Welcome to the thirty-second episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
Listen to the thirty-second episode of the Access On podcast (Browser).
Or listen on your preferred podcast platform.
Timestamps
- Introduction 0:00
- Scott White discusses NFB Newsline® 1:35
- Part one of podcasting as a blind person 25:44
- Tech tip, if you close the wrong tab on the Internet 56:03
- Closing and contact info 56:37
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. We learn about NFB-NEWSLINE and celebrate the arrival of its Android app in the Google Play Store. We bring you part one of our webinar outlining how to host a podcast as a blind person. And in our tech tip, what do you do if you're browsing the web and accidentally close the wrong tab.
This is episode 32 of the podcast, and it's Jonathan Mosen back with you from the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland where we are busy packing boxes. We are very much in pre-convention mode as I put this podcast together, and looking forward to seeing members of our Federation family and newcomers too in New Orleans.
Really looking forward to being back in New Orleans, and as this podcast is published, we are less than a week away from all of the wonderful convention activities. Remember, you can find out more by going to nfb.org/convention. Virtual experience is available if you're not attending in person, nfb.org/convention, be sure to grab our NFB 25 app for iOS and Android.
And we have had a few inquiries about whether any of the Convention sessions will be recorded. We're going to do our best. In this sort of environment, there are no guarantees, but we'll see what we can come back with for inclusion on Access On.
One of the things I noticed in my time as a rehabilitation professional is that people often come to blindness organizations when their vision gets to the point that they can't read the newspaper anymore, and I count myself fortunate to be old enough to remember a time when it was difficult for blind people to access newspaper material in a timely manner.
I remember being very excited when I came to my first NFB Convention 30 years ago in Chicago in 1995 when Dr. Jernigan was talking about Newsline and how finally blind people would have access to the newspaper at the same time as everybody else, and that has all sorts of vocational, informational, societal implications. NFB-NEWSLINE is a much-loved service, and the person who looks after it is Scott White. Scott, it's good to have you on the podcast. Thanks for doing this.
Scott White:
Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for the opportunity.
Jonathan Mosen:
How long have you been doing NFB-NEWSLINE?
Scott White:
Well, on July 1st I will have my 19th year anniversary of working for the National Federation of the Blind. So, I started back in July 1st of '06. Actually, my first day was at the Dallas Convention that we had in 2006.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, you have actually been around for the majority of NFB-NEWSLINE's existence?
Scott White:
Yes. When I look back at these things I say, "Man, I'm old." But anyway, yes, correct. This year going to be our 30th anniversary. And like I said, I was speaking to someone the other day and they said, "Well..." They were thinking, "Well, you've been around for..."
No, I haven't been around 30 years with NFB-NEWSLINE, just 19 of that. But I have developed it. We have been able to bring a lot of different factors and a lot of different features to NFB-NEWSLINE during those 19 years.
Jonathan Mosen:
We've got a global audience, and we also have people in the United States who perhaps just have not heard of NFB-NEWSLINE. It seems almost inconceivable, but I'm sure it's possible. So, give us the elevator pitch. What is NFB-NEWSLINE?
Scott White:
I describe NFB-NEWSLINE is an audio and Braille information service. We have currently over 600 publications available on the service. A lot of those are broken down into magazines and to newspapers from each state. We also have national and international publications. We also have some other features such as TV listings, retail ads, job listings that go along with NFB-NEWSLINE.
Those type of information can be accessed in a number of variety of ways. We initially started out 30 years ago in 1995 with telephone access method, and that's still an access method available today. So, an individual could call up on a Touch-Tone telephone or their cell phone, their landline and connect to NFB-NEWSLINE and listen to it over the phone that way.
Around 2008, 2009, we came out with some online initiatives, and that's going to include the things like we have where we can download to some of the portable players and also where you can view it on our secure website. About 2012, we came out with an iOS app, NFB-NEWSLINE Mobile. 2018, we came out with being able to get it as an Amazon Alexa Skill, so now you can listen to your publications despite with use of your voice on the Amazon Alexa devices.
And our newest development is something that we want to talk about a little bit today, is our Android app that we just brought out, and that's just coming with the previous month. So, that's our latest development is the Android app.
Jonathan Mosen:
How many publications are on NFB-NEWSLINE now?
Scott White:
In total, there are over 600.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's amazing. And not just US publications, right?
Scott White:
That is correct. Although that's the majority, but we do have an international section. That first started, it's an interesting story how that got started. I was actually at one of our NFB conventions, and one of my favorite parts about the job is speaking to subscribers. I don't get as much opportunity, being the director, as I did when I first started, but I really enjoy it.
Anyway, somebody came up to me and said, "I'd really like to have international publications to see how others in the other parts of the world think of the news here and what's going on in the States."
So that's how the international section got started. We approximately have about two dozen publications from around the world. A number of them are in Canada, the UK, we have the India Times, we also have the New Zealand Herald. I think you're a little bit familiar with that one.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's amazing how these things come along. So, there are a lot of publications available, and then there are TV listings. There are job announcements as well, which is a particularly timely topic, given the way that federal layoffs are, I think disproportionately affecting minorities including the blind communities. So, the job listings are an important thing to mention.
Scott White:
Correct. Now, with the job listings, one unique feature that we have is if you're listening to... It's just available on the telephone at this current time. We're working and striving to bring it to a mobile applications as well, but it's just on the telephone.
So, if you were to call in and connect with that, then by listening to it when you find a job ad that you're interested in, you can go ahead and press #, nine, and that will be sent to you via email, providing, of course, if you have an email address on file with us.
Jonathan Mosen:
There's something about the Touch-Tone interface. It's just easy and efficient, isn't it? Even for people who do consider themselves technologically proficient, particularly if you're sitting there on a landline phone or some sort of phone with physical buttons, you can really zap around the content that way.
Scott White:
That is true. That is why I love it. I use a combination of the services for my personal use. In the mornings, like on a Sunday morning, I love to have that traditional cup of coffee and be reading the New York Times, for example. When I'm out and about, I use the NFB-NEWSLINE Mobile app on my iPhone.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's interesting you say that, because I've been very interested in what's happening with iPadOS 26, and finally I feel like the iPadOS is coming of age, and it really is a multitasking device, and I was saying to my wife the other day, "I can see myself at the breakfast table with the iPad with NFB-NEWSLINE and in the newspaper.
There's just something about that lovely big slab of glass and using it to read the paper." She thought that was extraordinarily spinny of me to try and make this case for an allocation of budgetary funds for an iPad. But anyway, there are all sorts of ways you can consume this content.
There have been some changes to the Touch-Tone interface in recent times, I understand, and this also reflects the fact that there's been a change of voice over the years. I remember when I first used NFB-NEWSLINE, and I saw it being demonstrated 30 years ago, DECtalk was the thing. And DECtalk was the gold standard, and the fact that NFB-NEWSLINE had DECtalk was a really big deal.
Nowadays, I think people feel similarly about Eloquence, because it's everywhere and familiar, but I imagine you probably get a lot of feedback from different people about what they consider to be the optimal voice.
Scott White:
That is true. I know that people that have been using it for a while really love the Eloquence, such as myself. See, probably in the '09, 2010 time frame, we brought out some more human quality voices from NeoSpeech at that time. Now, a new owner has those particular voices called ReadSpeaker, and we're using those.
So, the new phone system that you were talking about that's not implemented publicly yet. It's still in beta at the moment, but what we're going to do is we're going to have on the new system, which we're moving to the cloud, we're going to have the Eloquence, the Kate and Paul voices that we had for a good while, and then we're going to add two of the more human quality voices, and that's going to be called Sophie and Mark.
Jonathan Mosen:
And that is in beta right now?
Scott White:
Correct.
Jonathan Mosen:
The Touch-Tone interface itself, does that stay the same or are there any changes to that?
Scott White:
It's going to be exactly the same. Moving to the cloud will give us certain advantages of things that we can do later on, but to start with, we do want to make sure that the baseline of everything that we have that's currently working in production right now, we're just able to migrate that over and have that be successful first.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, that raises an interesting question because I imagine there are a lot of moving parts in Newsline, some of which you control and some of which are out of your control, in terms of whether the provider of the newspaper delivers it to NFB-NEWSLINE in a timely manner. Any computer has the potential to go down or to have some hiccups, and that kind of thing. Do you think that the move to the cloud, the changing infrastructure that NFB-NEWSLINE has been working on will be of benefit to consumers in terms of increased reliability?
Scott White:
Well, what we've tried to do historically, we've had an uptime about 99.8, 0.9%. So, we've had a pretty good run all the time.
Jonathan Mosen:
That is good.
Scott White:
Now, as far as moving it to the cloud, we'll be able to add a lot of other things to it because it's just going to be more responsive. The computer, when you're processing searches, things like that, that will go faster. I know when we're sending out emails to the subscribers, that goes much faster, for example. So, a lot of the processes, I think, but as far as the stability, I think it's going to be pretty much in line with what it has been.
Because what we've always done in the past is we had a series, for people calling in on the Touch-Tone phone, we had a series of computers that they would call in and they were load balanced. So, if one computer went down, the others could pick it up. And we always provided it. We tried to stay at the utilization curve of about 75%, so when we talk about above 75% utilization, then we would add more hardware.
Jonathan Mosen:
Can I ask about the degree to which the fact that the NFB is running Newsline influences the content? Because I think sometimes there's a misperception about this. I just got an email before talking to you, in fact, about half an hour before talking to you that made the point that the American Council of the Blinds Convention agenda is on Newsline. So, NFB-NEWSLINE's always played with a straight bow like that, right?
Scott White:
Correct. The service is designed for... Dr. Jernigan, when he first started off, he said the service should be for all blind people. So, we've continued on with that model and we will continue on with that. So, a few years ago what we did is we have Braille Monitor, our flagship publication of the National Federation of the Blind, but we also have the ACB Forum. We carry that on there, and when it comes to convention season, we put up that material as well.
Jonathan Mosen:
You also have NFBRN, the NFB Radio Network streaming live for phone subscribers who perhaps may not have a computer, and that's a way for them to access it.
Scott White:
That is correct. So, if someone wants to listen to the convention sessions that are being streamed, they'll be able to get it over the Touch-Tone telephone as well.
Jonathan Mosen:
Very cool. Let's talk about the Android app. Why did that take so long?
Scott White:
Well, once we made the decision to go ahead and do that, it take a little bit longer. Actually, the programming of Android was a little bit more significant. It provided a little bit more difficulty than it did with trying to do the programming for iOS. But we've got it now, and it's available, and you're going to be able to get the same content, read all your same publications.
In fact, someone looked at the Android app the other day for the first time and they said, "Oh, that looks just like the iOS one." Yes, we've done our best to try to go ahead and mirror the experience as far as having the tabs at the bottom be the same, the ways that you access the publications, and it's got all the same feature set.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. And so, when you bring up a newspaper on the Android app, you can navigate by heading to move from article to article, all those sorts of things?
Scott White:
Correct.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, it will feel the same. And that's available now in Google Play. Are there any system requirements that people should be aware of, or is it pretty much going to work on any Android device?
Scott White:
Well, I believe that we go all the way back to Android 8, because what we wanted to do is to make sure that it would work on, if someone wanted to put it on a BrailleNote Touch, that it would work with that.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. So, it works on all of those blindness specific devices?
Scott White:
Yes. There's a number of devices outside of what I mentioned earlier that it works on. So, if you have any of the human wear Braille displays, it has where you can directly download from our servers directly to the device. They have that in all of their Braille displays. Now that's a recent development this year. The Victor Reader Stream, both the second and third generation can do the same thing.
Also, the SensePlayer from Selvas, that works as well. We're currently working with a couple of other vendors that haven't come out with the end product for that yet, so I'd rather not mentioned that, but we're working on a couple more. So, the idea here is just as there's any number of devices out there to give people options, we want to make sure that one of the options can be NFB-NEWSLINE content if they want to have that as well.
Jonathan Mosen:
Who's eligible to become an NFB-NEWSLINE subscriber?
Scott White:
If you are a resident in the United States. Now, for individuals that may be living, and we have a number of these through the overseas library of NLS, the National Library Service. If you are outside of the United States, and if you still retained your residency and you're working through the National Library Service, you can still be eligible for NFB-NEWSLINE.
Other than that, anybody that's inside of the States. And the requirements, as far as disability, would be someone that's blind, has low vision, or what we call a print disability. So, someone for example, that would have trouble in turning printed pages. Someone that has trouble in holding the magazine of the newspaper.
Jonathan Mosen:
Is it available right across the United States?
Scott White:
Yes. Now, there are a couple of states that are not sponsored. There's four states that we have, but the ones that currently not sponsored are going to be Alaska, the South and North Dakota, and Wyoming. So, it's currently available in every other state, plus the District of Columbia.
Jonathan Mosen:
NFB-NEWSLINE is free to the end subscriber. So, how does sponsorship work? How is this paid for? I imagine it's quite a significant financial undertaking.
Scott White:
What we do is we work with a number of state organizations, usually, in the States. It breaks down to about 50% rehab, and 50% Talking Book Library, and then each state has an underlying funding source for that. So, we have a contract with one of those organizations in the state, and that entitles everybody that's in their state that's eligible for the service to use the service. So, it's the same cost if they had a thousand people or they had 10,000 people.
Jonathan Mosen:
One technology we haven't talked about is one that I really personally like. I think it's branded, podable News, if I remember correctly, but this is where you can take an RSS feed, either of an individual section of a newspaper or magazine, or the whole publication if you want, and feed it into anything that supports playing podcasts, essentially. And you get your own personalized feed.
And it respects things like your default voice and even the speed of the voice that you've set. And using anything that you're listening to this on, basically, if you're receiving access on as a podcast, then you can receive NFB-NEWSLINE publications as podcasts. And I subscribe to a lot of things this way, and the articles just come up in my podcast feed in the same way that all the other podcasts I consume do.
Scott White:
That is true. That is a growing access method. When we first brought it out, we did have a software program that you ran on a computer, and we just had RSS feeds were still available at that point, but now subscribers really are starting to use it, as you mentioned, in their favorite podcast client.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's a brilliant way to consume the content on the move, because it just appears everywhere else that you are looking at content. So, Convention's coming up, what you're doing at Convention?
Scott White:
Okay, we're doing a number of activities at Convention. Let's go ahead and start off with the first one that we have that's on July 9th. A few years ago I came up with a concept of doing an open house. We had some seminar type events and things like that, but at Convention there is just oodles and oodles of things that people want to participate in.
So, I came up with the idea, let's have a number of hours and people on their own schedule during that day. We're just having on the 9th this year. There's going to be two sessions, one in the morning from nine to 12, and then another one from two to 5:00 in the afternoon.
So, this is designed where we're going to have not only myself there, but we're going to have other volunteers there that can help people with anything with NFB-NEWSLINE from signing you up, to answering any of questions. "Well, how do I do this on the iPhone?" "How do I do this on Android?" If you needed a little bit of help on it, we are there to help you. So, we encourage people to stop by and keep us busy on that one. When it comes to Friday, July 11th, we are going to have NFB-NEWSLINE; we mentioned it's available on Android, so we're going to have NFB-NEWSLINE now available in Android.
So, that session I will be there, but expert in Android is Jack Mendez. So, Jack is going to be really handling that seminar session. But you can start by then, and if you already have an Android device, we can answer your questions there as well. That will be more of a presentation style for that event, where the open house is more, "Come by when you want to," and get your questions answered.
We're also going to be in the exhibit hall, and we'll be there during the normal exhibit hours. And we're having one thing that's different and very unique this year to celebrate having the Android available app, having available at... This is the first convention we're having it available. I was able to go ahead... NFB-NEWSLINE is going to have two of the Google Pixel 9a phones that we'll be doing a drawing for.
Now, you can register for that at any of the activities that I just mentioned; be the open house, be it the Android session, or just come by the exhibit hall. Now, what you have to do is you either have to be a current NFB-NEWSLINE subscriber, or you have to sign up for the service to be eligible for the drawing.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's pretty sweet. So, you can score yourself a Google Pixel? Very nice.
Scott White:
That's true. That's true.
Jonathan Mosen:
And can you sign up there then, that can convention? And if so, what kind of proof do you need in order to sign up?
Scott White:
At Convention, really, we're going to ask you some questions and you're going to do a self-certification there at Convention.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, so it's pretty straightforward?
Scott White:
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Mosen:
I believe there's also an update to the iOS app coming out. Is that correct?
Scott White:
That is true. That is going to be a minor update. It's more Apple likes to change their rules for putting up their apps, and they deprecate certain things from time to time, and you have to come up to their standards. So that's one of the things, that's a maintenance release. There's a few other small, very small features that we're bringing on parity with the Android app.
Jonathan Mosen:
Very Good. So, that's NFB-NEWSLINE. If people want to find out more, what's the best way to do that if maybe they're not coming to Convention?
Scott White:
So, if you have availability to go to the web, you can go to nfbnewsline.org. That's www.nfbnewsline, or one word, .org. If you prefer to go ahead and give us a call, our customer service number is (866) 504-7300. That's 866-504-7300.
Jonathan Mosen:
It is an amazing service. It's an absolute treasure in my opinion, so it's great to talk about it. I use it daily, and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.
Scott White:
Okay, thank you, Jonathan. One thing to conclude that I like to say, and I often tell people there's so much variety of content. If you're not currently a subscriber, you owe it to yourself, and I really mean this. You owe it to yourself to go ahead and give it a try. As we've mentioned, the services at no cost to you. Go ahead and sign up for it, try for 10 days, give it a sincere try. We are here. We have a lot of materials in audio form, in Braille to help you if you need that.
We certainly have customer service to answer questions, but give it a try for 10 days and if you don't find something that you're interested in, give me a call. And I am sincere about that, because what we've tried to do is cover a wide variety of interest. Anything, magazines, anything from fashion to science to technology. So, it's just a wide variety of magazines and newspapers available.
Jonathan Mosen:
Sometimes in the advocacy arena that we are in at the National Federation of the Blind, we're focusing on things that we still have left to do, and goodness knows there are plenty of those, but it is also good, I think, for our own mental health really, and to record history, to reflect on how far we've come.
And I can remember when I was using CompuServe in the late 1980s and I stumbled upon this thing called the Executive News Service, and I was absolutely over the moon that for the first time I could actually read independently articles from the Washington Post and various publications they had in there.
But it was the CompuServe access rate plus $15 an hour just to read those things. And as a penniless student, it just about bankrupted me, because I was so enthralled by being able to read the news myself and not rely on my older sighted siblings to do that for me. And now we have all this content, and the National Federation of the Blind made that happen.
It was a problem that we, as blind people, identified as real, and we solved it. And so, sometimes it's just good to pause and reflect on how far we've come, and just what we have available to us now at our fingertips.
Scott White:
That is true, certainly. And I remember the CompuServe days as well. So, yes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Awesome. Thank you, Scott. Really appreciate it.
Scott White:
Thank you again.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can make a difference with the National Federation of the Blind's, Lead and Drive: Give 25 in '25. When you give 25 dollars or more between May 15 and July 11, you're entered into the Give 25 drawing. Each 25 dollar increment is a chance to win. Your support helps us continue to lead courageously and drive lasting change for blind people across America. You could win prizes like round trip transportation for two to the 2026 NFB National Convention, hotel accommodations, registration, banquet tickets, or 2025 dollars cash.
Oh, do you want a chance to announce our Give 25 winner at the convention banquet, become a Federation challenger. Ask friends and family to make donations, and indicate that you prompted their giving. We'll have drawings for prizes at Convention for our challengers, and if you were the challenger who prompted the most gifts, you can announce our Give 25 winner at the banquet.
But that's not all, be one of the first 100 people to give 100 dollars or more, and you'll receive a pair of Aftershokz headphones. And thanks to an anonymous donor, up to 25,000 dollars will be doubled. The annual Give 25 Drive supports the Kenneth Jernigan Fund, Sun Fund, Tenbrook Memorial Fund, and the White Cane Fund. You can choose a fund when you donate. To enter, visit nfb.org/give25donate. That's nfb.org/give25donate. You can call 410-659-9314, extension 2430. That's 410-659-9314, extension 2430, or you can send a check to National Federation of the Blind and mention Give 25 and the fund in the memo. The winner will be announced July 13th 2025. Thank you for your generosity.
We held a very popular webinar recently on starting a podcast as a blind person, and we did distribute the full recording of that to registrants. We've also had inquiries from people who've said, "Can you serialize that on Access On?" We're delighted to do that. It will take us some episodes to get through, but we're going to begin today with our introduction to starting a podcast as a blind person.
I've been podcasting since 2004, and during that time I've hosted several podcast projects that I've initiated myself. The most well-known of those was Living Blindfully, which when it closed had listeners in 113 countries, and it became a successful profitable venture. I've also hosted several podcasts on behalf of corporate entities. I set up FSCast for Freedom Scientific back in 2006, and hosted it continuously until 2018.
Even though we have four hours today, that's not enough time to give you demonstrations of the tools that we'll be discussing, and we certainly can't teach you how to use anything that we are discussing. So, this seminar will give you an overview of how to scope, create, and publish a podcast, so you'll have clear ideas about ways to follow up if you want to get started.
For ongoing discussion about podcasting as a blind person, I highly recommend joining the blind podcast creators email group. It is low traffic, it's on topic, and it's also friendly. We do have knowledgeable people in that group and we have people who have questions they want answered, so it's a good mix. If you want to subscribe to that email list, you can send a blank email to [email protected], and the Blind Podmaker is all one word. So, that's [email protected].
Podcasting is just another example of how the internet is one heck of a disrupter, because now you can produce compelling content from a device that fits in your pocket and be heard by a global audience. You'll be in good company. Estimates are that there are now over 2.1 million English-speaking podcasts worldwide.
Approximately 158 million Americans aged 12 and older have listened to a podcast in the last month, and that represents 55% of the US population in this age group. Podcasting has democratized media. As blind people, we know that our voices are too often neglected, too often not heard, and now we have the tools to change that.
If you've never opened a digital audio workstation software package before, if you don't think you have a radio voice, whatever that is, I'm here to tell you that podcasting is still for you. If you have something interesting to say, that's far more important than how many dollars you've spent on expensive equipment.
And that's not to say that good audio isn't important. With so many podcasts out there, I maintain that good audio is very important and it demonstrates respect for your listeners, but it is absolutely possible now to produce great audio on a budget.
So, let's first talk about what a podcast actually is. A podcast is not simply any audio that you jack onto a website. A podcast is audio or video that is distributed in such a way that it can come to you via a podcast client. There are podcast clients available for all operating systems, and some of the players designed for the blind community have podcast clients built in, such as the Victor Reader Stream, and similar.
A genuine podcast consists of two elements, one that you need to know a lot about, and we'll spend a lot of time on that. And another file that you may not need to know anything about if you are using a professional podcast hosting service, which most people do. The file that you need to know a lot about is the media file, the file that people actually listen to. That file can either be an audio file or a video file, but today we're going to be focusing exclusively on audio.
The audio file in most cases is either an MP3 file or an MP4 audio file with an M4A extension. But there is a second file, which while it's the unsung hero of podcasting, is just as important, and that is the podcast feed, which is in RSS format. So, podcasting is a fusion of media files and a data file, which contains details about those media files. Because of the name some people think that Apple invented podcasting, and actually that is not the case.
Podcasting was very much grassroots driven, and there was a thriving podcasting community before Apple decided to embrace the format through iTunes 4.0, gosh, that takes us back. That didn't happen until June 2005, but by that time, many of us were podcasting. Let's talk about some foundational questions before we even think about opening our digital audio workstation software and pressing record. On the first episode, there are some critical preliminary questions for you to consider.
Creating a good podcast is time-consuming. It involves pre-production and post-production steps. It involves planning, and it may involve research. And if you're interviewing other people, it involves finding guests and working with them to get the best audio you can from them. It will almost certainly involve editing. It will likely involve uploading your material, and if your podcast is popular, it's going to involve listener engagement.
So, the first question to have a clear answer to is why. Why are you prepared to devote a lot of time to making a podcast? Why are people going to choose your podcast out of the millions of options that are available now?
And here are some sample answers to that question. "I have a passion about my favorite hobby, or my favorite group, or my favorite kind of technology, or my favorite TV show, and I want to share that passion with my audience. No podcast I've found seems to be addressing my passion, or issue, or area of expertise in quite the way that I can, and I think I've identified a niche."
"I run a business or I work for a company, and a podcast is one way that we can tell customers and potential customers about our products and engage with them." "My friends and I are highly entertaining people. We think we're a bit of a laugh, and we are sure that our banter will entertain other people if they could only hear it."
Now, you notice that some of the answers to this question will be applicable if you're thinking of starting a podcast as a hobby, other answers will apply to you if you're beginning this journey on behalf of an employer or for your own business. Maybe you're seeing a podcast as the beginning of a strategy for starting your own business in your area of expertise, having a clear mission in your mind, a reason for your podcast to exist will keep you motivated and creating content that is on brand.
If you do your research and you find that there are numerous podcasts covering the topic that you are interested in, don't be too discouraged about that. You're special, and there's only one person that can do a podcast quite the way that you can do it.
So, let's turn to the next important fundamental question, who. Who is your podcast for? Since this webinar looks at podcasting from a blindness perspective, an initial question to determine might be whether the podcast is of interest to the blind community exclusively and those who have interest in that community, or whether your podcast has wider appeal.
The online blind community are voracious consumers of podcasts, but it's also quite a small group, and that's a factor to consider if you're hoping to make a commercial success of your podcast. It's less of a consideration if you're doing this as a hobby and you're quite happy keeping it that way. Of course, there's absolutely no reason at all why blind people can't produce podcasts on mainstream topics.
Many do. If you're looking at producing a mainstream podcast, you'll have many more competitors in a much bigger market. So, to be successful, have a clear vision in mind as to who is going to be attracted to listen to your podcast.
At this point, I want to introduce a concept that every successful broadcaster understands and embraces. When a good broadcaster is behind a microphone, they're not focused on the many thousands, or in some cases with really successful broadcasters, the millions of people who are hearing their broadcasts, they have one person in mind.
They've built up a concept of a typical listener, and they're focused on talking to just that one person. The best advice I ever received as a young broadcaster came from one of New Zealand's most successful current affairs broadcasters, and one day he took me aside and he said, "Jonathan, if there's one thing people can't help overhearing, it's an intimate conversation." That is incredibly invaluable advice, both when you are narrating your podcast and when you're speaking with an interviewee.
So, as you begin to put your podcast together, you may like to make up one or two fictitious characters, personas who you think are going to be listening, give them a name if you like, define their story. For example, you're creating a technology podcast, you might have a couple of choices of persona. Let's call the first one Bill. Bill understands the power that the iPhone is supposed to give him, but he feels frustrated because he just can't get the hang of it the way so many other people seem to.
He wants someone who'll be patient with him, sit down and explain things in common language that a non-techie person can understand. Alternatively, maybe that's not the kind of technology podcast you're interested in putting together. Maybe you are an unashamed geek and that's the audience you want to cultivate.
Maybe you have a listener persona, we'll call her Tiffany. Tiffany is a geek through and through an unashamedly, so she doesn't want to be patronized, and she doesn't want to be talked down to. She knows every nook and cranny of her iPhone. She's a voracious reader of The Technology Press. She's got her one terabyte iPhone 16 Pro Max, and she wants to hear a podcast where she might learn something new or at least thoroughly geek out about the iPhone.
Sometimes, the who question is far more complex to answer. For example, I'm conscious that with Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology Podcast, we are catering to an extremely large and diverse audience in the blind community. For that one, I have a few personas in mind, and when we get too geeky, I remind myself of the other personas and I say, "How are we going to make this make sense for the non-geeky persona who is also listening?" So, as you begin this journey, be clear about who it is you intend to talk to and to appeal to.
The next question we need to consider is what. What are you going to do on your podcast? So many people want to start a podcast as if it's an item that they just want to check off on their bucket list. Yeah, I'd like to be able to say, "I did a podcast one day," without thinking about those questions.
If at the beginning of this journey you don't have at least half a dozen episodes in your head, you're probably not ready to go further at this point. If you're not really clear about how to do it technically, that's okay. At this point, it's still important to have a roadmap, preferably in writing, covering what you'll do on your podcast.
Are you going to interview people and if so, who? And what about? Are you intending to sit down with people and just shoot the breeze and chat? If so, what about? Is that going to be sustainable after an episode or two? Or will you have run out of things to say in your head? Do you hear some sort of opening and closing music for your podcast in your head?
Are you going to encourage listeners to interact with you? And if so, how? Are you going to have a social media presence for your podcast? And if so, where? If you know the audience that you're aiming to reach, you may do some market research on where members of your audience tend to hang out, and that will influence your choices of social media sites.
The next question is where. Where are you going to produce this podcast? While it's not important to have a soundproof studio with completely dead acoustics, hopefully you have somewhere where you can work on your podcast where the acoustics aren't too bouncy and where you're not going to get interrupted. Knowing about your recording space is important for the all important question of choosing a microphone, which we will talk about a bit later.
Certain mics are better in specific situations. If you're going to have guests on your podcast and those guests are going to be recording in the same room as you, then you'll need to allow for that in your planning in a number of respects that could influence the microphones that you choose. Remember, with so many podcasts to choose from, listeners tend to have a low tolerance for podcasts that don't respect their time or their ears.
Next, when. When are you going to have the time to produce a podcast of sufficient quality that people are going to listen once and then keep coming back for more? To help answer that question, I'm going to talk about two broad podcast categories at this point. One, is the seasonal podcast, and the other is the episodic podcast. And we'll begin by looking at the episodic podcast because they're the most common.
An episodic podcast is like your favorite current affairs radio show. It has an overarching theme to it. So, you know that if you listen to a particular show on technology, you are going to get technology topics, but with subject matter that can vary widely within the show's framework. Listeners are creatures of habit, so it's easier for them to form the habit of listening to your podcast if it's published consistently.
If the kind of podcast you are running lends itself to being published on a regular schedule, such as the same time every day or the same time every week or the same time every month, that is ideal. I recommend starting with a less rigorous schedule and working your way up to publishing more frequently as you gain confidence.
If you go in with all guns blazing, publishing an episode every day or every week, and then you find that your schedule is really unsustainable, it's difficult for you to find ideas or it's difficult for you to find the time, and so you decide you're going to have to drop back, say to monthly, it makes listeners feel like the podcast is floundering, it's losing momentum. But the reverse is true.
If you start creating, say, one podcast a month, and you increase your frequency of production as you become more proficient, that sends a positive signal. It tells listeners that your podcast is on a roll, and it's on the up and up.
Seasonal podcasts typically focus on one theme per season, and there are a number of very successful podcasts in this category, usually true crime fiction or focusing on a celebrity. A lot of history podcasts use this where one season might be about a particular period or a particular person in history. So, that's where you run across a very specific theme, over a number of defined episodes, and then a new season starts and you do a completely different theme.
If you think about all these questions, maybe kick them around with people who you trust and seek advice. Hopefully, choosing a title for your podcast will be fairly easy. Try to be ethical and check that the brilliant title that you've thought up isn't being used already by another podcaster.
While not many podcasters officially trademark their titles, it's just not cool to use someone else's title when you could so easily search a podcast directory and make sure you have something unique. I've got to say, I was absolutely astounded and delighted to find that no one had used, Living Blindfully, before.
When you have your title confirmed, it's time to give thought to your logo. I can hear the groans from some people, even though they're all on mute. You will not get listed in the podcast directories without a logo. So, no logo, no viable podcast.
There are plenty of people who will design a podcast logo for you for under 50 bucks, and of course these days you could ask AI to generate an image for you based on your description. Whichever way you go, it's helpful for you to understand your own logo fully. Take the time to have the designer clearly explain to you what it is that they've designed for you.
And I personally would also have it verified by several people whose opinions you respect. This will be a good use case for Aira as well.
Now, before we go on to some of the mechanics of this, I want to bring Melissa in at this point. Melissa Riccobono is the host of our wonderful Nation's Blind Podcast, which the Federation has been producing for quite a few years now, and she's also doing a number of other things in the audio arena.
She has made her childhood dream of working with audio come true. So, Melissa, I'll hand over to you, and we look forward to you sharing your story with us.
Melissa Riccobono:
Thank you so much, everyone. And what wonderful information you have given so far, Jonathan, this has just been great. I wish that I had had a seminar like this when I was first starting out, but now we have it, so that's great. So, I would say one thing really quickly about the title.
Also, make sure that your title isn't so close to other titles that it's hard to find it. I work for a podcast, and unfortunately I think we get buried sometimes because the title is so close to other titles that are, for whatever reason, getting more traction, come up higher on search engines, that type of thing.
So, if you're going to do a podcast, make sure the title is as unique as possible without being too hard to remember. And even if it's not the same as other things, try to make sure that it's not so similar, that it's really difficult to find your particular podcast.
I digress though. Yes, Jonathan is right, from the time I was very young, I had dreams of working in audio. My cassette recorder back in the day was my very favorite toy, and I recorded so many different things, sounds from around the house, sounds from outside, interviews with my friends, pretend radio shows, real radio shows from the real radio, all sorts of things.
And I always wanted to put it together and make a career out of it. And then I got older and I've just felt like, "Oh, that maybe just isn't really very practical, and I should do something that's going to be a little easier and something else that I would also enjoy." And so, I became a counselor. And I definitely am also a singer, so I used music a lot in my counseling. I used interviews, of course, I used reading. I used a lot of audio in all sorts of ways in my counseling.
And then I decided that I was going to stop being a counselor, and took time off, helped raise my kids, which I'm still doing, did a lot with the National Federation of the Blind. And eventually figured out, after the pandemic, that I was in a spot where I really was ready to try something brand new. And during the pandemic, my husband said, "Could we do something about all these cassette tapes you have in our basement?
Could we maybe get rid of some of those?" And I said, "We can't get rid of them. That's my childhood." And he said, "Well, could you maybe somehow digitize them? There's got to be a way to take these cassette tapes and do some digitizing." And I had done some of this with software with my computer, but I bought a little unit that is a cassette player, and it actually just converts whatever you play on it into an MP3 file. And I thought, "Ooh, this is sort of fun."
And then I started to think, "Huh, some of these things aren't exactly the greatest sound quality. I wonder if I could do any cleaning up of the sound." I've done a little bit of this for certain things, never really got good at it, but knew a little bit about it. And so, I bought an audio workstation called REAPER, and that has really taught me so many things.
I started learning how to edit audio, I started learning how to restore audio. And the two things that have helped me most in that journey have been the email list that has been started by blind people in the REAPER community called REAPERs Without Peepers. I cannot recommend it enough, very friendly people and very good advice, and people will answer your questions mostly in ways you can understand.
There are definitely those on the list who have been doing engineering and audio work for a very long time. And sometimes I feel as if I understand maybe 50% of what they say, I'm getting better, but I really started this career with no advanced knowledge of engineering, of sound, aside from I know what sounds good and I know what doesn't.
I know what I like when I'm listening to audio and I know what I don't like, and so figuring out ways to get that sound that I'm looking for. And in REAPER, not only can you restore files and do all sorts of things, but you can actually work with multiple tracks at one time, and so that has just opened so many doors.
It's like when I used to take my two tape recorders and record the same thing on different tapes and then try to play it back or something that was slightly different. Now I can actually do that in REAPER and create mixes that actually sound pretty good. So, that has been amazing.
And of course, also once I get into my podcasting journey, which we'll talk about in a second, the blind creators podcast email list has been incredibly, incredibly helpful. So, I did become the host of the Nation's Blind Podcast way back, oh my goodness, I'm guessing maybe 2016, '17, somewhere in there.
And I did pretty quickly create a couple of bonus episodes talking to teachers that had children at the time, and talking to them about what it was like to teach a blind child and what it was like to work with blind parents. And those were episodes I was very proud of. I was able to edit them, and I was able to do the interviews, and I really loved that.
But then after that, it was just me and Anil, and Will Schwatka makes the magic happen. And so, I wasn't really editing or anything like that, I was just there hosting, and really trying as much as possible to create that connection with that listener persona, making sure that we are as conversational as possible.
Anil and I always have a very good time. In fact, I was talking to somebody yesterday about the Nation's Blind Podcast and I said something about Anil, and they said, "Oh, I've never met him. But you and he laugh together all the time on the podcast."
And so that was what he remembered. That was a really good start, because all I had to do was show up. I had to make sure that I knew what we were talking about, and that we had a good outline, and then I could just be myself and ask questions and see where the conversation took us.
Now that I'm doing more audiobook narration and voiceover work for audio description, which I love, and I'm also editing a podcast, it's a little bit different. I'm on the other side, where I'm actually recording the audio for people, and then I'm the Will Schwatka who gives that magic and makes that happen. And so, the thing that I love about this part of my career, I would say, is being that behind the scenes' person, I'm not always in front of the microphone.
In fact, I'm very rarely in front of the microphone, but I'm able to make it happen. I have the equipment, I go where I need to go. I set everything up, I do the sound monitoring, and then I take everything home, put all the files in REAPER, and do what I can to make the podcast sound as good as I can make it.
And I think that's another thing that you need to think about. Two things briefly, they say that an hour of audio can take up to four hours to edit. Now, that depends a lot. It depends a lot on what you're needing to edit. It depends a lot on how much you stumble, how many pauses you want to take out, whether there's background noise.
And of course, the more people that you're interviewing that are part of your podcast, the more likely it will be that there will be other noises, background noises, clearing of throats, coughing, playing with microphones, somebody forgetting to mute, a cell phone going off, that type of thing. And so, you do need to keep that in mind, but you also need to keep in mind what kind of podcasts you want.
Some podcasts are fine with being unscripted and mostly unedited, and that might be okay if that's just the kind of vibe that you want to go with, and you don't care as much. You certainly want the quality of the audio, but if you don't care that you say, "um," a few times, and you don't think that's too distracting, and you don't think people are bothered by it, then that's fine, and that's something that you can decide.
The podcast that I'm doing is for a company, and so I try, as much as I can, to still keep it sounding conversational, but I also do want to make the hosts and the guests sound as intelligent as I can, as smooth as I can. And so, I do end up taking out a lot of the uhs, the ums, the deep breaths, the sighs, the throat clearing, anything like that. But that is a choice that you can make.
And you can also have somebody, if you want to, edit your podcast for you, if that's nothing that you want to get into. Of course, that will probably cost you some money because most people who want to do some editing would appreciate getting some money or something for their time and their effort, and it really can be a lot of effort. It's worth it, it's fun.
There's nothing to me like having something that's raw and depending on what it is almost all over the place in some respects, and then editing it and making it into a very coherent podcast final product that sounds good, that makes sense, that's a pleasure to listen to.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we'll continue to give you highlights of our How to do Podcasting as a Blind Person Webinar in future episodes of Access On. So stay tuned for those.
We have time for a handy tech tip from the prolific Carl Smith from the NFB of Utah Salt Lake chapter. I'm sure he's coming to Convention. It'd be good to see you there, Carl. He says, "I have a tip for anyone who accidentally closes a tab on the internet.
If you close the wrong tab while surfing the net, press CTRL-SHIFT-T on a Windows PC, or CMD-SHIFT-T on a Mac to reopen the tab, and you'll be back in business." Thank you, Carl. That is a very handy one indeed.
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 Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.