Welcome to the sixty-seventh episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Description
The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference took place last week in Anaheim, California. To discuss the conference, including interesting sessions and new technology, Jonathan Mosen is joined by Everette Bacon, Chancey Fleet, Minh Ha, and Mike May.
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, our panel joins us for a comprehensive recap of the CSUN 2026 Conference. The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference is over for another year. People attended this conference from around the world to share, to learn, to network, and to geek out with the latest tech. To recap the conference, I'm joined by a truly illustrious panel for Access On. First of all, Everette Bacon is second vice president of the National Federation of the Blind. Welcome to you, Everette.
Everette Bacon:
Hey, Jonathan. Great to be here.
Jonathan Mosen:
And just like they say on the TV, live from New York, it's Chancey Fleet. Welcome, Chancey.
Chancey Fleet:
Thank you so much.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we're going to Boston. Minh Ha joins us just before Boston is bathed in green for the St. Patrick's Day parade. So, hi, Minh. It's really great to have you as a part of this.
Minh Ha:
Hi, Jonathan. So excited to be here.
Jonathan Mosen:
And still finding his way, after all these years, it's Mike May. Hey, Mike.
Mike May:
Yeah, that's my middle name. Wayfinding. Hello from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh, Marvelous. ¡Buenos día!. All right, so let's go to the beginning of this and do a quick round table, a recap of the conference, just getting your overall impressions of how you thought about it this year, and if you've been before, how it's stacked up. Everette, shall we start with you? What's your overall impression of CSUN 2026?
Everette Bacon:
Jonathan, that's a great question because I remember my first CSUN was around 2007, and one thing I have noticed that is very different today is there is so much more blind-centered, blind-focused technology and blind people at this CSUN conference than there was 20 years ago. It is definitely really exciting to see how many blind people are working in the field of access technology and also maybe working in other fields that have such an interest in access technology. My biggest impression was just really excited. It felt like a mini convention and really was excited to see so many blind people there.
Jonathan Mosen:
I want to go to you, Min, next because obviously Everette's been around doing this forever. What was your first CSUN?
Minh ha:
Well, my first CSUN was only two years ago. I first went in 2024, so this was my third CSUN, and I really felt like it was a charm for me. I really felt like I hit my stride. It was really busy. I work at Perkins, so I had a lot of meetings with our partners, but I've had to agree with Everette. I felt like it was like a mini blindness convention, and it was really great to see friends and colleagues in the field. I do have to say, I feel like every year, CSUN gets more and more overwhelming in terms of the offerings for sessions. My biggest wish is they would send down the offerings a little bit because making a decision on which session to go to is really hard and also the more popular sessions get so crowded and so full very quickly. So, I'm wondering if there's a way for CSUN to even improve that process, like have a pre-registration.
I couldn't even get into the keynote because it was packed by I think 8:30, like they closed the doors, and that was a common complaint that I heard from many attendees that they couldn't get into the sessions that they wanted to go to, even though they got there early.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's where it really helps if presenters take the time to upload their slides as well. So, I had several clashes where I wanted to be in many places at once, and I do appreciate it when I can log in afterwards and at least download their slides and find out what they were saying. Chancey, you were busy at CSUN. Speaking of slides and presentations, how was the conference for you?
Chancey Fleet:
I was a little busy this year. I had three talks. I really enjoyed the keynote. Haley Moss is an autistic attorney, and she talked about something that really spoke to me and resonates with what I see in my work, which is the power of interdependence and how life is not a DIY project, and she talked about how a less-told story of disability is how we find wisdom and strength in community and learn how to do things in community, and it wasn't a high-tech message. It was a message for everyone. It crossed across disability lines. She talked about neurodivergence in a really affirming way, and I thought last year's keynote with Gabby Giffords couldn't be topped, but this one was phenomenal as well. I'm really lucky that I was able to get into it. It's nice that I can go to CSUN and have an equal opportunity as a blind person to experience rudeness from a bouncer.
They really are not shy, and I do think that we could all benefit from the opportunity to pre-register for sessions, especially for people that might have mobility disabilities or conflicts, might move a little slower. I saw a lot of people from every walk of life getting turned away from sessions and when you've paid 500 dollars and more for a ticket, that's not great. Other than that, I thought the quality of the lineup was fine. I was afraid that we'd be drowning in AI this year, and we were. A lot of products are getting AI integrated whether they need it or not, but there was also a ton of Braille everywhere this year, both in the sessions and in the exhibit hall. I'm really heartened by the wide variety of Braille-centered projects that were there and the enthusiasm and community for projects that are coming up.
I'm super excited about the GitHub Accessibility Hackathon that's happening in May. I saw some really cool and adventurous prototypes. I met a lot of students and early career people, and it seems like although it's tough to think about the reasons why corporate presence has dwindled this year, and I wish that there were more support for accessibility right now in the corporate sphere, it has given the rest of us a bit of breathing room, and I saw a lot of ideas sparking between people, and I always liked that.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we'll dig deeper into some of those issues a little later. But Mike, your recap of the conference as a whole, because you beat all of us. You've been going to this thing since what? About 1882 or something, right?
Mike May:
Yeah, I think '83 maybe. I think first time was '96, and I think CSUN started in '95. So, it's been lots. Then I was there on Friday the 13th in 2020 when the world shut down, and there was maybe a third of the people had actually come to CSUN, and it's been building back up since. I think this was the busiest it's been, I don't know if ever, but certainly since before COVID. This is the first time I've navigated CSUN with a cane instead of a dog. My dog just passed away and-
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm really sorry to hear that. It's rough.
Mike May:
It's hard to lose them. They don't live long enough. So, nine CSUNs, she'd been to. So, you can imagine there's a hallway that goes back to the main rooms from the exhibit hall area, and I could not find that darn hallway. I kept overshooting it, undershooting it, banging on the walls, running into display stuff. I was not very elegant. So, I was missing my dog, and I'm sure I could get better at the cane with a little bit more practice. I did have a chance to take the glide on a 20-minute spin and compare that with the cane and the dog. So, lots of cool stuff and when we come back around, I'll talk about Braille displays, navigation, and smart glasses.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm looking forward to talking about the gadgets. I will just say a couple of things about the overall impression of the conference. Last year during this section that we did at the beginning of the discussion for CSUN 2025, I communicated some, in my view, justified castigation because there was no assistive listening available last year, which made it very difficult in the sessions. This year, I thought they had an excellent assistive listening system. So, credit where it's due, and you got the receiver every day, and there was a sign that was consistently placed in the same place to the left of the door in every room where there was a session, and on that sign was a QR code. It was tactile. So, you knew where it was. There was a reader on the back of the device. You scanned that QR code, and that tuned the receiver to the channel being used by the assistive listening system for that room.
It was digital, which created some issues for me when I was presenting, and I had three presentations, but when you talk, and you're monitoring with the assistive listening system, there was just enough delay for it to be a little bit disconcerting, but it was clear. It worked really well, and I do thank the organizers for getting it right this year. The other thing I will say is that GoodMaps just keeps getting better and better and as someone with a hearing impairment, navigating in very, very noisy environments, that really was very helpful being able to get to all the different sessions on time, and it worked flawlessly for me navigating from session to session. I was easily able to get a fix, and I didn't have one issue where GoodMaps misdirected me or took too long or anything like that. So, that technology's coming along nicely.
You've been involved with GoodMaps over the years, Mike. Are you pleased with how it's evolving?
Mike May:
It does get better every year. Unfortunately, they did not map the exhibits, which for me would be my first choice if they had to do one or the other, but exhibits have to be mapped last minute. So, that's a little trickier for them to do, but I too found it working really great.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, let's talk about sessions that people attended that have resonated. We probably don't have time to go through every session that everyone attended, but if there's some things that really stand out, it'd be interesting to hear. And why don't we go to you, first, for this one, Min? What sessions really did you appreciate this year?
Minh ha:
I did not get to attend a ton of sessions, but one of the ones that really stood out to me was an AI one, but I thought it was very different because it wasn't talking about anything like generative AI, using AI to create things for you. This was more using AI to cultivate a more cognitively friendly workflow. So, helping with cognitive overload as a neurospicy person person, I definitely really appreciated this, learning some tips and tricks on how AI can help me be a more productive person, but not get so overwhelmed at the end of the day and one message that I really took away from this was... How does she say it? Protecting your cognitive load is an accessibility practice, and I think that it was super affirming because I think in a workplace that is high energy, high initiatives, lots of things to work on, sometimes I just feel like I'm all over the place like a chicken with my head cut off.
So, using AI in the way to protect my own cognitive load and cultivating this accessibility practice, not even getting permission, but just that affirmation that, yes, this is something worthwhile to do. I'd love to take some of the things that I've learned and maybe write more about it. Another session that I really enjoyed learning about, and Chancey alluded to this, was the open source accessibility. I am not a software developer. I'm more of a co-designer working with researchers and others to create more inclusive products. Open source is always great, especially with prices going up on assistive technology. We always want solutions that are free or affordable to our community and having the Center for... my gosh, CAOS, Center for Accessibility and Open Source. This project, I think it's really exciting. It's something I want to keep a pulse on, and this GitHub Accessibility Hackathon, and they really looking forward to hearing more about it.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's go to you, Everette. What sessions resonated with you? Did you manage to get to some?
Everette Bacon:
I got to a couple, but yeah, my day job with Aira requires me to be at the booth on a regular basis all the time and then when I'm not at the booth, I get pulled in by our sales and marketing team to go and see if we can make another access offer with someone else. So, I was proud that Aira was able to provide access at CSUN this year. We don't always are able to do that. That got to be my decision, and I thought we could afford it as a company. So, we did that, and I've heard from many people that took advantage of that. So, I was glad that Aira was able to do that. I guess the session that stood out the most to me, I really enjoyed Agiga's session on EchoVision, which Mike was a part of, but it was neat to see some of the demonstrations of the live AI feature in EchoVision, as well as some of the other neat things that those glasses can do.
I think wearables is definitely going to be where we're going from now on and not only glasses, but I think we're going to see wearables in many other kinds of ways. So, we don't have to just wear glasses if we don't want to. There was a company that had a small camera that I thought was pretty cool, but I didn't get to their session that they're taking orders on where you can wear just a camera, and I liked that idea too, just in case I don't feel like wearing glasses, but I loved that idea, and I loved the EchoVision session.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, let's talk about EchoVision then since you brought them up. I had that listed under my gadgets section, but now that you've raised it, let's talk about it now, and I'd be interested to hear the panel's thoughts on EchoVision, if you saw it. We have had a beta version of this at the International Braille and Technology Center for some time. It is a different user experience from the Meta glasses in the sense that they connect over WiFi. So, if you're in your place of work or at home, you can connect via your WiFi network and roam around independently without your phone. If you're traveling, then you would want to use the personal hotspot feature of your phone to get internet access, but this means that the EchoVision glasses are capable of pairing with an external audio device. Now, that's great for demos at the booth, but also it's good for people who want to use AirPods instead of the built-in speakers and the glasses and hearing aids significantly because one of the pieces of feedback we've had a lot from members is that they want to use the Meta glasses, but having difficulty because their hearing aids just don't line up with where the speakers of the Meta glasses are.
So, if you have a Bluetooth capable hearing aid or cochlear implant, you can connect directly to that. I think it's doing optical character recognition very well, and it's describing people in quite remarkable detail. So, there is a lot to like with the EchoVision glasses. I do wonder whether the run has been left a little too late, given how ubiquitous the Meta glasses have become in our community, but it's a very interesting product and well thought through, and they've consulted the blind community a lot. Does anyone want to comment on the EchoVision glasses if you've had a play with them?
Mike May:
I agree with those points, Jonathan. They're really doing their best. They're delayed as a lot of new products are when they're first released, and that's a good thing because their CEO, their CTO, they were there. They've got a very prolific beta group on email. So, I think they're really taking seriously the feedback they're getting from users and fixing these things one at a time, and that encourages me. I think their live AI mode is really good, but there's a number of tweaks that need to happen before I would comfortably take this out every time I went walking around.
Jonathan Mosen:
Battery life's pretty minimal, and that does concern me. I mean, it chews through battery very quickly. I'm not sure whether that's because it's connected to WiFi or what the deal is, but hopefully that can improve over time.
Everette Bacon:
I think it might be something to do with the Wi-Fi, but I also know that when you are on the video feature, because Aira has been testing this, and we're about to release the Meta glasses on Aira, but if you're on the video feature, if you use too high of an image for video, then your battery drains really fast. So, we've had to really look at ways to grade the video feed to our Aira agents with it still being quality enough for them to still see what they need to do to be able to guide you or read something to you. But it's definitely not like the highest quality video image for them because if you do, you really kill the battery very fast.
Mike May:
And there's a number of people on the beta group that talk about external batteries. There's even little ones that can clip onto your glasses and because it has a USB-C port, it's really easy to use whatever kind you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
How cumbersome is that though, having a USB battery dangling from your USB-C port on the glasses?
Mike May:
It would be if you had a 10,000 milliamp battery, but-
Jonathan Mosen:
My big anchor thing. Yeah.
Mike May:
I've seen little ones that are the size of your little finger that clip on, and they're pretty unobtrusive and give you just a little extra hour or two.
Chancey Fleet:
I made the difficult decision this year to pack my little camera harness for my phone and walk around with it when I wanted hands-free recognition, and it's not going to win me any fashion awards, but it was 20 dollars. Putting the camera on glasses, I think, is appealing to folks for some kind of ocular-centric reasoning. There's no business reason that I can think of why the camera needs to be on the glasses, and there are a lot of reasons not to do it. Lower-res camera, you got to keep the weight light, so you're going to have lower battery life. You're going to have to charge a separate device. Our phones are excellent cameras already, and I think finding more creative and low-profile ways to deploy them would go a long way, or having a more flexible clip-on camera would be great. I think in five years, we're going to look back at the face camera era and cringe, and we will have moved on to something else.
But if people do want to put a camera on their face, I'm excited that Agiga is providing people with the opportunity to not do that with a mega corporation, that's sending all the footage off to contractors. I think that Agiga is probably more likely to be responsible with our data and not to be harvesting it, and to prioritize the features that blind people think are important over the long haul. So, I'm rooting for them, even though I'm not personally looking for the product.
Jonathan Mosen:
Mike, you and I have been talking about this very thing about what a powerful camera we have in our smartphones and convenient ways to carry it around.
Chancey Fleet:
That reminds me of the Feeldom pouches that were there.
Mike May:
I've showed Jonathan the Feeldom Flip, which is their new approach that you can actually access the screen of your phone while it's in your pouch, in your lanyard around your neck, and it worked pretty well. They're going to tweak a few more things, and they'll have it at the NFB convention, I think in its final form.
Jonathan Mosen:
Were there any other sessions that you attended, Mike, that you wanted to comment on?
Mike May:
I went to both of my sessions.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, good. You didn't send an AI version of yourself.
Mike May:
Yeah. Well, I have a clone voice. I could have sent it. Yeah, the Agiga session I think went well, and then I did another one that was more generally on outdoor navigation, of course, focusing on Indigo Nav. I did it with an orientation of mobility instructor. That was really useful to just touch on all the different options that are out there now of which there are many.
Jonathan Mosen:
And Chancey, what about you? I know you were doing your own sessions. Was there anything else that took your fancy?
Chancey Fleet:
I was really excited about the new haptics display, which is a four-line display using a novel pneumatic technology, and that effort's led up by a blind researcher named Sile O'Modhrain, and although there's quite a few Braille displays coming out with multi-line support right now, I thought that her creativity and craft was really evident in some of the software applications that she's developing. She's got an audio editor that plays music or whatever audio you've got and simultaneously leverages the eight-dot Braille cells to show a pseudo waveform, the peaks and valleys, if you will. And it's touch capacitive, so you can double tap and move the player head anywhere you wish. You can select, and I would imagine cut and move things, and I'm not real conversant on audio editing, but I know enough about it to know that that's a hard problem, that it's not very much fun to do it with text-to-speech only, and this was, I think, an elegant solution.
Jonathan Mosen:
I was at that presentation as well, and I certainly shot up and took notice when she started demonstrating the audio editor. She was also playing battleships with it as well, and I enjoy a bit of the old battleships, but it's an interesting device, this, because it's using a different type of Braille technology yet again, and this one is using a compressed air system to make the cells come up, and it's just a little device that plugs into the side of it somewhere, but it does feel like real Braille. It feels like piezoelectric Braille, and you've got four lines of 32 characters. I think the price point is coming in at about 10,000 dollars. I think this is one to watch. There was a lot of talk about it last year and when you look at how far it's come in a year, clearly, they're getting very close to shipping, and it will be interesting to see just how well that one goes.
Chancey Fleet:
I also want to shout out Lucy Greco and her session on the tools that she uses as a video creator and video editor who's blind. I believe blind people can do anything with technology, and I am terrified of the prospect of doing video editing. I've never done my own. She might motivate me to try. She showed an AI gimbal that can track her while she's doing her demos. She does a lot of cooking videos, and she also told us that there's going to be a cohort of blind people invited to take part in a Final Cut Pro class to learn how to do video editing as a blind person, and that sounds really challenging and really fun, and I can't think of a better person than Lucy to take it on. She always addresses questions that are really at the heart of the blind community. She did another session on considerations for purchasing appliances, which of course is really tricky in the age of touchscreens. So, I just want to thank her for those contributions.
Mike May:
I saw somewhere that the software Ableton is now fully accessible. I don't know if that's true, but that was what was promoted.
Jonathan Mosen:
Everette, I'm in a similar position to you in that people want to have discussions with the National Federation of the Blind, and I really do appreciate the many meetings that I was able to have at CSUN. Part of that involved meeting the Interim Chief Executive of Vispero, Colin Doherty. He had already met with President Riccobono a couple of weeks before and did that quite early in his tenure, and I sat down with him and discussed a range of issues that the Federation has communicated with Vispero about, and we've covered that on Access On, and there are a number of things that came up from the two Vispero presentations and those discussions. One is that Vispero has reversed its decision not to make Page Explorer available to home annual license users. It caused considerable consternation when they did not make it available to that user group.
They have also changed their policy on account creation. When JAWS 2026 was introduced, if you didn't create an account within an hour, your JAWS stopped working. After these changes were implemented, there will be no time limit in terms of how long you have to create an account, and this won't satisfy everybody. There are absolutely people who are strongly resistant to the idea that you should sign into your screen reader, but Vispero believes that there are real benefits in asking users to create an account, and those benefits they say are for the end user. It will allow them to communicate with you about critical issues, and they also hope to have some account-specific features like cloud sync in your JAWS settings if you use multiple computers, or if you upgrade to another computer, and you just want to restore your JAWS settings back from the cloud.
Another thing that might be possible in the future is the ability to check in an authorization if you're giving up a computer and then check it out again. So, the authorizations would sit on a server, and that will be very welcome rather than having to keep tabs on how many keys that you have. So, it was a very cordial and frank and helpful and encouraging discussion.
Everette Bacon:
I met Colin as well. I thought he was great and one thing, I don't know if you remember, Jonathan, they also announced... I couldn't believe this, but Vispero and HumanWare partnering together.
Chancey Fleet:
Never thought I'd see the day, and there it is.
Everette Bacon:
I never thought I'd see that day either. That blew me away to see JAWS now on a HumanWare device and the Braille Evolve, which I know we're going to get to. I was blown away by that.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. Well, I mean, if people of a certain age remember all the argy-bargy when one particular person moved from HumanWare to Freedom Scientific, you might think that you might never see that either. But yeah, and it does make me wonder whether had that happened earlier, would the BrailleNote Evolve be running ARM and not an Intel processor, which would've given them longer battery life and stronger performance? Another thing that Vispero presented, and it came back to something that I foreshadowed in my 2025 address to National Convention, was that they are now working very hard on the concept of a screen-reading AI agent, and they demonstrated this at a session. The idea is that you might be able to go onto a website where you're booking travel, and you can give the screen reader specific instructions about where you're traveling to, the time range you want to travel, and leave your screen reader to go and do that work for you and navigate the page. And of course, potentially what that means is that if you're on a not particularly accessible page, it would do that work for you.
There are discussions that are ongoing and the Federation will be involved in those discussions about guardrails, how much should the screen reader agent be allowed to do and presumably when it's all done, it will hover over the submit button to give you a chance to review what's happened there. They do hope to have this agent out well before the end of this year, and it's the start of a significant paradigm shift in screen reading.
Chancey Fleet:
I think there's a lot of potential there, and I also think that that's how you might wind up in Florida with tickets to Disneyland. There is a lot of excitement around the idea that you could simplify an interface down to a conversation and get the details what you want and explore what you want with less technical know-how and less need to navigate forms, and of course I want that, and every patron I support wants that. But once you start doing that, are you really going to check every decision that the AI has made? Are you going to check every field or are you going to be lulled into this sense of security? And when the LLM makes a mistake, who's fired, the model or you?
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. The stakes are very high here. One of the real benefits is that so many people just find all of the commands, the process of using the web and getting the outcome they want daunting, but whether AI is at the necessary stage yet to pull this off successfully remains an open question, I think.
Mike May:
And even bigger challenge is navigation. That's definitely an area where you don't want to have the AI making mistakes, but it's also an area that can be very complicated if you could just have a conversation with the AI as your friend that you were walking along with that would really make navigation a lot simpler.
Jonathan Mosen:
There was another app that was presented. I haven't had a chance to have look at this, but it's called Buddy Walk. And Mike, I don't know whether given your interest in this field, you had a look at this, but it was put together by a guy called Tyler Ortiz, and he's a recent City College of New York graduate, and he is trying to solve the problem of blind people needing to use multiple apps to get the information that they need when they're navigating the world, and he is supposed to have a website called buddywalk.app. When I've tried to access that after the conference, it's giving a 404, so hopefully that will be resolved, and we can see what it's like. He's hooking into the Google Maps API and doing a few interesting things, but that did catch my attention.
Mike May:
Yeah. Another new app was Oorion, O-O-R-I-O-N, and I've seen them at CES the last couple years, but it's getting a lot better, and they have teamed up with Meta so you can get the Oorion using the Meta SDK, and they have both the seeing AI kind of read text, but they also have targeting and some navigation features in their app.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, yes, it was a good app, but the one thing I will say is it did make me a little disgruntled. No one's ever gruntled. Have you noticed that? No one is ever gruntled. It made me a little disgruntled when they were requiring me to use that app to get to the menus at the restaurant rather than just giving me a hard copy Braille menu this year. In terms of presentations from the Federation, we produced one called People with Disabilities Are a Market, Too, talking about the concept of the defect equity framework and encouraging big tech to think of our issues having just as much weight and importance as other defects, and also a discussion on screen reader interoperability, which is a really big issue. This is something that a small committee of the W3C under Matt King's leadership has been working on for some years.
And we all know the frustration of having to become familiar with multiple screen readers because we have to work out the combination of which screen reader and which browser works best with this website today. So, if that can be addressed and interoperability improves so that people aren't having that imposed on them, that will be a significant benefit.
Everette Bacon:
Totally agree.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, we've taken a look at sessions that resonated with us and perhaps encountered a couple of gadgets along the way in that discussion, but we're going to get seriously gadgety in a moment and talk about what people saw in or outside of the exhibit hall, and that's coming up when Access On continues.
Speaker 8:
Let me ask you something. Have you ever opened a document from your city, your county, or your state, and your screen reader just couldn't make sense of it? No headings, tables that don't read? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone and more importantly, you're not asking for anything extra. There's a law called ADA Title II, and it applies to state and local governments. It requires their digital documents to be accessible, and there's a deadline, April 2026. You have options. You can advocate locally. You can ask agencies about their Title II plans. You can push back when public information isn't usable. Behind the scenes, agencies are racing to fix years of inaccessible content. Numa Solutions has remediated millions of documents in weeks, not years. Learn more about your rights and what's changing. Visit www.title2.info. Accessibility is not a privilege. It's a right.
Speaker 9:
Walking Alone and Marching Together is a podcast series that brings to life the history of the National Federation of the Blind from 1940 to 1990, based on the comprehensive book of the same name. This podcast is designed to make the rich and complex story of our movement more accessible, engaging, and immediate.
Speaker 10:
The book Walking Alone and Marching Together has been available in nearly every format imaginable, but its sheer size and depth can make it daunting to approach. That's why we're bringing it to you in a multi-episode podcast, breaking it down into manageable, compelling chapters that allow you to experience the history in a way that fits into your life. Instead of simply looking back on events that happened decades ago, our goal is to immerse you in the times, challenges, and triumphs of the organized blind movement as they unfolded.
Speaker 9:
Episodes are coming out fall of 2025. Subscribe and follow now.
Speaker 11:
National Federation of the Blind, live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's talk about the gadgets because I know that most people have come for the gadget talk, and we'll talk about some of the technology that caught your attention, and I suspect that what will happen is somebody will raise a particular gadget, and then we'll all just chime in. I'd like to go through Braille if we could, because I was quite staggered and delighted by how much new Braille there is this year. Can we start off with the BrailleNote Evolve? This is HumanWare's latest BrailleNote, and it runs full Windows. It's running Windows 11. It has dedicated arrow keys and modifier keys. So, you've got a Perkins keyboard. You've got 20 or 32 cells in the Perkins-style keyboard right now. It's got a KeySoft layer in it, but you're also running a Windows screen reader that is NVDA, but you also have six months of JAWS.
You can install JAWS on it. If you have your own copy ready, or if you want to, you can buy JAWS for BrailleNote Evolve. I mean, it's just a Windows machine, so you can put whatever you want on this Windows machine. Does anyone have any impressions of the Evolve?
Chancey Fleet:
If I could ask a clarification, what were you observing about the processor?
Jonathan Mosen:
The processor in the BrailleNote Evolve is an Intel Ultra Core 5 processor, so that does have the AI acceleration in it. It's also encouraging to see that it is sporting 32 gigs of RAM, so that's a decent amount of RAM, and that should help with performance. I will be interested to see just how well it performs on certain tasks like video rendering or using a large number of tracks and effects in REAPER. How will it do there? It may possibly bog down a bit, but I realize that's a bit of an edge case and most people will be using it for web tasks and email and note-taker kind of functions, but if we want this to replace our laptops, this is something that some of us will have to consider and wait for further information about in terms of how it performs, and it's a moot point now because clearly HumanWare's made its decision, but JAWS does work fairly well on ARM processes.
And if they had gone for ARM instead, then you would see a significant increase in battery life. I think it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility to have gotten over 20 hours of battery life, but there are some complexities when it comes to certain applications running ARM. So, maybe from a support standpoint, from an ease-of-use standpoint, sticking with the tried and true Intel was a sensible decision, but there's a battery life hit to be taken because of that choice. ARM is also better for instant on. So, from a cold start, the BrailleNote would've woken up, I think, a lot quicker if they had gone with ARM, and it's possible that things like optical character recognition might've been better. Also, I've not heard any mention of any cellular support being built into the BrailleNote Evolve, and that would've been a very nice touch.
It's not impossible to have cellular support on Intel processes, but it seems to be more common with ARM, I guess, because of more efficient energy consumption, and I imagine that there will be a fan of some kind in the BrailleNote Evolve because those processes can run pretty hot once you start getting busy with them. It would have been possible potentially, in theory, for an ARM version to have no fan at all, which would've made it quieter. But for the user base they're going for, I understand why they made the decision that they did, particularly when so much of this seems to be based on NVDA with JAWS as an option rather than JAWS at its core at this point.
Chancey Fleet:
I liked the form factor. It's a decent size. It's pretty light. I would like to think of it as a laptop replacement, especially since it's going to be around 6,600 dollars. I thought the keyboard offered pretty good travel. I could see using it for extended periods of time. I tested voice typing on it and the microphone worked all right, and that was encouraging to me. I would really want to know that it is going to stand up to those more demanding tasks because that price tag should be delivering a laptop replacement. So, I think we won't know until it's out in the field and users put it through its paces. The interface is certainly compelling at first look. They did the right thing and kept physical cursor routers and didn't run too capacitive on that, and I think that was a really wise decision, and I'm really excited to see people getting to know NVDA who have maybe never known it before through having it distributed in a high-end product like this.
I think NVDA is a really powerful tool, and this might be an on-road for folks, particularly students, to get to know it and to be familiar with an open source tool that we'll probably use for the rest of our lives.
Mike May:
Yeah, I too like the form factor. The one they had at the table that I saw was I think 32 cell. They're going to have a 40, and they said they're going to have a 20, which is what I would get. I've been using a BrailleNote PK for 20 years, and they're about eight by four inches. So, it's pretty small, and it runs GPS. I believe we can get the Sendero GPS running since there's a Windows app on the Evolve. So, between Running GPS and the form factor, I'm pretty excited about it.
Minh ha:
I'm also pretty excited about it. I do have to say I was a little bit underwhelmed by it, even though I'm still looking forward to getting it and testing it out in real life because I do work with students who have notetakers right now and one of the big challenges for us is how to transition blind students from using a notetaker onto a laptop from switching from the Braille keyboard to a QWERTY keyboard and changing the interfaces that they've learned, and we just know that if you're going to go to college or employment, you need to use a computer. Relying strictly on a notetaker isn't feasible for a lot of different tasks, especially if you are like a Google user. Professionally and personally, I'm very tied into the Google ecosystem. So, I've just had a lot of issues with notetakers, being able to work well with Google.
So, I'm excited to see how this potential laptop replacement with Windows on a notetaker, how that works with Google and how we can help our students have an easier time transitioning from using a Braille notetaker to a laptop environment.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. I mean, one less device to carry potentially if it works well and later in the year, we should also say that they have announced they're going to be doing a QWERTY version. So, what I have in my head is essentially a Mantis, but running Windows. I like the QWERTY keyboard input. I will like it even more if I have my Windows machine hanging over my shoulder in a carrying case. So, there's going to be a lot of testing, and we have already ordered one for the International Braille and Technology Center. So, we will be doing a demo of the BrailleNote Evolve here on Access On and talking to some people about HumanWare as part of that coverage as well.
Minh ha:
Can I just add one more thing? I did get to see the QWERTY version of the Evolve, and one of my biggest pet peeves and feedback that I've given to them with the Mantis too is the keyboard. I feel like for the price point, they could give us a better keyboarding experience. I was not impressed with how it felt. It was really flat. It didn't give a lot of spring in the keyboard, so I would just like to have a better QWERTY keyboard on these notetakers.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, is the QWERTY keyboard much like the Mantis, Min? Is that what you're saying?
Minh ha:
It was similar to the Mantis, but it was even flatter.
Jonathan Mosen:
See, I like the Mantis just as an individual. This is a personal opinion and keyboards are very subjective, but I get a good speed on the Mantis right now. So, if they came out with that sort of keyboard, I wouldn't be upset. But if it's a different feel, I'm looking forward to trying that. What do you want from the keyboard? I mean, what would you prefer?
Minh ha:
I think ergonomically it just didn't feel like a nice typing experience. I was imagining myself using it all day long, and I just couldn't see that being very comfortable.
Chancey Fleet:
Is it the travel that you feel like you're bottoming out?
Minh ha:
Yes.
Chancey Fleet:
It's a harsh feeling when you press all the way down and hit the wall.
Minh ha:
Exactly.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, it's very early days. So, it's good that HumanWare's getting that feedback now because they can change it. This is certainly not the device they're going out with, and I think one of the reasons why they went to CSUN with a device is to get exactly that kind of feedback. So, that's great. Shall we talk about BrailleSense 7? This is from Selvas. The BrailleSense has been a venerable note-taking device for some time, and they have decided to stick with Android. The BrailleSense 7 has a feature that I've only seen before on help tech displays, and it's a really cool feature, actually. That's the ability to... When you get to the end of a Braille line, it will automatically scroll to the next line. They're using kind of different technology to get this done compared with Help Tech, they tell me, but the result is essentially the same, that you don't have to push any keys to scroll through.
There are keys on the front of this device of the BrailleSense 7, but at the moment, they're not performing as navigation thumb keys. So, when the BrailleNote Emotion came out, we got a lot of positive feedback from people saying, "Oh, great. At last, Selvas has gone the thumb-key route for navigation, as well as the traditional BrailleSense offerings." But at this stage, the BrailleSense is not doing navigation for those keys on the front of the device. What are people's impressions of the BrailleSense 7?
Chancey Fleet:
Thumb keys forever. I need my thumb keys and in general, I thought that one thing we could all agree on as blind people, there isn't much that we all agree on, but I thought we all agreed that physical keys are great. I don't want to see them going away. Capacitive experiences are cool, but they don't need to replace "real buttons." Give me my cursor routers. It feels good to click a cursor router. Sighted people like to click a real mouse more than they like a trackpad. There's something very fundamental about it, I think, and it feels like trend chasing me to lean too heavily into just the capacitive experience, especially for people that might have little less tactile sensitivity and the movement of keys in a mechanical way really confirms something for them in the way that capacitive interaction doesn't, and I think it might be time to stop making Android notetakers happen.
We haven't launched the BrailleSense 7 yet, and they're already one version behind in Android. That's going to situate people in a walled garden where they can't upgrade because certain apps aren't going to be compatible, and I just think that an open system architecture is the way to go and because of the way that Google administers its certifications, that's not going to be Android anytime soon.
Jonathan Mosen:
Is the BrailleSense a Google certified device?
Chancey Fleet:
That's a great question. I believe that the prior one was. I don't have confirmation that this one is.
Jonathan Mosen:
They've got a Gemini button on there. So, they're going deep on AI and things. So, it'd be interesting to see how this competes, what people go for, and in the end, it may just depend on the user experience of are they used to the whole way that the BrailleSense looks and feels? Any other impressions from anybody about the BrailleSense 7?
Minh ha:
I would agree with Chancey. It's the proprietary section of clicking buttons. I was really surprised, honestly, really disappointed that they decided to move into using touch cursor routing buttons because I don't see that being a viable option for some of our students. Even for myself, I would not enjoy using the touch cursor routed buttons because you have to put your finger on the cell that you want to activate and then double tap the cursor touch button. It's not intuitive. It brings touchscreen experience into a physical device that doesn't really need to be there, but the replication of the Help Tech displays with moving to the end of the line, then it scrolling for you. I think that is really nice. That was something that I really enjoyed on the Activator or the Actilino from Help Tech, but other than that, keep our buttons. I think that just makes it easier for everybody.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's talk about Orbit Research. They are now releasing Braille displays with piezoelectric technology in addition to the Orbit cells. This is quite a departure because one of the reasons why Orbit Research came out with Braille devices was to cut the cost of refreshable Braille through different technology. But these devices are pretty fully featured, and they have the Strata 40 that is, as you would expect, a 40-cell Braille display, and it features a similar set of options to the Orbit Reader 40, but with piezoelectric cells. So, they will be quieter than the Orbit reader. Pretty important when you're in a studio environment like this one. They will refresh quicker as well. So, if you want an Orbit Reader, but you want traditional Braille cells, now you have that option. They also have the Strata 20 and 40 Pro. What you get here is basically an Orbit Speak, but with piezoelectric Braille display added.
So, if you are interested in the feature set of this, you can go back and listen to the Access On episode where we did a demo of the Orbit Speak, and you will know what you will get if you get a Strata Pro Braille display, and the other thing they announced is the Flow family. This is a very intriguing kind of back-to-the-future device, and it grabbed me, I have to say. This is a 40-cell Braille display, and it is super light. It's beautifully built. It's attractive, and all it does is Braille output and all it has is a USB connection. So, there's no Bluetooth or anything like that. Therefore, there's no battery to weigh it down, and I think there'll be a series of flows at different cell levels, but I can imagine if you have a 20 or even a 14-cell potentially display, you could plug this into the USB port of your phone or whatever. It's using HID. So, all the screen readers are pretty much embracing that now, and these are shipping in the second half of the year. Anybody take a look at the Orbit lineup this year?
Mike May:
I did, and I liked that one. That's the one that stood out to me, Jonathan. I was thinking about the HumanWare products at 6,000 dollars, and I can get a pretty nice laptop for 2,000 and then a Braille display for 2,000, and I've just cut the price by a third. So, that particular product would go nicely with a laptop.
Chancey Fleet:
I think it's a great idea to make a thin, light, simple Braille display. I worry about users using a phone and Braille display connected by USB because I think that there's going to be some tension on that cable down the line. I wouldn't be surprised if folks have to send in for repairs, because whether you mean to or not, you're moving that combo of Braille display and phone together in a way that might not be so secure. If I were them, I would come up with a case to help people not do that. This is just me speaking as a person who works in a library and sees everything that can go wrong when users are users, but I'm really excited about the idea.
Jonathan Mosen:
Freedom Scientific or Vispero have a Focus 640. This is called the 640 because it is the sixth generation of Focus, and it's a 40-cell display. It's got redesigned Braille cells, they say, and it's introduced a new four-way D pad. So, the Focus is a busy device already because you've got thumb keys on the front and rocker bars and rocket bars on the side and buttons and things, and now they've added the D pad as well. That's quite good because you can map all sorts of functions to iOS functions. They also have an expanded scratch pad with contracted Braille support, and it's interesting that they stopped there because there's been a drift in the last few years, where a lot of these Braille displays have become many note-takers with all sorts of things. You look at what's on board the Brailliant now and the power of the eMotion from Selvas and now the Strata Pro.
There are a lot of things included in these displays, but it looks like Vispero is keeping pretty minimalist in terms of the feature set other than being a Braille display, which can connect to five Bluetooth devices and USB.
Everette Bacon:
Yeah, but if you want your buttons, that's the device for you because it's got every button you could possibly think of in every shape on it, and I always thought that was pretty interesting about the Focus is all the different rockers and buttons and things that it could do, and now they've added even more.
Chancey Fleet:
Yeah. I think of it as a Braille display for heavy users that might be doing a lot of coding or proofreading, or they're in spreadsheets or Google Docs. Build quality is good. Bless them for making a ruggedized case that is a little bit shock absorbing. It's not the lightest, it's not the sleekest, but it's got every programmable button you could need, and it's sturdy, and I respect that.
Minh ha:
There was a Braille display, and I don't think it's close to being on the market yet, but it was the two line 40 cell from Beacon Street. This was at the Aira IT booth, and I got to see it, and I really liked it. There's just something about the two lines that really calls me. It's multi-line, but not too many. It's small. It doesn't have Braille keys. They're still working on their buttons. Right now, they're like little rubber buttons that aren't very satisfying, get stuck and all of those things. So, they're working on that, but the form factor was really nice. It's like the life of a 40-cell, but only like three inches wide, long. I'm looking forward to seeing where they take this because sometimes... I also use a Focus 40, and I do like my buttons, but sometimes it gets overwhelming, especially for newer users.
So, if you can just have a Braille display that you can pair to your computer, you can leave it in front of your keyboard, and that's all you get is the Braille. I think that is a really good proposition for people.
Chancey Fleet:
I feel like after we get off the podcast, we'll just have to form the Committee for the Preservation of Decent Buttons. And speaking of buttons, we saw Hable and Hable still has that little controller that lets you do Braille input with your iPhone for around 230 dollars and now they have the Hable Easy, which is inclusive of people who don't read Braille and as much as I love Braille, I also know that I have a lot of older, low vision and blind adults who might be on their way to learning Braille or not, who want to use their smartphone, and they don't want to fight with a touchscreen, and this is a way to replicate all the touchscreen gestures in a way that feels mechanical and familiar, and I've seen some of my patrons having success with that, so I was happy to see that there.
Jonathan Mosen:
The Hable was quite a polarizing product because on the one hand, you've got people who really get on well with Hable, but some people, because they've been, I think, typing on Perkins devices for so long, find it quite difficult to get used to the fact that the keys are aligned vertically like a Braille cell as opposed to horizontally like a Perkins.
Minh ha:
Because it's mirroring the screen away mode, right, on Braille screen input?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. Yes, that's right.
Chancey Fleet:
Think you might be able to change that mode though, but it is a cognitive leap, and I'm glad you said the word Perkins because I almost forgot about the Paige Connect. How cool is that? So, the Paige Connect is a device that you screw onto your classic or new Perkins on the bottom and turns it into a teaching and learning device. An individual can write and what they write gets synced up into the app. Somebody who's writing can get instant audio feedback on whether they're writing correctly or not, and they've got lots of learning activities and games built in. There's a full curriculum in the Paige Connect app, and I think it's so cool that it's a high-tech product that leverages the Perkins, which we already knew is still relevant today, but it almost gives the Perkins a second kind of importance.
Jonathan Mosen:
I met the guy from Paige Connect, the chief executive of the company, and I said to him, "I'm old enough to remember a device called the Braille-n-Print," which was produced by Quantum Technologies in Australia in the 1980s, and you used to have to take off the bottom of the Perkins to fit that as well, and you'd Braille away and then after you'd Brailled for some period of time, it would spit up what you'd Braille on a good old dot matrix printer. So, it was a very similar thing, but now it's all been updated, and they've gamified Braille and done all sorts of very cool things with this.
Mike May:
Yeah. I met with the Paige Connect guys as well, and there's a lot of cool stuff you have to come from those guys. I also liked the Blazie products. Yeah. So, to
Jonathan Mosen:
Talk about those, the Blazie BT Braille is what it's called from Blazey Technologies. It's coming in 20 and 40 cells, no thumb keys at all, nothing on the front of those. You have three programmable buttons on either side of the display, so you can configure those as you will. There were some other keys that you can assign to the function of your choice, and this is coming in as a notetaker. So, it comes in about 5,400 for the 40-cell version. It's an interesting product this because if you just picked it up and started to use it, it feels like a Braille Lite with modern features. But under the hood, it's Linux, and you can get under the hood and use it as a full Linux machine.
Mike May:
Yeah. Oh, another Braille-n-Print, I doubt it still exists, was from a Japanese company called Otsuki or Otsuki, and it put Braille-n-Print on the same page. That was back in the early '90s.
Jonathan Mosen:
Another Braille display I saw and which is coming to the International Braille and Technology Center, as are all of these products, of course, is the InsideVision products. InsideVision is a European company, and they have a couple of models at the moment. One is called the InsideONE+. And for those who've been talking about how they don't like moving away from physical buttons, you're not going to want this one because it does have these buttons that are completely flat. You might get haptic vibration possibly. I didn't see it switched on, but there are certainly not physical keys that you brail on in the traditional sense. You won't get that traction, the travel that comes from a physical keyboard. It does have Windows 11. It has an Intel i7 processor, and it has 16 gigabytes of RAM. For those who want a more traditional Braille input keyboard with all of these specs, there is something called the InsideSUPRA, spelled S-U-P-R-A.
That has the same specs. So, you get the i7 processor, it's running for windows, but you've got a traditional keyboard that you might find on any other Braille display or Braille notetaker that you've used. So, we'll be taking a look at that when we get that one in the IBTC.
Chancey Fleet:
We haven't even made it to the other multi-lines.
Everette Bacon:
Oh, like Dot Pad and-
Chancey Fleet:
Dot Pad and Monarch.
Jonathan Mosen:
What's your take on the state of those, Chancey?
Chancey Fleet:
It's interesting to see the two of them competing, and I think that that's really healthy for the market. I'm excited that the Monarch has another cohort of Project Rise opening up for college students, early career people, and people who are underemployed, and those applications are open now. It's an expensive device, but they're going to be doing a lot of pilot testing and learning. So, it's going to be a big opportunity for a lot of people. It's got some new apps built in. They've just released... What did they just release? A game, right, this year?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of apps that have recently come out, a periodic table app, but the game you mentioned is called WordStock. It's a Wordle type game. So, yeah, go WordStock. Hippies of the '60s rejoice.
Chancey Fleet:
And the GitHub Hackathon is going to feature hacking for the Monarch, and I'm super excited to try that and then the Dot Pad, of course, is considerably more portable and smaller, and it's got a variant of that same dot technology that doesn't fail to refresh when you touch it. So, if you're monitoring things in real time, the Dot Pad is an interesting choice. Of course, it doesn't have all the buttons on it that the Monarch does. So, you don't use it for Braille input and the navigation on the Dot Pad itself is a little bit limited. I think that their software architecture when it comes to dealing with graphics and interacting with other devices is still finding itself, but they're heading in a good direction and what is exciting is that there's an open SDK. So, if you don't like what they're doing with their software, you can develop some of your own, and the price point is considerably lower, down around what? 6,500?
Minh ha:
6,000.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right, but I don't really see them as competing, you see. I think there's a little bit of market confusion about this because Monarch is a content creation device, and you can route the cursor anywhere if you need to make a correction. You can store documents on it. You can Braille into it. The Dot Pad, which is an excellent device, is essentially for content consumption because you can't write anything on it, and you can't store anything on it, and it has no intelligence really other than based on what it's connected to via USB and Bluetooth. So, if you want to connect Dot Pad to your PC or your smartphone and read a book or proof something, I guess, and use your keyboard to move around, it's doable, but I think they're very different market segments. If you're seriously into content creation, then the Monarch has a very distinct advantage, both because it's standalone and because when you connect it to another device, you've got cursor routing capabilities.
Chancey Fleet:
Fair point.
Mike May:
They have the Wing It app. So, on your iPhone or iPad, you can draw, and that image shows up on the Monarch.
Minh ha:
Yeah, that's a really good distinction, Jonathan, because what I like to tell people, the difference between the Monarch and the Dot Pad is the Monarch is like a notetaker and the Dot Pad is a Braille display. Although a lot of Braille displays these days blur those lines, but the Monarch has a lot of different apps. You can create things on it and then the Dot Pad just allows you to read multi-line books and look at tactile graphics, which I think is probably why the lower price point-
Jonathan Mosen:
I mean, isn't it a wonderful world we live in that we're sitting here comparing multi-line rail options that are out there? I mean, it's just fantastic progress.
Mike May:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Minh ha:
Yes, yes. It's amazing.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, and for people who are interested in this subject, I would encourage people to check out some of the January episodes of Access On where we covered both Monarch and Dot Pad, and you can perhaps determine which is the best one for your use case, but it is exciting and when you look at other devices such as the Cadence tablet, I don't know whether Cadence was there this year, but this is a a modular thing where you can disassemble or reassemble bricks of Braille to suit your particular use case. That's exciting, and the cells with the Cadence tablets will depict shading because they have various states of upness, if I may use that term. And then there are other things as well going on a multi-line. There's the Graphiti. So, there's just heaps of innovation going on in the space right now, and it's wonderful.
Everette Bacon:
The Canute is still around, too.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's right. Yes. So, thanks for reminding me about that, and that's been around the longest, I think. I think that might've been the first one.
Everette Bacon:
Yeah, it won a Bolotin Award because it was so unique and something that we hadn't seen before.
Mike May:
Anybody else see the Dot Braille Dymo labeler?
Jonathan Mosen:
The Mnemonic Dot is what it's called. Yeah, so it's a collaboration between dot and mnemonic. This has two functions really. One is if you are doing a lot of labeling at home, you might get this one. There are other products that work in this space, too, like the six dot Braille label maker from LoganTech, but this is a tiny, tiny device, and you connect that up, and it will emboss on Dymo type but also serious industrial strength metal kind of labeling for the long term. So, Dot perceives a market here for giving it to, I don't know, pharmacies or who knows what else and having that in that business industrial situation. It's cute. It looks like a pretty functional device.
Mike May:
And the main difference is that the dot unit doesn't have any keys. So, you input from your phone and send a text to it and print out your labels. The six dot from LoganTech is 1195. The dot one is 995, but the six dot has Braille keys. It's like a little mini Perkins.
Chancey Fleet:
You can get a slate and stylus for the other 995 that has a dot in the place where I like it.
Mike May:
9.95 dollars.
Everette Bacon:
Well, you can get a free slate and stylus.
Chancey Fleet:
Yes. Go to the NFB Free Braille Slate program. Try that for a month, please, before you buy.
Mike May:
Did anybody see the Sony neck speakers?
Everette Bacon:
I did not.
Chancey Fleet:
Missed them.
Everette Bacon:
I saw the little robot dog, but I didn't see the speakers.
Mike May:
They're awesome. Bose had a model of those, and they sit around your neck. So, the speakers are on your shoulders. It's pretty light. It's really nice fidelity. It's something U, as in U-shaped, something U theater, 300 bucks.
Jonathan Mosen:
I don't know quite how to describe Sony's emotional support robot dog. So, I'll just simply remark that it existed. I sent a text to Chancey, and I said, "You've got to pat this dog." Did you pat the dog, Chancey?
Chancey Fleet:
I did not. I don't want Ellie to think that any robot dog is going to come and take her job.
Everette Bacon:
I think it could be a friend to your real dog.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, we talked about Agiga before. Shall we just have a talk about the Meta glasses because there's a lot going on here and the reason why I left Aira out of my opening remarks is because I did want to mention that a number of us are testing this integration. There are a number of us testing all kinds of integration. We were very pleased indeed with Meta's response to a letter that we sent to them last year after Meta put Be My Eyes on the glasses. We were thrilled that that happened, and we wrote to Meta, and we said, "This is a great start, but what if you created an environment where other blindness companies could use the Meta glasses as a platform? You've got a tiger by the tail here. You could really do something amazing." And over the last few years, Meta has deprecated a lot of APIs.
Some of us have been around long enough to remember that really cool accessible Facebook app that used to exist for Windows that used a Meta or a Facebook in those days, API that went away. So, I wasn't holding out too much hope that Meta would say, "Yeah, sure, we'll do this," but sure enough they have and the SDK is rolling out. We're at the point now where some people are kicking the tires on this technology before it gets released more widely to consumers. I want to talk about the various hardware options that are available. I did get to see the Meta display glasses. This is a completely different type of glasses, again, from the ones many of us are using. This has a little display, that size that people can look at and as a result, there's a screen reader on the Meta display glasses.
They have a wristband that works with it called the Neural Band. You wear that on either of your wrists, usually your dominant hand, and it's really sensitive to gestures. So, it knows when you're clicking your thumb and forefinger together, and it knows when you're clicking your thumb and middle finger together. It knows the difference and using those gestures, you can swipe forward or back through the screen. It has some GPS navigation. It has a range of features, and I can report they are super loud, which for those of us who might have trouble lining up, the speakers with hearing aids is very welcome. I want to talk a bit more about loudness in the context of the regular consumer wearables from Meta because I've heard from people even who don't have hearing aids or cochlear implants who say, "I've got the original Ray-Ban Metas, for example, and once I get into a very crowded environment, sometimes I have difficulty hearing it."
So, I think there'll be a bit of general interest in this research that I conducted. I did some research, and I found two things. First, the second generation of Ray-Band matters is twice as loud as the first, but the second thing I learned is that the Oakley Vanguard Meta glasses are six decibels louder again than the other models. So, if you want the absolute loudest in those wearables, then the Oakley, Meta Vanguard are the ones to get, and the other reason why you might want to get those is that there's an action button, and this is the only glass that has this, and the action button is like the one on newer iPhones. It's programmable. I have programmed mine to, whenever I press the action button, it sends a string, which is something like, "Hey, Meta, I'm a blind person, and I want a really detailed description. Look and tell me what you see."
And actually, believe it or not, that string really does help. It gives you more detail than, "Hey, Meta, what am I looking at?" And being able to just push that action button and get a very good response is great, and Everette, I can tell you that I was walking back from the Hilton to the Marriott and the Hilton lobby was packed. It was really noisy and reverberant and echoey, and the Marriott lobby was packed as well, and I was able to hear every word that the Aira agent was saying to me, who gave me great navigation, by the way, in that crowd with hearing aids and sound bombarding me from all directions. So, it's like Back to the Future having Aira on the Meta glasses.
Everette Bacon:
Yeah, it really is. It's pretty funny. Troy, our CEO, he brought out all of the different iterations of glasses that Aira was tried on a number of years ago. He had nine different pairs of glasses, and he was putting these in people's hands. "Do you remember this one? Do you remember this?" So, it was pretty funny and now here we are back to the future. Yeah, exactly, and hopefully people are excited about it. We definitely heard a lot of excitement about it. I was also really encouraged to see all of the different types of blindness apps that were going. One that I'm excited about is my friend Bryan Duarte and HapWare, what they're doing, the HapWare wristband that will... It's somewhat a fashionable wristband now. They've really worked on making it a fashionable item that pairs with the Meta glasses.
And now, when you are looking at somebody and if they wave at you, you get a haptic feedback on your wrist that tells you they're waving at you. If your wife is rolling her eyes at you, which mine does quite frequently, you can tell that she's rolling her eyes at you. It has a haptic feedback that tells you that, and you can program it to do lots of other types of things that the smiling, frowning, all kinds of things, and I think that's a remarkable product and software that Brian's worked on really hard on, and I'm excited to see where that's going to go.
Chancey Fleet:
I have a feeling your wife probably made the eye rolling accessible to begin with somehow. I like the haptic array, and I see potential in maybe applying it to other use cases like sports, like following a person. If we could have an app on the Meta glasses that would just let me point at a person, and then we're going to follow that person and the haptics tell me if they're turning a different way, I would go for that. I'm not so sure that I think detecting a wave or a smile is a big priority, but I guess there's a plurality of people who think that it is.
Minh ha:
I just feel like the AI isn't responsive enough for that yet, and I'm glad to see that the wristband is much more fashionable. They have rose gold now, which is good for fashionista girly like me, but yeah. I just feel like when somebody's waving at you or rolling their eyes, it's very immediate feedback, and I don't know the AI is going to give that to you. It might make it a little bit more awkward when you're like, "There's a three-second delay," and it'll just be as easy for a sighted person to say, "Hey, I'm reaching out my hand," which is what we've been doing for many years now. But I am really impressed by the haptic array. I'm a big skier, hiker, and I can see this being used in developing like a system where skiers can more easily follow their guide or listen to instructions because a lot of people right now rely on audio headsets to be able to hear their guides better. So, going 60 miles an hour down a hill.
Mike May:
Yeah, bad stuff audio for skiing. I find the haptics resolution is really difficult to be able to detect a frown versus a smile and some of those other things. If you get a haptic for left is two zaps and right is one zap, that's good, but trying to do the expressions is really hard. I don't feel it.
Minh ha:
Yeah, they have 27 different patterns. That's a lot for people to even learn. It's like learning a new language, right? How is it going to be in real practice? Are you going to be able to distinguish those different patterns?
Jonathan Mosen:
I guess what interests me about this technology is, as I think you alluded to, Min, blind people have gone without knowing about people's facial expressions and things for all time, and I wonder how much demand there is for knowing this and maybe that will vary depending on whether you've had sight before or not.
Everette Bacon:
Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. I mean, I think we see so many blind individuals who have gone blind a little later in life or even middle-aged blindness, and they're still so reliant on what they used to have. They're nostalgic for that, and you understand why. You totally understand why that is. So, some of those visual cues that they come to rely on to have a way to get those again, I get that. I understand where they're coming from, and I understand why that would be important.
Jonathan Mosen:
Does anybody want to comment on the latest iteration of the Glide?
Everette Bacon:
I think it's coming along. I have put a down payment, or I paid for the Pioneer, so I'm hoping I get mine in later this year, and I'm able to put it through. It'll be interesting to see the reactions that people get or that people will have towards me walking around with basically what looks like a vacuum cleaner, but it'll be interesting to see that. But I applaud Amos for working on... I mean, I think we have to have things that give us different perspective, and I like the idea of gently pushing it and guiding it because then you still are the one giving the commands much like you would if you were walking with the dog guide. It's a different way, of course, but I'm impressed at where it's going and want to consider that.
I think they've done a good job of listening to the blind community in the fact that they don't seem to be doing the inspiration porn type of marketing that they were doing when they first started, and they're focusing more on a new way of mobility. So, I like that idea a lot. I like the fact that it's going to start out with more of exploration rather than just point A to point B type of navigation.
Jonathan Mosen:
Are you confident that you'll be able to navigate your environment and get sufficient information about your environment to travel safely, that you won't miss your cane?
Everette Bacon:
Oh, I'm definitely going to miss my cane. I don't know if I can put my cane down even with it. It'll be hard.
Mike May:
Yeah. I've been trying Glide since day one, and this time was the first time I went totally on my own. I cruised out into the busy hallway. I walked through the coffee shop around tables. There wasn't a glitch in it. I had to be on my toes because when somebody cut us off, I had to stop on a dime, but it was great. What it doesn't do yet is give you directions. So, once it's integrated with something like GoodMaps or other apps, I want to know where do I turn? And it doesn't do that yet.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right, and you don't have your cane detecting walls or other things like that. So, that was the thing that got me a bit stumped when I was using it, is just missing out on all of those environmental clues right now.
Mike May:
I asked Amos about both trailing a curb and a wall, and he said there's some degree of a beam going off 45 degrees to the side where you could feel the wall. I don't know if you remember the mini guide, but people used the mini guide for that purpose. So, it's possible that you can trail a curb or a wall with Glide. It's just a different kind of feedback.
Minh ha:
Did you get to take it outside at all?
Mike May:
I did not go outside. I know they were doing outside demos, but I didn't.
Jonathan Mosen:
Is there any other technology that people saw or see some that'd like to comment on?
Chancey Fleet:
Hable has some little stickers called stack tiles, which are UV-printed, high-quality stickers that either have Braille or have different tactile shapes. You could use them to mark up appliances in your home. They come in under 20 dollars, and that's just a simple thing, but they did a good job with it, and it's affordable product, and I think that's a welcome edition. Min, do you want to talk about the all-terrain cane by any chance?
Minh ha:
Yes, I do since we always talk about high-tech things, but we love our low-tech stuff, too, and I got myself an all-terrain cane this year for hiking. It's like a combo between a cane and a hiking pole. It folds in three sections, and then there's an adjustable flip-lock with it for you to extend it even longer. So, I'm really excited to take it out, a hike on my own with the all-terrain cane and a trekking pole and see how I do with it, and I think it's always nice to find these products that don't cost thousands of dollars to help you be a little bit more independent with your hobbies.
Jonathan Mosen:
The bottom line then, Min, is if I said to you, "Take a hike," you wouldn't take offense.
Minh ha:
Oh, I definitely would not take offense. I could take you along with me.
Jonathan Mosen:
That'd be fun.
Everette Bacon:
It was pretty heavy, but I thought it was very sturdy and durable and could totally see why you would want to use that with hiking.
Chancey Fleet:
It's titanium, and it has a 360-degree swivel tip that's gigantic, and it took me a while to get past that, but they explained to me that the size of that swivel tip is so that it won't get stuck in the little crannies you find when you're hiking, that that actually serves a purpose. So, it's definitely not what I would use as my everyday, but rough terrain definitely requires something different, and I'm excited to see how it goes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, this has been a really informative discussion, and I appreciate everybody sharing so clearly what they experienced at CSUN 2026. A lot of this technology and more will be available at National Convention in Austin. So, we encourage people to get ready to take a look at what's there in July. Thank you all so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it as always.
Chancey Fleet:
Thank you.
Everette Bacon:
Thanks, Jonathan.
Minh ha:
Thank you.
Mike May:
Thank you.
Jonathan Mosen:
And if you went to CSUN, and you would like to share some of your thoughts about the experience, do be in touch with us. [email protected] is the email address to which you can attach an audio clip or write it down. 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.