Welcome to the fifty-sixth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
This week's episode of Access On is devoted to feedback from listeners like you. Here's what's covered.
- Introduction 0:00
- Vispero updates 1:23
- Listener comments on Vispero developments 5:02
- Looking for more friendly apps in iOS 26 18:07
- Apple Intelligence and more 19:06
- The Braille Access Command doesn't work on my NLS eReader 26:11
- Focus issue in the iOS Phone app 29:24
- Can I get WordPad back in Windows 11? 31:26
- I can't install Windows 11 25h2 independently 33:59
- Working with the new Outlook and JAWS 35:57
- PowerPoint, speaker notes, and JAWS 37:25
- Recording my screen reader in Reaper 38:47
- Travelling overseas with my portable recorders 42:26
- Outdoor travel technology 45:20
- Two Meta issues 47:41
- Streaming Alexa skills 49:32
- Envision Solos glasses 51:06
- Tech Tip: restoring the old ChatGPT voice behavior 56:17
- Closing and contact info 58:07
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
Speaker 2:
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This week, more communication from and listener feedback on changes at Vispero. Early adopters have their Envision Ally Solos Glasses and opinions vary widely. We talk iOS, including Apple Intelligence, Braille access, and third-party apps. And in this week's tech tip, we show you how to get ChatGPT voice to behave the way it used to.
It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode 56 of Access On. I got to say, it's starting to get pretty cold here in Baltimore, Maryland. It's good to be with you though, and plenty of feedback. If there's one thing we can count on, it's members of the National Federation of the Blind having opinions, and we love that.
So, we're going to catch up on just some of the listener feedback, a representative selection of the listener feedback that we have received to [email protected]. You're very welcome to get in touch that way with an audio attachment or a written email [email protected].
Let us return to something that we have been monitoring here at the National Federation of the Blind and covering on this podcast, and that is Vispero because we certainly have received plenty of feedback on this. And also, there are some updates.
Vispero, which is the parent company of Freedom Scientific, has announced significant changes to its technical support eligibility and user registration process. The updates come amidst user concerns regarding data privacy and transparency.
If you're a regular listener of Access On, you will be aware that our president, Mark Riccobono, has written to Rhonda Bassett-Spiers communicating the federation's concerns on behalf of our members. Rhonda Bassett-Spiers replied and we included both of those letters here on Access On. Effective December the 1st, 2025, so it's in effect now, Vispero has updated its support policy to Focus resources on current software versions.
Here are the only people now entitled to access technical support from Vispero. Customers with active subscriptions, perpetual license holders with active software maintenance agreements, SMA for short, and users running the current version of JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion.
Vispero says that users with inactive subscriptions or inactive SMAs will retain full access to their installed software and self-service resources like the knowledge base and documentation, but they'll no longer be eligible for live technical support or future product updates until they renew their subscription or SMA. Vispero cites the need to "strengthen reliability" and align with industry standards as the primary drivers for this change.
By deprecating support for older versions, the company says it aims to reduce troubleshooting time caused by older code and focus engineering efforts on stability, AI features, and compatibility with modern operating systems. And following what the company described as an abrupt and confusing rollout of its new user account system, Vispero issued a formal apology on November the 24th.
Users had expressed concerns over the amount of personal data required during signup, which of course is now mandatory if you want to use the latest version of JAWS, ZoomText or Fusion.
In response, Vispero went live with a streamlined registration process on December the 4th, which they say addresses privacy concerns and reduces friction. Now, most fields like occupation and specific usage data are optional. Instead of requiring a birthdate, users now simply select an age bracket.
For example, over 18, Vispero says it needs to collect this data to comply with regional privacy laws regarding AI features. And the only mandatory fields are now name, email, password, or a Google sign-in, country, and age confirmation.
Vispero reiterated that the account system is designed to enable modern features like settings synchronization across devices and future cloud capabilities. They emphasize that user data is encrypted, stored securely via AWS, that's Amazon Web Services, and is never sold to third-parties.
Vispero has published blog posts covering these issues under the byline of their new CEO, Rhonda Bassett-Spiers. You can read them by visiting blog.freedomscientific.com if you'd like the full word from Vispero on these issues. That's blog.freedomscientific.com.
Plenty of listener feedback on this, much of which agrees with the letter that President Riccobono sent to Vispero and echoes the sentiments. But we do have a few things that are offering a fresh angle. So, here's one from Matt Diamond, and he says one thing that has been omitted from the conversation is that there is no longer a path to upgrade an older version of a Vispero product. During COVID, many companies and agencies did not purchase an SMA to cut costs. The idea was to upgrade the software at a later point.
Earlier this year, when contacting the salesperson that I have worked with for several years, I was told that products that were not current no longer have an upgrade path. Therefore, a second new perpetual license had to be purchased. I'm sure you can understand the consternation of the customer's employers that I was working with to explain that there was no path to upgrade and an additional new license had to be purchased.
This has affected three customers that I am working with, two who use JAWS version 2024 and version 2023, and one who uses ZoomText. How preposterous is it that software purchased less than 24 months ago requires a completely new license simply because an SMA, which was not mandatory at the time, was not purchased.
This is a stock departure from 30 years of the way upgrades were managed and none of this was ever communicated transparently. Literally two weeks prior, I was quoted an upgrade for a product and then told, "No longer is this an option." I'm not sure how this can be in the best interest of any blind users, let alone those who are employed. Thank you, Matt.
Rebecca Skipper writes, "During their November 13, 2025 Q&A portion of the webinar, Vispero indicated that they are exploring ways to provide features of Page Explorer to home annual users. However, I have several concerns. First, if users become too reliant on Page Explorer, will they stop using the web navigation techniques we've relied on for years? It is my understanding that Vispero might consider offering add-ons for annual home users, though I am not sure if this is accurate.
Your demo of Edge and Copilot was helpful. Would you consider demonstrating other ways annual home users can gain some of the same functionality JAWS professional users get, even when it means using different tools and techniques? JAWS is a powerful tool that I'm dependent on for work and personal activities, but Narrator and NVDA are powerful options that may be good alternatives if we lose the home annual license."
"JAWS has always been funded primarily through corporations and the government. Is this model changing? Is JAWS transitioning to a software as a service model? At first, I was alarmed at the changes we're seeing at Vispero, but I've taken a step back. I have a BT Speak from Blazie Technologies. The company has just implemented a policy where BT Speak users who want the latest features will need to pay 200 dollars annually or 20 dollars a month. Keep in mind that Blazie Technologies was offering free updates every month for a year."
"Users who do not have a contract with Blazie Technologies will still receive updates with bug fixes and stability enhancements. The difference here is that if BT Speak users didn't have a contract, they would still have a functioning unit. Currently, if you let your home annual license of JAWS expire, you would lose all functionality.
AI costs money, and I think we need to understand that. Would you be willing to explain the amount of investment involved in maintaining AI features? Is it possible that the blindness community often makes demands that are not sustainable?"
"For example, JAWS 2026 home users get 20 requests per week for Page Explorer. If we were more educated about the costs associated with AI and software development and maintenance, could we better manage expectations? Could we make more reasonable requests based on factual information? I want JAWS to be around at least another decade or two, but I also want more companies to embrace the bring your own computer model.
Let blind users have more choice and take ownership of their own technology journey. Let us use the assistive technology that works best for us in the workplace, so long as we adjust as effective as everyone else."
"Frankly, JAWS is great for productivity, but it isn't the only option. If someone wants to use the Mac or NVDA and get the job done, then let the user take responsibility for learning their system of choice. If more product manufacturers implemented concepts of universal design, then we could spend more time focusing on the job and using more mainstream tools and less time worrying about specialized screen reader features."
Thanks for your email, Rebecca. Vispero has taken an approach where they have elected to shield users from the APIs, the application programming interfaces that are often being used to power some of these features.
So, if you're using an NVDA equivalent or in fact a third-party tool such as Leasey within JAWS, you're most likely to be required to go to the website for the company in question. Often it is OpenAI and ChatGPT, but increasingly it could be Google Gemini or Anthropic and obtain an API key, which you have to then copy and paste into some edit field somewhere to get these tools to work.
Typically, what then happens is that the user has to top up their account because every time you talk to AI and AI talks back to you, you are using tokens and you pay for those tokens. Normally, a standard conversation might only take a few cents if that, but it adds up over time and eventually your credit will expire and you'll have to go back and top up your account again.
And if you are a commercial entity where you might have many thousands of users using this thing all the time, as Vispero would with technology like Picture Smart and now Page Explorer, that is all going to add up.
And then of course, you would have the cost of developers who would be working on features like Page Explorer that get integrated into JAWS. I'm sure there's a lot of customization, a lot of prompt engineering that goes on to make sure that tools like Page Explorer give us the results that we are expecting, that these tools know that it's a blind person on the other end and the prompts will take that into account.
Vispero has chosen to absorb those costs into the cost of the product, and it may be that because of the number of tokens that are being used by a company like Vispero with a good number of users, they're getting some break on the price, but that would be commercially sensitive information that we wouldn't expect to have access to.
But certainly, there are tools, and if anybody has any specific NVDA related tools that they want to tell us about, where it's integrated deep with a large language model for quick exploration, either of pitches or for other things, do be in touch and make some recommendations, you can, of course, explore the NVDA add-on store, which is a great feature because it's a marketplace right within the screen reader that builds that sense of community within NVDA and essentially allows blind people to add functionality and build accessibility together. So, you can browse around there and find any number of options for accessing AI content.
I would also not rule out Copilot Vision, which as we demonstrated when we had our look at accessible shopping, is a very interesting concept for querying what's on the screen and getting descriptions of things.
So, if you are a Microsoft Edge user in particular and you're on the web and you want to ask Copilot Vision about things, you may be quite surprised by the quality of the answers that you get back. So, there are certainly alternatives to Page Explorer.
But in response to your question, we would reiterate the point that President Riccobono made in that initial letter that we believe there is a social contract of sorts that exists with this home annual license, where people become capable JAWS users, ready to use JAWS on the job and hit the ground running when they get that all important lucky break.
And it's a commercially savvy decision for Vispero to offer that license because then people want JAWS on the job and the employer pays. We understand that there has been some abuse of the home annual license and it's fair enough that Vispero is seeking to crack down on that.
Jean Asner is in touch and he says, "I found this podcast by accident and I'm glad I did." Well, I'm glad you did too, Jean. Welcome. I seldom use JAWS, though I used to use it years ago. I now use NVDA almost entirely, but I keep up a little with JAWS. Vispero doesn't just require you to have an account if you are a paid user.
They require it if you are a demo user, which is completely unjustified. It's abusive and it builds a database of those who don't have a license, but it's worse than that.
There is not one word of explanation in the JAWS documentation clarifying that the demo is still in JAWS 2026. And if you just update or download the program and try to use it, you might likely think the demo is gone. You get messages about needing to create an account.
You aren't told that if you do so, you will be able to use the demo just that you need to create an account. I would advocate spreading the word about this and something else important I found out far and wide to combat this abuse and misdirection, whether this misdirection is intentional or not.
I found out through a little thinking and playing around that you don't need an account to run the demo. Just don't be connected to the internet when you run JAWS and it will run as it always has in demo mode.
Those who own JAWS and don't want to be forced to have an account with information that is none of FS's business to compel for use of JAWS, I strongly suspect that they can run it too with a full license simply by, once again, not being connected to the internet when it is run.
After it runs, you may connect and it will continue to run as a demo just as before, and I would strongly suspect it will run in full mode just as it used to. I really resent Vispero trying to be Big Brother.
Thank you, Jean. We have not done that level of experimentation at this point to find out what is possible if you're not connected to the internet when you run JAWS for the first time once you've installed a new version. But it is interesting to know that this is also being required for demo users.
Christopher Wright says, "I would like to first thank the NFB for writing that letter to Vispero and thank Vispero CEO for that quick response." I would like to comment on one thing she said, mainly this statement. "This year we removed the home annual license option from our website, requiring our loyal customers to contact us directly to make a purchase.
This decision was made after discovering that several businesses were purchasing this low-cost license rather than true home users."
Three things in response to that. One, that could be because for some business owners, the home annual license is the most affordable option. Two, technically speaking, there are business owners like me who run a business from a home office.
Three, was she saying that the business owners who use JAWS are not loyal customers. Thanks, Christopher. I think the license is pretty clear with the JAWS annual home license that it is intended for individuals and for personal use.
So, if you are running a business from home and you're using it for some commercial moneymaking purpose, then that would be a breach of the license. People may well make the argument that there is a case for blind people who are running very small businesses and just trying to get ahead benefiting from a license such as this. But I think Vispero has been clear since 2018, I believe it was when this license came out that it is a non-commercial license for personal use.
Let's talk some Apple things for a while and Rod Khan starts us off. He says," Any advice on an alternative to the Apple Mail app?" Well, Rod, there is Microsoft Outlook. I know that there are many blind people using that on iOS and it's very accessible. There may be some other options too.
It would be useful to understand what it is you are looking for. What is it about the Apple Mail app, which is very accessible and quite powerful that you're not happy with? What are you seeking to do? And Rod goes on to say, also there has to be something simpler than Safari.
Again, Rod, if you're having a particular issue with Safari because web browsers on iOS largely work the same way. So, you could use Edge or you could use Chrome, but underneath, I think, at least in most parts of the world, they are all still using that same webkit framework. So, you're going to largely get the same experience. So, if you're having a particular issue there as well, do let us know about that.
Let's go to an email from Maurice Mines, which raises quite a few issues and we'll pick a few of them to deal with. The first one he's concerned about is too much Apple Intelligence. And he says, "What do I mean by too much Apple Intelligence?
It seems whenever I ask for something such as a sports score, the phone wants me to okay the use of ChatGPT. I have the 20 dollars a month subscription, but do I need it for everything, including sports scores? I wish there were a way to train the ChatGPT feature that it will not activate on sports scores."
That's interesting, Maurice, because I do ask for sports scores sometimes. I ask how the Ravens are doing and it's coming back quite quickly, but it may be using ChatGPT. I didn't think it was, but I may not know because I have switched off this prompt. I just want it to be seamless. So, let's go through how you do that. I'm on my iPhone now. I will push the button and say, "Open Siri settings."
Siri:
Beta.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're on the Siri screen, which also covers some Apple Intelligence things and I'm going to navigate by hitting.
Siri:
Apple Intelligence and Siri, heading, an illustration of two purple circles.
Jonathan Mosen:
We'll go to the next heading.
Siri:
A personal intelligence system integrated deeply into your iPhone, apps, and Siri. Learn more. Heading and illustration. Two per Siri requests. Heading. Extensions. Heading.
Jonathan Mosen:
And extensions is the heading we want. So, now, that I'm there, I'll flick right.
Siri:
ChatGPT button.
Jonathan Mosen:
There's the ChatGPT button and I'm going to double tap it.
Siri:
Settings. Use ChatGPT. Switch button on.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can disable it entirely if you want to. And that doesn't mean that you can't use the ChatGPT app. It just means that it won't be integrated with Siri Apple Intelligence. If you prefer to do that, you can just disable it entirely, but there's probably a less dramatic way of resolving this, so we'll flick right.
Siri:
iPhone can use ChatGPT to help you write text, create an image, answer questions and more. Open AI terms of use.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll keep going.
Siri:
ChatGPT account heading.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can sign in with your own ChatGPT account. The advantage of doing that is that if you make a request that involves ChatGPT, you can see it on other devices. For example, if you do something that triggers ChatGPT on your phone and then you go to your computer and you log into the same account and ChatGPT, you're going to find it there. I'm going to flick right.
Siri:
ChatGPT plus, Jonathan, sign out button, if you're signed in, ChatGPT confirm requests. Switch button off.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now, that is the magic button you want to press. Maurice, it's called confirm requests. And if you double tap that so that it is set to off, you're not going to be prompted every time Siri wants to go out and get some help from ChatGPT. There is an explanation after this. Let's just look at that.
Siri:
If ChatGPT can help, iPhone will confirm the request before sending anything to ChatGPT. Sending a file will always require a confirmation.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, if you have some comfort level with it just going out to ChatGPT, switch that switch to off and it won't bother you with that prompt anymore. I should say while we're talking about Siri, that it does look like Apple's news Siri, which room hazard is going to be powered by Google Gemini is not too far away for the testing, so that will be most interesting.
Maurice also continues: several times in the last week, I've seen the weather forecast be completely erroneous. Yeah. When I was on the radio a long time ago on commercial radio, I used to refer to it as the meteorological horoscope. But I think that forecasts have got a bit more accurate over the years.
Anyway, Maurice says, for instance, one day last week, supposedly with the weather forecast calling for rain on the phone, the national weather service forecast had not one drop of rain in it, not even a cloudy sky.
On the other hand, on a day when it was absolutely pouring, the phone indicated that there wasn't supposed to be any rain. In fact, the phone completely missed any extreme weather warning about a severe thunderstorm northwest of the city I live in.
It would be interesting to go into location services, Maurice, and just ensure that the weather app is using your location and that it knows where you are. I mean, there might be some discrepancy depending on the different services that your various weather apps are using.
But if it's that erroneous, like it's pouring down and you're not getting any information, that suggests to me some location services issue might be at play here. Maurice says, "How does one turn off summaries of text messages?"
For this one, Maurice, you want to find the apps button at the bottom of the settings screen. When you double tap that apps button, you will see a list of the apps on your phone so that you can go into system settings for each of those apps.
This list is navigable by heading and that can be very useful if you have many hundreds of apps like I do. So, you can navigate by heading to get to M and then flick through to messages. When you double tap messages, you'll get a range of interesting settings there, one of which is summarized messages. If you switch that off, you will get the traditional preview that we've all had for years and not a summarization of messages.
Maurice also says, "If I don't want to receive any text messages or anything, is it best to put the phone into Airplane mode or should I set the Focus to Do Not Disturb?" Maurice, putting your phone in airplane mode will turn off cellular service. You can optionally reenable WiFi and Bluetooth. What you may want to do is use Do Not Disturb if you think you may still want to have access to your phone for some other purpose.
And when you do put it in Do Not Disturb, you might just want to check the Focus setting for Do Not Disturb and ensure that you're not going to get notifications when the phone is unlocked. This is a pretty common problem that people have with Do Not Disturb.
They put it in Do Not Disturb and they wonder why they're still being notified with everything. It's because there is a setting that says when the phone is unlocked, basically let the notifications through. So, if you fix that, then you should be in good shape in Do Not Disturb mode.
Maurice is also asking about how one learns 1Password. I don't know whether there is an up-to-date blindness specific tutorial on 1Password. The user experience of 1Password changed significantly, oh gosh, a couple of years ago now, I think, when they went to 1Password 8.
So, that's something that we may potentially tackle in future. But if people are aware of a good quality tutorial that covers using 1Password on a range of platforms, then that will be interesting because Maurice, you are the second person in a week who has asked me about learning to use 1Password.
Now, we're going to hear from Becky, who is the secretary of the Central Connecticut chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. Thank you, Becky. It's good to hear from you. She says, "I saw your boutique on iOS 26 and learned a lot. So far, I am not having any problems with the update. However, I do have a question. I tried to use my NLS e-reader with my iPhone 14, as you showed us.
I have paired it successfully with my phone, but when I press Q7 and 8 with or without the space key on my e-reader, all it does is beep. Is there a setting I didn't turn on or off? I did turn on Braille input, but it didn't work, so I turned it off and it still didn't work. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong.
Well, that's frustrating, isn't it, Becky, when you've gone to all that trouble to use the Braille Access features? Here is something to try and I hope it helps. We'll go through the step-by-step so I have my handy-dandy iPhone.
Yeah. I used to watch Blue's Clues with my kids. It wasn't iPhone though. It was notebook in those days. Long time ago. Anyway, I have my handy-dandy iPhone. Open voiceover settings.
Siri:
Settings, voiceover. Switch button on.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're going to flick through until we get to ...
Siri:
Braille. Mantis is Q40.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the Braille display I'm using at the moment. I'll double tap.
Siri:
Settings, match input.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now, we're going to have a look at the Braille displays that appeared with this iPhone. To get there quickly, I'm going to perform a four-finger single tap on the bottom half of the screen.
Siri:
In progress.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now, I'm going to flick left.
Siri:
Searching, dimmed, NLS eReader, human worry, BH.
Jonathan Mosen:
There we go. I have an NLS eReader. It is not here at the moment, but it is paired. So, I can flick up at this point, which will activate the actions rotor
Siri:
More info.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I do want to double tap more info.
Siri:
Braille commands, button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And Braille commands is the first option, which is good because it is Braille commands that we want. I will double tap. For me, and this may just be a Focus issue with a particular build of iOS I am running, I need to flick left at this point, but what you need to locate is ...
Siri:
Braille button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll double tap Braille. We have a lot of Braille access commands in here. But the one you want to find is this one.
Siri:
Toggle Braille access, button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Double tap that. Toggle Braille access and see if a key has been assigned. If it hasn't, you can double tap the assigned key button and then press dot 7 and 8 and see if that registers. And once you've done, this, obviously this is a one-off process. You should then be able to use dot 7 and 8 to toggle Braille access on and off.
I hope that helps you, Becky, because it is a useful feature and you can read more about Braille Access in the December edition of the National Federation of the Blinds Flagship publication, the Braille Monitor. You can find that online by going to nfb.org and choosing publications, and the Braille Monitor is right there. There is so much of interest to read every month.
And still on Apple Things, here's an email from Thomas. I've noticed this one too, and it is quite frustrating. He says in 26.01 and 26.1, when making a call, it reads the amount of time when starting the call and when you are on the call. The only way you can stop it from counting is to move the cursor from the spot where it is counting.
If I was sighted and not blind, I would not have this problem. I have complained to accessibility. It needs to be fixed. Thank you for writing in on this one, Thomas. I can confirm that this is still the case for me with iOS 26.2, sometimes it's the little things that have a big impact.
And certainly, if you have a hearing impairment in addition and you answer the phone and somebody says, "Hi, Jonathan, it's whoever it is calling." And the phone is yelling at you, counting the time away. It's really difficult. And sometimes I find myself having to say, "Sorry, who did you say it was? "
I've actually started getting into the pattern of trying to turn my speech off before I answer the call, but hopefully this is something that can be fixed. It just sounds like Focus is being set to the wrong place in that phone screen. And there's a selection of Apple-related comments if you'd like to be in touch on those issues or any others.
[email protected] is the email address that's Access On all joined together @nfb.org. You can attach an audio clip to the email, either by just attaching it if it's small enough or linking to a cloud storage service somewhere, or you can just write the email down.
Speaker 5:
For over 100 years, the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults has provided programs and services to the blind and deafblind, mostly without cost and always with an emphasis on Braille.
Thousands of Braille books and Braille calendars sent and thousands more blind and deafblind people to reach. Help the American Action Fund by contributing today at actionfund.org/donate. Thank you for your support.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's Access On from the National Federation of the Blind. And let's move on to some Windows-related things now. And we're going to Budapest, where Peter is writing in. He says, "According to the legends, it is possible to keep on using good old WordPad on an updated Windows 11. After asking advice from ChatGPT and following accurately it's words, I did not manage to do it.
"On YouTube, there are a lot of how to install WordPad on Windows 11 videos, but they're rather not comprehensible without seeing them or what is said in the videos isn't valid information in my case. But there must be a way, I'm certain. Please give me the key or ask your audience how to do the trick.
Congratulations for nearly one year of Access On this. We're past that anniversary now. And thanks for the important advocacy work you do there at NFB for the whole world's blind community."
Thank you, Peter. We certainly appreciate that. I am happy to stand corrected, but the research that I have done on this indicates that what you want to do isn't really possible in newer builds of Windows 11. If you have an older build of Windows 11, you can go into the settings and choose apps and optional features and reenable WordPad.
But in newer builds of Windows 11, WordPad is actually gone. I suppose you could try and find an old version of Windows 11 and extract the binary, but my goodness, that does seem a bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach with this because there are other viable text editors out there that do what WordPad does.
I don't know whether Notepad++ will do it for you, Peter, but a lot of blind people seem to gravitate to that. It was recommended to me a few years ago, and I really do enjoy using that one. There are other text editors out there as well.
So, let's put this one out to the Access On audience and find out what people are using for text editing. I tend to do everything in Microsoft Word these days, to be honest, because even if it's a plain text file or a rich text file, you can still open it up and save it in that format.
But Notepad++ is good as well, and I'm sure there are other options. So, if anyone has any suggestions for Peter or if I've missed a trick and it's actually much easier to get WordPad back in Windows 11 than I think it is, please share that to [email protected]. But basically, Microsoft has sent the signal that they have deprecated WordPad. It's no longer a going concern. It has ceased to be. It's joined choir invisible.
Joe Norton's writing in and he says, "Hi, Jonathan. By the time you could read this on the podcast, he's hoping you don't have to. I was duly informed that Windows 11 version 25H2 was available. I updated just fine. However, I do like to do a fresh install with a major version change to kick the tires on the new release without my previous data being there.
So, I headed on over to Microsoft's website and downloaded the latest build of Windows 11, only to find that when I booted the USB stick and pressed Control Windows, Enter, nothing happened. The accessible install was broken. It didn't matter whether I used the official ISO image or the media creation tool. The result was the same. Maybe it's just my laptop that this is not working on. That's what I'm hoping."
"So, if this situation is still in effect, when you get around to publishing this, this is a heads up. For those who want to install a fresh copy of Windows 11 that they may want to wait or get sited assistance. I have done it with seeing AI, but it's tricky."
Thank you, Joe, for writing in on this one. I have reached out to our contacts at Microsoft. The National Federation of the Blind enjoys a good cordial relationship with Microsoft. They're pretty responsive. I also believe I've seen reference to this on social media somewhere else.
So, Microsoft did some testing and they got back to me and they said, "As of now, we are not able to duplicate this issue. We have installed 25H2. We pressed Control, Windows, Enter, during the install. We got narrator running. We were able to complete the installation."
So, if there was a problem, it looks like according to Microsoft, the problem no longer exists. Obviously, if people are finding something different, do let us know and we will follow up further. I hope you got your install done in the end, Joe, the accessible way.
This next email comes from Josue, and he says, "Hi, thanks for your answer to my Android question. It worked great." Oh, very glad to be of service. I'm glad to hear that. He says, "When I open Outlook new with JAWS 2025, most of the time, the forms mode is not active by default and the Focus is not placed on the message list. Is there a better way than disabling the virtual cursor? Would it be possible to enable the forms mode by default?"
It should be. I think what I would try is when you get into the new Outlook, press Control, Shift, I at that point, which is the classic Outlook keyboard shortcut to get to the inbox. We passed a resolution at the National Federation of the Blind a couple of conventions ago expressing concern about the new Outlook, and it has improved substantially since then.
It would be interesting to hear from people who have switched and what you think it's like these days in terms of its performance. Is it really now at the point where we can say it's a substitute for Outlook Classic?
But in my experience as somebody who is checking in on it from time to time, if you push that Control, Shift, I inbox, it tends to work some magic. It puts Focus in the right place and you can up and down arrow through your list of messages as if in fact you were in the message list in the old Outlook. So, if you haven't tried that, give it a shot and let us know how you get on.
One wonderful thing about the National Federation of the Blind is how we all help each other out. And Karl Smith has been a prolific provider of tech tips and now he's writing in with a question all the way from Utah. And Karl says, "I've been listening to the CENA PowerPoint presentation and thank you for getting it for me.
In the presentation you said, I believe Control, Alt, N or maybe JAWS Key Alt, N brings up the speaker notes in the virtual viewer so a JAWS user can listen to or read them. Doesn't that show up in the presentation? I'm not clear how other than presentation view, I can review my notes with JAWS without it being seen by the audience. Am I missing something?"
Thanks, Karl. The command we're talking about here is Control, Shift, N, which is not a very JAWS-like command, is it? But that's what it is. It's been around for a long time, and that puts the text in the virtual viewer. If you have a monitor connected so that people can see your PowerPoint presentation, when you do the Control, Shift, N, it's just putting it in the virtual viewer, but it is not displaying the speaker notes.
So, this works particularly well with a Braille display because you can turn off your speech. The PowerPoint presentation continues to run. Control, Shift, N simply sends the text directly to the speech or the Braille, but not to the screen.
Charles Okello:
Yes. Hello, Jonathan Mosen, and this is Charles Okello. Recently, I have begun learning how to use reperforming is to do recording, especially podcasts like recording. But then if I'm doing recording a demonstration, for example, I want to have a tutorial on how to use an application using just for Windows.
How best can I do this? Because I really would love to have that very, very good sound from the computer of the screener coming in the SIM, having its own dedicated microphone. What do I need to be able to achieve this?
I want to know the process. If it's, can I be able to do this without a mixer or do I use some mixer and is it like I need something if there's a mixer, could you recommend me some option, like something that I can really start it because I really would love to learn how to do this and to be able to have an impact in my community.
Jonathan Mosen:
Charles, thank you so much for the excellent question. Recording your screen reader's audio or system audio from your computer generally, and I assume we're talking Windows in this case, requires a feature called Loopback. So, I want to start with the lowest cost option and it's all in software.
There is a great piece of donationware, which is called VB-Cables. It installs a virtual cable on your PC and you can set your computer's output to the cable input and other recording software's input to the cable output, and that will trick your computer into routing audio internally.
The second option you have is a hardware solution, which is going to cost some money. We're talking audio interfaces. If you're looking to upgrade your gear, then the easiest and most stable way to do what you want to do is with a USB audio interface that has a built-in function called Loopback, and that allows you to record your high quality XLR microphone if you have one and your computer sound on separate tracks seamlessly in Reaper. And there are some relatively low-cost options that I would draw to your attention.
One is, of course, the Zoom PodTrak P4next that we reviewed in episode 54. That sells for 149 US dollars, and you can then use that to record you and your speech on separate tracks and then mix it all together in Reaper afterwards.
Focusrite and Audient also have products in this category. Focusrite has one specifically for podcasting. They have the Vocaster and the Vocaster Two in that range. That may be attractive for you because they offer a little bit of compression as well in the hardware.
But if you're using Reaper, you do have free compressor plugins and limited plugins as well, so that may or may not be a factor. Audient also has some great products in this area, and there are other manufacturers that offer Loopback as well. So, if you're able to, going with a Loopback hardware solution is probably the most reliable way to do this.
And for recording demos and things like that, it is hard to go past the use case of the Zoom PodTrak P4 because you can record on that as well as use it as an audio interface. You can take it places and do recordings if that effort becomes relevant. And at 179 US dollars, it is a very cost-effective option for all that you get.
Michael:
Hello, Jonathan. Just wondering if you could give me some advice. I'm traveling overseas next year to six countries. I'm going to use quite a lot of audio equipment to take ambient sound, spoken sounds, et cetera, et cetera. And what I want to do is find something where I could copy all my SD card files or micro-SD card files from my voice recorders to a hard drive.
People have said you can use a phone, which I've tried that method, but it's too slow and the phone overheats, et cetera, et cetera. So, I'm just wondering if you could recommend a basic maybe laptop. I could take a small laptop, I could take around with me and then put it on in the hotel room at night, copy all the files and then basically pack it away.
Jonathan Mosen:
And that's Michael with that question. Thank you, Michael. Safe travels to you. Sounds like you're on quite an adventure coming up. You can throw as much or as little money at this problem as you would like. The light, thin, capable notebooks obviously tend to be more expensive.
So, it just depends how much you want to lug around with you and how much you're prepared to spend on this. You may pay a premium for a device that has an SD card slot built-in, and that may actually add to the bulk.
So, what you might want to do at the risk of having another device to lose is get a little USB card reader that plugs into a USB port. You might want to see if you can get one that plugs into the USB-C port, which will give you a high transfer rate. And then you can just slot the SD card, be it micro or standard SD card into the reader, plug the reader into the USB-C port and you're up and running.
And of course, with certain recorders, what you can do is connect them directly. For example, the Zoom recorders will appear as a drive in Windows, and you can then just cable it directly and copy from the recorder itself to your device.
And there are all kinds of readers out there that take different sorts of SD cards, micro and standard and whatever other formats are out there, and they can even act as a thumb drive. So, what I would do in this situation is go to a store, Michael, and find some laptops and just find that happy balance between what you're prepared to pay and lightness and battery life.
You might want to consider getting a device with an arm processor if you think you're going to need very long battery life. And that may also depend on the screen reader that you're using, because I think NVDA's arm support is still rolling out. They're doing lots of test builds of that at the moment.
The JAWS one's been around a while. If you're a JAWS user, you should be on pretty safe ground and Narrator has good arm support as well. So, there's that as a consideration as well. Some of those laptops with arm processes are pretty light and thin and have amazing battery life.
Can you hear that relaxing seashore sound? It's coming from Mark Fisher. He says, "I'm lucky enough to be lying on a lounger. In the sixth week of an eight-week holiday in Mauritius, looking over the ocean, catching up on my Access On podcast while eating fresh banana, pineapple, and mango for breakfast." First world problem, "I know, " says Mark.
"I was interested in the recent episode on indoor navigation. I don't think we have quite solved that problem yet, was my takeaway. However, it made me think of some challenges with outdoor navigation apps, which I have currently experienced on this trip.
In Mauritius, it is not uncommon to visit houses or places in streets which have no house number, and therefore you need to use Google Maps to drop a pin when communicating with taxi drivers via WhatsApp. Apologies if you may have covered this before now. I also use VoiceVista and understand its benefits, particularly when walking on the beach and then returning to the same exact place I started."
"However, I was wondering whether a demonstration of how accessible Google and Apple Maps are would be useful, particularly given those are the most commonly used across the world, to my knowledge by our sighted colleagues.
For example, I don't believe it's possible to create a marker in VoiceVista and then share that as a pen in Google Maps, although you can share it to Apple Maps. Anyway, time to go for a swim," concludes Mark Fisher. Is he gone? Yes, he's gone. Thank you very much, Mark. Enjoy Mauritius.
We do intend to have a catch up with Mike May, who's been working on a new app called Indigo Nav for a while. So, when the time is right, we will do that and perhaps talk a little more widely about GPS experiences. Hope you had a great time over there in Mauritius. Mark is based in Australia.
Francisco Crespo says, "I'm writing to bring two Meta issues to everyone's attention. One, possibly many people already reported this, but I'll do it anyway. On the iOS Facebook app, voiceover now reads a very short preview of each post when scrolling the feed. In order to read the entire text, I have to double tap to open the post.
This makes it very annoying to read Facebook publications and I hope they reverse it ASAP. Would you please report it to Meta?" Done, Francisco.
When we started getting word of this, we did let them know about that. We worked with them and that is now resolved and I agree it is a big improvement to have it back the way it was. Now, onto Francisco's second issue, he says, "I've been using the new WhatsApp Apple Watch app and it looks like very little attention was given to accessibility.
Some controls are unlabeled, but the most critical issue now for me is that the accessibility elements on the chat screen are not grouped. This basically requires that to read one message, I have to flick several times to read the time, the text, and its delivered status, et cetera."
"The other annoying issue is that the scrub gesture to go back is not working to go from the chat to the list of chats. I hope you can report this as well." Will do, Francisco. I have seen that myself. I am using an app called WhatsChat for WhatsApp, and that is very accessible and a good experience.
But now that there is this first-party app, we would like it to be accessible for sure. So, thank you for reporting both of those things and will the other NFB members who reported the Facebook trouble so that we could pass that feedback on.
Let's go back to an issue that Rick Roderick raised with us here on Access On. He says, "I have made some discoveries about video skills. This is not only the Streamplayer, but this is true with other skills that contain both audio and video components.
I'm talking about the various Streamplayer channels as well as free speech TV. FSTV did reply and the issue may be a codec problem. This issue started on January the 5th of this year. Basic Alexa just said that I cannot access your Streamplayer skill right now, followed by the tone of Doom."
"On a totally different topic, I tried using Narrator with my computer. When I went back to JAWS, it didn't work. I had to call Vispero and put the Braille driver back. After I did that with their help, JAWS and NVDA worked again. Has Microsoft fixed this problem?"
Rick, I'm sorry to hear that. We do continue to hear reports of this from time-to-time, and Microsoft is aware of this pain point. It is pretty troubling when you just want to try to see what narrator's Braille support is like. And in the process of doing that, access has become broken for other screen readers.
I think that this was something that we're trying to work on. We will reach out to Microsoft and see if we can get an update on how things are going with that. Because certainly if the word's out there, and the word definitely is, that Braille can break in this way, then it's a disincentive to try it, which is unfortunate.
Now, speaking of unfortunate, we have received quite a bit of feedback on this next topic, and this email comes from Marinella, and it says I wanted to send in my thoughts about the Ally Solos Glasses since they have been brought up in an episode where Puerto Rico has Meta available to them to use with the Meta Glasses.
Even though the Meta Glasses are popular among my blind colleagues at my workplace, I decided to go with the Ally Solos Glasses from Envision because I wanted to get the Envision glasses at some point.
I had an AllCam for a few years and have seen the quirks with how I have to turn my head to keep it focused on the text or a barcode on a product when it's placed on the right side of my glasses.
When I heard about the Ally AI app beta being released, I decided to try it out and had fun with it, with having my Ally sounding like one of the companions from Dr. Who, but I'm now using Zoe who cheers me up with her delivery.
When the glasses were announced a week after my birthday, I was excited and decided to be part of one of the pre-order groups and purchase them with some savings and receive them and put them to the test.
So far, I have not been disappointed despite having the app running on my phone in the background, but the cameras captured pictures pretty well and the descriptions have been amazing, especially while being in Walmart once looking for a makeup brush and the glasses described how the display had brushes from eye to face in front of me.
Another amazing description was being in a French pastry place, asking about the pastries in the case in front of me and described the croissants and Danishes in front of me, and then later the fountain in a park nearby. And the glasses have been a help earlier this morning when it came to a tube of mascara.
I'm glad that you sent that in, Marinella, because we have had overwhelmingly negative feedback coming in from people who have made this purchase. We also made a purchase of these glasses from the International Braille and Technology Center and have had some difficulty getting them to pair and be reliable.
We have found that the Ally app on the iPhone is actually quite sensitive to lighting conditions as well. It does not seem to be as tolerant as some other apps in that regard. And what we're hearing from people is that there are just a series of problems relating to getting these glasses to work.
We've heard from people who want to return them and are getting very slow responses, so we are deeply concerned about that.
I did reach out a few weeks ago to Karthik Kannan from Envision because we did talk about these glasses here on Access On and communicated the feedback that we were getting and the direct experiences that we were having.
For example, one of the interesting things was that even when the glasses were paired and supposedly working, if we tried to perform the gesture to take a picture, it was actually resulting in the magic tap being performed on the phone, which would usually start and stop media playback.
Now, Karthik did offer to help with that and to see what might be going on. Other commitments here at the International Braille and Technology Center have at this stage prevented us from following up, but we will. And hopefully, since there have been some revisions, things are starting to improve. But there are multiple areas of concern that we are hearing from members.
Some of them are technical, some of them are to do with responsiveness and the difficulty that some people say they're having, getting some acknowledgement and getting the process underway when they have determined that these glasses aren't all that they were hoping for and that they want to return them within the window where they can get a full refund.
So, we are interested in people's feedback on these. We have been monitoring social media and other forums and seeing the genuine struggles that people are having. We did have a member contact us and at this stage, our best advice was if you're having some struggles as a number of people are, then we can certainly duplicate some of these struggles and that the best option might be for people to return their product while they have the ability to do so.
It is unfortunate that this product does not seem quite ready for primetime. I think the very best that can be said is that it is buggy and the user experience is incredibly variable, but we're receiving a lot more concerns than we are receiving praise for this product.
And I suppose that's fair enough. If you are concerned, you're more likely to get in touch with an organization like the National Federation of the Blind. But I think it is fair to say we also get a lot of excitement and praise about the Meta Glasses, Ray-Ban Meta and some of the new variants.
But we are hearing a lot of frustration here and we hope that for the sake of Envision and the customers who've invested in the company in terms of buying this product, that it will get better from here.
Time for a quick tech tip before we go, and this one relates to the new ChatGPT voice feature, and we're going to demonstrate this using iOS, but it probably applies to other smartphones as well. The new ChatGPT voice is multimodal. So, in the past, you would have to go into an exclusive voice mode, which meant that if ChatGPT wanted to display some data for you, it couldn't. You're either working with voice or you were working with text, but not both.
So, there are definitely some advantages in the new ChatGPT voice mode. But at least for now, one of the advantages is that you most likely want to switch your speech off because ChatGPT is repeating through the screen reader what the voice is trying to say, which can be disconcerting.
If you want to go back to the old behavior where you just have this exclusive ChatGPT voice mode, you can do it and we'll show you how. I am in the ChatGPT app and I'm going to go to the top of the screen.
Siri:
Jonathan Mosen, button.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the button I want. It's got my name. Yours won't say that. At least I hope it won't or I've been hacked. So, double tap.
Siri:
Settings. Heading.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now, that I'm on the setting screen, I can navigate it by heading and I'll continue to do that.
Siri:
Account. Heading. App. Heading. Speech. Heading. Voice mode. Heading.
Jonathan Mosen:
Voice mode is what we want. I'm going to flick right now that I'm there at the voice mode heading.
Siri:
Voice. Maple button. Separate mode. Switch button off.
Jonathan Mosen:
Separate mode is off by default now. But if you double tap to turn this on, you will get the previous experience back where you go into a dedicated voice mode, which if you don't often want multimodal data, you may find a little bit more convenient and a little bit more accessible.
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].
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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.