Welcome to the thirty-fifth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
Listen to the thirty-fifth episode of the Access On podcast (Browser).
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Timestamps
Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
- Conclusion of our series on podcasting from a blindness perspective 0:00
- Trouble reporting WhatsApp accessibility bugs 33:05
- Seeking a good quality microphone headset, and ways to digitize my cassette collection 36:03
- Issues with WhatsApp for Windows 38:55
- Voice free control of the Meta Smart Glasses would be nice 40:27
- From the vendor Showcase at National convention:
- AT Guys 44:04
- Envision America 48:30
- GoodMaps 51:13
- Dream Vision 53:22
- Tech Tip, setting up the unsend email feature in Gmail 57:31
- Closing and contact info 58:43
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, we conclude our series on creating podcasts from a blindness perspective. WhatsApp is on the minds of some listeners this week, both for iOS and for Windows.
We begin our visit to the Technology Vendors Showcase held at our national convention. And in our tech tip, how to set up the unsend feature in Gmail. You could be glad you did.
It's Jonathan Mosen, back at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland with this edition of Access On. We are at episode 35, and we're going to begin by concluding our series on podcasting as a blind person.
We've had a lot of positive feedback on this, so I'm glad that it's going down so well with so many people, and we look forward to hearing some new people podcasting as a result of the information. That will be the greatest tribute of all to this little series on podcasting that we did.
A reminder that this was part of a four-hour webinar that we did back in June, and you can find out more about these webinars and boutiques that we put together here at our Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility by going to nfb.org/cena.
That's nfb.org slash C-E-N-A, and then you can draw down to the boutiques and webinars and find out what's coming up. We have some really cool stuff in store for you for the second half of the year. But let's conclude our look at podcasting this week.
Having given you a broad guide to using some of these post-production tools, I want to let you know about a product that is magical, and it takes the guesswork and frustration out of a lot of post-production tasks.
The service is called Auphonic -- that's A-U-P-H-O-N-I-C -- and you can find it at auphonic.com. Auphonic has become increasingly capable over time, and these days it does a lot.
Some audio production experts used to criticize Auphonic because it didn't offer sufficient options that could be tweaked. That is no longer a problem.
For those who aren't experts, you can use its defaults, and they're very good, but if you want to get highly granular with its parameters, you now can. Here are just a few of the things it now does.
It can do loudness normalization, which defaults to the level of loudness recommended for podcasts. It can apply automatic noise and hum reduction. It uses what they call "intelligent leveling technology," and this adjusts the volume to the loudness level that you specified, so that even if there's a variation between the volume of you and your guest, or a co-host, or maybe the guest backs off the mic a bit, it constantly adjusts for that. It will convert your audio from a lossless format to a smaller, lossy one that's suitable for distributing to your podcast host.
So after you've done your editing, run Auphonic, and you should be ready to publish your podcast when Auphonic finishes its work.
It will create transcripts for you. AI transcript tools have become a lot better in recent years. I would recommend proofing the transcript that Auphonic produces, but chances are, you won't need to edit very much. Transcripts are important. Try not to skip those.
If people are listening to your podcast using Apple Podcasts, Apple takes care of the transcription for you, but not everybody uses that app, and it's important to produce the transcript so Deaf and Deaf-Blind people aren't excluded from your content. It will edit out silences as well as verbal fillers.
You can produce videograms using snippets of your podcast and use your logo in the video for uploading to social media for promotional purposes. Auphonic is a cloud-based service, and it is accessible. If they break accessibility, I let them know and, in my experience, it gets fixed promptly.
It's free for two hours of use per month, so if you're publishing monthly, or perhaps you do 30 minutes a week, most of the time, you can get by without paying for Auphonic at all. But if you want to go beyond the two hours a month, you'll need to purchase credits.
You can either buy monthly packages of credits, which give you a number of hours per month, or you can buy credits outright, which never expire until you've used them. If you're going to process a consistent number of hours of audio every month, then buying a monthly package of credits will be more economical.
It's easy to upload content to Auphonic. It supports the popular cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, and you can upload via a web form. If you connect the cloud service, you can set up a watch folder, so the moment you copy an audio file into that particular folder, Auphonic sees it there, it'll process the file based on the presets that you've defined, and you've got audio at the other end.
There are two types of Auphonic production: one is for single audio files, and the other is for multi-track projects. The latter option is more complicated to use, but it's even more powerful.
You need to give Auphonic two or more files of dual length, and Reaper makes this process very easy; you can render a FLAC or a WAV file of identical length, filling the file with silence where the track isn't being used. Auphonic then listens to all the tracks and applies all the effects that we've just talked about.
Additionally, it makes intelligent decisions about how the tracks should be mixed. It cuts down on crosstalk, so for example, where you and your guests are in the same room and on different tracks, and you're so close together that your microphone is bleeding onto your guest's track and vice versa. It'll take care of that. It's listening ahead and constantly making tiny adjustments to the volume of every track.
It can also perform restoration on bad audio, eliminating reverb and filling out the audio so that it sounds more listenable. It can also equalize each track so that even when participants are using different microphones, they sound similar.
If you want to hear this in action, you can listen to the recent Access On podcast about WWDC. The four of us on there, we're using different microphones.
The result of the audio Auphonic produces is fantastic. You can do some of the things Auphonic does with various plugins in your DAW, but it is hard to beat Auphonic for ease of use and just getting it done.
It really can make your podcast sound significantly better. There is a full demonstration of Auphonic, along with an interview with its creator, on The Blind Podmaker feed.
If you're not going to use Auphonic, then when you've recorded and edited and got your podcast sounding as good as it can be, you will want to then save it in a format suitable for uploading to your podcast host.
In some digital audio workstations, this is called "rendering." For full backward compatibility, I'd recommend MP3, but M4A support is very widespread now, and it does sound better at lower bit rates.
You should add metadata to the file that you're going to upload to your podcast host, also known as "tagging the file." Some podcast hosting companies will add metadata to the MP3 file or M4A file after you upload it, so if you know that the company you've chosen does this, then you don't necessarily need to add the tags yourself.
I like to have full control of my own metadata. Metadata contains information like who you are, the title of the episode, when it was published, and some other data.
You can also add episode-specific artwork if you want. If that's not necessary, then your podcast host will use the logo of your podcast.
Every good DAW will allow you to enter metadata into your projects, which are then included in the lossy versions that you make for publication.
When you think that you're ready, if you're new to the world of audio production, perhaps ask someone you trust to give what you believe to be the final version of your episode a listen. You want someone who will be an honest but constructive critic.
And now we are ready to talk about hosting your podcast. This is another important decision on your podcasting journey. Who are you going to entrust with the distribution?
So, it's known as a "podcast host," and that can be a bit confusing because some people think of a podcast host as the person behind the mic on a podcast. If you type something like "best podcast host" into a search engine, you'll get many reviews back.
Podcast hosts usually offer a variety of plans. Some place of limit of some kind on how much content you upload, so the more you pay, the more storage and/or bandwidth you are given.
Some let you keep your old episodes, and you're given a new allocation of storage every month; others require you to delete old episodes when your storage is full. There are some limited free options that insert audio ads or banner ads into your content.
Many offer online players and help generate a web page to make it easy for people who listen online in their browsers, and despite apps making it easy for the content to come to listeners, some listeners just still listen via the web.
Some hosts will offer additional features like a feature to let you work with remote guests without having to use another service, or post-production tools. And some offer great monetization features.
Pinecast is a podcast host that has gained popularity in the blind community. It's one of the smaller players, but the owner of Pinecast cares about accessibility and is very responsive to feedback. Their pricing is reasonable, it has a good feature set, and the support is excellent.
If you would like to give Pinecast a try, the NFB uses it for Access On, and we have an affiliate code, which means that you get a discount, and we get a credit for referring you, which helps us to continue to do our valuable work.
If you would like to write the affiliate code down, NFB's referral code is R-dash-A-D-B-E-7-0. That's R-dash-alpha-delta-bravo-echo-7-0.
There are many other choices, including Spotify for Creators, which is free, Podbean, Buzzsprout, and Libsyn, as well as countless others. Many of these services are quite generous with their distribution of promo codes, or they offer a full, no-questions-asked refund for a clearly defined period.
So if you try a podcast host, and you can't get it to do quite what you want, and support hasn't been able to help you out, try another one. It is a good idea to settle on one that you know can live with before you submit your podcast to the podcast directories because, while you can change hosts, once you get your podcast running, it can be a bit fiddly.
When you sign up with a podcast host, you are usually provided with a website that accompanies it. Whether you publicize that website is up to you. Most good podcast hosts will let you link your own website to your content, and if you don't have a website, many will let you buy a domain for your podcast website.
For example, you might be allocated a site called thefredfrisbeepodcast.podbean.com, or you could buy your own domain name like www.fredfrisbeepodcast.com. The advantage of having your own domain is that it's good for branding, and if you ever change hosts, you can take your domain to your new one.
Before you publish your first podcast, go through the settings your podcast host offers and configure them to suit your preferences and your podcast. You should specify whether your podcast is episodic or seasonal and the order in which they should appear in the client.
The settings in your RSS feed will also allow you to tell podcast directories if you include explicit content, and you should provide a good, succinct description of your podcast. You'll also need to upload your logo to the right place in your podcast host because without a logo, your podcast is going to get rejected by all the big directories.
Another important part of configuring your podcast host is deciding where else you'd like your podcast to be published automatically. Many will send it on for you to Facebook, YouTube, and some of the more open platforms.
You used to be able to do it to X, but that may or may not be possible now that X has deprecated its API to some degree. But you will need to provide credentials for all those services and go through the connection process.
When you're signed up and you have configured your podcast host, it's time to publish your first episode, and this involves uploading your MP3 or M4A file to your host and giving your episode a good set of show notes.
Providing good show notes is important for your listeners and for search engine optimization. If you worked from a script when you introduced your subject matter on the podcast, you may be able to do a copy and paste or massage the text a little.
There are now AI tools as well that'll generate show notes for you, but I encourage you to review their output critically and carefully and make changes where you need to. Have a look at the way that other podcasters write their show notes, and adopt a style that resonates for you.
When you write them, be mindful that you should do so with a view to maximizing your chances of getting found by new listeners who perform a search. I'd suggest making good use of hyperlinks. It's handy for your listeners to be able to click through to what you are talking about, and hyperlinks can assist with search engine optimization.
Now we're going to talk about the all-important directory listing. Publishing your first podcast is only the beginning of the setup process because now you need to list your podcast in the big podcast directories.
Some hosts will offer to do this for you, but be very careful here. While on the surface this appears to save you plenty of time, and it's very kind of them to volunteer, it may mean that your podcast host, and not you, has control of your directory listing.
This can be a real problem if you change providers later, and you want to make some sort of change, only to find that it's a process to get control of a directory listing for your own podcast -- you might have to do a "Taylor's Version" of your own podcast.
The process for all of them is broadly similar. They want to know the URL of your RSS feed. You'll be using this a lot, so it's good to have it written down somewhere in a place that you can easily reference it and paste into edit fields for the directory websites. Many podcast hosts try to keep the syntax simple.
By far, the most important directory to be in is Apple Podcasts. There really is no competition about that because not only is it used by the Apple Podcasts app, the most popular podcasting app in the world by a long way, it's also used by many other podcast apps and services.
To be listed there, you need an Apple account. If you've ever used an Apple service or you've owned an Apple device, you have one. But if not, you can create one, even if you never intend to use any other Apple thing.
TuneIn Radio is also a good one to be listed on because products including Sonos, Amazon Echo, and Google Home can tap into it. Thanks to Alexa, listing your podcast on Amazon Music is a good idea, as is Spotify. YouTube now offers direct support for audio podcasts. A lot of people consume content via YouTube, so although it's a process, I recommend being properly listed as a podcast on YouTube.
After you've done the submitting, wait for confirmation from all these sources that your listing is active. Go to each directory and verify that everything's looking okay. Save the email in a safe place if they contain information about how to update your listing for that particular directory.
Unfortunately, the old phrase about "if you build it, they will come" no longer applies with the internet being so massive. So how do you get the word out about your podcast and gain a following?
First, it's important to be realistic. I might burst some bubbles here, but when evaluating podcast performance, download numbers per episode within the first seven days are a common benchmark.
Let's take a look at the Buzzsprout data from January 2025. More than 28 downloads an episode in the first seven days place a podcast in the top 50%. Over 109 downloads reach the top 25%. If you're exceeding 462 downloads, you're in the top 10%.
If you're surpassing 1,101 downloads, you're in the top 5%, and more than 4,707 downloads secures a spot in the coveted top 1%. These figures provide a general framework, but different podcast genres have varying benchmarks. Also, averages are pushed up by those very high, popular podcasts that receive millions of listens.
Unless you're trying to make money from being a professional podcaster, I think you've got to be in this game because you enjoy it and that, if you're making a difference in some way to even a few people's lives, you've made the world a better place.
Also, if your podcast serves a niche market, it is harder to get big numbers, so enjoy the ride, and hopefully look for steady growth.
Turning up consistently is so important. Listeners are creatures of habit, and recent research indicates that most podcast listeners only subscribe to five or six podcasts that they want to keep track of. To make yours one of those, be consistent about when you publish.
If you use social media, and you're on email lists where it would not be off-topic, where it would actually add value for you to mention it, then let friends, family, and colleagues, and others on those social media and email groups know about your podcast and invite them to spread the word. Nothing works quite like word of mouth.
Join email lists as well as Facebook and LinkedIn groups relevant to the subject matter of your podcast, but be respectful here. Promoting your podcast like an ad can do more harm than good. It can turn people off, and it can even get you banned from some of those things.
You'll be perceived as spammy. But if it happens to come up in conversation that your podcast has covered a topic that's being discussed, then that's a win-win for everybody.
Belonging to groups like this can also give you ideas for future episodes. You can also link to your podcast and email signatures. Encourage everyone who listens to leave you a five-star review in Apple Podcasts, which can help give your podcast more prominence in the directory.
You might like to find successful podcasters doing a similar thing to you and invite them for interviews on your podcast. There are some exceptions, but in general, the podcasting community is quite collegial, and a well-known podcaster may link to your interview with them, which will help spread the word.
Don't stop with podcast hosts. Find authors who've written new books that they're desperate to promote that would be of interest to your target audience, and seek to interview those authors.
If the author has a website and good social media, and they link to your interview, it can make an enormous difference in terms of spreading the word.
Speaking of LinkedIn, you can add all kinds of links to your LinkedIn profile. Be sure to include your podcast so anyone who checks you out on LinkedIn knows you have one. Mastodon also has a similar feature. Transcripts are also great for giving your podcast search engine exposure.
A critical way to encourage listener loyalty is to promote user engagement. Now, there are many ways to do this. If you have the time, money, skills, you can set up a domain name for your podcast and build additional content around your podcast.
For example, you could set up a web-based forum where users of the podcast could interact with you and other listeners about the subject matter. You could set up an email group, and in the blind community, I find this works really well because email is so ubiquitous, and it's on all the devices, pretty much. My favorite service for email groups these days is groups.io, which is accessible and reliable.
Facebook is an excellent tool for listener engagement. If you set up a Facebook page -- and you can also set up a Facebook group -- several major podcast hosts will publish directly to a Facebook page. You can encourage listeners to email you and read a selection of emails on your podcast.
With most podcast listeners using smartphones, you can also suggest they email their feedback to you as an audio file so you can include the voices of your listeners. Services like Google Voice or Voicemail Depot are good for this. You can download these messages as audio files, and they can be included in the podcast.
After you've put in all this effort, how can you tell how well you're doing? And try not to look too much because you can get demoralized by the numbers as well, but any good podcast host will provide you with detailed statistics.
In some cases, the more you pay your host, the more detailed your statistics get. While you'll never be able to identify your listeners individually -- that would be very creepy -- a good stats package will show you where people are listening from and what they're listening with.
I know, for example, that the Victor Reader Stream is a very popular way for blind people to consume podcasts, as is the Apple Podcasts app.
So you're running a podcast, and you're getting a following. You're putting in the work, and you're building up a sense of community around it. Can you actually make any money from this thing?
Some people do give up their day job for podcasting, and I actually did that. I resigned a CEO role to focus on Living Blindfully before I had the opportunity to come to the NFB. But to be honest, not that many people get there.
Still, it might be possible to make a bit of money and at least recover the costs of producing the podcast, and here are several things that you could try. If you're running your own business, it can be hard to quantify the benefits of running a podcast.
When I ran my own company, Mosen Consulting, I believe that running the Blindside Podcast, which I did at the time, helped with my training and tutorial sales. If you run your own business, it's absolutely appropriate to advertise it on your own podcast.
One way of generating revenue is to use affiliate marketing. You find a product or service that you believe in to the point that you want to tell the world about it. A lot of companies offer affiliate programs these days.
Usually, you must apply to be on them, stating how you intend to promote their products. If you're accepted, you get given a link that is unique to you. You can include this link in show notes, and if you have a website, you can create aliases that are easy to remember.
There are affiliate sites you can sign up with, where you can browse for programs that might appeal to your audience. You can pick those with the most generous commission or that you believe in the most, and I'd actually personally prefer to do the latter because if you are promoting a product, you're lending your reputation to it.
Another option is to seek a revenue stream from your audience itself, which I did with Living Blindfully. There are several ways to do this: one is simply to ask nicely for contributions to keep your podcast afloat and give an address linked to a service like PayPal. There is a service called Patreon, which allows listeners to donate to support your podcast.
You can also attach benefits to different levels of patronage, such as extra audio content. If you include sponsorship messages, or you promote affiliate programs on your podcast, you might create a version of your podcast for patrons with all of those things removed. In other words, if you pay, you get it commercial-free.
And this takes us into the area of premium content. As well as using Patreon for this, which is agnostic about the podcast host you use, some podcast hosts have well-developed premium content programs of their own, which you can choose to tap into.
You can also set up subscriptions in Apple Podcasts, which are easy for the listener to subscribe to, but unfortunately, creating them has some serious accessibility issues, which, despite being informed of them, Apple has still failed to fix.
You may publish an episode in the usual way, except you designate it as premium content, which your listeners must pay for, or you might follow the model we did on Living Blindfully, where you publish an episode to paying subscribers first, and then you make it available free after a while to everybody. In Living Blindfully's case, it was 72 hours.
If you want to get very commercial about it, you can solicit advertisers for your podcast. Living Blindfully did this successfully as well. You might approach potential advertisers directly. If you take that approach, be prepared to prove to the advertisers that they're going to get a good return on their investment.
I was running Living Blindfully for three years before I started seeking advertising. By that stage, Living Blindfully was in the top 1% of downloaded podcasts, with a very engaged audience, so the case was easy to make.
Some podcast hosts will let you access a marketplace that pairs podcasts with advertisers. Typically, you will need to have a certain number of downloads before you are eligible for programs like that.
I personally didn't use that kind of approach because Living Blindfully was a niche podcast, and I didn't want my listeners to be bombarded with ads that weren't relevant to them, but it might work better for your audience.
You can also sell merch. Yes, good old merchandise like T-shirts, thumb drives, and coffee mugs. There are plenty of places out there that'll put your logo or a photo of some kind on all sorts of things and help you with the distribution.
So we have covered a lot in this webinar. If you would like to get started with a little bit of audio recording without starting your own podcast, don't forget about the National Federation of the Blind's podcast because we love getting contributions from blind people about the things that we're talking about.
Access On regularly encourages people to contribute, so if you'd like to try your hand at recording a technology demo, or you just want to try and record an opinion piece about something in the technology space, or you want to respond to what the Nation's Blind Podcast is talking about, do feel free to use those podcasts as a way of getting experience of just doing a little bit of recording. We love to get your audio contributions for the NFB podcasts.
So in this webinar, we have just scratched the surface, and hopefully, encouraged you to go looking elsewhere for a lot more information on how to start your own podcast. If you choose to take the plunge, just turning up regularly is more than most people do.
Data indicates that 90% of podcasts don't progress beyond three episodes. That's amazing. And of those that do, 90% cease production before they reach episode 20.
So let me end with one final piece of advice: enjoy yourself. I mean, isn't it amazing that you can communicate with a global audience and make an impact on people's lives? You are on track to becoming an internet personality.
Congratulations, I wish you every success, and I hope that we can continue the discussion, if you subscribe to creators-subscribe at theblindpodmaker.com. That is the Blind Podmaker discussion list.
Speaker 3:
The PAC Plan is our preauthorized 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 N-F-B-dot-O-R-G-slash-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.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh! Oh, I was waiting for the PAC Plan song. I've been sitting here waiting for it. I'm not going to sing it. I'm not going to inflict that on you. We need to get a good recording of the PAC Plan song so we can play it. But anyway, whether we sing the song or not, get on the PAC Plan. Sign up today. That's what I say.
We're going to have a look at some listener emails now, and we're going to Australia for this one from Scott Rutkowski. He says, "Hi, Jonathan. I'm writing to express my significant disappointment with the lack of effective support from Meta/WhatsApp, particularly concerning accessibility issues.
I've encountered a very serious bug in the latest iOS beta for WhatsApp that is severely impacting my ability to use the app with VoiceOver. Specifically, when I tap the voice message button to record a voice message using VoiceOver and then attempt to tap the send message button, the button completely disappears from VoiceOver's recognition.
The only workaround I've found is to turn VoiceOver off, then tap the bottom right corner of the screen, which is incredibly frustrating and defeats the purpose of an accessibility feature.
"I've already tried to report this to WhatsApp support, but my experience has been incredibly unhelpful. I've been met with generic, useless links that have nothing to do with my specific bug.
Even after attaching a screen recording as they requested, I've repeatedly received replies claiming they haven't received my video. I even tried reaching out through WhatsApp chat with similarly unmeaningful results.
"This situation highlights a major problem. It seems incredibly difficult for an average consumer, especially someone reporting an accessibility bug, to get quality support and actually file a bug report that is taken seriously.
Could you please reach out to Meta and inquire why their support process is so challenging and ineffective for critical issues like this? It's essential that users can easily report bugs and receive proper assistance, especially for accessibility features that are crucial for many. Thanks."
Well, thank you, Scott, for writing in and drawing this to our attention. We have reached out to our contacts at Meta that we have here at the National Federation of the Blind, and I can tell you they are aware of the VoiceOver issue with the build released in WhatsApp, and it may be that by the time this episode is published, a new build may be out that fixes it.
I understand that in the latest beta that is out there now, if you are part of the WhatsApp beta group, you've got the fix, and they are hoping to rush this fix out.
So, as I say, maybe it's already out by the time this episode is published. So that's the immediate issue dealt with. Because I know a lot of people do use voice groups on WhatsApp, so this was a significant deal for the blind community, and remains so, until it's fixed.
You make a good point, and we'll also raise with Meta how we might ensure that accessibility-related bugs can be reported and taken seriously and what mechanism might be put in place. So we'll have that discussion with them, and watch this space.
And this email comes from John Rhiel. Nice to know you've made it here to Access On, John. John says, "Hi, Jonathan. As a longtime listener to your various podcasts and a longtime admirer of your flat-out excellence and professionalism..." Oh, that's nice. Thank you. "I'm enjoying listening to the Access On podcast.
I have two questions: the comfortable Zoom mic headset I've been using has broken, and I don't seem to be able to find it on Amazon for other than an outrageous price. I'd be curious to know what good-quality, comfortable Zoom headsets you and your listeners might recommend."
That's a good question, John. I haven't used a headset for many years because these days I've got to the point where I have to wire my hearing aids into everything. Well, that's pretty wireless these days, but Plantronics and Logitech used to be pretty safe bets, and there are probably higher-quality options out there.
So let's outsource this one and see if people can recommend specific models of microphone headsets that sound really good. What would you say? [email protected] if you have any thoughts on this. That's Access On, all joined together, at nfb.org.
Let's continue with John's email. He says, "My second question: I have a bunch of cassette tapes I want to digitize. There was an allusion to the ease of doing this in the first part of your presentation on podcasting, but no details. Can you or your listeners give me any recommendations re-digitizing cassettes?"
John, I digitized my cassettes a long time ago, and I did it the good old analog way by connecting a cassette deck -- it was a good quality Harman Kardon cassette deck -- to a mixer, and then I applied some noise reductions.
These days, like so many audio things, it is so much easier because I understand there are USB-based cassette decks that you can buy for this purpose, and you plug the cassette deck into a USB port of your computer, you play the tape... I presume that it will come with some sort of specific software for the cassette deck in question, but you might be able to just use any old thing like Reaper or GoldWave or whatever you choose to use and record that way.
I know this is something that Melissa Riccobono was talking about, as you say, in the first part of our series on podcasting, so she may be able to comment if she's listening, and I'm sure there are others that are doing this too and may have some specific products that they can recommend for you.
But if you're doing this the simple way, it seems like a USB-based cassette deck is the way to go these days. So let's wait for those contributions to come pouring into both of those questions, John, and I appreciate you getting in touch.
And Francisco Crespo has been in touch as well. He says, "Hi, Jonathan. First, wanted to congratulate you on your amazing presentation to the National Convention."
Thank you so much. "I will be someday in Baltimore and would love to visit the new IBTC that you are building for all blind people." We'd love to have you, Francisco. We always welcome visitors coming to see us at the IBTC.
He continues, "I would like to bring two WhatsApp issues to your attention. I will very much appreciate it if you can share them with Meta. First, the Windows WhatsApp app renders its web interface using the legacy Edge engine.
This makes it annoying to navigate the interface with the virtual cursor on, as it takes a few seconds for JAWS to read the next line when pressing down arrow. I know the best way to use WhatsApp is with the virtual cursor off, but turning it on can be helpful when trying to open a link on a message, for example, and it is quite slow.
"And the other issue on the Windows app is that reactions to messages are not read by the screen reader, as it happens on iOS. In groups of sighted people, this is particularly helpful."
Thanks for the report, Francisco, and we will check that out here, see what we can reproduce. If anybody has any comments on either of those issues, of course, you're welcome to get in touch. [email protected].
Here's Edward Alonzo. He's writing in, and he says, "Hello, Jonathan. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the National Federation of the Blind Convention." I did, Edward, I loved it. He said, "I listened to most of it while working, and I caught the banquet over the weekend.
It was incredibly well done." It was a good speech, wasn't it? I was saying to President Riccobono, actually, "I'm so glad that somebody tackled that whole thing about the blind man and the elephant because it's one of those things that has bugged me for a long time, and now we can own that story; we can reinterpret that story."
It was also wonderful to see Glenn Gordon get recognition through the Kenneth Jernigan Award for his outstanding contribution to blindness technology, and to our lives, through JAWS for Windows.
Anyway, going on with Edward's email, he says, "I wanted to ask if you've had a chance to try the latest version of the Meta Glasses -- version 16.1 -- along with the most recent iPhone app update. I can't recall the version number. With the detailed responses feature enabled, I've been thinking about a potential improvement that could make the experience even more personalized and efficient.
Wouldn't it be helpful if we could configure the touch panel or top button on the glasses to trigger a specific preset voice command? For example, instead of saying, 'Hey, Meta,' -- don't want to trigger everybody's glasses -- 'tell me what I'm looking at out loud,' -- this can feel awkward in public spaces like an Uber -- I'd love to be able to press a button and have the glasses automatically perform a custom action or give a specific type of response.
"Ideally, the app would allow users to define what happens when the button is pressed, whether it's a short description, a detailed analysis, or another personalized response. This would streamline the interface and make it more discreet and user-friendly."
Excellent suggestions, Edward. I think the idea of being able to control the Ray-Ban Metas, and for that matter, the Oakley Metas because they're about to come out, without having to say anything in certain environments would be a real benefit to us.
Now we're going to bring you our first audio from the National Federation of the Blind's National Convention held in New Orleans -- I know how to do it now, New Orleans, Louisiana -- in 2025, and we'll play you bits of this throughout Access On over the next little while. I took my Zoom H6essential along to the vendor showcase, and I plugged it into the mixer, and I recorded it.
If you have not been to the vendor showcase before, it's a really good thing to go to. It often happens before exhibits open, and it's a way for exhibitors to come to the showcase and just talk about some of the things of interest that you could see at their booth.
So, it's a way of making notes if you are a convention attendee, and you think, "Oh, that sounds interesting, I must check that out when I'm in the exhibit hall." It's also a great way to give you, the Access On listener, a taste of some of the things that were in the exhibit hall, and of course you may choose to follow up with the vendor.
Congratulations to Mark Jones and Brett Boyer who were fronting the event this year, and I'm going to edit this down severely so that we just rattle through as many of the vendors as we can whenever we do this feature. So we're going to start with A T Guys.
JJ:
Hi everyone. This is JJ from A T Guys. You said that... I've never led off this thing. I don't know what to do. Awesome. We are on the left wall at Alpha 19. We're always along the wall there. We're always on the wall. That's again, [inaudible 00:44:19] And we have all sorts of cool access tech products, and of course, almost everything that we have, you can buy and take it with you, and if not, we'll ship it right to you for free as well.
So, of course, we have our accessible power banks, the ones that you can press a button to know how much charge is left. Those are on sale this week, 10 dollars off, 65 dollars for the 10,000 milliamp, or 89 for the 20,000. We have lots of our speakers, and we have...
Every year, we have a bigger speaker. This year, our biggest yet, the Stormbox Blast 2, 200 watts of Power, reverb, four... Yeah, quarter-inch inputs, re-... Oh my gosh, it is crazy. It is the craziest party speaker in the world. It's 299, but, oh my gosh, you...
If I would've brought that in this room, it would've solved all of our problems just now. Just saying. We would've been just fine. But we have 69 dollar speakers as well, if you don't need a 300 dollar speaker.
We have two different voice recorders. Hey, guess who's back?
Micro-Speak:
Ready. Battery high.
JJ:
The Micro-Speak is back. The little tiny digital voice recorder. The new version has an easier on-off switch, has USB-C, has a removable memory card, and it's still just as simple as before. 69 dollar.
If you want something a little fancier, we still have the Zoom recorders. There's the H1essential right here. It is entirely talking. There are some new Zoom models. If you are an audio file podcaster, the H5studio-
H5studio:
Standing by. Remaining time: 23 hour, three minute. Battery level full.
JJ:
Yeah, so that's the Zoom. Everything talks on that as well. Bless you.
We have lots of different headsets from Shokz, we have FlyBuds, we have over-the-ear headsets, lots of different things like that.
We are right next door to The BrailleDoodle. Come check that out. We are distributing that, and we have those. We don't have them to give you, but we can show them to you, and we do have them in stock, so they will ship out, if you order this week.
I know people have been asking us about The BrailleDoodle. It is a Braille learning and drawing tablet. One side, it's free drawing, and then one side you can learn Braille. Really cool. It's kind of the Braille Etch-a-Sketch. It's such a cool little device.
We are selling the Feeldom Navi-Pal. It's a little portable case that you can use to... You can drop your phone into it, it's a lanyard case, but you don't have to stick anything to your phone, which I really think is cool. And you can pull your phone in and out of the case. There's a nice big hole for the camera as well.
Let's see. We have the Versa Slates, the paperless Braille slates, the full size of the mini. We have Braille, alphabet, and math blocks. These are fun. Uncle Goose is the name of the company. Made right there in Michigan. So we have those this year as well.
But there's all sorts of other things. We have a new desktop charger called Sharge, S-H-A-R-G-E, that has USBs and AC outlets. You just plug it into the wall. It is a great way to make friends in your hotel room, and you can have one of them for 50 bucks. So all sorts of cool stuff. I am forgetting some things. I am sure.
Oh, we have the Meater. The Meater is really cool. A wireless cooking thermometer. I think, Mark, you need one of those, Mark? It's a wireless cooking thermometer. It works with an app, free app, iPhone or Android, and of course it's accessible. We wouldn't sell it if it wasn't. So, everything we sell is accessible. We've been tested by blind people, used by blind people. So what are you looking for?
I should mention the Shokz headsets are on sale, 30% off, because this happens to be Prime Week as well, but they're matching them. We're matching those prices as well, so you don't got to go to the big store. You can come straight to us and get them.
We are at atguys.com. If you want to save some time, go there tonight, browse through everything, put in code NFB25, and do what Donna Ring did and just come through, and you can pick it up, and you can just pick it up at the booth. It'll save you some time.
We give you a free gift on 100 dollar purchase. We have lots of cool little candy, SD cards, things like that. Lots of cool little things. Alpha 19, come by; we cannot wait to see you. Always good to be here, and thank you so much, Mark and Brett.
Speaker 4:
All right.
JJ:
Making it happen, baby.
Speaker 4:
All right, next on the program is Jenna Reed. Jenna Reed is from En-Vision America.
Jenna Reed:
ScripTalk. Who knows what ScripTalk talking prescription labels are? Who uses ScripTalk? Who does not know what ScripTalk is? Anybody? Yeah, we got a couple? All right.
All your major pharmacies, Walmart, Costco, Rite Aid -- if they ever get out of bankruptcy -- a lot of the other ones, your mom and pops, your Publix, your Wegmans, your Wire, all of them offer this. If you are taking medications, whether it's one, whether it's five, whether it's 10, whatever it is, call us. 1-800-890-1180. www.envisionamerica.com.
It's free. I have the best marketing pitch ever, guys. Absolutely no cost. Your pharmacist puts a little electronic tag on the bottom of your prescription bottle. We've got a free app.
It's going to read everything out loud to you, including warnings, everything. Also, we've got a ScripTalk station. You don't like your phone? We will ship it to you for free. You can use it however long you want it. If you're not using it, we ask you send it back.
Again, absolutely free. How much is it?
Audience:
Free.
Jenna Reed:
Really? How much is it?
Audience:
Free!
Jenna Reed:
Yes! Thank you! And, I'm going to keep it short and sweet, we have news tonight. A lot of people have been asking us for medication reminders. We're beta testing with the app, the iOS. It's coming very soon, where alarms going to go off and remind you when you need to take your medications.
So we've been listening, and we're working on it, and hopefully we'll get it out there soon. We're beta testing. And of course, after iOS or Apple, we got Android coming. So, fingers crossed that's going to be soon.
Now I also got to say we have large print labels, booklet style. We've got dual language translation labels. For our Braille readers, we have Braille labels. Okay?
A lot of times, they'll give you the little electronic tag along with the Braille labels, most of those are going to come through your mail orders. ScripTalk is our flagship, and that's the one that you're going to get more easily through the pharmacies.
I'm going to be in B-22 of the Convention Center. Please come see me. Visit me. Make the smile, and you might just get a free T-shirt.
Speaker 4:
Coming up next, we have GoodMaps' Kevin Kline!
Kevin Kline:
Anybody else excited to be back in New Orleans? So, I am excited to be back because I met the GoodMaps team here about three years ago at the career fair.
So I was newly blind and heard there were some blind people in New Orleans, so I came on down and had a great time but also met my boss now who's here and got to start working with the team a little bit later.
So, want to mention a few things. We do have accessible indoor navigation at both hotels. We have the first through fourth floor here at the Marriott and the 41st floor.
And then on the Sheraton side of the street, we've got the first, second, and third floor. So you're able to navigate using the app, GoodMaps, one word, indoor navigation, and you're able to use our new feature called Look Around.
Some of you all may remember that from GoodMaps Explorer. It was my favorite feature. So we brought it back, and we made it a little bit better.
And so, really makes an exploratory version of our app to where if you walk in a place and you don't know where you want to go, you can just explore, and you can roam around with your mobility skills, explore what's near you, find the bar, find the restroom, grab a coffee, whatever, without knowing exactly where you want to go next.
And that's going to work in the exhibit hall. And so you're going to be able to roam around the exhibit hall tomorrow and throughout the week while using that Look Around mode.
So when you do that, you can find us at D, as in dog, D 13, and once you do, you can come fill out a survey letting us know how that experience was, and once you do, you'll be in on a raffle for one of three different 100 dollar gift cards. So I know you all like money just like I do, so why not come try it out?
And I'd love to talk to you all about how we're making progress. I always get asked every year, "Are you in my airport?" So come check us out. I'd love to let you know one of our 25 airports we're in now and growing and see if we're coming to your state.
Speaker 4:
Next. It's going to be Mike Tindal is going to come up here and talk to us about Dream Vision. You want to stand or sit, Mike?
Mike Tindal:
Hello fellow Federationists! It's been many years since I've been able to say that. It's great to be back. I've not been to the National Federation of the Blind for a few years. I've had to go to other conventions, unfortunately.
But again, truly, it is great to be back. I know that probably several of you remember back in 2005, 2006, I worked at the International Technology and Braille Center for the National Federation of the Blind. And so I'm just happy to be home.
This year, we at Dream Vision are honored to have with us, all the way from Germany, the CEO of Help Tech, the inventor of Handy Tech back in the day and Help Tech Braille Displays.
Let Siggy Kipke can know you're glad he's here tonight! He got here last night, all the way from Germany. I'm very proud that he's with us this year.
We at Dream Vision, we are the US and Canadian rep for all Help Tech Braille Displays made from Germany. And I'm sure that many of you have come by in the past and seen the Braille Displays that Help Tech make.
We have anything ranging from a 16-cell all the way up to an 80-cell display this year at our booth. And I call it... We read Braille, but I talk about these Braille Displays all the time, all over the country, and I talk about "when Braille reads you."
And what that really means is that when you get to the end of a line of Braille, whether it's three cells or 80 cells, the Braille will scroll to the next line automatically. It's not auto-scrolling, it's scrolling when you get to the end of Braille. So it's following you, no matter how fast or how slow you'll want to read.
The Activator is one of the flagship devices that we have this year. It has both a QWERTY and a Perkins-style keyboard, all on the same device. It's a 40-cell model, has an iPhone dock where you can simply magnetically put your iPhone against the Activator, and you can also put a USB thumb drive into that dock.
If the Activator is plugged in, it will also charge your iPhone at that point when they're docked together, but it can also be used with Bluetooth or plugged in directly with USB-C.
We have tons of options this year to show you. We also have the brand new Activator Pro that is just as it's said; it's the Activator Pro. Has a wonderful QWERTY keyboard. It's like butter when you type on it.
I like it so much that I've personally bought one myself, not a company unit, a Mike Tindal unit, because I want it on my desk forever.
If you can, come by booth C-34 and visit us. We will be there tomorrow, 9:00 to 5:00. Today's Tuesday. Thursday, 9:00 to 5:00; Friday, noon to 1:45 and 5:00 to 9:00 PM, as will everybody else in the room.
So again, thank you so much for having us this year. It's great to be home. Come see us at booth C-34. Thank you so much.
Jonathan Mosen:
And before we go, another terrific tech tip from that prolific proliferator himself, Carl Smith. He says, "I enjoyed your presentation at convention, and I'm enjoying Access On. Keep up the good work." Thanks, Carl. "I have another tech tip for your listeners. Have you ever sent an email to the wrong person or said something you immediately regretted?
If you're a Gmail user and accidentally wrote 'Dear Dummy' rather than 'Dear Debbie,' or called someone 'useless' instead of 'useful,' you can grab your message back even after hitting send by doing the following: go to 'settings,' then to 'see all settings,' and in the table of settings, go to 'undo send' and set the time to the maximum of 30 seconds and press enter on the 'save changes' button.
Then, if you hit send, you'll see an undo button, which you have 30 seconds to hit to unsend the message. Phew," he says, "that was close." Oh, my word. Thank you, Carl. That could be a lifesaver.
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.