Welcome to the tenth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
The show is segmented by chapter, making it easy to move between segments of the podcast if you have an app or player that supports chapters. Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
Introduction 0:00
Improvements to Facebook accessibility 0:54
To use the mobile experience on a desktop device, visit https://facebook.com/?force_mobile=1
Brandom Biggs discusses Audiom 13:02
Remembering Ed Potter 43:35
Listening to Access On with SensePlayer, and accounting software 45:44
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and hearing aids 47:10
Accessibility of Microsoft Word for iOS 50:16
Learning another language 51:40
Configuring the restaurant program for Phonak hearing aids 54:49
Closing and contact info 59:28
Transcript
Intro: Live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen: Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This week Meta introduces a means of accessing the Facebook mobile experience on the desktop. Audiom is an accessible way to explore maps of buildings, streets, and even other non-map data. If you're thinking about learning another language, listeners share their experiences of doing that, particularly with Duolingo.
And our tech tip is for Victor Reader Stream 2 users relating to getting audible content on the device. It's Jonathan Mosen at the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland welcoming you to episode 10 of the podcast. Some good news to start us off. The National Federation of the Blind recognizes that accessible technology is crucial for blind individuals to live the lives we want.
Accessibility barriers are preventable and unacceptable, hindering our full participation in society. Therefore, we actively collaborate with technology companies to enhance the accessibility of their products. Our contributions have significantly improved and will continue to improve the tools used by blind people. In October 2024, we initiated discussions with Meta regarding accessibility regressions on Facebook.
The most critical concern was the deprecation of the mbasic.facebook.com site. Although this version was originally designed for mobile devices with limited capabilities, its simple text-based layout made it a viable alternative to the increasingly inaccessible Facebook desktop site for blind screen reader users. The Mbasic site was discontinued for security reasons, and it seems Meta may not have fully understood the extent to which blind users depended on it.
We are committed to collaborating with Meta to ensure the main Facebook site becomes fully accessible to screen reader users. We're encouraged by Meta's willingness to work towards this goal. However, there is an urgent need to restore Facebook accessibility for those who access the platform solely through desktop or laptop computers. The absence of accessible options, particularly during the holiday season, has been frustrating and isolating for many.
Thanks to the advocacy efforts of the National Federation of the Blind, Meta has introduced a URL that forces the current mobile Facebook experience to work on modern desktop and laptop browsers. Effective immediately, you can visit this URL. I'm going to read it out and I'll also put it in the show notes. It's www.facebook.com/?force_mobile=1. That's a bit of a mouthful, so I'll give it to you again.
It's www.facebook.com/?force_mobile=1. We recommend bookmarking this URL in your browser for a simpler text-based Facebook experience. While we appreciate Meta's response to our advocacy and the introduction of this workaround, we offer the following caveats. Unfortunately, there is currently no easy way to navigate from one post to another. We suggest that each Facebook post be identified by a heading or landmark to improve navigation.
The page scrolls indefinitely so there's no set number of posts per page. Since this page is designed for mobile browsers, there may be other issues our testing hasn't uncovered. If you have any feedback on the functionality of this workaround and it's not for the podcast, then you can send it directly to me. That's Jonathan Mosen, and my email address is [email protected].
Members have also provided us with feedback about regressions in Facebook for iOS. The most impactful bug related to difficulty composing posts because what users typed and the composer wasn't being seen by voiceover. We've assisted Meta to identify this issue and we know Facebook users will be pleased that a fix is rolling out for this. Finally, in this round of fixes, Facebook has already rolled out an efficiency improvement to the timeline.
Facebook made a change in the last year, which means that a user's profile picture was seen as its own element by voiceover. This meant that each post required two swipes when navigating. This has now been restored to the previous more efficient behavior. There is more to do and we would have preferred that the deprecation of the Mbasic site hadn't resulted in such prolonged inconvenience for many blind people.
Nevertheless, Meta has been receptive to our concerns and worked with us in good faith. Our partnership with Meta is stronger as a result, and we're continuing to dialogue with them on a range of issues, including improvements to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. If you have concerns you want to report about any technology you're using, we encourage you to make your own constructive approaches with the assistance of our self-advocacy toolkit.
You may recall that Karl Belanger, Kennedy Zimnik, and I talked about this in the previous episode of this podcast. You can also alert us to issues that you're having by completing our inaccessibility tracker form. You can find those on the CENA homepage at nfb.org/cena. That's nfb.org/C-E-N-A. We look forward to ongoing dialogue with Meta that makes further needed accessibility improvements.
What I'd like to do now is give you a demonstration of this Facebook mobile experience on desktop. At the time that I'm recording this on Tuesday the 28th of January 2025, we are aware that there are some people who are not seeing this experience. So there are a couple of things that you might want to try. The first thing to note is that you do have to be logged into Facebook to see this experience.
So if you go to facebook.com/?force_mobile=1 and you're not logged in, you will see the regular desktop experience. If you are logged in, but you're still seeing the regular desktop experience on this URL, the best thing I can suggest at the moment is that you try logging out of Facebook entirely and then logging in again. We have let Meta know that there are some people, I think it's just a few at this point, who are not seeing the mobile experience on desktop using this URL.
Obviously one person who can't see it is one too many and hopefully Meta will be able to track down what the issue might be. But definitely make sure that you are logged into Facebook to see this. What I'm going to do is start off by going to the regular Facebook site. So I'm going to Facebook.com. I will press enter.
Audio: Facebook document. Loading complete. 20 plus Facebook, six regions, five headings, and 17 links.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, the first thing that you will notice is that there are headings on this page. There are regions on this page. You will not get any of that if you go to this new mobile site that we're telling you about. So that's the first clue that you are on the standard Facebook desktop site. If I go to the top of the page on the standard desktop site.
Audio: 20 plus Facebook.
Jonathan Mosen: And down arrow.
Audio: Visited link Facebook. Blank. Edit combo collapsed. Account controls and settings navigation region. Menu button. Messenger to unread button collapsed. Notifications. 65 unread button collapsed. Your profile button collapsed.
Jonathan Mosen: So this is a very familiar experience for you if you're used to trying to navigate Facebook on the desktop. Also, what you'll find is that when you navigate by heading.
Audio: Home heading level one, stories. Heading level three, create a post heading level three. Newsfeed post heading level three. Chris Peterson heading level four link.
Jonathan Mosen: And we can see different Facebook posts. The problem we have is that we'll get to a point where there are plenty of block quotes and extraneous information there and it's not a very clean experience. And also scrolling is a particular problem I have to say for JAWS. It seems to perform a little better with NVDA than with JAWS on this main Facebook desktop site. So let's take a look at the difference when we go to this new page that forces the mobile experience on desktop. I'm going to go to the address bar.
Audio: Selected.
Jonathan Mosen: And I'm going to type facebook.com/?force_mobile=1. And because I've been there before, Microsoft Edges Autocomplete is filling it in for me. And when I press enter, you'll hear that it's a really different experience.
Audio: Loading page. Loading complete. Facebook Microsoft Edge. Facebook Microsoft Edge page. Facebook. Facebook. Unlabeled zero button.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, I don't have any page load information there for some reason, but I'll go to the top.
Audio: Facebook logo button. Facebook logo button.
Jonathan Mosen: The first thing you'll notice is there's not a number at the top here. I'm going to down arrow.
Audio: Search Facebook button. Facebook menu button. Feed one of six. Tab selected one of six.
Jonathan Mosen: So this is very different. And if I down arrow.
Audio: Friends, 100 new. Two of six tab. Two of six. Messages, 15 new. Three of six tab. Videos, 18 new. Four of six tab. Four of six. Notifications, 56 new. Five of six tab. Five of six. Marketplace. Six of six tab. Six of six.
Jonathan Mosen: If you just press the space bar or enter on any of these tabs, you will get to the appropriate part of Facebook to work with it. I'll continue to down arrow.
Audio: Go to profile button. Make a post on Facebook button. Unlabeled minus one button. What's on your mind. Photo button. Unlabeled zero button. Go to make a post on. Go to profile button. Make a post on Facebook button. Unlabeled minus.
Jonathan Mosen: So this is where we see that there's a little bit of repetition sometimes because of this infinite scrolling where JAWS does seem to struggle a little bit. We're seeing a bit of repetition here. But if you keep going, it normally sorts itself out.
Audio: What's on your mind photo button. Unlabeled zero button. View uncommon knowledge and hypnosis download story button. View New Zealand Parliament story button. View Melissa Wales story button. View Ari Kersen story button. View Lisa Berg.
Jonathan Mosen: So we've got a whole bunch of stuff here relating to people's stories.
Audio: View Rachel. View Iraz. View. View. View. Dot. Dot. Dot. Link Queen Laquisha Walters. Feeling Curious. 2D. More button. I have some questions about the NFB and the conventions.
Jonathan Mosen: Oh, well, there we go. How timely is this?
Audio: Don't try to incur people who go to convention. Sammy, Jane, or Lee and three others reacted button. For light, double tap and hold for more reactions button.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, because this is the mobile experience, you're going to get language like this, double tap and hold for reactions. But if I press the space bar.
Audio: Five [inaudible 00:10:42] double tap and hold for more reactions button. Five [inaudible 00:10:44] double tap and hold for more reactions button.
Jonathan Mosen: So I can press the space bar to like this post, but I'm not aware of a way that I can actually force the other reactions at this point.
Audio: Seven comments button.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, if I press the space bar, we will go into the comments for this post, and it's quite a clean user interface.
Audio: Christopher Walker, I've been a member for over a decade now. I joined through my local.
Jonathan Mosen: One of the things that you will see is that there is, as I said in the statement at the beginning here, no way to navigate between posts by heading or region or anything like that. What you have is a very text-based user experience where you can just continue to scroll through. So we certainly acknowledge that it's not the most efficient experience because it would be far quicker if you can just get from one Facebook post to another in some way, but it does restore the ability to see more than just a few Facebook posts without things going badly wrong.
I can scroll through a very long way, in fact, infinitely, even when JAWS is running, although sometimes there is a little bit of repetition when it loses its place and I am able to just move through all the Facebook posts. Since we released this announcement, some people have reported that they have taken to using the tab key to navigate through and that that helps somewhat, but we would still prefer some clean way to navigate from post to post.
As we've been very clear to point out, we don't consider this a definitive solution to the problem, but it has restored some access to Facebook that some people lost. There has been some comment on Facebook about how the majority of people use the app, and I suspect that's true in this day and age, but there are people who for a variety of reasons choose not to use a smartphone.
And it's really important that we take their needs into account as well and that their choice is respected and they're not locked out of Facebook. So this is some progress and we look forward to some of the bugs that we mentioned being fixed in the mobile version of the app, which still needs some work. So we'll keep talking to Meta. The dialogue is constructive.
And if you have any feedback on all of this, you're welcome to be in touch, [email protected]. That's all one word, [email protected]. You can attach an audio clip to the email or you can write it down. Know Before You go is a phrase you often hear, and that's one thing that you can use Audiom for, an innovative audio mapping system that is branching out. It's now doing so much more than mapping.
I know there'll be many people listening to Access On who'll be fascinated to learn about this technology if they don't know about it already. Brandon Biggs is the CEO of XR Navigation who make Audiom.
Welcome, Brandon.
Brandon Biggs: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Jonathan Mosen: Tell me about you. How did you get involved in all of this?
Brandon Biggs: I am blind myself and grew up going to public school. And part of my experience was that my materials always got to me really late and if they ever got to me at all. So when I was in my early 20s, I actually founded a company with my mom, who's a teacher of the blind, and we provided all different components of a visually impaired program to K-12 schools around the US.
As part of that, we provided accessible materials, and I was able to see from the back end how much work actually goes into preparing materials. And for things like graphs, math content, spatial content, it was really hard. So my undergrad was in music, so I decided to switch over to what was called inclusive design because I said, there must be a better way. Why are these materials just being made visual?
Why can't they be made inclusively from the ground up? And so that's why I decided to go into inclusive design. So around 2017, I decided to start my inclusive design master's program at Ontario College of Art and Design University and that's where I started looking at different types of data representation. So I began with charts and graphs, but then quickly moved on to spatial diagrams, which are things like maps or blueprints or anatomical diagrams.
And I started with geographic maps and said, there's really no way to view these digitally without a tactile map. And since it's really, really difficult logistically to get a tactile map, I said we need some way for us to actually get these dynamics so that we can watch real-time election result maps or real-time wildfire maps or anything like that. So digital was really, really critical. At the time, there was no full page Braille displays, so that wasn't even an option.
So I was really interested in what is something that everybody has and the answer was either a computer or a smartphone. So all my work has been focused on how do we represent geographic maps and spatial information so that blind people can fully access them using their smartphone or a computer, and how do we do it in a way that's scalable so that anybody can create any kind of map and have that rendered out in an accessible format.
That's basically what all my research has been on since 2017. I got my master's in 2019 and started a PhD program in human centered computing also looking at the same issue in 2021. So that's where I'm at right now. I'm just at the tail end of my PhD program. And during that time, I began work at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute also researching this problem, and then ended up starting my own company, XR Navigation, which is actually selling these maps to institutions that have inaccessible geographic maps on their sites or apps.
Jonathan Mosen: You mentioned that when you started this endeavor, full page Braille displays weren't around. And I just like being able to say to people, look, I've got a Monarch on my desk here at my office where I'm talking to you from. It's a marvelous device. Has that lessened the need for Audiom in any way do you think? Or is it actually that some people are visual learners and absorb this information, in our case, when it's under our fingertips and some people actually absorb it better through audio?
Brandon Biggs: It's a multifactor issue. So absolutely there is the theory of multiple intelligences or learning modalities where people do learn better through audio or do learn better through tactile. So that is definitely something that I have observed. And somebody needs to run a study on this with blind people because blind people are really the only people that learn how to read in two modalities, and that's really, really unique in our society.
So that needs to be studied more. But I definitely have seen that personally. I am a very auditory learner. I cannot read Braille as fast as I would like to to even do a read aloud. I'm just very slow, and so it's not my favorite. But I know there are people probably you or other folks who definitely prefer reading in Braille. That's one issue. The other issue is that the Monarch is a little bit expensive.
I don't know how many people have 15,000 dollars laying around to buy a full page tactile display. That is definitely an issue. The third factor here is literacy. In order to understand something like the Monarch, you have to be trained on both how to read tactile graphics and Braille. And that is a pretty tall order. I wish more people were trained on how to read both, but it's still an issue, especially if we're talking about developing countries where Braille literacy is still pretty low.
Jonathan Mosen: So we're going to go into some demo shortly, but talk me through the practicalities of how this will work. So let's say I'm going to the National Federation of the Blind's Convention in July in New Orleans and I'm looking forward to that. I will be there, and I want to get a feel for the environment either before I go so that I can walk around the hotel confidently or maybe I'm looking at my agenda and I want to visit a particular presentation that's in a designated room and I have no idea where that room is. How does Audiom help me there?
Brandon Biggs: You're going to go find the Audiom map either on your app or on your desktop. So usually they'll post it on the website like on the exhibit hall website or something like that, or they'll send it out in an email. It'll be somewhere on the materials that you'll be given. And you'll open that up in your browser on your phone or on your computer, depending on what you prefer.
Then you click on the button that says activate sounds and skip to map. That'll be at the very top of the page. I'm going to go ahead and show a real quick demo. Audiom is very similar to a video game where you can hear the name and sound of objects as you move a character over them. You use your touchscreen, arrow keys, or other controller to move your character around the map. There's also a visual map.
So I mentioned before that it's really important that you have options of modalities if you have the senses to access them. So if you're sighted, you don't need to use the audio experience. You can use the visual only experience. If you're low vision, you can use a mixture of the audio and visual experience. If you're totally blind, you can use either the audio experience or you can use your Braille display to read the different labels as you're moving around the map.
And if you're deaf-blind, you can you read the different labels on the map as you're moving around. So you can choose which modality you prefer.
Jonathan Mosen: I'm mindful of your comment about the expense of the Monarch and that is a real thing, but do you see a time when you might be able to take advantage of that full page Braille display, show the map on the Monarch, as well as exploring it with Audiom?
Brandon Biggs: Absolutely. That's our ultimate goal is that we can really expand out the tactile experience of Audiom, because right now it's pretty minimal, unfortunately. I am in conversations right now with American Printing House for the Blind on how we can integrate Audiom into the Monarch or actually allow it to run Audiom. Because Audiom is a browser-based application, so it runs in theory on any device.
The Monarch right now is very early stages still, and so their browser capabilities are still a little bit limited. In order for us to actually integrate with a Monarch, we'd have to build our own custom app and that goes against every single philosophy of Audiom, which is compatibility with everything in one app. We do not really want to go and create our own Monarch-specific app at the moment.
We're probably going to wait another year or so until the Monarch becomes a little more developed, and then we're going to really focus on integrating with that. But if there are other full page Braille displays that come out that do have better browser support, we're definitely going to be hopping on that.
Jonathan Mosen: How widely available are maps for Audiom? This data that you have to process before users can use it in Audiom or is there somewhere that they can go get some map file of some kind and use it with Audiom?
Brandon Biggs: Right now you can go onto Audiom.net, Audiom.net, and enter in your address and pull up an OpenStreetMap version of any location in the world. The map data there is slightly questionable because it is open source and nobody has gone in there and said, "I'm a blind person and I prefer to have all this extra information," like, I don't know, say sidewalks. So sidewalks are completely missing from OpenStreetMap data.
Doors are completely missing from OpenStreetMap data, and those are really the only two critical pieces of information that blind people want. So you have to take the OpenStreetMap data with a grain of salt. The types of maps that are up, we do have a few that we've listed on our website and I'm definitely going to be creating a bigger list soon, but we are working with specific locations to make maps, other spaces or specific websites that have maps and making maps of those locations.
So that's how we make our money to be a sustainable business. So we do not charge users. We charge the institutions that have maps. So for example, conferences, you mentioned like the NFB conference, we did the map for the NFB 2024 Exhibit Hall map. We might be doing it for the 2025 Exhibit Hall. We're the official CSUN map this year. We're the official ATIA map this year. We're the official VisionServe Alliance map this year.
So we're contacting and working with these conferences and hotels and places like that to create maps of their spaces. And each location is one new map that we've made accessible. Right now at the moment we don't have a way for users really to go in and paste their own map in. If you are interested in doing that, it's not very difficult. You just need to talk to me about the conventions on how to do that. But if you're super interested in that, please send me an email.
I'd love to chat with you because there aren't that many people who are that nerdy about maps who want to actually create their own at this point. [email protected]. All right, so I'm here on the VRATE 2024 Exhibit Hall map, which is one of my favorite exhibit hall maps that we made this last year, and I'm going to go ahead and open up a menu that shows the different objects around me.
Audio: Filter objects sub menu two of 123.
Brandon Biggs: And I'm going to warn you that I do have my arrow keys, my command keys being spoken and also have all the keys being spoken. So I'm not going to tell you that I'm going to be pressing down arrow, up arrow. You're going to hear it being spoken through my screen reader.
Audio: Down arrow. Stairs is right here. Sub menu.
Brandon Biggs: So we hear that the stairs are right here. That means that our character is on the stairs right now.
Audio: Down arrow. Wall is right here. Down arrow. Hallway is right here. Sub menu.
Brandon Biggs: So we've got a couple different objects that we're actually on. So they're on top of each other or right next to each.
Audio: Other down arrow. Exhibit hall is one step sub sub menu six of 120.
Brandon Biggs: So we can hear that the exhibit hall is actually one step up, and now I'm going to go find a booth.
Audio: Down. Down. Down. Down. Up arrow Digital Apex LLC booth one is two steps right and five steps up.
Brandon Biggs: Cool. So Digital Apex LLC is a booth and I'm going to hit enter on that.
Audio: Go two of six.
Brandon Biggs: We have an option to go.
Audio: Down Arrow. Description three.
Brandon Biggs: You have the description.
Audio: Down arrow. Listen four of six.
Brandon Biggs: Listen to its sound if it has one.
Audio: Down arrow. Directions sub.
Brandon Biggs: You get directions. I'm going to hit enter on directions.
Audio: Enter. Digital Apex LLC. Booth one is two steps right and five steps up. Application. Audio map is on button.
Brandon Biggs: And we moved back to our geographic view. So now I can use my arrow keys to move around the map. Each arrow press will move me one meter in that direction. That's because I have my steps size set to one meter. I can have it set to whatever I want it to be. I'm going to go ahead and hit the up arrow.
Audio: Up arrow. Exhibit hall 31.3.
Brandon Biggs: And I'm going to press the D key to get directions to that booth.
Audio: D. Digital Apex LLC. Booth one is two steps right and four steps up.
Brandon Biggs: So we hear that the booth is two steps right and four steps up. So I'm going to go ahead and go to the right.
Audio: Right arrow. Bleachers, equipment, and exhibit hall.
Brandon Biggs: And it says bleachers. I probably can't go over those bleachers because they're kind of not walkable. So I'm going to go back and I'm going to go up and see if I can get away from those bleachers.
Audio: Up Arrow. Right arrow. Exhibit hall.
Brandon Biggs: Now we're in front of the bleachers. So if I went down, I'd find those bleachers again.
Audio: Down arrow. Bleachers, equipment. Up arrow.
Brandon Biggs: And I'm going to hit the D key again.
Audio: D. Digital Apex LLC. Booth one is one steps right and three steps up.
Brandon Biggs: So it says one step right.
Audio: Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: And then three steps up.
Audio: Up arrow. Exhibit. Up arrow. Exhibit. Up arrow. Digital Apex LLC. Booth one. Exhibit hall.
Brandon Biggs: And we found it. So now what we can do is move our character around these booths and see where the aisles are. So I'm going to hit the left arrow.
Audio: Left arrow. Exhibit hall 32.
Brandon Biggs: And I can actually go up.
Audio: Up arrow. Exhibit. Up arrow. Exhibit hall. Right arrow. Digital Apex LLC. Up arrow. Exhibit hall. Right arrow. Userve. Platinum sponsor.
Brandon Biggs: Cool, so Userve is also here. And now I'm going to go to the right and see if there is another aisle on the right of these booths.
Audio: Right. Right arrow. Cap tell out. Right. Right. Right arrow. Exhibit hall.
Brandon Biggs: Yes, there is another aisle here, and I'm going to go to the right some more.
Audio: Right. Right. Right arrow. Exhibit hall 41. Right arrow. Contexture. Right arrow. Right arrow. Right. Right arrow. Exhibit.
Brandon Biggs: So there were two booths. There are two booths on the second column and.
Audio: Right. Right. Right arrow. Human wear. Right. Right. Right arrow. National Federation of the Blind of Arizona.
Brandon Biggs: And we've got two booths on the third column. And so there are basically two aisles in the middle that I can walk up, and then two aisles on either side.
Audio: Right. Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: I'm going to go ahead and walk down this side aisle.
Audio: Right. Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: And if I keep going to the right, I found that there's a wall there.
Audio: Left. Left. Left. Left arrow. National Federation of the Blind.
Brandon Biggs: Now I'm going to go down and see what's on the bottom right corner.
Audio: Down. Up. Up arrow. Exhibit hall 54. Up. Down Arrow. XR Navigation booth.
Brandon Biggs: And we've got XR navigation. So we can basically explore around this exhibit hall and learn how the booths are laid out. So now I know that there are three columns of booths and each column has two booths in it. And these columns go all the way up and all the way down, and there is a aisle on the bottom and then there are aisles in between.
It's really hard to describe these verbally, but if you are viewing this in Audiom, you can really quickly move around the space using your arrow keys or touch screen and understand this different information. I'm going to really quickly go and find the jump to audio map button so that you guys can hear what that sounds like.
Audio: NVD.
Brandon Biggs: So I'm going to go ahead and hit the...
Audio: Control home. NVD. Control home. Out of menu. Out of frame. Clickable toolbar navigation land.
Brandon Biggs: All right, so I'm going to go ahead and hit the H key.
Audio: Main landmark Audiom VRATE 2024 exhibit hall map heading level one.
Brandon Biggs: And this will be similar to what you'll experience. There's going to be an iframe on whatever page you're on.
Audio: Frame clickable map heading level three.
Brandon Biggs: And it'll say heading level three map. And you go ahead and down arrow.
Audio: Down arrow. Map region button. Enable sounds and skip to map.
Brandon Biggs: And you hear this enable sounds and skip to map. That's what you want to click on. It's the very first element in the iframe other than the heading, so right underneath the heading. So go ahead and hit enter on that.
Audio: Enter. Enable sounds and skip to map button. Application. Audio map is on button.
Brandon Biggs: And that's when you know that you're in the map and you can start moving.
Audio: Up. Down arrow.
Brandon Biggs: So that is the experience of the exhibit hall. You can also turn on... Sometimes surround sounds will be on.
Audio: P. Playing ambient sounds.
Brandon Biggs: You can hit the P key and sometimes there'll be surround sounds. And you can hear as you're moving around unique locations. So this particular map has sounds of the presentation area.
Audio: Left. Left. Left. Left. Left arrow. Exhibit.
Brandon Biggs: So I'm going to walk up this aisle here.
Audio: Up arrow. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up arrow. Exhibit.
Brandon Biggs: And we can hear that right beside us is the presentation area. So I didn't even look where that is. I can hear that because it's in 3D audio.
Audio: Right arrow. Up. Up arrow. Seating area. Booth. Up. Up arrow. Up arrow. Workshop stage two. Booth.
Brandon Biggs: So it says workshop stage two.
Audio: Left. Left. Left arrow.
Brandon Biggs: That tells me that there's something there that's important. We know that on the very top of the right column is workshop stage two, and then we can also go onto one of these booths.
Audio: Down. Down. Left arrow. Eye concern. Booth 30.
Brandon Biggs: And hit the space bar to read what the object card says.
Audio: Space. Button. Enable sounds and skip map. Sidebar. Complementary landmark feature cards region eye concern. Down arrow. Button collapsed. Exhibit hall.
Brandon Biggs: We've got the exhibit hall. I'm going to go ahead and enter on that.
Audio: Enter. Expanded. Down arrow. Out of region feature cards region the exhibit hall is a rectangle. 30 meters wide going left and right and 37 meters long going from. Down arrow. Top to bottom.
Brandon Biggs: And you can hear a description of that. And so if they're the vendors, it'll tell you vendor information and give you their website. And if there's the exhibit hall, we often have a description of that feature in these object cards. And you can get that by pressing space.
Audio: Escape. Collapse. Escape. Application.
Brandon Biggs: And you hit escape and you go back and you can move around again.
Audio: Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: So that is the really basic run through of how you can use the exhibit home app.
Jonathan Mosen: And because this is browser-based, I take it that you could take this on your smartphone with your browser and do it in real time. How helpful would it be in that context because obviously it's not going to know your location, correct?
Brandon Biggs: Correct, yeah. So you're going to have to update it to your location or just explore around. So you find a landmark in the space. So for example, the bleachers or you know that you're on the very bottom right corner, or you know that you're in the seating area on the right side of the building. So if you know that you're there, then you can go in and find that location on the map and then go and explore around.
So you're going to have to find where you're at on that map and relate that to where you are in the physical space. Unfortunately, we're not quite integrated with a lot of the turn-by-turn navigation applications yet, so that would be the ideal situation if we could be integrated with things like good maps. That's the ultimate goal eventually. If you want that to happen, tell them that you want integration with Audiom.
Jonathan Mosen: What's interesting too is that you are going beyond map data. Was it originally going to be exclusively a map-based application, or did you always have other types of diagrams in mind?
Brandon Biggs: It was originally just going to be a map application. And we realized that what the information maps are giving you is space, and space is not exclusive to maps. And so even though maps is how we originally built the app, we realized that there are other types of maps out there that really aren't considered maps, but they are maps. And so we made this broader category called spatial diagram. So now we're saying Audiom is the world's most inclusive spatial diagram viewer and editor. So I can show you real quick one of those if you'd like.
Jonathan Mosen: Sure, that'd be great.
Brandon Biggs: I'm going to show you an airplane seat map, and it also has the engine information as well so you can explore around what the airplane looks like on the outside. So first, I'm going to go ahead and use my arrow keys to move around, see what's around me.
Audio: Down arrow. Main cabin 59.
Brandon Biggs: Cool. So I'm on the main cabin. I'm going to keep going down.
Audio: Down arrow. Main cabin 50.
Brandon Biggs: And I'm going to hit the left arrow key.
Audio: Left arrow. Left arrow.
Brandon Biggs: See if I can find the edge of the plane.
Audio: Left arrow. Left. Left. Left. Left arrow. Left wing.
Brandon Biggs: Cool. So I'm on the left wing now. And I can actually just go around and explore this left wing. So let's do that.
Audio: Left arrow. Left wing. Left arrow. Left wing. Up arrow. Left. Up. Up. Up arrow. Down arrow. Left. Up arrow. Empty space.
Brandon Biggs: Empty space just means that there's no data for that location, so we're off the airplane then. So that's why I really quickly moved off of that.
Audio: Down arrow. Left air brook.
Brandon Biggs: Cool. So we've got left air brook. No idea what that is, but it's on the left wing here.
Audio: Left arrow. Empty. Down arrow. Left arrow. Left air brook 40. Left arrow. Down arrow. Left air brook 40. Down arrow. Left air brook. Left arrow. Left air brook. Left arrow. Left air. Left arrow. Left air brook. Left arrow. Left jet engine.
Brandon Biggs: We've got an engine here, so that's connected to the air brook or right really close to it. And so we can understand how these are related to each other, and they're both attached to the left wing.
Audio: Down arrow. Left air brook. Down arrow. Left wing.
Brandon Biggs: And then I can go back to the airplane.
Audio: Right. Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: And I can go and see where the seats are in relationship to these different items.
Audio: Up. Up. Down arrow. Seat B, row 16.
Brandon Biggs: So we've got seat B, row 16.
Audio: Right arrow. Seat C, row 16.
Brandon Biggs: And seat C. So I can just go through these different aisles.
Audio: Up arrow. Seat C, row 15 and main.
Brandon Biggs: And that's seat C, row 15. And I can explore around this airplane and see if I can find any lavatories. I can also open up the menu.
Audio: M. Filter object sub menu two of 239.
Brandon Biggs: And down arrow through these different objects and see what's around me as well.
Audio: Down arrow. Main cabin is. Down arrow. Seat D. Down. Down. Up arrow. Exit is three steps right. Unreachable with current.
Brandon Biggs: And so we can hear different objects that are around us and really quickly get directions to them or jump to them or whatnot. So that is a way for us to actually explore things that aren't necessarily maps in the traditional sense. We can do the same thing for anatomical diagrams, circuit diagrams, astronomical diagrams, any type of thing where space is critical.
Let me show one more map of the choropleth information real quick because that's also pretty interesting. I'm here on a COVID statistic map. And on our thematic maps, we have two modes, a tabular view and a geographic view. I'm going to start with a tabular view.
Audio: T. Table. Name column header row one, column one.
Brandon Biggs: We have a table and each of the columns are a statistic in this map and each of the rows are a feature on the map. So I'm going to find a feature of interest.
Audio: Down arrow. MN row header row two name column one.
Brandon Biggs: This is Minnesota. Down arrow again.
Audio: Down arrow. OR row header row three name column one.
Brandon Biggs: This is OR.
Audio: Down arrow. W arrow. Header row four name column one.
Brandon Biggs: And Washington. So I'm going to go ahead and go to the column of interest.
Audio: Right arrow. 1,957,759 WA row four total cases column two.
Brandon Biggs: This is total cases. I'm going to hit right arrow one more time.
Audio: Right arrow. 257,096.06 WA row four cases per one million column three.
Brandon Biggs: And what we heard there was a pitch that represents a relative values of this number in this column. So let's look at relative cases per one million. I'm going to hit the up arrow.
Audio: Up arrow. 231,000.
Brandon Biggs: So OR, Oregon, has fewer cases per one million than Washington.
Audio: Down arrow. Up arrow. Down arrow.
Brandon Biggs: You can hear the difference there and we can also read the actual numbers, but it's easier to tell the relative differences using the numbers. I'm going to go ahead and down arrow one more time.
Audio: Down arrow. 348,774.58 WI row five cases per one million column three.
Brandon Biggs: And I'm going to go ahead and hit enter on this so we can tell this actually has a higher number of cases per one million than Washington or Oregon.
Audio: Enter. Alert audio map.
Brandon Biggs: And this jumped me to the location on the map and switched from whatever the previous statistic was on the map to cases per one million because that's the column that I was on. So now I'm on this state.
Audio: Right arrow. Wisconsin.
Brandon Biggs: And we're on Wisconsin. What I'm going to do now is what's called weaving, where I'm going to go investigate what is in and around Wisconsin here.
Audio: Right arrow. Empty space. Minus 80.
Brandon Biggs: All right, so Wisconsin is bordered by empty space right now. I know that Wisconsin is actually bordered by the Great Lakes, so I know that if I go a little bit further.
Audio: Right Arrow. Empty. Right arrow. Michigan.
Brandon Biggs: You have Michigan there. So I'm in one of the Great Lakes here.
Audio: Left. Left. Left arrow. Down. Down. Down arrow. Illinois.
Brandon Biggs: All right. Now I'm going to go to the left.
Audio: Left arrow. Illinois. 326,000. Left arrow. Iowa. Up Arrow. Iowa. Right arrow. Wisconsin. Left arrow. Up arrow. Wisconsin. Right arrow. Left arrow. Wisconsin. Up arrow. Left arrow. Up arrow. Minnesota. Right arrow. Wisconsin. Up arrow. Left arrow. Up arrow. Right arrow. Right arrow. Minnesota. Down arrow. Right arrow. Michigan. Down arrow. Right arrow. Wisconsin. Right. Up. Right arrow.
Brandon Biggs: All right. So what we heard there was that Wisconsin has the highest number of cases per one million than all the other states around it, but I think Minnesota has the highest number of cases per one million surrounding Wisconsin. So that's type of information that we don't necessarily get just reading the table. So that is why you need really both the tabular view and the geographic view.
Jonathan Mosen: You mentioned that your hope was to expand this to other apps. What's your dream that we could just bring up Apple Maps, Google Maps, those sorts of technologies and Audiom would be an option?
Brandon Biggs: Yes, that's the ultimate dream. We built Audiom to be something that one of those tools could embed either integrate completely into their app or have a button that says activate inclusive map and then it'll just pull up the Audiom experience on there. So that is our ultimate dream. I would love for everybody to please email [email protected] and ask for an Audiom integration, or the other big map provider is Esri who provides most of the government maps in the world.
And so if you email Esri, [email protected], then that's their email as well. And then there's a report issue on Google and you can ask for an Audiom integration as well there. So please ask for it. Most of the comments that we get from these companies or places that have an accessible maps is that nobody's asking for accessible maps, so I guess we don't need to make them.
Jonathan Mosen: Indoor navigation, there's so much development and thought going into that. GPS is pretty well established, but it feels like there's a plethora of potentially incompatible standards for indoor navigation. Is that true or is it not quite as bad as that?
Brandon Biggs: Well, thankfully, there is a pretty unified indoor mapping data format that's built by Apple, and this enables basically any application to pull in that data and use that for maps or turn-by-turn navigation. It's not a perfect standard, but it's really good. It's better than anything that's out there. And most tools like Good Maps or Next AI or Apple Maps, they use indoor mapping data format.
So Audiom has a way to import indoor mapping data format pretty easily into its viewer and we can just render out that data fairly easily with very minimal changes to our system. So we're still perfecting that, but there's a lot of potential there for interoperability between these different systems.
Jonathan Mosen: Tell us about, once again, how people can kick the tires on this and also it might be worth mentioning that you are providing map data for CSUN. A number of listeners to this show will be at CSUN, so they'll be able to take it for a real-world spin there as well.
Brandon Biggs: Absolutely, yeah. Hopefully CSUN will be sending out that map pretty soon. Go ahead and go to Audiom, Audiom.net, and that's where you can generate a map of your location. We'll also have our newsletter there where we can send out information about recent maps that we'll be doing. If you would like a map of any location, we really need you to be asking organizers, event owners, venue owners, website owners to create an accessible version of their map.
So say, for example, you're in Los Angeles right now and you want to see the evacuation maps or the fire maps. Email CAL FIRE and say, "Hey, XR Navigation can make those types of maps accessible." Please talk to them about making CAL FIRES accessible because a table or description is just not good enough for that kind of situation. Same thing for conferences. CSUN, email them and ask for an accessible map.
If you don't know where it is or if you're attending any conference, just email them and ask for an accessible map. And if they don't know what you're talking about, mention Audiom and XR Navigation.
Jonathan Mosen: Brandon, it's a pleasure to catch up and congratulations on how far you've taken this technology already, and we look forward to learning more about how it develops in the coming years.
Brandon Biggs: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
John Gassman: Hi, Jonathan, this is John Gassman and congratulations on another good set of podcasts. I'm just now catching up on them and wanted to take a couple of minutes and talk about Ed Potter.
Larry and I knew Ed since 1979 before there actually was a Playback. Ed had sent a message out to various cassette magazines indicating that he was going to be doing this and wanted to find out if people would be interested in listening to it.
So he created a few samples and Larry and I got on the list and stayed with it through the very end and became longtime friends with Ed. And we'd send in contributions from time to time. I remember we sent one in on the infamous super radio, which was really a good radio for its time. And in addition to Playback, which we stayed with throughout its lifetime, Larry and I also traded old radio programs with Ed.
Larry and I had been playing them, collecting them, and been involved in the hobby for centuries. And so we found stuff that he didn't have and he found stuff that we wanted, and we traded for a number of years until we both got too busy. Sent them back and forth in these great big boxes capable of holding five or six reels at a time and had a good time doing that as well.
Then a couple of years ago, somebody said, "Gee, whatever happened to Ed Potter?" And we didn't know. We hadn't heard from Ed in several years since the magazine ended. And so we just called the phone number that we had on file and Ed picked up the phone and was doing very well aside from a little hearing loss, but basically doing pretty well. And that's the last time we talked to him, which was maybe about three or four years ago.
Just a terrific guy and a lot of fun to talk with. We enjoyed talking with him very much, and this was really before we got started with computers for the most part. So we loved the access to all of the cassette information that he gave us every month, or I guess maybe it was every other month.
Jonathan Mosen: Great memories there, John. Thanks for sharing them. Always good to reminisce about the old days of technology, isn't it? Now, we have a couple of listeners with the same questions, so I'll read this one. It's from Carl Smith. He says, "I'm a member of the Salt Lake City NFB chapter, and I'm enjoying the podcast. I have one issue and a question. Sometime back, I told you that I cannot find the Access On podcast on my SensePlayer. You said that it's there, but I still can't find it. Am I missing something?"
Apparently, Carl, you are. Graham Minnis has the same question, and I've had this from a few people, but I contacted Selvas, the SensePlayer people, and they assured me it's there, and that you have to scroll a long way down through the list when you search for Access On to find it. So if you're having difficulty, maybe you could have a chat to them and see if they might promote it in some way if they have the ability to do that.
But all I can tell you is when I got this inquiry when Access On first started, I did check in with them. They assured me that it is there. Carl continues. "Recently, my accountant retired and I'm looking for any suggestions for accessible tax preparation software. Someone has suggested TaxAct, but I wonder if there are any other suggestions. Thanks and keep up the good work."
Yeah, it's heading towards that time, isn't it, Carl? So let's just open this up and find out if anybody who manages their tax, perhaps is operating a small business can be of any assistance here. [email protected] if you can help. Let's talk more about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. It's a popular topic on this podcast and in the blind community in general. This email says, "Hi, Jonathan. This is John Jacques in Arizona. I would like to once again compliment you on another excellent podcast."
Thanks, John. He says, "I have a question that you being a hearing aid user and a glasses user as well might have some insight for me. I recently had the opportunity to try the Meta glasses while out at a restaurant. Unfortunately, it was quite noisy there, so my experience was less than ideal. I could barely hear the glasses with or without my hearing aids in. I found that if I cupped my hands over my ears, the sound was directed more into my ears or hearing aids and I could hear them quite well.
This, of course, negates the hands-free capability of the glasses. I would appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts of others who use the glasses with hearing aids. It would be nice if the glasses could Bluetooth into my hearing aids as my iPhone does. It also seems that if the glasses had been conduction capable, such as the Aftershokz headphones, that might go a long way to alleviate this problem. I look forward to any response you or others may have on this subject. Thanks again for a great podcast."
Well, thank you for writing in, John. I think this is going to be a problem, particularly if you're using in the ear or in the canal hearing aids. My hearing aids are Phonak and they're actually quite large and they're behind the ear hearing aids. And what I find is that by positioning the hearing aids carefully enough, my hearing aids are directly resting against the speakers of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and I get really good audio from them even in noisy situations.
I can see though that if you're wearing in the ear hearing aids, that's going to be a much more difficult nut to crack. And I agree, it would be great if Meta would find a way to Bluetooth to an external device. They could pitch this as a way of using Bluetooth to connect to a speaker of some kind. But I guess the challenge here is that many hearing aids don't support direct traditional Bluetooth.
They use protocols like Made for iPhone, which are a bit proprietary, so that means that those hearing aids don't necessarily expose themselves as standard Bluetooth audio devices. Phonak is an exception in this case. Phonak don't use the Made for iPhone standard. And this can be a bit of a challenge at times actually as some users of new Phonak hearing aids are experiencing with iOS at the moment.
But one of the advantages is that it does pop up as a standard Bluetooth audio device. So there may not be much that you'll be able to do about this at the moment, but we are in regular dialogue with Meta as we've indicated on this podcast, so I'll certainly pass this feedback on that there are some use cases where allowing an external audio device to pair via Bluetooth with the glasses could be a significant accessibility benefit.
Let's go to Canada now. "Hi, Jonathan. I hope everything is going well with you and everyone listening to Access On. I was interested in the topic regarding Microsoft Word for iOS, and I agree with the comments about its accessibility. While I enjoy using the Windows version of Word, I personally consider the iOS equivalent of both the standalone Word app along with its implementation in the Microsoft 365 app to be totally unreliable, at least with my iPhone 13.
I'm a fast typist when using my Bluetooth keyboard and have noticed that both apps become rather sluggish or something like it while I'm typing a document, resulting in characters not being entered at random. I'm forced to backtrack through my document and make the necessary changes, which can be time-consuming. As well, while typing a document some time ago, the app crashed, resulting in the loss of what I had written before I could save it.
I haven't experienced these issues with any other iOS-based Word processor such as Pages, Ulysses, or Scrivener. In short, if anyone's looking for a good Word processor for iOS, I'd stay clear of MS Word/365. The others I mentioned are significantly better." Now, here's a contribution on language learning from a listener who hasn't identified themselves, but it says, "I have used Duolingo on iPhone successfully for more than three years to learn French. I'm now able to conduct rudimentary conversations in the language.
I'm told that the Duolingo site is accessible on the computer also, but I have not been able to get it to work. Chancey Fleet tells me that it does work." And on this topic, Stephen Hudson writes, "Hello, Jonathan. Just popping in to comment on the topic of learning languages. Duolingo is the only language learning platform I'm familiar with, and I only have experienced with the Klingon course." Whoa! Here they are on the starboard bow right now.
Scotty, beam me up. If anyone is thinking about using Duolingo, there are some important things to consider. The web interface has a few accessibility issues. Those who have listened to Living Blindfully may already be aware of them as I covered them quite extensively there. The dynamic scrolling on the main page can and will interfere with the ability to navigate the list of lessons. I experienced this behavior in Chrome using JAWS, and I don't know if NVDA handles dynamic scrolling any better.
There is no easy way to work around this, but in JAWS it is possible to use the touch cursor to navigate the lessons. It's very tedious though. NVDA's alternative methods of navigation may also work, but I don't use NVDA, so I can't say for certain. Exercises that ask you to translate a sentence won't show the sentence to be translated due to the improper use of the aria-hidden attribute.
If you're using a Chromium browser, this can be worked around by installing an extension called Hammertools. This extension has the ability to remove all aria-hidden attributes on a page through a context menu. This will have to be done each exercise. You can search for this on GitHub, and it will have to be installed manually. Instructions are provided on the page.
You could also use OCR or AI if you really wanted to, but this may not always be reliable depending on the language. Many of the links used to navigate the various sections of the site are images without alt text. If you're using JAWS, you can work around this by pressing control JAWS key plus F7 to have the URL of the link spoken. If you're using NVDA, press NVDA plus K.
I've contacted Duolingo about these issues and have gotten a response that basically said they'll work on it when they can. Unfortunately, that was almost a year ago now and nothing has been fixed as of yet. I can't comment on the accessibility of the iOS or Android apps, but I know that there are blind people who use them. Any other issues will probably be course specific as Duolingo supports various types of exercises.
Let's go back to the topic of hearing aids, and Paul Hopewell is in touch. He says, "Hello, Jonathan. Congratulations on your new job." Thank you very much. "I'm delighted that you are doing the Access On podcast. I intend to try Innosearch.AI, which looks like a very useful website. As you use Phonak hearing aids, I would appreciate your advice on how to best modify the settings for the restaurant program.
What I want to achieve is to listen to the person I am looking at and to reduce all other sounds. It is rather difficult to adjust the settings while in the restaurant as I have to disconnect my hearing aids from Bluetooth and instead listen to the MyPhonak app through the phone speaker, which is difficult in a restaurant. Should I set noise reduction to a large number, say four, or to a low number, say zero? Similarly, should I set speech focus to a large value or to a small value?
Also, how should I set dynamic? What settings do you use? Otherwise, I'm very happy with my Phonak hearing aids. Many thanks for any advice." If you're a Braille user, Paul, I would take a Braille display in with me to the restaurant, and I would turn on a relatively new feature in iOS, which is called Sound Curtain. That stops any sound at all from coming through your iPhone.
So be careful to toggle it off again when you want your phone to work. But the advantage of this is that it's not going to trip the MyPhonak app. What happens when you're trying to adjust something is that every time you make voiceover talk, it's obviously going to switch to the Bluetooth program, so that switches you away from the program that you're trying to configure.
So it's sensible, it makes sense, but it's annoying. And I found that taking a little Braille display such as say a Braille in Twiddy cell or something like that. If you are in the United States, you might be able to get one of the e-readers actually that would do this as well. And then you can turn Sound Curtain on and configure the program in the restaurant itself.
And that's what I've taken to do and I've found that that's pretty effective. But the higher the value, the more intense the feature's going to be. So if you want aggressive noise reduction, set it to a high number. If you want the focus to be very focused, set that to a high number. I like compression. I like dynamic audio compression, so I tend to crank that up as well. I just think it sounds better, but that's more of a personal preference thing.
The higher the dynamic audio compression, the more aggressive it's going to be about responding to changes in your environment. But it is quite hard to configure these things in advance and every restaurant has slightly different characteristics. So if you are a Braille reader, and I apologize, I don't recall whether you read Braille or not, this would be a great solution for you to configure something on the spot and then you can tweak the parameters until you get something that maximizes your ability to hear.
A handy tech tip for Victor Reader Stream uses from Joe Danowski. He says, "I'm a big fan of the Victor Reader Stream. I use the Victor Reader Stream 2 Trek. I recently found that AudibleSync running on Windows 11 no longer works for me. This was the program provided by Audible that was used to access the Audible library and download books onto the Victor Reader Stream.
In the event your Victor Reader Stream listeners are having the same problem, I just wanted to let them know the good news is that books can be downloaded and added to the Victor Stream manually. For a while, I found the manual method did not work and I needed to use AudibleSync. To add books manually to the Victor Stream, I go to the Audible Access website, then go to library, search for the book in my library, then tab to the download button.
And once downloaded to the PC, I copy the book into the Audible directory on the SD card. The actual title of the book now shows up in the Audible directory instead of a series of unidentified numbers, as was the case when AudibleSync was used. Also, it appears that the Audible books also now recognize the chapter controls on the Victor Reader." Thank you very much, Joe, and I take it that that is, of course, following your authorization of the Victor Reader Stream to use your Audible account.
So I appreciate that. The Victory Reader Stream is certainly a very popular way to hear content in our community, including this podcast. 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 announcements only email list about upcoming episodes, send a blank message to accesson-announce-subscribe at nfbnet.org. That's accesson-announce-subscribe at nfbnet.org. 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.