaron Preece (30:43):
So we've got the book reflection, book review. We've got a review of Ally by Envision. It's ai, lots of AI in this issue. So Ally is an AI companion app that you can use to recognize and as we were similar to what we were talking about with Meta, but this would be using your phone's camera,
(31:12):
But where you could talk back and forth to an, it'll recognize and describe things to you and that sort of thing. For anybody that's new to a smartphone ally is deliberately designed to be very easy to use, very uncluttered interface. So it's nice. I would say, especially for people that are getting started, it's a nice way to get up and running immediately with AI recognition, without a lot of hassle, with remembering to, with voiceover, I'm thinking about whenever you swipe to an item and then you have to remember that it's got actions to do different things or a lot of that complexity is not there on purpose to make it easier to use. We have a review of inner search ai. I don't know, have you heard of that?
Tony Stephens (32:01):
No, no.
Aaron Preece (32:02):
It is an AI service that helps you shop and you can make purchases through it. And it uses AI to look through and find products, and you shop from multiple locations.
Tony Stephens (32:16):
When you type in something in Google and it'll list you, it
Aaron Preece (32:18):
Has the AI overview at the top,
Tony Stephens (32:20):
Walmart, Amazon, buy it on Google. You'll be like a live jacket for my sailing and 12 places to buy the life jacket from.
Aaron Preece (32:29):
And this is using ai, so you can ask it what the pictures look like of if you're shopping for clothes, you can ask it like we do with any kind of ai, where you can just talk to it like a person. And you can also call it, and again, so for people that are not as comfortable with technology or lost their site later in life or something, and they want to be able to order things online and that sort of thing, they can go through and call a phone number. I remember somebody years ago asked us, they called a FB, and they were asking, how do I let my phone call the internet and I can just talk to the internet over my phone? At the time, that wasn't a thing. But with search AI, that sounds like it's basically a thing now. It also does flights. You can make flights, which I know even the most accessible airline website.
Tony Stephens (33:23):
Oh man,
Aaron Preece (33:24):
It is still a pain to deal with.
Tony Stephens (33:27):
I'm still trying, I gave up trying to get flights from me and my kids to go to Atlanta for a wedding in September, and I'm just like, I had to take a break.
Aaron Preece (33:37):
So complicated
Tony Stephens (33:38):
Going to two airplanes, two airlines, particular a lot of flights to Atlanta. And I was just like,
Aaron Preece (33:48):
Yeah. So you can do that now, and it can probably collate in fine. I know even just using Google flights, which kind of merges all the different airlines together and you can search thing, it's still trying to find what I'm actually looking for when it comes to, I want to leave at this time, and then I want my connecting flight to be this time. And just like it is not even the most accessible options are not the most intuitive. So I think that would be a major boon. And again, with ai, you have to look out for hallucination and things like that. But it seems like one of the things that Deborah Kendrick who wrote the article noted is they are constantly taking feedback and just constantly improving the service. So it's always getting better, it sounds like. So it seems like a very promising use of AI and just are already a promising technology
Tony Stephens (34:36):
Interface. Worked well with screen readers and everything.
Aaron Preece (34:37):
Yeah. Yep. It's designed for people who are blinder lovis, so designed to be easy to use with screen readers and that sort of thing.
(34:46):
And then Steve Kelly reviewed the opto from Eschenbach, and it's a case that you can connect to your phone and it has a camera built into it in an app, a companion app, and it turns your phone into a video magnifier. And we reviewed another one back in, it was either winter or spring of this year, maybe it was last year, there was another one. So that's becoming a more common product where you can take your phone and turn it into a handheld video magnifier. And now with the size of phones these days, that's becoming more and more viable, especially Does it
Tony Stephens (35:21):
Have a stand for it?
Aaron Preece (35:23):
Yeah, I think it has a stand and it's got a separate, the camera, I'm pretty sure is separate from, it's not using your phone camera, it's got its own camera built into the thing and it's got a stand and that sort of thing. So very cool that that's because that was one of the, back in the day, very quickly after the iPhone became accessible and the app store came online, so many blindness things went to the iPhone that you used to have your color identifiers, your OCR, all of that kind of stuff, your book reader, all of it went to the iPhone and you really couldn't really, there was some magnification, but you still needed external tools if you were low vision and using magnification. So it seems like that is also being consolidated more readily onto smartphones. Now,
Tony Stephens (36:14):
Wax the nostalgia again for when I was in elementary school and middle school when I was using a vtech, I dunno if they had vtech in the nineties, but this was the old CRT.
Aaron Preece (36:26):
Oh, the CCT, the XY tables.
Tony Stephens (36:29):
It was, they were huge, just bulky fact, I remember when I was working at a CB, every now and then, someone would call us and be like, yeah, I got this. I'd like to donate to you. And I'm like, oh, no, no, not taking, it weighs 200 pounds or something. They were just so big with the tray that would slide up down left, right?
Aaron Preece (36:51):
Yeah. I had one of those,
Tony Stephens (36:53):
And I hated moving that thing once a year. We'd have to move it to a new resource room.
Aaron Preece (37:01):
They took up an entire desk to get the CRT too. It was at least the one I had at home was literal tv. So you plugged it in, like you plug a video game system in, and then you plugged the CCC TV in, but it took up the entire desk,
Tony Stephens (37:16):
Like an old tv, like something from the sixties that weighed just,
Aaron Preece (37:19):
Yeah, a 30 pound TV that takes up, it's a good two feet thick and yeah,
Tony Stephens (37:29):
This is, yeah, spoiled now.
Aaron Preece (37:31):
Yeah, now they use iPads on 'em, and you just fold it up and can put it in a backpack and there you go.
Tony Stephens (37:38):
Kids when I was young!
Tony Stephens (37:41):
Oh man, I don't want to be that guy.
Aaron Preece (37:43):
Yeah, I'm starting to get that way too.
Tony Stephens (37:46):
Oh yeah,
Aaron Preece (37:47):
Totally.
Aaron Preece (37:48):
And then to kind of close out the issue, I talked about the Suno AI kind of reviewing those, the AI music services more for the web app aspect of them, because web apps are such a more much common now, and they are significantly more complicated to make accessible for a screener because they are so dynamic and that sort of thing. And the one I tested this time was called Fusion, and they actually, right before I finished testing, they had released a new, they kind of updated their system, and now they have a paid option and a pro model that's better audio quality and song production and that sort of thing I would say is I use Suno. I'll just say I use Suno as my main music AI generator. But that being said, SUNO is usable. But Fusion definitely had the more accessible interface. It was definitely more intuitive, and there were more things that were accessible. Even when you generate songs, it generates two at a time, and it would tell you the percentage on each song of how close it was to being done. And it was more you knew where the focus of your screen reader went, where you thought it would go, and the page behaved as you thought it would behave. To me at least it seemed like it was, there was just more things were labeled and that sort of thing. But from a more intangible or subjective aspect, I found it to be just a
Tony Stephens (39:30):
Made you feel more in control.
Aaron Preece (39:31):
Yeah, more in control, exactly. And it was really a good comparison because they are very similar in what you can do with them. So I could compare side by side what it was like making a song in this one, making a song in that one, scrolling through user generated content on each one. And that's really what drove that home that this is, there's a lot, if you are a developer and you're looking into building a web app, there's a lot that Fusion does correctly. And again, my daily driver when it comes to AI music and what I use is suno, but definitely more finicky for sure.
Tony Stephens (40:14):
Making me think, going back to sailing. I dunno why in my head, maybe I wish I was in the water right now. You can have a sailboat that has the tools like we were describing that can really help you safely, confidently navigate, get where you need to go. And then I tried to windsurf one time where they pointed me into a bay on Lake Michigan, and they're like, just go that way. And then the wind took the sail and I just had no idea where I ended up. And then they had to come rescue me on a jet ski because I was just so confused and lost. So yeah, the idea of, and the lesson here is kids, no. The idea that just, it's nice when developers create things with sort of structure and rules and make it WCG 2.0 friendly and
Aaron Preece (41:02):
Yeah, predictable being,
Tony Stephens (41:05):
Yeah, just a workflow that actually works versus feeling like you're just, yeah, I'm creating music as I'm screaming through the wind over waves, having no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Just crying.
Aaron Preece (41:16):
How did I get over here? Yeah.
Tony Stephens (41:18):
Yeah, exactly. How did I make this song again? I have no idea. I just started clicking buttons until something said, please wait. Processing.
Aaron Preece (41:28):
And it's one of those things where it felt almost a, I wouldn't say subjective because was there was just more, especially when it came to focus and stuff, it was more accessible than Suno. But yeah, there was something about the layout, just something with the layout style and the use of headings for things versus using a weird semi inaccessible table and that type of thing. Just easier to follow, for sure. Just easier. The workflows or the focus order and that sort of thing was just easier to follow.
Tony Stephens (42:02):
Is all this AI music work helping you create a summer playlist for when you're hiking?
Aaron Preece (42:08):
Yeah, I have an embarrassingly large playlist that I've created of all just my very specific metal tastes that I made for myself.
Tony Stephens (42:21):
Yeah. Nice. Cool. Well check out those issues, those articles in the issue that dropped in May. Next
Aaron Preece (42:29):
Step. Yep. The summer issue, August.
Tony Stephens (42:32):
And then be sure to check out a.org to come join us in November when we'll celebrate 25 years of AccessWorld at our leadership conference. So
Aaron Preece (42:41):
Yep.
Tony Stephens (42:42):
Lot's going on. Time for a break, man.
Aaron Preece (42:46):
Yeah,
Tony Stephens (42:46):
Literally about to leave. So safe travels.
Aaron Preece (42:51):
Thanks.
Tony Stephens (42:52):
And hopefully I return from Mexico.
Aaron Preece (42:54):
Yeah, for sure. I'll be curious how that goes.
Tony Stephens (42:56):
It's something completely egregious that they're like, oh, we have to take you under custody now.
Tony Stephens (43:01):
Trying to get back in the country. All I was asking for was a taco. Oh man. Yeah. Anyways. Cool. Well, thanks everybody for listening to this one's episode of AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. You can check us out online. Be sure to check out AccessWorld magazine at afb.org/aw, where we have 25 years of back issues walking through memory lane. And then join us in Crystal City, Virginia, right across the Potomac in November. So cool. Or come say hi if you're at the ACB conference, I'll be there. And then while Aaron, it's usually around the 4th of July weekend, so I'm sure you'll be drinking your mint julep on your porch.
Aaron Preece (43:51):
I hope that's the goal.
Tony Stephens (43:54):
Awesome. Alright, thanks everybody for joining us.
Aaron Preece (43:56):
Talk to you next one.
Tony Stephens (44:07):
You've been listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind, produced at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland. Our theme music is by CosMonkey, compliments of Artlist.io. To email our hosts Aaron and Tony, email communications@afb.org. To learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind or even help support our work, go to www.afb.org.
Outro (44:59):
AFB.
