Welcome to the seventeenth 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.
- Panel discussion about CSUN 2025 0:00
- Facebook for iOS regression re comments 49:06
- Seeking advice on accessible fitness equipment 49:52
- Innosearch is great but needs to do more 52:24
- Three tech questions 53:48
- Tech tip, finding another iPhone user in a crowd 56:57
- Closing and contact info 59:15
Transcript
Speaker 8: Live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen: I'm Jonathan Mosen. Welcome to Access On the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim, California is done and dusted for another year. We bring you a conference recap thanks to a panel of tech experts and members of the National Federation of the Blind. There's a new accessibility regression in Facebook for iOS, this one pertaining to comments. And in our tech tip how some iPhones can help you locate a specific individual even in a large crowd.
Well, the 40th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference is over, and if you weren't there and you want to live through some of it vicariously or even if you were there and you want to live it again, we have got a National Federation of the Blind panel of experts who were at CSUN to talk about some of the highlights and maybe some low-lights. So first of all, let's introduce the panel. We should introduce the second Vice President of the National Federation of the Blind first, that is Everette Bacon. Hi Everette.
Everette Bacon: Hi Jonathan, thanks for having me.
Jonathan Mosen: From the great state of New York, we have Chancey Fleet. Welcome, Chancey. Good to have your views coming up on the podcast.
Chancey Fleet: Hi, it's wonderful to be here.
Jonathan Mosen: Mike May, no introduction necessary. Welcome to you.
Mike May: Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
Jonathan Mosen: And Jack Mendez, Deputy Director of NFB Newsline is here too. Welcome, Jack.
Jack Mendez: Thank you so much.
Jonathan Mosen: Let's go around the panel first of all and just get your general impressions about CSUN and we'll start with you Everette. What did you think of the conference this year? You've been to a few, how did it stack up and were there any particular highlights you wanted to introduce at this point?
Everette Bacon: What's interesting, Jonathan, I have been going to CSUN probably not as long as Mike and Chancey, they've been going probably longer than I have. Maybe Chancey and I have been going around the same times. But what's interesting to me is how it is now very much geared toward blind and low vision individuals, where it used to be a lot more other disabilities had a much bigger footprint on the conference.
Now it seems that there's so much geared directly towards blind and low vision individuals that there are a lot more blind people there than there were 15 years ago, which is really fascinating to me. I think it's a real testament to see that more blind people have gotten into the fields of access technology and that's exciting.
But yeah, I thought that was a big highlight of the convention was just how many blind people were in all of these different jobs in access technology representing different fields for access technology.
Jonathan Mosen: What was your first CSUN Mike, and what did you think of this one?
Mike May: I don't remember what year it was, but probably late nineties. And I think the highlight for me at every CSUN is the networking. I schedule a few appointments, but most of it happens last minute and I could stand in that lobby of this hotel and then of previous hotels, and just run into people after person after person and get caught up and that's really the highlight for me.
I think what was significant, what struck me was there seemed to be a lot of options now and a lot of times people say, "Well, what was the new greatest thing?" And I don't know if there's ever that one thing, but I was really enjoying the fact that I could feel lots of Braille displays different options, the graphic displays, the Dot, and the APH Monarch, Tactonom, all of these devices. The EchoVision and Agiga glasses, that was pretty exciting a lot of people were thrilled about that. The MakeSense Vector, and then of course I know you appreciated Jonathan, the GoodMaps technology, which I thought was better navigation indoors at CSUN than it's ever been.
Jonathan Mosen: Yeah, it was interesting looking at GoodMaps because it did get me most of the way to most of the sessions, but I did find that when you got to some of the more remote sessions further down in the hotel, it might just drop out within about 40 feet or so where you needed to be. But in general, it worked very well and for those who haven't used GoodMaps in an indoor environment like that, as somebody with a hearing impairment who can find it difficult to navigate in those very noisy environments, it is just such amazing technology because it gets you right there.
And one of the best exhibiting experiences I've ever had was when at the 2023 National Federation of the Blind Convention, we actually had GoodMaps in the exhibit hall and you could dial in the booth that you want. There's nothing worse than walking up to a booth and saying, "What booth is this?" And then you kind of get captured by the person at the booth doing their patter and you weren't really interested in the product in the first place, but you kind of feel obliged to stick around while they do their patter because you went to a booth you didn't want to go to. So, GoodMaps is pretty cool.
Shall we just check in with you, Chancey, when was your first CSUN and what did you think of this one?
Chancey Fleet: I'm trying to think what year, I think it must've been around 2010 or 2011. And this CSUN felt a little bit different, I feel like the corporate presence has dwindled a little bit since the pandemic and that hasn't bounced all the way back. And we are in this moment of national uncertainty where a lot of priorities are shifting.
And without taking this to really a super political place, one thing that I kept hearing was that practitioners in the accessibility space are grateful to have a time and a space to be in community with one another, and focus on the priorities, and focus on what's important and what's next.
And one hopeful thing that I kept hearing from practitioners, particularly in the digital accessibility space is all the work that's taking place on the European Accessibility Act. So I don't really follow the web accessibility side of things too closely, but I know how very important it is to our equality in the digital ecosystem, and I heard a lot of hopeful focus on EAA as a way to keep carrying forward the gains that we've enjoyed so far when it comes to digital accessibility.
I really agree that GoodMaps has gotten exponentially better. I really have been a skeptic for a long time about navigation that involves computer vision and on several occasions this year I found myself able to pinpoint a destination with GoodMaps and get there really quickly and elegantly. And I'm really excited to see how it continues to evolve as resourcing changes and cameras get better and better.
Jonathan Mosen: Mine was 2004, by the way, my first CSUN, so I guess that makes me a bit of a veteran of these conferences at this point. What about you, Jack? Where did you first go to CSUN and what were your takeaways in broad terms before we drill down?
Jack Mendez: Sure. Yeah, so I believe it was 2011 and so a few years back now, and I think that Mike had it right, just the options that are now available to us. We have people trying different approaches to solve accessibility challenges and they're just really trying to provide options for our community and people will have different preferences and I really enjoyed observing new people at CSUN, seeing their reactions and responses to the tech that they were seeing in the exhibit hall.
Jonathan Mosen: I want to make one point about CSUN this year, which was very disappointing to me and a lot of people commented on this, they decided not to do any assistive listening devices this year and people complained about this because it's not a good look to have an assistive technology conference where people with hearing impairments can't really enjoy the sessions that they paid to attend. And I understand that those who actually contacted the conference organizers about this were told, "Well, we tried but we couldn't find anything." That does seem an extraordinary thing to me that a conference like this has not provided for assistive listening.
Chancey Fleet: There is always a back channel every year about every conference, but I have to be honest and let you know that there's more of a back channel when it comes to CSUN. There is a feeling among presenters and attendees often that accessibility considerations are left out, which maybe is inevitable. But what's not inevitable is that the organizing committee doesn't seem to have really robust mechanisms for taking feedback and acting on it and it might be time when we look at things like the missing assistive listening devices, when we look at the quality of the tactile maps that are coming out, it might be time to start thinking about some collective action and what as a community we want to say out loud sort of in the public sphere that we want and expect in an accessibility conference.
Everette Bacon: I also agree, and I thought the staff was a bit rougher this year than in past years. For instance, I work for a access technology company in Aira and I needed to go to my booth. I got there five minutes before the booth time opened, I have presenter on my badge, I had been in there, and I got blocked and told, "No sir, you cannot go in." And it was interesting that they were so strict on so many things this year, I hadn't felt that before and my first one was 2006.
Jonathan Mosen: They had an app for the first time, which was a good initiative and the National Federation of the Blind has had one of these for some time now where you can communicate with those who choose to make themselves available via the app and you've got the schedule there and other things like that. But what was extraordinary to me again, for an assistive technology conference was when you go into the agenda and scroll through, that app had a scrolling issue.
You could not just flick right through the sessions, you got to a point where it got stuck and you had to be a reasonably advanced user to scroll to the next bit. You wonder how on earth they can get away with that at an assistive technology conference.
Chancey Fleet: Oftentimes organizers are presented with a variety of third party options, they're not going to build their own app and I think it comes down to the lack of standards when it's time to procure. We all look at the best of a few bad options that have accessibility bugs and individual conferences accept the best one with those few bugs. Nobody ever says, 'Hey, this is a showstopper we're not going to procure unless these things are remediated." And until again, I know I always beat this drum, until we collectively organize and apply some pressure on procurement we're going to keep seeing that.
Jonathan Mosen: Mike, I think it was you in the Living Blindfully days who drew our attention to these hotels where you go and there's a brand new interface for elevators and you'd think for things that just go up and down, what can you do? But the way this seems to work is that you press a button, this one was accessible to be fair, so you could push a big button to make it talk and then you would choose the floor that you want and it would tell you to proceed to a particular car.
The difficulty is of course, then locating the car that it told you to proceed to. But it is actually a very efficient experience because once you get in there, they're managing traffic so you get to the floor that you are supposed to get to with relative efficiency.
But this is increasingly a thing, and you were pointing out Mike, back in those days that not all of those interfaces are accessible and even if they are, they're problematic.
Mike May: Yeah, I think the problem with this particular system, they all vary a little bit and Otis Elevators now has a person in charge of the accessibility, but I'm sure it's going to take years for her input to trickle down. But at CSUN it has a nice keypad, which is great because some of them have touchscreens, but you punch in your floor number and then you have to lean within a couple of inches to hear the speaker, unless it's three in the morning and there's nobody around. It's so loud in that elevator lobby that you can't hear it and then you finally hear it and it says, "Elevator B." And you said, "Was that B, E, or D?" So it is tricky.
The GoodMaps data could help a bit more with that by describing in their point of interest database. Let's say for example, the elevator bank goes from A, B, C, D, E, F counterclockwise and once you get that in your head then it's a little bit easier to get going quickly. Also, when you hit the accessibility button, which makes it talk, it also delays the elevator so that it doesn't close for, I don't know, 30, 60 seconds it takes a while just because someone in a wheelchair might be going there. It'll be interesting to see what it's like at the convention in New Orleans this summer.
Everette Bacon: I hear it's a touch screen, so we may be in for some real challenges.
Jonathan Mosen: Let's talk about specific technology that people liked. And I'll start with you Mike, because I know you may not be able to be here for the duration of this whole discussion. And you did mention a few things, but the one that you didn't was something you introduced me to and this is a new travel tool from the UK and I'll preview this because I think you'll be great at describing it. But I'll preview this by saying I took a walk with this particular travel tool and they set me up after a bit of onboarding to walk a block around the hotel in Anaheim where there were quite a few things to weave and wind around.
And what I found with this technology in my hand after having done the onboarding was my cane did not come into contact with a single object as I did this whole city block. Can you talk us through how this works in simple terms?
Mike May: Yeah, it's interesting and I appreciate that these guys have been reaching out for a while, it's been a year and a half or maybe even two since they first came to me and said, "What do you think about this?" And when I saw it I thought, "Well, I like it in concept, but how's it going to be implemented?" It's the devil's in the details. But what's different about this versus your normal audio and haptic navigation cues is this is a physical, let's call it a thumb wheel that's on a small little flashlight-sized thing and as you walk along, that thumb wheel points in the direction that you should go.
So you have something that's very definitive when somebody says left or 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock that gets you in the right direction. But with this thumb wheel that you're actually feeling, it's very, very precise and I think has a place in navigation both in connection to maps and also in obstacle avoidance that I think warrants a lot more research and development, and these guys seemed quite focused on making it happen.
Jonathan Mosen: Now the companies MakeSense Technologies, right?
Mike May: And the product is called Vector.
Everette Bacon: I did the same walk you did, Jonathan, and I was fascinated by the information that you got from the thumb wheel. I think the pulsating was a little too intense at times and I found myself almost a death grip on the device, but I had to make myself relax and try to pay attention. But I was impressed that I didn't hit any objects either and that I was able to line up with the street crossings that we had to do and it was a pretty fascinating technology. Basically it's a military-grade GPS that's in the device so you're getting the most accurate GPS information that soldiers get in military times and so it was pretty interesting technology.
Chancey Fleet: I talked to the folks from MakeSense, and it's important to note that at this point the device is conceptualized to work on retracing a route that you or you and a guide have taken before. And I had a long talk with the folks from MakeSense about how a lot of us don't live by routes, how a lot of us have to improvise, especially those of us that might be the most highly motivated to want and try new travel tools. And I'm really hoping for these folks that they find the right community partners, whether that's maybe at Google or through GoodMaps or some other partnership where they can explore applying this technology to non-routed first-run situations. I think that's where the true power is going to be unlocked.
I really did find it intuitive to follow the pointing of this thumb wheel, I found it lightweight and less obtrusive than any other haptic navigation device that I've ever tried. And I could really see it decreasing someone's cognitive load and sort of easing navigational decisions once it can be tightly integrated with the type of GPS that we think about when we think about first-run mapping.
Mike May: And Chancey, as you know, I'm all about collaboration so that's one of the things I've really tried to do with them is to get them to connect with everybody. And they know that they want to work with indoor maps, outdoor maps, and also with visual interpretation services, all the pieces of the puzzle because not one thing works for us all of the time.
Jonathan Mosen: And I did say to them, you've got the geeks here at CSUN, but I think this technology is really for primetime in a wider audience to give you feedback and I do hope that they will come to the National Federation of the Blind's Convention in New Orleans in July because this product has a lot of promise and they've just received about $3 million in venture capital, so it's going to grow.
And the interesting thing about CSUN this year also was the specter of the Meta glasses kind of hovering over so many things in the blind community. So this does use computer vision and at the moment when you trial this, you have an iPhone strapped to your chest, which kind of looks a bit lethal. What they want eventually though is for the Meta glasses to provide the computer vision. And so I think there'll be increasing pressure on meta to provide some sort of API, some documented SDK so that everybody can get in and provide these blindness products that they wanted to do.
Mike, any other gadgets? Because I know you are going to have to depart soon. Was there anything you wanted to expand on?
Mike May: No, certainly EchoVisions were intriguing. There's always a little cautionary thing in the back of my head going, I hope this company is viable because they are focusing on the blindness market, which is too small to sustain an affordable price and they were talking about a 500 dollar price point, so I would hope that they appeal to the mass market so that they can keep themselves going and be around a couple of years from now. But I really love the fact that they were able to easily add Seeing AI, Be My Eyes, Aira, to the app, which is of course the frustrating thing about the Ray-Bans in terms of working with these third parties.
Everette Bacon: These are the EchoVision from Agiga, I thought the audio quality was better on those glasses than the Meta glasses. What did you think, Mike?
Mike May: It's hard to tell in a noisy environment, it certainly was as good as, and little speakers in the glasses are kind of hard to have high quality anyway.
Jonathan Mosen: Essentially, is it's competing with Envision it sounds like with a menu of different apps on the glasses that are blindness specific.
Everette Bacon: It's kind of competing with Meta, honestly. They're a very fashionable pair of glasses like any type of frames and lenses you would put on and they have an interface in there that allows you to do both computer vision but also can connect, as Mike said, with Be My Eyes and Aira, and you're able to call up a visual interpreter, they can see through the camera, there's a camera on the right side of the frame in the corner, and then there's a light that's on the left side of the frame, so very similar to the footprint of the Meta glasses. I just thought the audio quality when I was in that busy room, we connected with Aira and I could hear the Aira agent better than I can in a busy room or a very noisy atmosphere than I can on the Meta glasses.
Jonathan Mosen: Do you know Everette, whether those glasses compare with an external Bluetooth audio device, which I think presently is a weak point of the Ray-Ban Metas because you can't pair with a pair of earbuds that might give you a bit more volume in those scenarios. Or for example, a Bluetooth capable hearing aid.
Everette Bacon: good question, I did not find that answer out. I didn't ask that question when I was there, but that's something I can definitely get an answer to for you.
Jonathan Mosen: All right, and we'll find out. We'll see if we can get them on Access On to tell us about these glasses. It's been a while since we heard from you, Jack. Tell us about gadgets at CSUN that excite you?
Jack Mendez: Well, one comment about glasses that I've asked several... I didn't get to see the EchoVision, but I've asked about stereoscopic vision, two cameras in glasses, and nobody seems to think that's needed. But I can't help but wondering for more complex computer vision projects, whether that's really the next step for these things.
Chancey Fleet: To get depth, are you thinking?
Jack Mendez: Yes, that's right.
Jonathan Mosen: And what's the status of these glasses? Just before we go on, are they shipping now or they're prototype?
Everette Bacon: No, they're supposed to start shipping this summer. They're anticipating a July release, but you can, I guess get in on a pre-order type of deal right now.
Jonathan Mosen: Go ahead Jack, what else took your fancy?
Jack Mendez: Sure. Right, gadgets. So regarding options, of course the Orbit Player was shown at CSUN, that's the new audiobook player from Orbit Research. Their main differentiate in the market seems to be pricing, they're going to target about a 300 dollars US price, so of course we'll be there on NFB Newsline we'll able to get publications to that player. Their speaker is a bit better than the Victor Stream and they have all the similar features. I did see from the people that produce the Versa Slate, some modifiable Braille signage.
There's an adhesive back with a plastic front that you can change the pins on, so that could be interesting for universities and different places that need to change their Braille signage. It's a single line, 20 cells I believe it was, so you had this adhesive back and then you can remove a cover and change the pins so that you can have a changeable Braille sign. That was pretty cool.
Really all of the other stuff has been iterative. I didn't see anything that said, "Hey, here's a new product that I must have right now." All the updates from everybody we're used to, nothing really grabbed me, honestly.
Jonathan Mosen: So can we come back to that Orbit Daisy Player, they're trying to come in at a lower price point, aren't they? That means that they're undercutting some of those other players in the market. And you're saying that you think the speaker is better, is it as feature rich as say the Victor Reader Stream, which I guess is the one to beat in this category?
Jack Mendez: Yeah, it's at parity at least.
Everette Bacon: They don't have NLS capability yet, but they will. I thought it was a very comparable device to the Victor Stream and half the price.
Jack Mendez: And honestly it's got a user replaceable battery, which I think was a major misstep from HumanWare on that part. It's got Bluetooth 5, which is a bit better, so in some respects it's a little bit better.
Jonathan Mosen: Nice form factor and very discernible keys, it did look like a really nice unit. What about you Chancey? What's going on in gadget land for you from CSUN?
Chancey Fleet: Oh my gosh, so I am just so delighted and happy about the progress of the Monarch, I know it's going to be a slow rollout, but it's exciting that they're able to distribute Monarch starting this year. And the big news at CSUN was the release of an email app so imagine kids, and teachers, and peers being able to correspond by email using a 10 line Braille display instead of just that one line.
The first eBraille book got released, Treasure Island, so that's a proof of concept of eBraille, which is a format that adapts for different types of multi-line Braille displays. That's going to be important for all of us, but particularly I think the K-12 market. So that really excited me a lot, among other things.
Jonathan Mosen: The Monarch, they have their cells, their display, coming from a South Korean company called Dot, and what was interesting to me is that we could see the Dot Pad second generation from Dot themselves at CSUN, and this is a iPad like device and it's form factor. It's also got a dedicated 20 cell refreshable Braille display in addition to that graphical area where you can display either graphics or Braille.
And what was interesting to me is that that's coming in to the US market at a price point of just over 6,000 dollars. They have overcome in the second generation technology one of the major shortcomings of the Monarch, which is that if you put your finger on a set of cells, say you're monitoring or you're trying to monitor status changing, if I'm recording here for example, and I want to see how long the recording's going for if I have my fingers on those cells, they don't refresh until you lift your finger from the cell. The Dot Pad has solved that problem and I wonder whether eventually the Monarch will get that updated technology.
Chancey Fleet: Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know.
Jonathan Mosen: As I understand it though, the Dot Pad is largely dependent on external devices, it doesn't have a lot of software on board like the Monarch does.
Chancey Fleet: Exactly. The Monarch is designed to be a full software ecosystem for reading and writing and hopefully eventually higher level communication tasks. And the software, I've been testing it pretty extensively, the software is remarkably, I think, stable for how early the device is, and so I think that's a lot of where the development effort and the differentiation shows up.
I have two more I'd like to share. There is a company called Paige, I think it's Paige with an E, P-A-I-G-E. Paige Connect is a device that sits under a Perkins Braille writer and digitizes what the user is writing in real time. And this can be used to back up what you're brailling, but it can also be used for gamifying Braille, for giving instant feedback to a kid or an adult learner about what they're brailling, and showing what they're brailling on a visual screen so that's sighted and blind folks can collaborate together.
They're also working on Paige emboss, which is, if you know the form factor of a cutting machine, I would say about half the size of the smallest portable Braille embosser now, they're looking at a price point sub 1,000 dollars. It's not the fastest Braille embosser in town, it is slower than the affordable embossers that are on the market right now, but if you need to emboss on the go or get an embosser to areas where they might not be available, I think it could be great.
The last one that I'd like to mention really I think is a sleeper hit because this vendor didn't have a booth and was traveling CSUN, setting up meetings, and doing tech demos, but it's the T3 from Touch Graphics. This is the next generation talking tactile tablet, it is a jumbo sized Android tablet that is traditionally used for signage up on a wall and you can put an 11 and a half by 11 piece of paper on the tablet, it automatically registers what piece there. There is a mirror system that captures a QR code and that's how that happens.
T3 has been on the market for a couple years and what it's done so far is allow you to buy booklets of practice. So you could start out with basic tactile symbols and go all the way up to the complex scientific diagrams, and orthographic projections, and maps and learn about what you're touching by hearing what you're touching in real time and even taking quizzes and finding different areas. So far so cool, for a device that costs around 700 dollars.
What's happening now is that the developer is preparing two brand new applications. One of them is going to let the user directly hook up to an embosser, print out a tactile map, put it on the T3 and instantly have every street, every landmark, and every intersection spoken when they touch their finger to that position. And that is going to bring the richness of multi-layer audio feedback to the precision of a tactile map. The other thing that the developer is doing, Steve Landell, that I think really, really exciting and groundbreaking, you'll be able to draw anything you want or emboss anything you want, sometimes I draw with a sensational blackboard and sometimes I emboss graphics.
You'll be able to put your own graphic on the T3 and use a fully non-visually accessible system, I've tried it myself, to trace out any area, any line, or any point and add your own audio or text labels in real time and make your own fully talking tactile graphic in a way that is intuitive and that I feel like I could teach to the average TVI who's not necessarily a tech person.
Jonathan Mosen: An intriguing couple of devices there. Going back to that first one you mentioned the Paige device, that reminds me of the good old Braillen print. Does anybody else remember the Braillen print? See, I'm aging myself. This was a thing in the eighties from Quantum Technologies from Australia.
Jack Mendez: I remember, yes.
Jonathan Mosen: Yeah, you put this thing under your Perkins Brailler and you would Braille into it and it would actually use a good old Dot Matrix Printer to instantly transcribe into print what you were brailling on a Perkins.
Chancey Fleet: Well, it's back.
Jonathan Mosen: Everette, anything from you?
Everette Bacon: The name of the company is escaping me, but there was a Braille display that was using compressed air, it was pretty fascinating.
Jack Mendez: Yeah, the NewHaptics?
Everette Bacon: Yeah, that was it, NewHaptics.
Chancey Fleet: That's Sile O'Modhrain project, yes.
Everette Bacon: That was pretty fascinating. That could definitely make the price point of Braille displays much better and much cheaper if that technology can get there fully. But I did feel the device and it was easy compressed air and it was pretty interesting.
Jonathan Mosen: Did it feel like Braille and what was the refresh rate like?
Everette Bacon: It definitely felt like Braille to me. Of all the people on this call, I'm probably the newest one to Braille, but the refresh rate, I thought it was pretty standard, I didn't notice a big difference.
Mike May: Yeah, I thought the Braille was exceptionally good and it was solid, it didn't cave in.
Jack Mendez: The only thing that concerned me was the compressor, even in the loud environment of CSUN, first of all, you could feel it on the desk and you could still hear it even in the exhibit hall. So you talk about my white noise right now, but that thing, that's going to have to be addressed at some point.
Jonathan Mosen: Well, it's the holy grail, isn't it? Everybody's been trying to find a viable alternative to the piezoelectric, which is venerable. I mean, it's just gone on for decades as the credible way to do refreshable Braille and it is expensive.
Jack Mendez: I did attend a session from Arizona State University where a couple of students were talking about their approach to building yet another, what they think of as a low-cost Braille display. They're targeting 250 dollars for, I think it was a 20 cell, and they're using magnetics and less of the actuators in their design, which reduces the cost. And they also are building an AI app, I guess that allows one to browse the internet more easily, which I was a little bit skeptical of.
But I always attend these sessions at CSUN for people trying to build lower cost Braille displays and so that was interesting to me. Three students from Arizona State and their engineering projects designed for community impact.
Chancey Fleet: How did we get so deep into the hour and just now for the first time somebody said AI?
Everette Bacon: I know, huh?
Jonathan Mosen: Yes, yes. Good on you. We've done well and actually I went to one of those birds of a feather sessions where somebody said, "Let's see how long we can go without saying AI." And we did what, probably about 10 minutes I think, and then somebody dropped the AI thing.
So let's segue because it was beautifully done, Jack. We should talk about the sessions at CSUN and I guess the approach that I take to these sessions, particularly in my National Federation of the Blind capacity is that I have a whole lot of sessions I intend to go to and then as I think Mike was saying earlier, the networking happens and you get asked to attend one-on-one meetings and they're often very productive so the sessions become a bit of a backup. But I did get to quite a few this year and I thought we could just go around and find out whether there were any particular sessions that stood out for you.
Before we do that, a little gripe, for anybody who presents at CSUN, I went back because you can't attend all the sessions that you want to a lot of them are concurrent and cloning hasn't been widely deployed yet. So it is frustrating when you go onto the CSUN website post-conference and you find that a good number of presenters have not uploaded their slide decks or any supporting materials. So if you were really interested in a presentation and you couldn't make it, it's pretty sparse. I mean, there are a few on there who have uploaded their materials and you can download them and read them, but gosh, a lot have not.
Let's start with you Chancey, what sessions in particular stuck out for you?
Chancey Fleet: I was actually so happy that I went to the Keynote with Gabrielle Giffords and it turned out to be something totally different from what I was expecting. It was former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was shot years ago in an assassination attempt and has been steadily recovering from the effects of aphasia, hearing and understanding speech and writing. And she was up there in conversation with her speech language pathologist, they've been together for 12 years working from a time when she could only speak two words to now when she's fluently delivering speeches, reading, writing, expressing herself really vivaciously.
And what stood out to me about that Keynote more than any Keynote that I've ever seen before, is how it honored the relationship of trust and reciprocity that comes between someone with a disability who's in a place where they need support and a direct service provider. It was a great story about Gabby's self-determination and it really centered her goals and the things that were important to her and the tools that she used. But the language pathologist was right up there too, and it was so clear, more than it usually is at a tech conference, that the human relationships power any of the social technical gains that we all make, especially individually when we're transitioning through new types of disability.
Jonathan Mosen: Any others?
Chancey Fleet: For me, that was the standout. I have some thoughts about the narratives that I was hearing about AI in other sessions. I heard a claim in one session that shall not be named that seeing AI when you ask it about an image will research the image for you. And as a library worker, that kind of made me tingle a little bit and think like, gosh, we need to make sure that the people who are teaching AI in this field understand what an LLM is doing and all of the potentials for misinformation that can pop up, and how getting a conversational response actually differs from referenced research. And I heard a little bit of conversation about security and privacy and informed choice around AI, but I heard a whole lot more about what AI can do than how we should be using it and how we should be teaching it. So I'm hoping to hear more pedagogy around AI next year.
Jonathan Mosen: There was a session and I think the material is available for this one and I look forward to reading it about responsible AI. I think it was something called Glean and I don't know whether anybody came across that session or knows what Glean is, but it talked about using this tool to responsibly research with kids because of course there's no putting the genie back in the bottle, and there can be accessibility benefits as well of using AI for research. So, using it responsibly and making sure that the AI isn't the essay for the student is the major challenge now that we face. Jack, any favorite sessions for you?
Jack Mendez: I too enjoyed the Keynote, it was very real, both people were very present. I really liked her genuineness, she really articulated her journey and gave really good context for the things she has to do on a daily basis, it was really an amazing presentation.
I also did enjoy the legal update that Lainey Feingold did. I really thought she provided good context, hope for the future regarding advocacy and private enforcement, that sort of thing. I always enjoy going, but for me, the highlight of courses, the networking, I too, like Mike went and walked around the halls and got updates from people.
Jonathan Mosen: Our very own Mike May did an interesting session on what is to be done about inaccessible apps. And there was some very interesting discussion that went on there about whether it might be time for us to call on the purveyors of these stores, the App Store and Google Play to actually do more, that there may be categories of apps where there really is no excuse not to make them accessible. And given the micromanagement that Apple does supposedly reviewing every app before it goes in the store, there's actually no technical reason why they couldn't evaluate for accessibility in certain categories and say, "Okay, if you don't conform to Apple's accessibility guidelines to a certain degree, we're not going to approve the app in the store."
Jack Mendez: I heard from a developer at CSUN who works on accessibility issues and one of his comments to me as an aside was I publish bug reports to Apple in hopes that they will fix them someday. And this is from a developer, so I know we have a lot of Apple love here, I get that, but when you hear that from developers, it's very discouraging to me.
Jonathan Mosen: What's your thoughts on that Chancey, in terms of whether the companies who are running these stores are doing enough to promote accessibility and enforce accessibility with mobile apps?
Chancey Fleet: I think that it's abundantly clear that the remediation of critical accessibility bugs, I don't even like to call them bugs, but failures, access to denials, addressing them is not as well-resourced as it should be. I do think that we're entering an era where AI can be used to flag things faster and to remediate things faster. And so I expect to see some acceleration in the addressing of critical bugs in the near future if there are still enough accessibility practitioners who are being resourced and empowered to use and deploy those tools.
So I think that the technical tools to fix the problem are available. I think the companies have the knowledge and expertise that they would need to figure out the best roadmap to do that. And what we see is the resourcing or lack thereof in the org chart. At the end of the day, if there's not somebody who has the power to prioritize critical bugs that get reported through accessibility channels, and if there's not somebody who can stand at the door and block the shipping of releases that contain known critical bugs, we're going to continue to see the lackluster performance that we now see pretty much across every platform.
Jonathan Mosen: It was interesting, Jack, you commenting on the legal side of things in some of the sessions there, I found it interesting to hear descriptions of what's going on in Europe with some of their legislation. And the EU is becoming quite activist in the technological field generally. I mean, if it wasn't for the EU, we wouldn't have USB-C ports on our new iPhones. This is a chance at an international conference like this to just compare notes and find out what might we expect here in the United States as a result of what's going on in Europe because these major players have to comply with a range of laws. And in fact, you do get quite a different experience now on your iPhone in Europe in terms of the ability to use third-party app stores than you do here.
Jack Mendez: Right. And of course you have to do a lot of maneuvering to get that to happen, you can't visit Europe and experience that you have to have a valid address and all sorts of stuff to make that happen. But yes, I think that the laws that are happening in Europe are really going to impact the people there greatly, it's going to be amazing if they can get it.
Jonathan Mosen: So just a couple of sessions that I enjoyed as we start to wrap. I did enjoy Lucy Greco's session on accessible appliances, which is a pretty important frontier to think about. And the process of shopping for an accessible appliance is such a mission. Can you count key presses, do the menus wrap or not? Various things like that. And she did a great job in a humorous and very lively way of highlighting the whole accessible appliance issue, so that was a useful presentation.
Also, the BBC did one on accessible TV and some of the initiatives that they're taking in the UK there. And one may be dear to your heart Chauncey, there was one that I didn't get to and I think actually I do have the slides for this and haven't checked them out yet, and that was this whole debate about using AI to describe video for audio description. I think this is a slightly different topic from using synthetic speech, which I know you have a view on, but it sounds like what they were talking about in that presentation was can you actually use AI to describe a movie?
Chancey Fleet: Yeah, there seemed to be several sessions that were touching on AI and audio description and alt text. I went to one that was sponsored by Intuit with Ted Drake and Marco Salsiccia, and that one was kind of focusing on the pitfalls of auto-generated alt text because it can leave things out, and maybe more importantly it can be painfully verbose as those tools are currently conceived. And so they were looking at workflows for leveraging a little bit of AI but keeping a human in the loop, which seemed like a sensible approach. I didn't make it to those ones that were explicitly focused on AD though.
Jonathan Mosen: And I feel like the super side of Access On has been kind of like the Hunger Games because we've had Mike who had to drop off due to another commitment and then Everette had to drop off as well. So you were like the survivors, I'm not sure which one of you is going to be the final one standing at the end of this Hunger Games type episode. But Jack or Chancey, do you want to give us some final thoughts on CSUN, would you recommend the people go for those who haven't done this before?
Jack Mendez: Just one last comment on the appliances. LG was present at CSUN and I did give them feedback regarding their washers and dryers. So I'm glad to see they were there for the first time, so that was good to see them there. Regarding would I recommend people go, yes, I would because I think it's really good for people to get an idea of the breadth and depth of the options that are there.
Jonathan Mosen: And Chancey, any final thoughts from you on CSUN and whether you would recommend that people attend and why in particular?
Chancey Fleet: I would absolutely recommend that people attend CSUN. There is such a concentration of technical knowledge and historical knowledge. It's a great place to go to get a technical deep dive, really understand some of the technology that is underpinning the things that we use every day, networking across different fields. I got to meet one of the people that developed SVG, which is a tool that I use for graphics every day, sort of understanding disciplines that are adjacent to my own it's really great for me to have that context. And there's so many newer and fledgling companies that come to CSUN and it's a great place to learn about what's happening across disabilities across the legal landscape.
On the other hand, CSUN is expensive and CSUN really attracts the type of blind person for whom technology is designed, a person who has disposable income, who has a lot of technical fluency and confidence, and who wants to spend their time learning tech. And it's really important for developers, and designers, and educators to realize that that's not really completely representative of the whole community.
So as much as I recommend that we all go to CSUN, I recommend even more that developers, and designers, and funders, and educators come to the National Federation of the Blind Convention because that is the people's movement. That is where people are coming from every walk of life, whether or not they have a ton of technical fluency, whether or not they're yet in a place of confidence with their disability, you'll see every type of person with every type of tech setup and every type of confidence, and you don't see that if you only come to CSUN. So I would just really encourage developers to come and see what the people's movement is all about.
Jonathan Mosen: Well, that's a rousing way to finish and so true too. That's Chancey Fleet, one of our panel members looking at CSUN 2025. Also on the panel was second Vice President of the National Federation of the Blind, Everette Bacon. We had Mike May and Jack Mendez from NFB Newsline. We've got time for a couple of listener comments and they really are building up, so we'll take a break. And since Chancey finished with such a rousing call to come to New Orleans very shortly.
Speaker 9: Join our 2025 National Federation of the Blind National Convention from July 8th to July 13th at New Orleans, Louisiana. Our National Convention is the largest gathering of blind people in the world. It is the premier event for training, support, and information for the blind community. The National Convention offers hundreds of sessions, dynamic presentations, and countless opportunities. As well as a chance for members to participate in decision-making in organizational policy. Now is the best time to book your hotel stay. Learn more at NFB.org/convention.
Jonathan Mosen: Whoa, I can't wait to get to New Orleans in just a few months time. Before we go on to reading some listener comments, we have been inundated at Access On at NFB.org with comments about a regression in the Facebook app for iOS pertaining to leaving comments. It sounds very similar to the posting bug that Facebook recently fixed, except that this time it appears to affect comments. So if you try and leave one, you can type away and not get any kind of feedback from voiceover about what you are typing. We've let our contacts at Meta know I'm producing this on the Monday after CSUN, and we've just let Meta know of this issue so we are hoping that there will be some quick proactive remedies to this, but rest assured we are on it. We hope very much that Meta is too.
Now, here at the National Federation of the Blind, we want to tap in to the wisdom of Access On. So if you can help us out with this [email protected] is the email address. That's all one word, [email protected]. And if you're a member of a chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, give it a shout-out and we will give it a shout-out in turn.
This email comes from John Berggren, who is a long serving fellow executive director on the leadership team here at the National Federation of the Blind. And he writes, "Jonathan, we are fortunate to have a workout space at the Jernigan Institute so our members can stay active while staying in the building here in Baltimore. We've got a selection of accessible machines like treadmills, stationary bicycles, and rowing machines. Our elliptical machine recently gasped its last breath." Sometimes I feel like I'm gasping mine when I'm using the elliptical machine.
Anyway, John continues, "And unfortunately replacement parts are no longer available. We are now exploring the options for a suitable replacement. As with too many products, plenty of fitness equipment leverage a touchscreen interface to operate the machine, monitor workout progress, and access exercise data making use by the blind difficult or impossible.
There are however, machines that still have tactile buttons and/or an accessible mobile app that allows a user to effectively perform these functions non-visually. I'd love to hear from listeners who have found a relatively new elliptical that they like something accessible and user-friendly, either an individual machine or maybe an entire product line of exercise equipment. What is the make and model? What do you like about it? How much personal customization was required to make it accessible? Thanks to the Access On community."
And that's from John Berggren who was our executive director of operations. So there you go, so many people come and visit us at the Jernigan Institute, for various conferences, and seminars, and meetings that we hold. One of the many things I love about being here at the Jernigan Institute is all the blind people we see passing through from all over the country and in some cases the world. So this is your moment, you see, your moment to shine, your big opportunity to have a say in some of the equipment that might end up here at the Jernigan Institute in which therefore you may well use at some point in the future.
InnoSearch has become a regular topic on Access On, and there are some thoughts on it from Amanda Lacey. She says, "Amazon is becoming harder and harder to use. Just now my screen reader, VoiceOver on macOS got trapped again in one of their sponsored ad frames. However, InnoSearch lacks functionality that I would need to replace Amazon. First, I have a bunch of subscriptions. I can't go back to having to order each item manually every week, or every month, or every two months, depending on how much I use. The subscription feature is powerful because it saves so much time.
Second, I often order food and supplements. When I ask InnoSearch to list ingredients in a food or supplement, it says that it can't give me that information. This is inexcusable, blind people have just as much need to know what we are putting on and into our bodies as everyone else. Can't it at least OCR the label? Please pass this feedback on to InnoSearch. I love their clean interface, but I can't live without subscriptions and it needs to provide ingredient lists when asked."
Thank you for that comment, Amanda, I have passed your feedback on to InnoSearch, they responded saying they're both very good points and that they believe they can resolve them in time. So let's see what happens with InnoSearch going forward.
Daniel Garcia: Hey Jonathan, this is Daniel Garcia. I am a member of the Kansas City Chapter National Federation of the Blind of Missouri so I want to give a shout-out to the chapter and I have three questions. Number one is Windows 10, transitioning to Windows 11, I know that Microsoft is not going to support Windows 10 starting October 14 of this year, and I'm wondering if I can transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 without sighted assistance? I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to turn off DOS and turn Narrator on instead, if anybody in your audience has tried it, can let me know.
Number two is it's been recommended to me that I get this security system called SimpliSafe and of course it has a panel and it comes in it, you can use the app. But again, I want to know if the phone app is accessible or not? I don't want to spend money and then find out that the app is accessible. So I wonder if anybody in your audience has tried SimpliSafe?
And then number three, of course, Facebook, it's very popular topic. So there is another issue with Facebook that I want to bring up and it has to do with the dating tab of Facebook. Let me raise the volume of my phone here. I'm on the dating tab here-
Speaker 10: D, romantic command center.
Daniel Garcia: I'm going to go the romantic command center and get it profile. Photos and prompts, that's the one I'm having a problem with.
Speaker 10: [inaudible 00:55:33] photo. Photo on photo, delete photo. The person wearing a public profile, profile, profile, profile photo does not seem to have phone assist. Remove [inaudible 00:55:33] profile.
[inaudible 00:55:33]. The secret to open life is Ellipsis. Remove.
Daniel Garcia: So these are the prompts, you could add prompts or photos here. So I have added a few photos and a few prompts, but if I want to delete-
Speaker 10: The secret to open life is Ellipsis, remove. The secret to open life is Ellipsis, remove.
Daniel Garcia: You see it says remove, but I cannot activate that remove button for some reason.
Speaker 10: The secret to open life is Ellipsis, remove.
Daniel Garcia: And the same thing happens with pictures. So if I want to change any of the prompts or the photos in my dating profile, then I basically have to get sighted assistance or I have to delete the whole profile and start again, which is rather painful. And of course, if you delete your profile, you may not be able to create one for seven days according to Facebook.
Jonathan Mosen: Daniel, good to hear from you. Let's go through some of those questions. The first one, it is accessible to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. I don't believe I needed to exit a third party screen reader to complete the installation. But if you find yourself wondering what's going on and you don't have speech from your third party screen reader, you can usually press control, windows, and enter, and that will bring Narrator up and you should be able to get some feedback. But the process is pretty well fine-tuned now including installing a new version of Windows from scratch.
And before we leave you for Access On this week, let's do another tech tip. This one inspired by the festivities and the meeting up with people at CSUN 2025. Often you get a call from someone and they say, "Hey, do you want to meet up?" And say, "Hello." Or, "Go out to dinner." Or whatever it is. And you say, "Yes." And what I also say is, if you have an iPhone 15 or newer with the exception of the iPhone 16 E, which does not have the chip to do this, then all we need to do is temporarily share our location with one another.
You can do that by going into the Find My app. And if the person's in your contacts, it makes it super easy to add someone's location, you can also add a phone number if you want, and you can specify for how long you want to share your location.
So if you are setting this up within the hour that you're going to meet someone, you can just say, share my location for an hour, and then you can forget it. They can't stalk you because the location sharing will automatically expire after an hour. You can also share your location with someone until the end of the day, and you can encourage them to share their location with you. Once you've done that, you can go to the place that you're going to meet up and if it's in the CSUN hotel, you may well be able to get GoodMaps to assist you to get to the place that you need to be if you feel the need to do that.
But when you look on Find My and you double tap the person's name and it shows that they are nearby, you'll be able to find them precisely. This is the most remarkable thing, and I was showing somebody last week how this works because they'd never seen it in action before. So I went into the lobby, I had shared my location with the person who I wanted to meet, and in the Find my app, it was saying this person was 15 meters away because I've still got it on meters, old habits die hard. I've been using meters all my life.
And then you walk in a certain direction and if it starts saying 16 meters, 17 meters, then you know you're going in the wrong direction. So you turn around And you see the distance between you closing and it gives you a real time update, it'll tell you 14 meters, 13 meters, and right down to a meter, at which point you just yell hi, and you've found the person that you’re looking for. It is a very handy feature, the Precision Finding available in iPhone 15 or newer with the exception of the iPhone 16 E.
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]. 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 Nations Blind podcast right from where you heard this podcast.