Welcome to the eighth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
The show is segmented by chapter, making it easy to move between segments of the podcast if you have an app or player that supports chapters. Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
- Introduction 0:00
- Patrick Long and Bryan Vuong discuss Innosearch.ai 1:12
- JAWS sound split feature, and a talking body temperature thermometer 45:58
- Pages for Mac with Apple Intelligence, and playing Access On with Siri 48:07
- Podcast apps for iPhone 50:58
- Tech Tip, keep your travel organized with TripIt 56:35
- Closing and contact info 58:55
Transcript
Speaker 1: Live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen: Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. Innosearch.ai promises accessible shopping and its co-founders say this is just the beginning. You have a lot of choice in terms of podcast apps for your iPhone. We take a quick look at some of the choices available. How well are the writing tools from Apple Intelligence working with the Pages for Mac application? And if you travel regularly, the TripIt app keeps you on top of your travel and accommodation.
Welcome to episode eight of Access On. I'm Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute here in Baltimore, Maryland, the headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind. Great to have you with us. If you're a first time listener, a special welcome to you and we do appreciate everybody spreading the word about the podcast. It is great to see more and more people listening to Access On every week. Because there's so much choice out there, we appreciate that you're making Access On a part of your podcast listening.
Online shopping is one of the most tantalizing promises of accessible technology. You don't need to have someone go through a store with you where you feel pressured to just get the job done and get the things you came for. You can browse at your leisure like everyone else, and what's more, you can do it from the comfort of your home. The only trouble is most of these sites are cluttered and a challenging experience for all but the most savvy of screen reader users, and many are just plain inaccessible, turning the promise of accessible shopping into stress and frustration.
A startup called Innosearch.ai is seeking to change all that and it's creating quite a buzz in the blind community because of the quality of the user experience. So what does it do? How did it get started? And what does the future hold? I'm joined by the co-founders of Innosearch.ai, Patrick Long, who's the chief executive officer, and also Brian Vuong, who's the chief technical officer. Welcome to you both. It's really great to have you on Access On.
Patrick Long: Yeah, we're very excited to be here, Jonathan.
Brian: Yeah, thank you as Jonathan.
Jonathan Mosen: Patrick, what inspired you to start Innosearch.ai and how did your accessibility journey begin?
Patrick Long: Earlier last year, Brian and I were experimenting with a lot of AI technologies and we found that general purpose AI for sighted people, the utility is not as large because a lot of folks today enjoy the internet, the internet is built for a sighted audience, but for folks who are blind and visually impaired, there's a lot of images, there's a lot of ads, there's a lot of media that is hard to consume for people who are blind and visually impaired, people who rely on screen readers. So we set out on a mission to basically help these underserved communities regain their independence and confidence shopping online. So we've built a great experience today. In a sense, aggregated over 500,000 retailers, giving users a chance to browse from over 1 billion products. And also an ability to search for flights as well, all at their fingertips, and all without leaving Innosearch's accessible experience.
So far, the reception has been very great. We serve over 1000 blind and visually impaired users daily, and they've told us it's super easy to use with any screen reader. There's no advanced functions you need to do, just quickly navigate, find what you're looking for, and go through the checkout flow all on that Innosearch experience.
Jonathan Mosen: Brian, do you have blind people in your families or how was it that you stumbled upon the blindness market, the accessibility market?
Brian: That's a very, very interesting question. The short answer is we do not have any family members or friends who are blind, but like Patrick said, when we started more than a year ago, experimenting with AI, we have come across many different users, and some of them are actually blind and visually impaired. And we figure out that actually the power of AI, a simple web design actually can bring a lot of benefits to those people. And that's why we started to talk more to users in that community and we figured out that there's actually a strong need for an accessible E-commerce website.
Jonathan Mosen: You mentioned, Patrick, that there were over 500,000 retailers. I'm interested in this, and there may be some trade secrets that you don't want to go into too much detail about, but in my mind I thought you must be tapping into APIs in some way to offer the experience that you are, but for that number of retailers, there must be something else going on. I was really intrigued, actually, I used this... I mean I've been playing with it for a wee while, but I made a purchase with it this morning, and I searched for an Anker power bank. And I found one and I was surprised. I expect that I might find it on Amazon or Walmart through Innosearch but I actually did find it on the Anker store and there was a significant discount available because it's a beginning of the year special. How is it that you are able to index that many sites?
Brian: Like you said, we rely on a set of technologies including API and web scraper, to basically to fetch the information in realtime from all the retailers to Innosearch and to serve that in just a matter of couple of seconds.
Jonathan Mosen: When a user goes onto the site, what is it that they will notice that's different? Obviously you've mentioned that it's accessible, but the other thing you're doing too is I know that there is a lot more description of the products that you're looking at because you're using AI to essentially extract quite detailed descriptions of the pictures, so it's more than just reformatting or repackaging the existing text that you might get on the retailer's website.
Patrick Long: The way I would think of Innosearch is a accessibility layer that actually goes past just the originating retailer's site. So we also have information from a lot of the large language models that they've trained on vast quantities of internet data. So there's a lot of information that it has learned from reading things like maybe the product manuals, maybe Google searches. So there's a lot of background information that it's trained on. So as you browse through the site and as you look through different products, it has a lot of knowledge of what you're looking for. You'd be surprised, it can make a lot of interesting suggestions. We think this will significantly improve the retail shopping experience. Especially for those who are blind and visually impaired every single image has alt text and has proper descriptors, so you're never really lost when you're browsing Innosearch.
Jonathan Mosen: It was interesting when I was shopping for that power bank this morning, they had seven images of the power bank. And as you say the AI described them all in some detail, but I was also able to bring up an edit field and make queries, and it looked like it was searching all sorts of things, including product reviews and things like that. But AI can hallucinate. So is there a danger then that I might ask a question about a product, particularly a more complex one, where there are a range of choices, and I might get the wrong answer back because the AI is hallucinating?
Brian: You are correct, Jonathan, AI can sometime hallucinate. That is the term referring to the fact that sometimes the AI can make up its own things and to convey to the users. So to be honest, we cannot eliminate all the hallucinations caused by the AI, but we have trained our model based on a lot of data and we also configure the model in a way that it doesn't become too creative in the sense that it will mostly rely on the facts and on the data that we provide to the model. Even though we cannot guarantee a 100% of no hallucination, but we can minimize that quite a lot.
Jonathan Mosen: Did you involve members of the blind community in the design and the testing phases of this product as their direct input there?
Patrick Long: Yeah, absolutely. Innosearch actually has three blind and visually impaired people on our team. So some of you may know Dr. Kirk Adams, he's been involved in the Seattle Lighthouse, the American Foundation for the Blind. Sam Seavey from the Blind Life. And as well as Akash, who's our accessibility engineer. So these folks are involved in the weeds the day to day as we build, come up with new features, and test. So very much so we have the blind and visually impaired on our team, but also we have a very vibrant community. So hundreds of people very often give us comments, feedback, use the product. So yeah, I think it's very important to make sure, as we build, as we iterate on our product, we keep the community in mind, and think from our user's perspective to make sure the tools that we're building are applicable to their online experience.
Jonathan Mosen: When I was meeting you in an NFB capacity recently, you were talking about that sense of community that's evolving, and that really it's beyond shopping, the community's getting together for trivia nights and all sorts of interesting things.
Patrick Long: Yeah, that's something that actually took me by surprise. As we were building this initially we had just thought, "Hey, this is just a product, E-commerce, and we can help the customer easily find what they're looking for." But as we've interacted more and more with our customer, we've really built a relationship with them. They've served as almost product ambassadors and product testers. So hand in hand, we work with them very closely. And as you know, there's a lot of organizations that host weekly events, so that gave us an inspiration to host something to give back and to also get our community involved and meeting one another.
So weekly, every Tuesdays at 6:30 Pacific, we've been hosting trivia nights. And there's usually 30 to 50 people from all across the United States that get together and share a fun night of trivia. And there's always a chance to win some coupons on Innosearch as well. That has been very exciting for us and great to meet and get the community together.
Jonathan Mosen: How do you make your money and how confident are you that this is going to be sustainable, that in another 5, 10 years time we'll still be able to use Innosearch.ai?
Brian: Our business model currently is very simple because whenever we bring the traffic and the purchases to the retailers, then we get a percentage of the sales as the commission or the affiliate revenue. So that is how we make the money right now, and to be honest, it is pretty small. So that's a couple percentage every sale. But we have a strong belief that as Innosearch grows and the user bay is getting bigger and bigger, then the revenue will increase and it will bring us to the sustainable state that we can rely on the revenue and to build even better products for the community. Patrick, you have anything to add?
Patrick Long: Yeah, I would also like to add, there is a lot of interesting developments, things like voice commands, things like phone support, a way to place orders through the phone. And these new features could also potentially allow us to expand to adjacent markets, people like seniors, people who have other physical or cognitive disabilities or just simply people that are not that tech-savvy and just want a more streamlined, simple shopping experience. So I think there are a number of avenues we can go. And I'm very confident that we could definitely can be sustainable and be around for the community for, like you mentioned, Jonathan, 10 plus years from now.
Jonathan Mosen: What, if anything, can you say at this point about the voice interface? I understand you're working on that now. Can you talk at this stage about how you imagine that working?
Brian: So there are multiple surfaces that we are developing the voice command. One is on the Innosearch website itself. So currently the AI on Innosearch, it can only answer the questions, but it cannot take actions. For example, if the user would like to add certain items to cart or go to checkout, the AI cannot perform that task for the user. So we are improving the capabilities of that AI so that it can take the commands from the users, either via text or voice, and to perform that on user's behalf, for example, search for certain item, add certain items to cart, describe the images of some items, or enter the payment information.
The second surface that we are also actively developing is, like what Patrick said, a fully E-commerce system via phone line. So basically imagine you can just call a number and on the other side there will be an AI agent to pick up the phone and to help you search for different products, researching the details of those products, and eventually add those products to cart and take the payment information, and the next day the product will appear at your doorstep.
Jonathan Mosen: One thing that I didn't fully appreciate until I made a purchase was that when you do pay for an item, you pay on the Innosearch.ai website. So I thought that at some point I would be passed back to the retailer and that I would have to grapple with sometimes an inaccessible or convoluted checkout process, but that's not the case. But that got me wondering, and I'm sure you've been asked this question before, given that you are handling the payment processing, you have a customer service department, which I've seen on online forums is praised for its responsiveness, it's willing to be helpful. Does that mean that it's more expensive to use your site than it would be if I had gone directly to the retailer?
Patrick Long: Basically the price you see on Innosearch is going to be the same whether you would go directly to that retailer. So obviously there are 500,000 retailers, Amazon, Walmart, just to name a few, and the prices you see on Innosearch will be exactly the same price as if you went to that respective retailer, be it Amazon or Walmart. So we're able to pass on the exact same price. And the reason we're able to do that is because we're that accessibility layer that sits on top of all these different retailers underneath. So we don't reinvent the wheel, we rely on their existing infrastructure, their warehouses to get those products to you.
Jonathan Mosen: So when I pay for a product on your site, how quickly does my order get to the retailer so that the retailer ships it? I presume it does still come directly from the retailer, does it, or is Innosearch.ai being some sort of intermediary here?
Brian: So the products actually come from the retailers. And like Patrick said, we are just like an intermediate layer to process the order and the payment. So on the backend then we have the combination of automation and human to process the orders. So the order once is placed on Innosearch, it can be placed on the respective retailer in just a matter of few seconds if the automation kicks in. But in some other cases, if we need to do some manual intervention, because if the order is too complex or maybe the item is out of stock or something like that, then it may take maybe up to a couple of hours for the order to get fulfilled on the retailer side.
Jonathan Mosen: And then when the product ships, do I get a tracking number from you or does the retailer contact me directly with the tracking number, or do I in fact get a tracking number? How does it all work?
Brian: So you will get the tracking number from Innosearch. We have a lot of automation in the background. So after the order is placed with the retailer, then we have the automation to monitor the order. And when the order is shipped, then we extract the checking information together with the expected delivery date and update that with the users.
Jonathan Mosen: So my relationship is exclusively for the purchase with Innosearch.ai, which is really interesting. So that means then that if there's some sort of problem I can contact your customer service. What can they help me with? If I get a product and I'm not satisfied with it, say after seven days of trying it and using it, I would then contact your customer service, is that correct and discuss what options I have to exchange or return the product?
Patrick Long: We have a customer service department and we would help you basically take care of the returns or exchange. Obviously, returning or exchanging is different from retailer to retailer, and I think that actually is the great value add that Innosearch brings to our customers because we are the common denominator between all these retailers. And we do the work to communicate with them, find what number or what email that they use to do the return, and we relay that return information directly back to you. So for the end user, they are basically guaranteed an accessible experience. And on Innosearch right now we have free shipping on all orders and we have a 30-day return policy a 100% guaranteed by the company.
Jonathan Mosen: I can only imagine as somebody who's run businesses that the margins on each transaction must be fairly small. So there will be some transactions, I imagine, where you're losing on the deal with that kind of customer service.
Patrick Long: Right now on each transaction, depending on the item and the retailer, it varies. For things that are digital, the affiliate revenue can be even up to 10%, but for physical items it's a lot smaller, can be 2, 3, 5%. But yeah, I think with economies of scale and also being able to tap into new verticals, like I mentioned earlier, that can make this business work. And at the end of the day we're very excited that a lot of our users find a lot of value in this and continue to spread the word. So in the future, I'm confident that this can really work out.
Brian: And one thing I would like to add is Innosearch is, I would say, 90% a technology company, meaning that we rely on technologies to do most of the work. So we don't have to deal with inventory, we don't have to deal with package loss because we are just a layer to relay everything between the user and the retailers. And most of the work there is done by AI automation.
Jonathan Mosen: There are some who say that sites like this let first-party sites off the hook, that it may cause harm because the first-party sites may feel less compulsion to improve their own accessibility if you are doing the heavy accessibility lifting for them. How do you respond to that concern?
Patrick Long: Basically, I feel right now there is no solution. So those first-party sites, their primary audience are folks who are sighted and they build their experience based on that. Sighted people probably bring in a vast majority of their revenue, and so accessibility a lot of times is an afterthought. So they've been around for quite some time and they still haven't come up with any great solution for those who are blind and visually impaired. So I see Innosearch as a player coming in to build a wonderful solution to a problem that's there.
It may or may not let those companies off the hook, but the way I see it is we're a value add to this ecosystem for the retailers because we're bringing in additional business that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten right. And for the people that are shopping, now they can actually have access to these sites that they otherwise couldn't have browsed without Innosearch. So for all parties, I feel like it's a win-win. The retailer can earn more business. And for the blind and visually impaired, they get access to products and services that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to purchase on their own.
Jonathan Mosen: With 500,000 retailers, which is an extraordinary number. You're also offering a comparison shopping service essentially, you can just go to the one place and search all these retailers. What influences how your results are sorted? Do you do it by price or will I get the cheapest option at the top or how does it work?
Brian: There's no single criteria for the product to be ranked. We have the algorithm that combines hundred of different factors into account when we decide the ranking of the product on our search result page. So things like the price is one, how relevant the product is to the query, which retailer they're coming from, what are shipping, returning policies of the retailers, what are the user reviews? So a lot of criteria actually contribute to formula on how we rank.
Jonathan Mosen: Booking travel is a nightmare at times, really time-consuming even for those of us who feel like we really understand how to use a screen reader. It can be frustrating. And you've obviously recognized this because one of the new areas that you've gotten into in recent times is searching for flights. How does that work? Can you tell me anything about that user interface and that experience?
Patrick Long: Flights is very simple. Again, getting feedback from our community, also attending a lot of conferences like CSUN, we've heard from a lot of blind and visually impaired individuals that booking a flight is a nightmare, partly because there are so many different flight operators in the US and a lot of those... All have different experiences. Some may be more accessible than others, but some others may not because they're a budget airline, they don't invest much in customer service even for sighted individuals.
So we decided to take this on as a potential opportunity and the way we do it today is we aggregate all the flights across all the different airlines out there and we make it incredibly simple. So just by entering the origin and the destination airports and the dates, you can quickly find the most relevant flights for your travel. And you can quickly navigate between the different options and choose the one that makes the most sense to you. So we've simplified it and you never actually have to leave the Innosearch experience. So very similar to purchasing items, purchasing the flight is that same process. So you find what you're looking for, you make the selection, and make the payment on Innosearch. The flight details like the confirmation number and all that good stuff will be sent to you via email from Innosearch.
Jonathan Mosen: Are there other markets that you're thinking of getting into in terms of... So you have flights, you have retail shopping. Is there anything else you could do with this technology?
Patrick Long: Yeah. In fact, we've discussed a lot internally. We've also talked a lot about it with some of our users during our trivia nights. Some on the list are things like restaurant menus. Because when you're in person, sometimes or many times, a lot of restaurants don't even have something for the blind and visually impaired to find something to order. So restaurant menus has been very hot. Another thing is groceries. Going to the grocery store can be a challenge. So we are looking into things like groceries as well as food delivery. Another is ride-hailing like Uber or Lyft. So there are many areas, but again, as a company we also want to stay focused and make sure that what we're building is good quality. So yeah, some of that is still in the early stages and we're prioritizing the things that add the most value to our end user.
Jonathan Mosen: It is a really interesting site. And when I first heard about it, I thought it's not particularly targeted at somebody like me who gets around pretty well with a screen reader and can solve most problems unless the site is particularly hideously inaccessible, but just the mixture of the comparison shopping and the very smooth user experience and the great descriptions of the pictures, it all adds up to a pretty special experience. It sounds like you are getting a very positive reaction from the community at this point.
Patrick Long: Yeah, they have been just phenomenal. I've heard plenty of stories. For example, one individual by the name of Francisco, he's told me he's never actually shopped online in the past. A lot of times he needs to have family members help him out. This Christmas, this past Christmas was the time where he actually discovered Innosearch and the first time ever that he was able to shop on his own and then surprise his family with some gifts. Those type of stories make Brian and I very excited. Those are the stories actually that motivate us to continue on and really try to make this happen for the blind and visually impaired.
Jonathan Mosen: What countries do you serve at present and are you likely to extend to other geographical markets in the short term?
Brian: So currently we are available in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. Expanding to new markets is in our roadmap, but first of all, we want to make sure that for the markets that we are available, we bring the best customer experience. And we are still focusing on improving the product and to make it even smoother for our users.
Jonathan Mosen: So if people want to find out more about this, it is at Innosearch.ai and we will go into just a brief demo to show how this works. You are compatible, what, on desktop and also on mobile browsers. People can use their Android or Apple smartphones to use it too?
Patrick Long: Yep. We are accessible on your desktop, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, tablets. Yeah, we are accessible on all those platforms. It is on our roadmap to have a native app, but hopefully by the end of the year we'll have something like that. But for now it's just through web and if you just go to Innosearch, I-N-N-O, search.ai, you can access our platform.
Brian: We are compatible with all the popular screen readers like VoiceOver, NVDA Access.
Jonathan Mosen: And you're testing that quite regularly, I take it, and just making sure that all the changes you make, because the product is evolving quite quickly, are fully accessible?
Brian: Oh yes.
Patrick Long: Yep.
Brian: Yes.
Patrick Long: We test it every day.
Jonathan Mosen: Patrick and Brian from Innosearch.ai. And I'd like to give you a quick demo of this site. I'm using JAWS on this occasion on a Windows 11 PC. And we'll just show you briefly some of the things that make Innosearch unique. First of all, we're going to search for a product and to do that we would typically go to an edit field on a site where we know we can perform a search. So I'll do that.
Speaker 5: Search, edit, combo, blank, placeholder, search for a product or item.
Jonathan Mosen: And I'll turn forms mode on.
Speaker 5: Home Innosearch AI. Your ultimate shopping assistant, find best deals and top products. Banner region. Search region. Search edit combo. Blank, placeholder. Search for a product or item. Found zero suggestions for.
Jonathan Mosen: That's a wee bit chatty, but it's saying it's found zero suggestions because I haven't typed anything in yet. I'm going to use the example where I actually ended up making a purchase before I recorded the interview with Brian and Patrick, and that is to type in Anker so you'll hear what happens when I start typing in A-N-K-E-R. I'll turn keyboard echo on.
Speaker 5: Characters.
Jonathan Mosen: And that way it's a little clearer what I'm doing here.
Speaker 5: AN. Found two suggestions for AN. Found five suggestions for an K-E-R. Found five suggestions for Anker. Found five suggestions for Anker.
Jonathan Mosen: I'll press the spacebar.
Speaker 5: Space. Found five suggestions for Anker.
Jonathan Mosen: And I'll type the word power.
Speaker 5: P-O-W-E-R. Found five suggestions for Anker Po. Found five suggestions for Anker power.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, I can type power bank and press Enter, and then I can browse for headings in the normal way, but I can also, at this point if I want to just press the down arrow key.
Speaker 5: Search list with five items, Anker power bank one to five, Anker power station two of five.
Jonathan Mosen: I'm just down arrowing and you'll hear it's very accessible.
Speaker 5: Anker power strip, three of five. Anker power bank MagSafe, four of five. Anker power bank [inaudible 00:32:01] five of five.
Jonathan Mosen: I'm going to up arrow.
Speaker 5: Anker power bank MagSafe. Anker power strip. Anker power station two... Anker power bank one of five.
Jonathan Mosen: In fact, it's the first search that I'm interested in, Anker power bank. So I can press Enter. Again, I could just type the whole thing in if I want Anker power bank and then just press Enter. So this is an optional feature.
Speaker 5: Enter. Results for Anker power bank Innosearch AI, your ultimate shopping assistant. Find best deals and top products. Results for Anker power bank Innosearch AI, your ultimate shopping assistant, find best deals and top products. Searching for Anker power bank. Found 114 results for Anker power bank.
Jonathan Mosen: Without me having to press any keys, it told me how many results it had come up with and there are a lot of results. I'm going to go to the top of the page.
Speaker 5: Results.
Jonathan Mosen: And now you'll find I can navigate by heading. I'll press the letter H to do that.
Speaker 5: 114 results for Anker power bank heading level one. Anker PB fast charging 20K power bank with digital screen, 30W, heading level two link.
Jonathan Mosen: And I can keep browsing this way if I press H again.
Speaker 5: Anker fast charging 20K power bank, 15W, two ports, heading level two link.
Jonathan Mosen: But let's say that I want to find out a little more. I can down arrow.
Speaker 5: Free two-day delivery. Retailer Walmart. Rating, 4.4 out of 5 stars over 87 reviews. Price, dollar, 39.17. Reduced by over 2% compared to the original price of dollar 39.97. Free 30-day return. Chat with Innosearch for Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports button. Add to card Anker fast charging 20K power bank, 15W, two ports button. Buy now anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports button collapsed. Bookmark Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports button. Heading level two link Zolo power bank 20,000 mAh, 30W, high speed, portable charger with built-in new SBC cable, one USB-C, one USB-A, battery pack for iPhone 16/15/15 Pro/15 Pro Max/15, plus MacBook, Galaxy, and more.
Jonathan Mosen: And you hear based on the fact that there is heading level there and another link that this is a different product. So when you find these products, there is a lot you can do right from the search screen. The information is presented very accessibly. As you can hear, some of these items are buttons, which makes it easy to navigate between those items. So I'm going to press shift with B to move backwards by button.
Speaker 5: Bookmark Anker fast charging 20K, power bank, 15W, two ports button. Buy now Anker fast charging 20K, power bank, 15W, two ports button collapsed. Add to card Anker fast charging 20K power bank, 15W, two ports button. Chat with Innosearch for Anker fast charging 20K power bank, 15W, two ports button.
Jonathan Mosen: That's what I want to do. So I'll press Enter.
Speaker 5: Enter. Chat with Innosearch dialogue. One moment. Innosearch is generating the response...
Jonathan Mosen: I'm going to let you hear how long this response takes to generate. So I won't pause the recording.
Speaker 5: Conversation content main region. Innosearch latest reply heading level three. Innosearch has generated the response... The Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports is praised for its 20,000 Mha capacity allowing multiple charges for smartphones and tablets. Users appreciate its portability, fast-charging capability, and dual ports for simultaneous charging. It's ideal for on-the-go use, charging an iPhone 14 up to 4.3 times. The power bank is noted for its convenience and value for money.
Jonathan Mosen: All of that happened with me just pushing that button. I didn't have to go searching for that information. It is sent to the screen reader automatically. Now I want to ask it a question, so I'm going to see if there's an edit field on this page.
Speaker 5: Your message edit, blank, placeholder. Ask me anything...
Jonathan Mosen: And there it is. I'll press Enter to turn forms mode on.
Speaker 5: Enter. Send message form region. Your message edit, blank, placeholder. Ask me anything...
Jonathan Mosen: I want to know how big this is, so I'm going to type, "Give me a physical description of the device including its size and weight." And I'm going to press Enter. Let's just confirm that though.
Speaker 5: Give me a physical description of the device including its size and weight,
Jonathan Mosen: Right. Let's press Enter.
Speaker 5: One moment. Innosearch is generating the response... Conversation content main region. Innosearch latest reply region. Innosearch has generated the response... I'm unable to retrieve the specific size and weight details for the Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports at the moment. However, Anker power banks are generally compact and lightweight designed for portability. If you have any other questions or need further assistance, feel free to ask.
Jonathan Mosen: So it wasn't able to answer my question in this case. What is good though is that I'm still in the edit field. So I don't have to go back and find the edit field again, I can just keep typing if I have further questions. And I want to see if it will direct me in some way to a larger milliamp power bank. So I'm going to type, "Does Anker produce a power bank with a higher capacity than this one?"
Speaker 5: One moment. Innosearch is generating the response... Conversation content main region. Innosearch latest reply region. Innosearch has generated the response... Yes, Anker produces power banks with higher capacities than the 20,000 mAh model. For example, the Anker Prime 27,650 mAh power bank offers a larger capacity providing more charging power for extended use.
Jonathan Mosen: Let's continue the conversation. I can type, "But I presume that one will be a lot larger?"
Speaker 5: One moment. Innosearch is generating the response... Innosearch has generated the response... Yes, higher capacity power banks like the Anker prime 27,650 mAh are typically larger and heavier than lower capacity models. This increase in size accommodates the larger battery needed for extended power storage. However, they are still designed to be portable and convenient for users needing more power on the go. Conversation content main region. Innosearch latest reply-
Jonathan Mosen: And we can review this. It's navigable by region because all of this data is available in a specific region of the page, so we can review this discussion if we want to. So this functionality goes beyond accessibility actually. It's just convenient to be able to use AI, assuming that it's giving you accurate information of course, and we can't always assume that, to have this conversation. It's like a combination of being online and all of the convenience that comes from being online, and having somebody in the store who actually knows about the products that they're selling. Let's see if we can escape from this.
Speaker 5: chat with Innosearch for Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15 W-
Jonathan Mosen: I'm going to go into this product so I'll navigate back by heading.
Speaker 5: Anker Fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports, heading level two link.
Jonathan Mosen: There's a link for it. So when I press enter, we will go into the page for this product.
Speaker 5: Results for Anker power bank Innosearch AI, your ultimate shopping assistant. Find best deals and top product-
Jonathan Mosen: Now we're going to go to the top of the page and we'll just navigate by heading.
Speaker 5: Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports, heading level one. Rating 4.4 out of 5 stars over 86 reviews. Price, dollar 39.17. Reduced by over 2% compared to the original price of dollar 39.97.
Jonathan Mosen: As we traverse this page, I'm just using the down arrow key to navigate by line.
Speaker 5: Heading level two, product description.
Jonathan Mosen: And we're going to get the product description. So I'm going to invoke a say-all at this point and just let it read.
Speaker 5: Experience the ultimate in charging convenience with the Anker power bank 20,000 mAh, 15W, two port. Boasting an impressive 20,000 Emma capacity. It powers most smartphones over four times and tablets at least 1.5 times. Enjoy rapid iPhone charging, reaching up to 50% in just 30 minutes through its powerful 12W output. Simultaneously charge up to three devices all while staying informed about the battery percentage through the intuitive digital display. Stay powered and connected effortlessly. List of three items.
Bullet. Enhanced capacity. Deliver an impressive 20,000 mAh power reserve. Providing over four full charges for most smartphones and at least 1.5 charges for tablets. Bullet. Rapid charging performance. Experience high speed charging with a robust 12W output. Capable of boosting the latest iPhone models battery up to 50% in just 30 minutes. Bullet. Versatile multi-device charging. Effortlessly charge up to three devices concurrently, ensuring all your gadgets stay powered up without compromise. List end. Read More button.
Jonathan Mosen: So there's a Read More button, but if I go down-
Speaker 5: Free two-day delivery. Free 30-day return quantity. One quantity button collapsed as
Jonathan Mosen: We can choose how many of these we want.
Speaker 5: Add to Cart button. Buy Now button collapsed.
Jonathan Mosen: If I press Enter on that collapsed Buy Now button.
Speaker 5: Apply rewards dialogue. Do you want to apply rewards for this purchase? No coupons can be applied at check-out,. No button. Yes button. Yes button. heading level two, apply rewards.
Jonathan Mosen: And I'll just push escape.
Speaker 5: Main region-
Jonathan Mosen: And that gets us out of that dialogue.
Speaker 5: Buy Now button collapsed. Bookmark Anker fast charging 20K power bank 15W, two ports button. Heading level two, top user reviews.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, the reviews are at a heading level two and each review is at a heading level three, which makes it easy to skip. So if I were to navigate by heading at this point, I would get from review to review, but if the reviews aren't of interest to me, I can just navigate to the next heading level two, if one exists on the page, and bypass the reviews entirely. I'm going to go to the top of the page.
Speaker 5: Anker-
Jonathan Mosen: And this time navigate by button because you'll see there are quite a few images on this page.
Speaker 5: User Menu button collapsed. Start Dictation Mode button.
Jonathan Mosen: You can dictate to this as well. So you can search by voice.
Speaker 5: Search button. Country, United States. Button collapsed as pop-up list box. Show image one of nine button. Ask Innosearch to describe image one of nine button.
Jonathan Mosen: Right. We've got nine images of this battery pack and we can ask Innosearch to describe it. So if I press Enter, it'll do just that.
Speaker 5: Chat with Innosearch dialogue. One moment. Innosearch is generating the response...
Jonathan Mosen: Do not adjust your sets. We're just waiting for the description to be generated here and I do want to let you hear how long this can sometimes take.
It is taking some time, I'm not going to edit out how long it's taking so that you can get a feel for how long sometimes it can take. And we know this, that when we-
Speaker 5: content main region. Innosearch latest reply heading level three. Innosearch has generated the response... First image of the Anker fast charging 20K power bank shows a sleek black rectangular device with a matte finish. Anker is embossed on the sides and a digital display at the top shows the battery percentage. The design is modern and minimalist with rounded edges for a portable and stylish look.
Jonathan Mosen: All right. And how different is the second image? If I escape out of this.
Speaker 5: Main read.
Jonathan Mosen: Now I'll push B.
Speaker 5: Show image two of nine button. Ask Innosearch to describe image two of nine button.
Jonathan Mosen: So it is remembering my place and that makes it easy to get all these images described.
Speaker 5: with Innosearch dialogue. Conversation content main region. Innosearch reply heading level three. Innosearch has generated the response... The first image of the Anker fast charging 20K power bank shows a sleek black rectangular device with a matte finish. Anker is embossed on the side and a digital display at the top shows the battery percentage. The design is modern and minimalist with rounded edges for a portable and stylish look. Innosearch reply. One moment. Innosearch is generating the response...
Jonathan Mosen: So a little bit of excess verbosity there because it did not clear the first description from the region.
Speaker 5: Innosearch reply heading level three. Innosearch has generated the response... The second image shows the Anker fast charging 20K power bank being used to charge a smartphone. A user holds the power bank and phone connected by a cable. The sleek matte finished power bank displays the Anker logo and the digital battery percentage indicator highlighting its charging capability.
Jonathan Mosen: So it would've been better had we not got a repeat of the first image, but it's something that could easily be fixed. I don't think that's a showstopper. So we can go on, we can browse all of these images and really get a feel for the product that we are potentially buying. And of course we can comparison shop because there are so many retailers on the one site. So it's easy to navigate, find the best deal, make sure we are getting the power bank in this case that we actually want. And it's important to emphasize that what's available here is well beyond technology. This is a technology podcast, so I thought I would demonstrate Innosearch.ai with technology. But there's a lot that you can buy here and you can also search for flights if you want to do that with a very similar user interface to the one that we've just demonstrated.[email protected]
At the time that I'm putting this demo together, two or three days have elapsed since I recorded the interview with Brian and Patrick. And I have my tracking number for the power banks now and I've been tracking it in my parcel app, so it does seem to work very well. I also have used it for one more thing since we recorded the interview and that is cable shopping. I thought I got the right cable on Instacart. Instacart is a marvel by the way. We don't have that in New Zealand, so I'm enjoying using Instacart and getting all sorts of things delivered pronto. Marvelous.
Anyway, I typed in the name of the cable and I thought I got the right thing. And when the cable turned up, it turned out that I did not have the right thing at all. It had the wrong end on one of the ends of the cable. So I gave the problem to Innosearch.ai and I typed in what I was looking for. And when I found the cable that I was pretty confident was the one I actually asked it if it was compatible with the device for which I was buying the cable, it went out and did some search and said, "Yes, this cable is indeed compatible with the device that you're asking about." So hopefully it will be when it arrives, but that was also an excellent experience. The website again is Innosearch.ai, I-N-N-O-search.ai, and if you use this, I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it and how useful you find it.
You can get in touch [email protected] is my email address. All joined together [email protected], and if you're coming in from an NFB chapter, be sure to give a shout-out to that chapter so we can acknowledge it and say hello. You can attach an audio clip to your email if you want your voice to be heard. It's always good to get a variety of voices on the podcast. Or you can just write the email down.
Plenty of listener contributions coming in. We are delighted by that. Let's get through some of them for the remainder of this episode. "Hello, Jonathan. My name is Maggie and I'm coming from Phoenix, Arizona. By the time I get to Phoenix. Thank you for your podcast.
I've learned so much about assistive technology and the blindness community the last few weeks. The tech tips are great." Glad you're enjoying it, Maggie. "Do you know if the audio switching feature JAWS key with space, V, B left or right arrow requires specific headphones? I'm testing it out on my Windows 10 computer with JAWS 2022 and an old pair of headphones from my mom. I'm hoping it will help me at my new job when I get JAWS 2024 or 2025."
Maggie, as far as I'm aware, no specific headphones are required at simply sending JAWS to a particular audio channel, so it is not in any way to the best of my knowledge device specific. Maggie continues, "Also, does anyone know of a good cheap talking thermometer that goes in the ear or over the forehead? I'd also settle for the kind that goes under the tongue, but I've heard they're less reliable. Thank you again." First of all, Maggie, congratulations on the job. I hope it's everything that you hope it will be.
And as for the thermometer, I think I can help you out with that one as well because the independence market here at the National Federation of the Blind has a couple of thermometers that will do this, that will take your body temperature. One does go under the tongue and it's actually pretty reasonably priced. The other one is more expensive and it's a non-contact thermometer, so you hover it around your forehead and that's all you need to do to get a reading. So that could be useful if multiple people are using the thermometer. So give us a call, 410-659-9314 is the main number for the National Federation of the Blind. 410-659-9314 and choose the option for the Independence Market, and talk to the friendly team there and they will be able to sort that out for you and ship it to you. Isn't it marvelous?
Let's go to Haya Simkin who says, "Hello, Jonathan, I hope you enjoy living in Baltimore and I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year. I knew you couldn't stay away from the microphone too long since you mentioned that you've been on the radio since you were four years old, and so I'm very glad to listen to your new podcast. I have a question," says Haya, "About using writing tools and ChatGPT in Pages on the Mac specifically. I actually wrote a science fiction story using ChatGPT and it came out largely to my liking, but I wanted to edit it further. I managed to copy and paste it into a Pages document on the Mac and was trying to edit it using Apple Intelligence, and especially by giving ChatGPT commands such as telling it to write up and add things to the text or to eliminate all inconsistencies. The document is actually about 15,700 words long."
"Every time I try to do anything in Pages with the whole text, Pages seems to stop responding and in fact it tells me Pages is not responding over and over again. Another thing that happens is that if I try to select the whole text and have Apple Intelligence proofread it, assuming that I get to the menu and the writing tools, it will say, 'Text, text, text.' I don't have a Braille display right now, and so I don't know what it does in Braille in that case."
Haya, this is definitely a good one to send to Apple support. They do have an accessibility line that you can call and I know that you're coming in from Israel. I don't know whether the number is available there, but it is pretty easy to call US 800 numbers if you need to do that. And I would report this and see if they can assist you. They can either write it up as a bug or perhaps give you some hints on how to use Apple Intelligence features and the writing tools optimally with Pages. Of course, if anybody has any experience of this and has seen what Haya has seen and some workarounds do be in touch [email protected].
Haya also says, "Today I put on your podcast and I tried to tell Siri to play it and Siri kept putting on a podcast called Access. I tried saying both, 'Play Access On' and, 'Play the Access On podcast' and, 'Play the podcast Access On,' but it still kept playing a podcast called Access. Do you have any tricks as to how to get Siri to play your podcast?" Sure. I was able to do this with Siri no problem. I just tried it and it worked. I was able to tell it to play the latest episode of the Access On podcast from the National Federation of the Blind. And I think the National Federation of the Blind thing is the one that really steers it in the right direction and I was able to get Siri to play the latest episode. So I hope that helps.
And while we are talking podcasts on this podcast, let's go to an email from Dennis Long who says, "Hi Jonathan. What podcast app do you recommend for iOS? I would be curious why you use that particular app." For many people, Dennis, the Apple Podcasts app is hard to beat. So these days, not only does it have a wide range of features, but it also has built-in transcripts. This can save you a lot of time. And of course for deaf blind users, it can unlock a lot of content that's not accessible elsewhere. Pocket Casts is also one that gets high praise. It's accessible on a variety of platforms, so there's a Pocket Casts for Mac and Windows and Android and even built into the Sonos ecosystem as well as iOS. And the nice thing is that if you want to use Pocket Casts, it will keep all your content in sync so you could listen on your phone, for example, and then pick something up on your Sonos device when you get back.
Also, there is Overcast, although Overcast was recently completely rewritten from the ground up and there have been some accessibility regressions that have crept into Overcast as a part of that process. And so far, some of them, which are reasonably significant, are outstanding. The one that I use and it's a Power Users podcast app I guess, is called Castro, and this suits my particular needs very well. The reason for that is that I consume a lot of news podcasts. And you may or may not know that NFB Newsline is also receivable via podcasts. You can get an entire newspaper from NFB Newsline into your podcast app or you can get specific sections of a newspaper that you want in your podcast app.
So I have quite a few technology sections from a variety of newspapers coming to me as podcasts through NFB Newsline. It's a really nice feature that we offer. And it will read with your text to speech engine of choice that you've chosen on the Newsline service at the speed that you've chosen. The way that Castro works is like email. All your podcast episodes go into an inbox and I just flick very quickly through those podcast episodes. Many of them are just news headlines. And if the news headline doesn't grab me enough, I just move on to the next episode. If something does interest me, a podcast episode is there that I do want to listen to, then I just flick down and choose to add that particular to my podcast queue of episodes.
When I've quickly skimmed the inbox this way and I'm left with all the episodes I didn't want to listen to, I can just double tap on the Inbox tab and choose delete all episodes. And it could be that with all these news podcasts I have, I may have 200, 300 episodes that I want to delete at once and Castro will let me delete them all in one go. It's not perfect. There are one or two accessibility regressions that have crept into Castro that the new owners who have given it a new lease of life are aware of, and I'm hoping that they will be addressed, but Castro is under new ownership. I did move away from Castro for a while because it really was looking like it was not going to be around, and then it got acquired at the 11th hour and the new developers are very responsive and they've made it much more reliable and it's a good app at the moment.
You can do some other things with Castro that are pretty unique as well, including sideloading YouTube videos. All you have to do is go to the YouTube video on your phone that you want. You choose the share sheet, the share button in the YouTube app, and one of the options if you have Castro Premium is to sideload to Castro, and that YouTube video will appear as a podcast episode for you to listen to. That's a feature I enjoy very much.
Another thing that I do like about Castro is its chapter support, which in my opinion is hard to beat. Again, this is a premium feature. So you've got to be a pretty serious podcast listener to want to pay for this, particularly when there are such good free alternatives available. But the thing I like about the chapter support is that you can deselect the chapters that you don't want to listen to.
Access On, for example, is indexed by chapter. So if we take this episode, you'll find that you can skip between the interview that I did with the team from Innosearch, my demonstration, and all these different listener questions and comments. You can just move to those particular sections in the podcast if your podcast player supports chapters.
But with Castro, you can bring up the list of podcast chapters at the beginning of your listening. And if, for example, you hear a question about Pages on Mac and you think, "Okay, I don't have a Mac, that one isn't relevant to me," you can just deselect it and when you're listening to the podcast, it will just magically skip that section really without you knowing that it's done it. It's very seamless. So there's lots to like in the Castro Podcasts app, but there is an annual subscription and it may just be too much app for people who have relatively straightforward podcast listening requirements.
But chime in on this as well if you like, what podcast app do you like for your iPhone or for any other platform that you use? Let's not exclude Android on this one either. I know that Podcast Addict seems to be a very popular Android app in our community. [email protected] if you want to be in touch. That's [email protected] and you can attach an audio clip to the email or just write it down. You can also get in touch with us on Mastodon and follow us there. [email protected].
And a tech tip to finish with this one is for you, if you're doing a bit of traveling in the next little while, we've got the ATIA conference coming up shortly. There's also CSUN coming up not that far away as well. So if you're on the tech circuit, chances are you could be doing a little bit of travel. I've been using something all the way back since the Symbian days that I found incredibly helpful. Symbian, by the way, for those not old enough to remember, it was the operating system that powered the old Nokia smartphones, and a Nokia smartphone was the first smartphone I had, well over 20 years ago now.
But this is still up and running and current, and it's called TripIt or one word, T-R-I-P-I-T. What you do with this is when you get your flight itineraries and hotel stays, you forward them all to plans at tripit.com. And even if you haven't used TripIt before, if you forward something to plans at tripit.com, it will try and create an account for you and walk you through the process. But you can also download TripIt for your mobile phone of choice, be it iOS or Android. It's available on the web as well and on other platforms too.
When TripIt gets all your plans, it builds an itinerary for you and you can view that in the TripIt smartphone app. They have a TripIt Pro service, which is an annual subscription that will send you push notifications when your flights are delayed and when your gates have changed. I cannot tell you how useful this is when you're at an airport and you get a notification telling you that actually now you are at the wrong gate and you need to go somewhere else. It'll also, if you have TripIt Pro, send you notifications about what baggage carousel you need to get to claim your baggage.
And certainly on iOS, and I'm pretty confident it, we'll do this on Android as well, you can have widgets so that you can install relevant TripIt info right on your lock screen. You can set up Siri shortcuts so you can say, "Where is my next flight? What's my next gate?" And Siri will answer thanks to TripIt. It is a very useful app for those who do serious travel or who just want to feel in control and organized when you travel. So that is a service called TripIt. Well worth a look. I'm sure there are alternatives. And if you use an alternative travel app or you have some thoughts that you'd like to share on TripIt, be in touch [email protected].
That concludes this episode of Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip, or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon. [email protected]. That's [email protected] on Mastodon. To subscribe to an announcement-only email list about upcoming episodes, send a blank message to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. [email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org, or phone us (410)-659-9314. That's (410)-659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.