Welcome to the seventieth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
- Introduction 0:00
- Brava has ceased operations 0:57
- Lindsay Patterson and Peter Walters discuss MakeClassroomPodcast.com 6:40
- Apple IIE memories 35:03
- Accessibility regression in the Cosori smart air fryer 36:09
- Enthusiasm about the Orbit Flow 38:35
- CSUN memories 40:16
- Concerns about the new Outlook 41:22
- Looking for an accessible way to check my typing speed 46:03
- Listening to the BBC 46:43
- Advocacy to Huntington Bank 49:34
- Working with multiple email and calendar accounts 53:02
- Closing and contact info 59:16
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
MUSIC:
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. Coming up this week, Brava shuts down, and we don't know how much longer our ovens will work.
Makeclassroompodcast.com is a fully accessible web-based way to create podcasts. Microsoft will eventually retire Outlook classic, but how accessible is the new Outlook? And strategies for working with multiple email accounts and multiple calendars.
It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where it is feeling very much like spring. It's warm. It's pleasant. What's not to like? Welcome to episode 70 of the podcast.
Unfortunately, we begin with a developing story that highlights the precarious nature of aspects of the smart home. Now, last year, Brava contacted us here at the National Federation of the Blind's Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility. They sent us a demonstration unit of their smart oven for us to evaluate.
After beginning that evaluation, we had some feedback which we provided to Brava, and they were receptive. They implemented some of that feedback. And eventually, we produced a demo of the Brava smart oven for Access On. I was so impressed personally by the Brava smart oven that I paid for one myself to use at home. We use it almost daily and like it a lot.
The Brava smart oven has become quite a hit in the blind community given how seriously they have taken accessibility. When I use the Brava app to look up recipes and see who's commented on those recipes, I see several familiar names.
We're all enjoying the quality of the food this thing produces and the quality of the accessibility in the smartphone app and website. But today, I have to share some disturbing news. Effective March 6th, 2026, Brava Home Incorporated officially ceased normal business operations.
The company has essentially shut its doors. They're no longer selling ovens, and they've said they have no further plans for software updates, new recipes, or accessibility updates. While the Brava Cloud is currently still running, the company has issued a warning saying that services could be limited or discontinued at any time, and that is a significant blow.
Because the physical interface on the oven itself is a tiny, inaccessible touchscreen, the mobile app is our only way to use the device. If the cloud goes dark, the app goes with it, and this oven becomes a piece of hardware we can no longer operate. Before I discuss the corporate side of this, I want to take a moment to speak directly to the people who made Brava what it was. There were individuals at Brava who truly got it. It's wonderful when you see something like this.
These people attended relevant conferences. They met with us face-to-face, and they listened to our feedback to make their product better. To those employees who showed such a commendable commitment to our community, please know that we don't hold you responsible for this situation.
We see the work you did. We salute your dedication, and we wish you the very best as you seek new opportunities. You set a standard for how accessibility should be handled, and any company will be lucky to have you.
Unfortunately, that spirit of collaboration seems to have vanished at the executive level. When I became aware of this situation some weeks ago now, in my capacity as executive director of accessibility excellence here at the National Federation of the Blind, I sent a formal letter to Composition Brands, the private equity-backed firm that now controls Brava's assets.
In that letter, we asked for clarity on the sunset timeline for the cloud service. We asked for a commitment to maintain the app so it doesn't break with future phone updates. We even suggested that if they're walking away, they should release the local control documentation so blind people can build our own accessible solution. As of this recording, we have received no response.
This silence is an unfortunate and unacceptable way to treat customers, especially those who use digital interfaces for equal access to a product that we've paid for. I'd love to say that this was somehow a new thing, but this is part of a larger, frustrating pattern. We've seen other smart home products become bricked in this way because of corporate upheaval.
When a company sells a device that's tethered to a corporate server, we have now seen several examples of the fact that they are selling a promise that they seem to feel free to be able to break at any moment. We need to be cautious. If you were considering a Brava, I strongly recommend you look elsewhere, even if you can find one secondhand. The clock is ticking apparently on its usability.
Moving forward, we must prioritize devices that offer local control or support open standards like Matter. We shouldn't have to worry that our access to a product that we paid for will just vanish because of a corporate acquisition. We'll keep pushing Composition Brands for an answer. And before we move on to our feature interview, a word from one of our sponsors.
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This podcast is just one demonstration of the fact that podcasting is already a powerful medium, and the project we're discussing today asks, "What happens when you design podcast creation from the ground up so blind students can participate fully alongside their non-blind classmates?"
Well, that's the motivation behind makeclassroompodcast.com and the Classroom Podcast Creator, a free, browser-based tool and teaching portal developed through an NSF-backed collaboration among Tumble Media, AUI, Oregon State University, and Independence Science.
And with me, Lindsay Patterson from Tumble Media and Dr. Peter Walters from Independence Science to talk about the origin of the project, the accessibility choices behind it, and what they've learned about using audio storytelling to open doors in STEM. It's a real pleasure to have you both on Access On. Thank you for joining us. Peter, let's start with you. Could you give me an overview of this tool and who it's for?
Dr. Peter Walters:
So this tool is actually part of a larger project on using STEM storytelling with podcasts in the upper elementary classroom to see if we can improve STEM engagement. And in addition to that, to see if by featuring blind scientists in podcasts that are used in the classroom, we want to see if we can shift attitudes about who can be a scientist.
In particular, with this one, nine episodes of Tumble have featured blind scientists. The project features two different tracks. There's a listening track where teachers get to use existing podcasts in classrooms. And as part of that, we have developed various classroom course materials that go along with the podcasts that teachers can use.
They're obviously welcome to design their own, but teachers are very busy. And so, in order to help facilitate that, we worked to create materials so that a teacher could use a podcast in a classroom in various ways with the students listening to it and then doing activities or other reactions to it.
The other piece, however, we really wanted to employ podcast creation as part of this. So a student who is trying to demonstrate their knowledge, so as a summative activity, could say, "I'm going to be making a podcast about this." So instead of writing a paper, they get to explore the various types of podcasts that they could create. They could work in teams.
And the big piece of that after discussion with many teachers is they loved the idea of podcasts, but the learning curve and trying to get to the point where the tool was usable in a classroom setting was often a huge barrier they encountered.
And after these discussions, it came out that if there was a tool that was simple to use, then it would lower that barrier to creating podcasts in the classroom. And so, we set about trying to design that tool, which we did, which is the Classroom Podcast Creator.
With both the scope of the grant work itself and also for Independence Science, we are a company of blind scientists who are dedicated to making STEM experiences accessible. It was important to us to make sure that whatever product we created was inclusive and accessible right from the get-go. The born-accessible was really important. It also needed to be as simple as possible, which we've really worked hard to do.
If you go to the site, the landing page at makeclassroompodcast.com is the Classroom Podcast Creator, and there's no login. There's just a few buttons. There's some tutorial information.
We try to keep it very basic and simple, and it is as simple as you hit the record button, and then you record something, and then you hit the stop button, and then you're asked to name the clip, and the clip goes into a list of clips that you've recorded, and you can upload other clips if you like that you've either recorded earlier or from other sources.
We have about six different file formats, audio file formats you can upload in. And then in that clip manager, the list of clips, you can rearrange them, remove them, save them individually.
And then when you're all done, you can click a button, just puts them together end to end, and you get prompted, and it puts it right in your Downloads folder. Importantly, for teachers as well, in addition to the simplicity, it's all client side on the browser.
We save no information. If you navigate away from the browser, anything you haven't saved is gone. We don't create logins. So teachers can feel safe using this in the classroom.
Once it's downloaded to the child's device, they can upload it to a Google Classroom for the teacher to listen to or do whatever they want with it. But importantly, we are not keeping that information. So those were the goals to make it accessible, to make it simple to use, and to address security concerns with other pieces of software.
Jonathan Mosen:
It is very simple to use, and it can even be run on a Chromebook, because it's all based in the browser. Curious about this concept of STEM storytelling. What does that mean? What kind of stories does STEM have to tell?
Lindsay Patterson:
I think there are so many stories that STEM has to tell. And as the creator, host, and writer behind Tumble Science Podcast for Kids, we have been telling science stories for 11 years now on our podcast, and what we were really interested in doing with this collaboration with Independence Science and OSU was sort of harnessing the power of telling stories, not just about science and the results of science, but the process of science, how science works, and featuring blind scientists to, as Peter said, shift ideas about who can do science.
Our first story was from oceanographer Amy Bowers. She studies ocean currents using sonification, and she also creates sonification. So we did a really fun sonic scavenger hunt through the episode to both get people to understand the tools that scientists use to make science accessible, both to do and to communicate, and we've also created live shows based on this concept as well. We did nine episodes in total featuring blind scientists and look forward to doing many more.
But really, what we want to communicate is that science is for everyone. Science is accessible, and that especially when it comes to people who may not have an identity that is based around, "I could do science," or "I couldn't do science," that it's interesting just to learn and to understand the world through a scientific lens.
So those are some of the concepts that we went into when we were creating the content, and the tool is really a jumping-off point to hear that and then create your own stories and be able to tell your own stories.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's exceptionally easy to use, and you just go to this website. There's no login, as you say. There's no data collection. How much of that came from accessibility thinking, and how much came from the realities of school privacy and procurement?
Dr. Peter Walters:
Probably about equally. So the design, what prompted the development of the Classroom Podcast Creator in the first place was teachers saying there was this barrier to creating podcasts in the classroom, that they really were curious about doing it, but just having a classroom of 25 to 30 10-year-olds with a very complicated piece of software where you need to tell them, "There are 300 buttons available on this page.
You need to click only these three," and then having to deal with the, "I clicked this button over here, and now there's a screen that popped up, and I clicked something else, and now I don't know what's going on."
So it turns the teacher from someone who is trying to keep the class organized and moving forward into someone who's solving IT problems. So the driving principle was to keep it simple, and accessibility can happen for complicated pieces of software.
But once we were using the simplicity for the teacher's sake, it also made it very easy just to say a lot of the accessibility gets baked in with a web browser if you're using a screen reader or other accessibility tools.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm sure that feature creep is a real possibility with a project like this. So why did you decide to include the features that you did? And I imagine that there were a lot of debates about what features to leave out of this.
Dr. Peter Walters:
There certainly were, sort of the minimal viable product, that picture we had. We had to be able to record and save to the local device. It also was not difficult once we had decided to do that to say, rather than having to take it all in one long clip, being able to stitch several clips together.
It was a nice feature. So some of it was driven by just saying, "Okay. Starting with the basics," and then saying, "Incrementally, what would be nice to have?"
And part of it was just with the tools we had available, what would fit within the budget for development? There are things that we had wanted to put in, such as individually shifting the volume of the clips, that just turned out to be much more tricky given the software implementation that we have than we would have been able to do in the scope of the grant.
So that got set to the side. But anything that looked like it was making it too complicated, we just said, "Is this going to significantly improve the experience, or is this going to cause problems?" So we ended up with something that if you want to do something more complicated, I would say, if you've outgrown this software, that you're ready to move on to something more complicated.
But that is maybe something for a student to decide, because they've had this spark of interest in podcast creation that's been lit through use of this in a classroom setting, and they want to move on and say, "Okay. What else could I do if I was doing a podcast?"
So noting that, we weren't trying to be an all-inclusive, every-single-feature piece of software, because that then comes into conflict with the initial purpose of keeping it as simple as possible to use.
So just saying, "What do we want to be able to do here? What is simple to do?" There are some features that we've put in too that are also in acknowledgment that these are 10- to 12-year-olds that we're looking to have using the software.
And obviously, anyone could use a software, but especially in a classroom setting, because if you navigate it away from the page on their browser, everything is lost. So we had to put in some safeguards saying, "Are you sure you want to leave?
You will lose everything if you haven't saved it already." So having some prompts like that put in, which were not necessarily in the initial spec, but then after some testing, said, "Oh, okay. This is going to be a problem."
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm glad you added that safeguard, because I know the heartbreak of losing a recording you've worked for a long time on, and that would be very demotivating for the kids, I'm sure. Does this work in pretty much any browser? I mean, could you take an iPhone or an Android device, and it will work in there as well?
Dr. Peter Walters:
I have definitely tested it on my iPhone, and it works. Safari gets weird at times. I think we fixed that, but I also know that sometimes we're testing it. Safari and Zoom compete for microphone access.
If you've got the page open and you're trying to record something, and you're on Zoom as well, they basically have a custody battle over the microphone, and it's always a toss-up as to whether the people on Zoom can still hear you or you're recording dead air onto the thing.
We haven't noticed that problem with any other browsers. Part of where we are now in the project is we've sent it out to people we know within the project, within our team, and said, "Please try this on every device you have, whatever browsers you have, and then report back."
And we fixed, I think, all the issues. I don't even know if the Safari-Zoom... I think that was a weird one that we couldn't quite correct, but that's also a strange case for a classroom.
I wouldn't expect a student to be on Zoom and Safari in a classroom setting. I guess it could happen.
But in this case, we're at the point of trying to release it into the wild and letting as many people bang on it as possible and play around with it, and there's such a huge number of configuration possibilities that are out there for hardware and software to interact. And so, the only way we're going to find issues is for people to try it.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, it raises an interesting point, because I'm sure there are many adults listening who would love a friendly, accessible, browser-based tool, something like REAPER or GoldWave or whatever, or Audacity. May be a very steep learning curve, and they just want to dabble in this stuff. Is that a problem? I mean, would you object to adults using this tool as well?
Dr. Peter Walters:
Oh, not at all. That would be fantastic. The more people who could use it, the better. It was designed with upper elementary in mind, because that was the scope of the National Science Foundation grant, was targeting that particular age range, but having the scope increase because people are finding it useful is, I think, almost the best possible scenario.
Lindsay Patterson:
I'll just add to that that Peter is talking about our full classroom resources. It's a kit that teachers can use, and we actually tested this out ourselves, myself and my cohost, Marshall, at the teen room in our local library just a few weeks ago with kids who were interested in making podcasts, and it is just very simple, out of the box.
You can learn how to create a concept for a show, what kind of podcast you want to make, and there is basically a Mad Libs-style script to record a trailer within an hour.
So it gets kids really excited about the potential for podcasts, and I think awareness of podcasts is very high among kids and teens right now.
So it's a really cool thing to do. And when you have technology that's so accessible and so easy, it just becomes very easy out of the box to say, "I'm a podcaster." And I think that's really empowering for kids.
Jonathan Mosen:
At this stage of the project, what are you finding that people are making? Are there particular podcasts that have resonated with you that you know have been made with this tool?
Dr. Peter Walters:
At the moment, the Oregon State team is still in the process of doing their field research. So we just have some preliminary results. What we've found that I think has been, again, a delightful and surprising result is, the scope of the grant was, again, for STEM classrooms, but the teachers we've tried it with said, "This is amazing for all our classes."
So they've taken the tools and said, "Instead of doing a history report, you get to do a podcast to demonstrate your knowledge of whatever section of history you've been studying or researching."
And so, whether you want to make that a student having a podcast interview with a historical personage or just have a roundtable discussion between the students to demonstrate their knowledge, it's a very exciting thing to see that expansion as well.
We've been told about students who are very shy and maybe don't want to talk, but they're happy to put a script together. So it works really well for collaborative, things like that.
So that's some of the feedback we've heard as well, is being able to let students work in teams and groups and utilize their particular skill sets in various ways that work well. And under the classroom creation tools that Lindsay was talking about, there are various roles for breaking a group of students down into saying, "Okay. Do you want to be the host?"
And then other people can be on the roundtable, or they can be other roles. You can have an editor, so someone who's basically producing or directing, and then saying, "Okay. We're going to rerecord that. That was good. We're going to rearrange this."
And then clicking Stitch and putting it together and saving it, and then uploading it. So there's lots of different ways that the teachers that we've tested this with have started to use it. I'm not part of the research team.
And for various IRB reasons, I don't get to hear what the kids make in the classroom. So I only get the summaries of what the teachers have said that the kids have done, but I've been really delighted with some of the stories of things they've done.
Jonathan Mosen:
Do you see this tool being up for the foreseeable future, or is it likely to go offline at a certain point, maybe when the grant has run out? What's its longevity looking like?
Dr. Peter Walters:
As part of the grant, Independence Science has committed to maintaining the tool for at least five years past the end of the grant. It is not a huge financial burden to do so, because it's just essentially renewing the website domain registration every year. And obviously, if lots and lots of people are still using it, that's so much the better, but we have no plans to take it down at this point.
Jonathan Mosen:
Is it feature-complete, or are you likely to see additional features added at this point?
Dr. Peter Walters:
There have been features we've talked about adding. So we've got Stitch, which adds them all end to end, which is your traditional, "Okay. We're going to record the different pieces. We'll put them end to end, and then just get one file."
There's another one that allows you to stack the audio files on top of each other. This is a bit more experimental. What we'd like to do with that is if students wanted to put music in the background. That's a great way to do it.
So you've recorded your podcast. You stitch it all together, then you can upload that completed file and then upload a music file, and then just put them on top of each other.
Getting the volume levels there is a little tricky. Right now, you need to have music that is at the right volume level for that. We would love to have some prerecorded music samples that are set at the right volume to easily manage that or even automate it.
That's more tricky to code. So we've just said that doesn't really fit within the scope of the grant work, but we've had lots of talks about things we'd love to add to it. As I mentioned too, being able to individually adjust the audio volume of the clips, and that becomes, I think, really important if you are uploading other audio files that were not recorded at the same time through the podcast creator.
So sometimes just getting the volume levels normalized or equalized or set wherever you want them as a podcast creator can be tricky, and this tool doesn't allow you to do that right now.
Jonathan Mosen:
And Lindsay, how did you become involved in this project?
Lindsay Patterson:
Well, the grant is a partnership from the beginning between Tumble Media, AUI, OSU, and Independence Science. So we are sort of the practitioner in part of this. My background is as an audio producer, a science journalist, and we have been making this podcast and gained a significant audience over the 11 years in which we did it, and we've always been interested in really understanding the audience and how to unlock the power of podcasts for education and particularly STEM education.
So really, Tumble is a platform for studying podcasts and education. And with the listening track and the creation track, as Peter has been talking about, we had the opportunity to create content, get feedback on that element of, who can be a scientist? Does this shift ideas within the classroom?
And then within the creation to empower students to participate in that sort of digital creator of like, "Not only could I be a scientist, but I can also be a creator and tell my story," and to have both sides of that be equally accessible and inclusive to blind and sighted students.
So we have really learned so much about podcasts and how to tell inclusive stories through this grant, and then I really see the tool as just another aspect for what we understand of podcasts to be a jumping-off point for further exploration, especially when you're talking to kids, families, educators.
What they really do is spark conversation, because there's multiple people listening at the same time. It's a child, but it's also likely a family member in the classroom. It's not just the experience of having your headphones on. Often, classrooms are all listening together.
And so, you're having this group experience, and then you're very likely to have conversations about what you heard, what you learned, and we really always try to build into the podcast a message of empowering kids to do things and get curious. And so, what we really want this to serve as is the technological link between, "I heard this. I can do it.
I can then tell stories in the ways that I've heard from these examples that we've created and really bring it all together," because I think listening is an active experience, and then creation really takes it up to another level to share what they've learned.
And you asked earlier about what are kids making and the experience they had with the library. Kids' instinct was to share what they learned.
They're into something, and they want to make sure that other people know, and they're excited to share their knowledge, so that there's not a barrier there anymore with the technology just as they have a lot more access to technology now. But I think particularly in the classroom, that was really missing of knowing what tool to turn to.
Jonathan Mosen:
Did you know much about access technology before you got onto this project?
Lindsay Patterson:
We really didn't, and that has been so incredibly rewarding. And Peter and I have gotten to work together on the editorial side as well as on the creation side, and we've just learned so much about the principles behind accessibility, and it has totally shifted the way that I think about technology, and that's been an incredible experience.
Jonathan Mosen:
So makeclassroompodcast.com is the website. And I got to say, I went on there to have a look ahead of this discussion. I was really impressed with just how quickly I was able to get up and running.
Obviously, when you go there for the first time, your browser is going to ask for permission to access the mic, but essentially, that's really it. It's not collecting any other data.
You can, for example, take clips that you might have recorded even on the free Windows voice recorder tool or the equivalent on the Mac, or the iPhone for that matter, and upload them, or you can record in the browser, and it's really simple to string something together.
So people should give this a shot. And certainly, if you are involved in the education of blind kids, spread the word about this. It is 100% accessible and written with blind people in mind. Welcome back, and have a look at some listener contributions for the remainder of the episode as Access On continues.
Speaker 6:
The PAC Plan is our Pre-Authorized Contribution Plan. This is a way for anyone to make contributions to our organization on an ongoing basis, and that ongoing basis enables us to be able to budget for the money that's coming up.
Anyone who wants to contribute to the plan for the first time or who wants to up their contribution, just share with us some financial information. It can either be a debit card or a bank account and routing number, and we will make sure that your generous donation is processed each month.
There are two ways that you can do this. One, you can go to nfb.org/pac. That's P-A-C. You can also give us a call at 1-877-NFB, the number two, PAC. That's 1-877-632-2722. Leave a message that does not contain financial information, but that contains your contact info, and one of our folks will call you back.
Speaker 7:
The fastest way to waste your ADA Title II budget is to start remediating documents before you understand what is actually in your archive. Across the country, agencies are sitting on millions of pages, scanned files, and old PDFs no one has looked at in years. The real problem is not remediation. The real problem is not knowing what you have.
That is why Pneuma Solutions is offering a Free Archive Readiness Assessment. We analyze your backlog, create a Title II triage plan, and remediate a representative 1,000-page sample from your own documents so you can see real results on real files. Email [email protected]. That's remediation@P-N-E-U-M-A, solutions.com, with the subject line Archive Readiness Assessment to get started.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome back. This is Access On from the National Federation of the Blind. Let's go to Karen Anderson for this email. She says, "Hey, Jonathan. I've really enjoyed the latest Access On podcast and was struck when Bonnie said that she had used the Apple II through '97.
I actually learned to type on an Apple II in my elementary school in the mid-1990s, probably starting in '95 or so, and used the Apple II in my classroom through at least fourth grade."
"At school, we used AppleWorks, which somehow had speech built in. But at home, my mom, who was blind herself, had an Apple II that she gave me once she got something new. That one used BRAILLE-EDIT. So I learned both programs and absolutely used my home Apple II through at least 1998 or 1999, printing out my homework assignments using a daisy wheel printer."
Oh, man, I've forgotten all about those. "My dad also worked to make some of my mom's work files accessible using the Apple II system and BRAILLE-EDIT. Pretty cool to see how things have evolved."
Thanks so much, Karen. Really appreciate that. Another smart appliance tale of woe in this episode. This one comes from Andrew Castillo, who sent me this email that he has sent, and I think it speaks for itself. So I will just read it. "I am writing concerning the recent discontinuance of a critical function in the Cosori Smart Air Fryer line of products.
My wife and I, who are both totally blind, have been enjoying this air fryer since early in 2024, thanks to its ability to automatically start when commanded by voice assistance, such as Google and Alexa."
"This capability has made your air fryer especially accessible to us and other blind users who could not otherwise effectively use the touchscreen on the device. It has been working for us up until March 9th of this year, 2026.
As of March 10th, the device no longer starts cooking and simply beeps when commanded by the smart speaker voice assistant. It was later determined that one must now tap the start button on the air fryer screen once the voice command is given to actually start the device."
"As stated above, this is virtually impossible for a blind consumer as the screen is extremely sensitive and can result in wrong functions being tapped even when tactile locator dots are used.
Upon performing a Google search as to why this is now the case, Google AI suggested that there must have been a very recent firmware update because of safety regulations, although it's cooperating links or at least from one year past when we were still able to use the automatic start capability."
"Disabling this function surely does not affect just blind people. I would be very surprised if sighted people are not already writing to you, peeved that they can no longer enjoy such conveniences as being able to start cooking from a smart speaker in another room."
Thanks very much, Andrew. I wonder where the problem actually lies. It sounds like it may be a firmware update in this particular case, but we're certainly becoming aware that an increasing number of skills don't work the way they used to in Alexa+ compared with how they worked with the previous iteration of Alexa.
But if you have tried this with Google Home as well and you're experiencing the same thing, then maybe we let Alexa+ off the hook in this particular case. But thank you for drawing this to our attention. We'll see if we can follow up. And if you've heard back from them, do let us know how you're getting on.
And in response to our recap of CSUN, Christopher Wright says, "Hi, Jonathan. Thank you for informing me about the Orbit Flow and the fact that it doesn't have a battery. Let's take a moment to celebrate. A proprietary product doesn't have a battery. What component goes bad first? If you said battery, you win nothing other than my joy."
What an anticlimax, Christopher. He continues, "Seriously though, I'm delighted all but research is producing bare-bones displays without fancy features like Bluetooth, which require a battery that will go bad.
When said battery goes bad, it might be impossible and/or very difficult to get a replacement due to the proprietary nature and age. I'm looking at my otherwise fully functional Focus 40 Blue from 2009 with the whiz wheels and the APH Braille Plus from 2007."
"I hope Orbit Research expands this option to all their products. This would make the Orbit Reader 20 and 40 even cheaper, and I'd love an Orbit Slate without a battery. Batteries have their place, but they aren't reliable. They'll fail when you need them the most, and they're really bad for the environment, but that's quite a different discussion."
Thanks, Christopher. Yes, the Orbit Flow is a kind of a Back to the Future product, and I would expect it to do quite well. It doesn't have a Braille keyboard either. So it's just a bare-bones Braille display that can sit in front of a keyboard. And I think if they can pitch this at a good price, there'd be quite a few people who would like that.
And still on the subject of CSUN, Dave Andrews says, "I enjoyed the panel on CSUN. I have you guys beat. I went to my first one in 1988 at the LAX Marriott. I remember that venue, and then they had the Hilton very close by, and it was so close to the airport too, which was fabulous."
Dave says, "It was smaller then, and there was a sense of community, and we were all discovering the internet together. I have gone on and off since then, although not since 2019."
"The conference, it seems to me, has split into two conferences, an assistive technology conference, primarily blindness-related, and a web/software accessibility conference. Back in the '90s, the Closing The Gap Conference here in the Twin Cities used to be the blindness conference to be at.
They moved towards K-12 stuff, and I don't hardly know anyone who goes any longer." Thanks, Dave. Yes, I went to a couple of Closing The Gap Conferences, but it's just something that you don't really hear about anymore.
Here's Curtis Chong who says, "Hello, Jonathan. We have all heard from Microsoft that support for what it now calls Outlook classic will be gone in 2029.
Many longtime Outlook users such as myself, who rely on screen readers, are sticking our toes into the new Outlook swimming pool, and I must say, with all honesty, that the new Outlook is a huge showstopper if the ultimate goal is to have a pleasant and productive email experience."
"I know that the folks in the Vispero training department have conducted a number of webinars to help ease the transition from the classic Outlook to the new Outlook. But at this point in time, I would be shocked to find any blind person who uses the new Outlook as his or her sole email program.
The new Outlook is a web application with all the positives and negatives that this implies for JAWS users, which means that there are times when it's helpful to have the virtual JAWS cursor active, while at other times, it is better to have the JAWS virtual cursor turned off."
"The trick is to know when to do what. In my brush with the new Outlook, I tried to spell-check an email that I was writing. May I say that this was a terrible experience for me? I could not find out what word had been flagged as being an error.
When I copied the message into Word, I was able to perform a spell-check. But when I pasted the corrected document into my email message, some of the paragraphs were duplicated."
"All of this is to say that the National Federation of the Blind should be actively working with the folks at Microsoft to improve the new Outlook so that once the classic Outlook program goes away, blind users will have a less traumatic experience when converting to the new Outlook.
It is better, I feel, to work with the Microsoft development team on software that can be more easily changed internally and well before it is released to the public."
"So far, the new Outlook shows no evidence that nonvisual access considerations have been made such that the new Outlook is a pleasant and productive experience for blind users.
This effort is vital, particularly in the area of employment where the ability to interact with email efficiently is a critical survival skill." Thanks very much, Curtis. This is something that we are actively monitoring. We talk to Microsoft about what progress they are making with the new Outlook regularly.
It's a difficult situation, because they're kind of trying to make a web application feel like it is not one, and they're doing that by using a lot of keyboard commands, but it does require the screen readers to pop in and out of its virtual mode, whether you call it browse mode or the virtual cursor or scan mode or whatever, and it really does feel like it's trying to simulate an experience that isn't real.
I did read an intriguing and, from my perspective, positive article in a reputable Windows tech publication a few days ago, which suggested that Microsoft may be adopting a new approach and was hiring people to produce native Windows 11 experiences.
If that's the case, I wonder whether Microsoft might rethink the new Outlook. Teams, of course, suffers from a similar issue where, under the hood, it really is a web experience, and they're trying to make you think from a screen reader user's perspective that it isn't one.
But it's interesting that when you run Teams for iOS, it looks like a native iOS app, and it's actually a pretty pleasant experience. To me, it's a simpler, more authentic experience than Teams for Windows is, but not everybody wants to do that kind of work on their iPhone and nor should they have to. So thank you, Curtis. We are on this. We continue to have discussions with Microsoft, and I appreciate the nudge in this regard.
We'd certainly be interested in hearing from people who have attempted to use the new Outlook. How do you find it these days?
Microsoft has been doing a lot of work on the new Outlook, I hasten to add. From an accessibility point of view, they know that they have to get this right, but it does feel like a work in progress for certain.
I have now got my own computer set up so that I have both the new and the old Outlook coexisting, which is progress, because it makes it easy to use it more often and see where the pain points are.
But by all means, be in touch. Tell us where you're finding the pain points to be. [email protected] is the email address to be in touch. You can attach an audio clip to the email, or you can write it down, [email protected].
Meia is writing in and says, "I'm looking for a platform to test my typing speed, but I need it to be accessible with JAWS. Can you suggest anything?" While there is fun with TypeAbility from YesAccessible, it's a lot of fun. It does a lot more than a typing test, of course. It has typing lessons, which may be not what you're looking for, and it could be an expensive option just to get the typing speed.
So let's open this up and see if anybody has found a way to do a typing speed test that is accessible and maybe free or highly affordable. Be in touch, [email protected]. Here's Brenda writing in, and she says, "Hi, Jonathan. On one of your podcasts, you said that you really enjoyed the BBC, and I have the impression that you don't access the BBC as much as you'd like."
"Well, here I am in Pikesville, Maryland, just on the edge of Baltimore, and I listen to the BBC from London anytime I wish, sometimes all day. I just downloaded a program called Simple Radio onto my smartphone, and I can listen to stations all over the world. I listened to a station in Toronto, Canada, and since I'm a retired NSA linguist who worked in Spanish, I sometimes check out Puerto Rico.
I hope this helps. I am a member of the Central Maryland Chapter of NFB and have been there since we formed the chapter. Some people know our chapter as Sharon's chapter, as in Sharon Maneki, the former state president. Well, I hope you find the BBC you want. The one I listen to carries news, sports, and science."
Thank you so much, Brenda. I really appreciate you writing in. Of course, Sharon is a legend, and people nationwide know Sharon for any number of reasons, but particularly because for years at National Convention, Sharon would read the resolutions.
So what you're describing, Brenda, is the BBC World Service, and it's wonderful that that is widely available like it always has been, but what I was describing was the BBC domestic streams, and these unfortunately are now much harder to hear than they used to be.
I haven't tried the Simple Radio app, but I'm confident that, in days of yore, the BBC domestic streams would have been available in that app, because they were available in all the apps, and the BBC took a decision, I believe it was last year, to phase out international access to all those BBC streams via apps like that, and also via smart speakers.
What you can do if you want to hear them is go to the website. For example, if you wanted to listen to BBC Radio 3, which is their classical music channel, you can go to bbc.co.uk/radio3.
BBC Radio 4 is my favorite domestic BBC network. It has a lot of news, other spoken word material, drama, and comedy, and you can, I think, sometimes use the international version of the BBC News app to find BBC Radio 4.
But it's a little bit more buried now. So it's not as widely available in these radio apps as it used to be, and that's why this came up, because I think somebody else wrote into Access On to say how much they were lamenting the lack of ease of access of those BBC domestic streams. But if all you want is the BBC World Service, then nothing has changed there, and that is at least something.
"Hello, Jonathan and fellow Federationists. This is Eric Duffy, treasurer of the Capital Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio. I bank at Huntington National Bank, which serves the Midwest.
At some point in the fall, I discovered I could no longer perform some tasks in the mobile app. I couldn't Zelle a payment, and I couldn't transfer funds between accounts without deactivating VoiceOver and then reactivating it."
"I was frustrated, because when I spoke to someone in the online banking department, she had absolutely no clue what I was talking about.
She told me there wasn't anyone I could talk to, and that I would have to go to a branch and show someone there what I was experiencing. I mentioned this problem to a friend, and she said, 'I used to work at Huntington Bank. Let me reach out to someone to see if she has any suggestions.'"
"A day or two later, someone from the accessibility team contacted me. One problem was fixed in an app update that came out about two weeks later. The other problem was solved in the next app update.
As I said, I was frustrated when I couldn't get the first person I spoke with even to understand the problem, but I could not stop there. I know that we are all on the front line when dealing with accessibility or other issues affecting blind people."
"The Federation teaches us to advocate for ourselves and others and helps us gain the confidence to do so. When we do all that we can for ourselves, we help stretch the resources of the organization. Huntington also offers Braille debit and credit cards. I just got my Braille debit card. Next, I would like to discuss my frustration with JAWS and Microsoft."
"At work, I use Office 365. Both on the web and in Word, JAWS reads a message that goes something like, 'This application can't access your current location. You can change this in settings.'
A few weeks ago, I called the Microsoft Accessibility Answer Desk. They said they were aware of the issue and that I needed to call Freedom Scientific. They said that Freedom was aware of the problem and was supposed to roll out a fix."
"I immediately called Freedom Scientific, who must have been reading from the same script as Microsoft. Although this issue is only annoying and not a showstopper, it is something that needs to be fixed.
Once again, we are caught in the middle between Freedom Scientific and Microsoft. I can't count the number of times that's happened over the years. Needless to say, it is a very old song and dance, which I am more than tired of."
Well, congratulations for getting a resolution to the Huntington issues, Eric, because other people will benefit from your advocacy.
It is fascinating to me though that they have an accessibility team at this bank, but the person you talked to on the front line apparently didn't know that the accessibility team existed. So clearly, there's a need for some education there of staff.
Regarding your second issue, we have good contacts with Microsoft. I will raise this with them. I've heard it myself. It is irritating when you hear it over and over again. So we'll see if we can get this one resolved. I appreciate the nudge, and we've had another listener who has done exactly that as well. So clearly, it is getting on people's nerves, and I understand that.
Chris Nusbaum:
Hi, Jonathan. This is Chris Nusbaum here from the Greater Carroll County Chapter in Maryland and the NFB Assistive Tech Trainers' Division. I wanted to respond to a question that a gentleman asked about alternate email clients to the native Mail app on iOS, and he seemed to be looking for one, because he didn't like the iOS Mail app for whatever reason.
I am not sure what issues he was having with that app, but I also have alternative clients for Mail, not because I was necessarily looking for one, but I have multiple apps on my phone for email out of necessity for professional use.
Like you, I prefer the native iOS Mail app, and that's the one I use for my personal account and for my main business account, which is primarily what I use for my professional or work correspondence if I can do so.
However, I do a lot of my work as an independent contractor through a company that works directly with school districts across the country. So I have an email address through that company, which uses Office 365.
And initially, I was able, when I started working for them, to easily import their account into iOS Mail, but it seemed that once Microsoft Authenticator was introduced, that seemed not to work as well.
I don't know if it was me or the app or what it was, but I ended up having to download Outlook for iOS to get it to work, and I know I was not the only one who had to do that. Also, many of the school districts that we work with, for one reason or another, require us to use email addresses that are unique to those districts.
That usually has to do with some kind of proprietary thing that has to do with their firewall. So we have to use district-specific accounts to get into the Google Meet or Teams meetings that we use to see our students.
So if I'm going to have my district emails on my phone, I have to usually have the Gmail interface, because it seems like the ones I work with seem to be Google-based, but I'm sure there are others that are Office 365-based, in which case I would use Outlook.
In this case, I'm using Gmail, and I have several accounts logged into in that app, because for firewall reasons, I guess, they don't allow me to import those into iOS Mail. Believe me, I have tried.
It is easy to get calendars mixed up when you have multiple email accounts spread across multiple apps.
So my suggestion would be, if you can't put things into iOS Mail and just use the default calendar, I would suggest finding an app that you can use to put everything in one place. The best app I've found to do this is a calendar app called Fantastical, which you actually tipped me off to, Jonathan. So thank you.
And I have used that very well, and continue to, to put all my calendars into and look for all of them in one place in the morning when I need to know what's going on throughout my day. The other thing I would suggest about the Gmail app for iOS is I've found it helpful, if not necessary, to turn off threading mode, or it might be called conversation mode.
I don't remember which, but it's the mode that puts all messages with the same subject line in a conversation together in one place. That might look visually appealing, but it's not quite as accessible. So I've found that it's helpful to turn that mode off and keep all the emails separate.
Jonathan Mosen:
Thanks so much for that, Chris. I would be lost without Fantastical. Another thing about Fantastical that is so nice is that it has natural language input. And once you get used to the syntax, you can add appointments to that calendar so quickly. It also integrates very well with the Drafts app, and it supports integration with Todoist, the fabulous, accessible task manager.
There is a subscription every year for the full Fantastical experience, but I'm happy to pay it, because it is just such a good calendar experience, and as you say, supporting multiple calendars in the one place.
It also has a feature called Openings, which kind of performs a function similar to Calendly, and I use that all the time as well so people can book time on my calendar. It just really is a super app, and it's made by a company called Flexibits, which, over time, has shown an ongoing commitment to accessibility.
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.