Welcome to the twenty-third episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
Listen to the twenty-third episode of the Access On podcast (Browser).
Or listen on your preferred podcast platform.
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.
- A guide to effective participation in online meetings 0:00
- Perplexity offers a voice assistant to rival Siri on iPhone 18:10
- Problems with Stamps.com 38:31
- Looking for English to Hungarian AI overdubbing 40:07
- Working with PowerPoint 42:58
- Thoughts on automated document remediation 44:58
- Can't get my Bluetooth speaker to behave with my laptop 45:50
- Adjusting playback speed in YouTube for iOS 50:33
- An accessible stand-alone thermostat 55:07
- Working with PowerPoint slides 56:54
- Closing and contact info 58:58
Transcript
Speaker 1: Live the life you want.
Speaker 2: Access On.
Jonathan Mosen: Welcome to another edition of Access On: the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. Coming up on this week's episode, some tips to make your participation in online meetings hassle-free.
The AI app, Perplexity, now offers a voice assistant for your iPhone to compete with Siri. Listeners offer some suggestions on working with the playback speed control in YouTube for iOS. And if you're looking for a standalone talking thermostat, no app required, there is still one on the market.
It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to Episode 23 of Access On. Let's get right into it and begin our serialization of the webinar we did a couple of weeks ago on online meetings. And this webinar covers Teams, Zoom, WebEx and Google Meet, common platforms that you will encounter if you are attending online meetings.
Before we went into detail about each of these platforms, I did a section at the beginning where we discussed some general principles: things that you can do to set yourself up well for attending an online meeting and making sure that it's going to work well for you. So this week, we're going to start with that. Just a few general things to consider when you're attending an online meeting.
Let's talk first about some general principles that we can apply to all of these online meeting platforms to make everything go smoothly, and the first key to a great meeting is preparation. When we take a few steps before the call starts, we set ourselves and others, for that matter, up for success.
Now, we all know that technology is a great enabler. It can also be as frustrating as heck. It can be unpredictable, and as the saying goes, failure to prepare is preparing to fail. So join early with the link handy, have the link or the meeting invite accessible well before the start time, and plan to join, say, five or even 10 minutes early. And this gives you time to deal with any login issues or waiting room delays before the meeting actually begins.
There's nothing more distracting for everyone than a frantic call or a text from someone who can't find the link at the very last second, so by connecting a few minutes early, you can troubleshoot things, you can do that in a quiet way without the panic of the meeting about to start, and you can avoid making others wait while you resolve your tech problems. Most platforms do have an option to test or preview your audio and video, and ensuring your mic is working and your camera is set up properly before you join is going to spare everybody those awkward "Can-you-hear-me-now" moments that we've become so familiar with particularly since the pandemic.
If you encounter an issue, you will have a few minutes then to fix it, or you could even switch to another device. So for example, if things just aren't behaving for you on your PC, but you have the app in question on your smartphone, you may decide, "Okay, maybe I should switch to that just to get things working." So this quick tech check helps you enter the meeting smoothly and confidently as well.
If there's been an agenda or some set of documents that have been distributed ahead of the meeting, read them beforehand and come prepared. Being familiar with the content also lets you contribute more meaningfully when it's your turn to talk. Choose a quiet distraction-free place, try to set up in a quiet environment with minimal background noise when you're joining the call. You might think of this as putting up a do not disturb sign, if you will, so let others in your home or your office know that you'll be in a meeting so they don't accidentally interrupt you.
Now that we've laid that groundwork, let's talk about managing our audio during the meeting. Managing your audio well means minimizing distractions and ensuring that you can be heard clearly. So first, mute yourself whenever you're not actively speaking. It's absolutely crucial to do this. Background noises, keyboard typing, or your text-to-speech engine blithering away in the background in the meeting, or people coughing, or guide dogs barking, or other noisy pets or family members chatting in the next room, they can all hijack the meeting audio and they can distract the speaker and other participants.
We all know how annoying it is when people carry on side conversations during an in-person meeting, right? And the same is true in an online meeting. So make it a habit to join the call already on mute and keep yourself muted unless you're actually addressing the group.
And thankfully, muting and unmuting is easy with keyboard shortcuts. Familiarize yourself with your platform's mute controls, whatever platform you're going into, and practice using them regularly so that you get fast at it. You can practice until it just becomes second nature.
It's also wise to test muting in a meeting's audio preview feature or something like that. If you've never used a platform before, and some of us use a lot of Zoom, for example, but may be not quite as familiar with Teams, or Google Meet, or Webex. No harm in setting up a test meeting and doing those checks. When it's your turn to speak, you should be ready to quickly unmute and chime in.
Next, let's talk about microphone quality. Using a good microphone or a headset can make a world of difference. Many of us just use the built-in laptop microphone or our phone, which can work, but often, those do pick up a lot of ambient noise, and they may not capture your voice clearly. A headset or even earbuds that have a microphone will typically provide better sound quality and they'll isolate your voice. Some conditions that cause congenital blindness also include hearing impairment, so it's the considerate thing to do to make the audio as clear, direct, and free of echo as possible.
The bonus for us as blind users is that if you use a headset, that also ensures that others on the call won't hear our screen reader output echoing away in the background. If you use your screen reader during the meeting to read an agenda or check the participant list, then you can use your computer's speakers while unmuted and your speech won't be picked up by the microphone and broadcast to everyone. And this can be really distracting, and it could even announce information that you didn't intend to share.
So consider investing in a decent quality headset. You can actually find one for a reasonable price, and often, these are designed for conferencing applications exactly like the ones that we're talking about today. So often, the microphones include some noise-canceling features built in that improve the quality of the audio if you've got a bit of room bounce in the background.
If you are in a situation where multiple people are joining from the same physical location, try and avoid using one device for everybody unless it's absolutely necessary. Now, the exception, of course, is if you're in an office environment and there's some sort of professional audio conferencing equipment there that have a whole array of microphones. But if you're just trying to use a laptop or a smartphone, it is better if each person has their own device and headset in separate spaces to prevent audio feedback. If you've got to use a shared device, be diligent about muting whenever you're whispering to each other off camera.
The meeting host can mute participants if they need to, but you do not want to be that person that has become so noisy, so disruptive to the meeting, that the host feels compelled to intervene and mute you. It's important to respect the flow of the conversation and use the tools available to signal when you have something that you want to say. You can use the raise hand feature to request the floor unless the host has explicitly said that it's kind of an open popcorn style discussion.
In most cases, especially with larger or more formal meetings, the virtual hand raise is the polite way to indicate that you would like to speak. It prevents chaos and multiple people talking all over each other, so take a moment to learn the keyboard shortcuts for raising your hand in the platform that you are using.
Once your hand is raised, wait for the host or the moderator to call on you before you start speaking. It can be tempting to just jump right in, but unless it's an emergency, it's best to let the moderator manage the queue. There may be rare moments when an urgent interjection is appropriate, but generally, raising your virtual hand is best to indicate that you want to speak, and this courtesy keeps the discussion orderly and it ensures that you don't accidentally cut someone else off.
When it is your turn and you begin speaking, start by saying your name, especially if not everybody in the meeting knows you by voice. For example, you might unmute yourself and say, "This is Jonathan, I'd like to add to this point." Of course, and if your name isn't Jonathan, and then you want to say something a bit different.
Stating your name at the outset helps everybody, particularly those on the phone, or fellow blind participants recognize who's talking. In group discussions, respect turn-taking and avoid interrupting others. It's easy to accidentally talk over someone because there is a little bit of lag even now in these conferencing platforms, just enough to make talking over someone possible, moreso than if you're in a regular in-person meeting.
If you start to speak and you hear somebody else speaking at the same time, both parties should politely stop. You can even say, "Sorry, go ahead," and let the other person continue, or maybe wait for the moderator to give you some guidance as to who should proceed, but only one person should speak at a time so that everybody can follow along. Overlapping speech is hard for anybody to understand.
One strategy meetings often use is to have the host mute everybody except the speaker to enforce this rule. But even if that's not in effect, we as participants can do our part by being patient and courteous.
Another great tool for engagement without disruption is of course the chat feature. Both Zoom and Teams have a meeting chat where you can type in comments or questions, and in fact, all of these meeting platforms have that. If you have a thought while someone else is speaking, consider posting it in the chat instead of interrupting the flow of the conversation.
Now, there are some meetings of blind participants where they discourage use of the chat feature because some screen readers don't have the ability to silence the chat output, and even then, some screen reader users may not know how you do that, even if the ability does exist. So I would advise that you check to see if there are any preferences from the meeting organizers and other participants about whether you should use chat or not.
For those who don't want to hear the chat, some screen readers will offer the ability to silence chats or minimize what you hear, so you might want to become familiar with the screen reader functions for the platform you're using. If using chat is okay for the meeting that you are in, once you've used it, the facilitator or others will sometimes acknowledge your comment at an appropriate pause. We do this, for example, in these sorts of webinars. It's also useful for sharing links or info without having to read them out loud because some links can be very long, and again, we've done that by already sharing the link to the full captioning that you can choose to have in your browser.
Additionally, listen active when others are speaking. This means focusing on the conversation and trying not to multitask too much because we're not as good as we think we are, and responding when it's appropriate with brief verbal acknowledgements if needed. "Yes, I agree," or a quick comment when you're invited.
If the meeting is small and hand-raising isn't required, you can still chime in politely by saying your name and waiting a bit perhaps for the meeting moderator to acknowledge you, and of course, keep your microphone muted until that moment that you're ready to speak. It's worth reiterating because it's fundamental to good meeting etiquette.
Well, I've talked quite a bit about audio, so let's talk about video, which is I guess a bit of a contentious topic in a blindness context. Video can be a double-edged sword for blind professionals in online meetings. On the one hand, you might think, "Well, I can't see them, so it doesn't really matter if they can't see me."
On the other hand, turning on your video can make your presence more visible quite literally to others, and foster a sense of connection. People can see your expressions or at least see that you are attentive, which can humanize the interaction for sighted participants in the meeting. There's no one-size-fits-all answer here, but if you're going to use video, here are some best practices for you to consider.
Take a moment to ensure that you are framed well and presented as you would like. JAWS has a feature called Face in View, where you can sit in front of the camera and be told whether your face is visible and whether the room is well-lit. You can do the same thing on your smartphone by opening the camera app and having talk-back or voiceover tell you if your face is centered.
The same concept also works on the Mac, and there's also a free tool called Can You See Me that works with any Windows screen reader, in fact. So it does pretty much the same thing a little more in a limited way, but this basic thing, am I centered? Am I in view of the camera? It's very similar to JAWS's built-in Face in View.
If you participate in online meetings a lot, you may want to get a webcam that has good autofocus features fixed to the wall so that you know that when you sit at your place at your desk where your chair normally is, you are likely to be in the right spot. And when I worked from home for a long period back in New Zealand, I did exactly this, and it never let me down having the camera positioned in that fixed place.
Also be mindful of your background if you are on camera. Remember that what is behind you is visible. A cluttered room or people moving around in the background can be distracting to others, so try to have a clean, neutral background, or use a visual background if that works for you. A lot of these apps provide that now. You might consider sitting in front of a plane wall or using a screen or a divider of some kind behind you to block visual distractions.
Good lighting of course helps as well. You don't need professional lights, just avoid sitting in a complete dark place or with very bright light directly behind you, and that can make you appear like a silhouette. You can ask a visual interpreter service like Aira if you like to talk about lighting and give you some advice. Also, some of these apps that I talked about earlier will tell you when the lighting is not sufficient.
Many platforms also offer virtual backgrounds or blur effects now, so feel free to use those if that makes you feel more comfortable. Though be aware that sometimes, virtual backgrounds can cause your head to be kind of cut out of those, your head and shoulders, so it might not work for everything.
If you're not using video, you might at least like to set a profile photo or avatar in the meeting software, and that way, instead of just a blank screen, or your name initials, others can see your picture when you speak, or in the participant list, and this can help to personalize your presence. Microsoft's own accessibility guidelines, in fact, note that having profile photos helps others identify who is speaking during a meeting.
Also, consider using features like do not disturb mode on your communication app during meetings. If you're in Teams, for instance, and we're going to get into Teams very soon, setting your status to do not disturb will suppress notifications that could otherwise pop up and be read aloud while you're in a meeting. Similarly, on Windows, you can use Focus Assist, or on Mac, you can enable Do Not Disturb system-wide while you're in a call so that extraneous pings or alerts don't steal focus literally and figuratively.
We're going to spend a bit of time now diving into a service that's rapidly earning a reputation as one of the most innovative players in the AI space, and this is Perplexity. At its core, Perplexity is an advanced AI-powered search-and-answer engine. You can think of it as a blend between a traditional search engine like Google and an AI assistant like ChatGPT, but it's designed to be faster, more precise, and more conversational.
Rather than giving you a list of links, Perplexity focuses on directly answering your question, citing real sources along the way, and even suggesting related questions that you might want to ask next by way of follow-up and to get further insight into the question that you're asking. It's a much more dynamic and interactive way to find information compared to a standard web search.
One of Perplexity's standout strengths is its access to multiple large language models, or LLMs, for short. Depending on your needs, you can choose responses powered by models like OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 from Anthropic, DeepSeek, and even Google's Gemini. So this is a powerful research tool. Because you're not locked into one AI, there's a lot of flexibility. Each AI has its own style personality, if you will, and way of answering questions, so sometimes it's good to be able to switch it up and see which model gives you the best answer.
And sometimes, you want different things. At one point, you might want detailed reasoning. At another, you might want creative responses or more concise factual answers. Perplexity now offers a pro search feature, and this scours the web in real time to augment its answers with the most up-to-date information. This helps to solve a common complaint about AI tools that they sometimes rely on outdated knowledge.
They've recently introduced a deep search mode, which is becoming more common. You can find deep search tools in ChatGPT and Google Gemini, and they're extremely powerful. And we will cover deep search at some point on this podcast. It is something that we will be talking about at the National Convention in July in New Orleans when we do a session on all these AI advances that have taken place since we last gathered.
We're going to be talking about the iOS app in a bit because there's been a significant innovation that Perplexity has just unveiled, which I thought was worthy of mention, but it's also worth mentioning that the iOS app is not perfect. Often, you find that there are toggle buttons that allow you to switch between modes that don't tell you their state. So you double-tap a button, but you don't really get any feedback about whether the double-tapping has taken effect, and when you're reviewing settings, it makes it very difficult to determine in some situations what options are selected. For example, which voice you've had selected or what large language model.
There is a free version of Perplexity, but if you want the full features, it's going to cost around about $20 US a month. With all these things, you may want to try the free version, see if it's something that you will use regularly, and then upgrade if you really think it's worth it.
One of the big advantages of course of using Perplexity is it may save you money in the long run because you get all of these large language models rolled into one service. Although you have access to these large language models, it's not quite the same as, say, paying for ChatGPT, and paying for Gemini, and paying for all the other services, because there are some premium features that are reserved for those individual services. So the best thing I can suggest is that you have a play with the free version, upgrade may be for a month and see if you like it, and it may or may not meet your needs.
One thing that is good about Perplexity is that if you need quick, reliable summaries that also show you where the information came from, which can be important if you're using this in academic work, Perplexity does that well. If you want more control and transparency over the information that you're getting from AI, obviously that's an advantage for Perplexity because of the multiple large language models. If you're frustrated with traditional search engines pushing sponsored content to the top, which may be actually less helpful, then Perplexity might be worth a look as well.
No service is perfect, and there are a few criticisms. While Perplexity is impressively fast and accurate, it is not immune to the same hallucination risks that affect all large language models. It cites sources, but sometimes those citations can be overly general, linking to an article that isn't quite as specific as the answer suggests that it should be.
And while the ability to switch between multiple large language models is powerful, casual users might not always know which model is best for their kind of question. Choosing the so-called wrong model could lead to less helpful results than if you're familiar with the differences. So this service may be useful in terms of really getting the power out of it for those who understand the strengths and weaknesses of all of these different large language models, and that can be quite a bit to keep up with.
Another potential downside, while Perplexity's free version is excellent, many of its best features like full access to all supported large language models, require a paid subscription. So for some users, it is not a completely free replacement for other tools that they currently use that are free.
The reason why I bring up Perplexity this week is because they have just unveiled for iOS a voice assistant that they say can rival Siri. Indeed, in some instances, they say it is much smarter than Siri. This is a pain point for Apple at the moment. People have been waiting for more Apple Intelligence features to be rolled out, and there were some pretty ambitious promises made last year at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that haven't quite eventuated yet, and Apple has had to go out and say, "We've had to delay some of these features because we don't think they're ready for prime time yet."
So Perplexity sees a bit of a gap in this market, and what they're doing here is quite interesting. Let's first, though, talk about how you would use this. You can go into the Perplexity app, and you can download Perplexity from the iOS App Store, if you don't have it already. It is pretty easy to sign up to the service and give it a spin for free. You can sign in with any number of typical sign-in methods such as your Apple account, you can sign up with email if you want, Google, et cetera. All fairly standard stuff In terms of getting started.
The app itself is pretty easily navigable, but as I mentioned, there are some settings that are a little ambiguous because you can't tell when things are selected and when they're not, but it is pretty easy to get the voice assistant going by double-tapping the ask a question by voice button, which we'll do in a moment.
If you find yourself using Perplexity's voice assistant frequently enough, you may want to assign it to the action button if you have an iPhone that has such a thing, and a lot of the newer iPhones do. This would make it just as easy to invoke the personal assistant from Perplexity as Siri. With Siri, you would hold down the side button, and with this Perplexity voice assistant, you would hold down the action button.
The way to do that is that when you go into settings and you choose the action button option, you can choose to have the action button execute a shortcut, and then you'll be given a list of shortcuts that are available on your device. If you've installed Perplexity's app, then a shortcut will exist there that lets you launch the voice assistant.
You could also do any number of other things with that shortcut. You could assign it to a keyboard command in VoiceOver settings. You could maybe assign it to the back double-tap of your phone if you want. There are any number of ways to invoke a shortcut. Perplexity also comes with widgets, so if you want to invoke it that way, you can add a widget to one of your home screens, and it will be readily accessible to you.
Let's talk about some of the key features that this voice assistant offers. The first is task management and app integration. So you can ask Perplexity to draft an email message for you, and this is using AI to the max for convenience, so it's a different approach from the one Siri is currently taking. You can ask Siri to write an email for you, but you have to dictate the text of that email. If you're not quite happy with the tone and you want something better, you can then use Apple Intelligence if it's available to you to rewrite the email.
With Perplexity, you're not dictating the email. You're essentially summarizing who it's to, what the subject is, and the gist of what you want it to say, and then Perplexity goes ahead and writes it. It also has reminder and calendar integration if you give the appropriate permission. It can create reminders and schedule events by accessing the Reminders and Calendar apps respectively.
You can do reservations and ride booking as well, so it integrates with services like OpenTable as well as Uber, allowing users to initiate dinner reservations or book rides through voice commands. It also supports media playback so users can request the assistant to play music or podcasts via Apple Music. That's of course provided you have the app installed and you have the appropriate subscription.
Now, what may be significant as well for you if you have an older iPhone, because perhaps upgrading is just not something you can afford to do right now? This voice assistant is available on older iPhone models where Apple Intelligence isn't available, such as the iPhone 13 mini, to pick one, but there are some limitations because of what third-party apps can't do on the iPhone. For example, it can't modify system settings like adjusting your brightness or volume, and Siri can do all those things. Perplexity can't set alarms either.
At the moment, the assistant lacks the ability to access the iPhone's camera for contextual awareness, but I don't think that that's necessarily an Apple limitation, because that sort of thing is available now from ChatGPT and Grok and other things on the iPhone, so it may be that that one will come.
I'm going to give you a quick demonstration of the voice capabilities of Perplexity. There are two modes that you should be aware of. One is the default where once you enable the voice assistant, you can then leave the app and use it anywhere, so it's always listening once you enable it. There is an option called Push-to-talk where you have to hold the button inside the app to make it work.
And that makes it a little less convenient to use, but it's always listening in the mode that I have it. So if I talk to you while I'm doing the demo, it's going to hear and get confused, so if I do need to explain anything, I'm going to insert my explanation after the fact. Good morning.
Speaker 4: Good morning. How can I help you today?
Jonathan Mosen: What do you know about the National Federation of the Blind?
Speaker 4: The National Federation of the Blind is an organization that advocates for the rights of blind individuals. They provide support, resources, and programs to promote independence and equality. Would you like more information about their specific initiatives or services?
Jonathan Mosen: Yes.
Speaker 4: The National Federation of the Blind offers various programs and initiatives including, one, education. They provide resources and support for blind students, including scholarships and mentoring. Two, employment. They work to improve employment opportunities for blind individuals through training and advocacy. Three, accessibility. They advocate for accessible technology and information.
Four, advocacy. They work on policy changes to protect the rights of blind individuals. These programs help promote independence and equality. Would you like more details on any specific area?
Jonathan Mosen: Could you tell me who serves as president of the National Federation of the Blind?
Speaker 4: The current president of the National Federation of the Blind is Mark A. Riccobono. He has been serving in this role since 2014. Would you like to know more about his work or the organization's current initiatives?
Jonathan Mosen: I can talk to him on the podcast about those things. Can you tell me if you know who the executive director for Accessibility Excellence is at the National Federation of the Blind?
Speaker 4: The executive director for Accessibility Excellence at the National Federation of the Blind is Jonathan Mosin. He focuses on promoting accessibility and inclusivity in various fields. Would you like more information on his work or contact details for the podcast?
Jonathan Mosen: No, that's fine. Let's move on. I'm interested in dinner tonight at a good steakhouse. What do you think about Prime Rib in Baltimore?
Speaker 5: Text field.
Speaker 4: I found a great steakhouse for you, The Prime Rib in Baltimore. I've navigated you to the Open Table booking page where you can make a reservation for dinner tonight. Enjoy your meal. Would you like any other assistance?
Jonathan Mosen: Just give me a sec while I browse this page.
Speaker 4: Sure. Take your time. Let me know if you need any more help.
Jonathan Mosen: I'm on the Open Table website now inside the Perplexity app, so I can browse the page and make a reservation. There's also a button here to open the Open Table app if I want to go there. Could you book an Uber to get me there for 6:00 PM tonight?
Speaker 5: Uber back.
Speaker 4: I've booked an Uber for you-
Speaker 5: Button.
Speaker 4: ... to The Prime Rib at 6:00 PM tonight. You should see the ride details in your Uber app. Enjoy your dinner. If there's anything else you need, just let me know.
Speaker 5: Destination: The Prime Rib. Button pickup, National Federation of the Blind, NFB button.
Jonathan Mosen: I don't want to go yet. My reservation isn't until 6:00 PM, so I would need to double-tap the Schedule a Ride in advance button at the bottom of the screen, and then go ahead and schedule the ride for later. But I am in the Uber app, I am on the right screen, and as you can hear, the details have all been filled in.
Send an email to Bonnie Mosen with the subject dinner tonight, telling her that I have booked a table for two at The Prime Rib for 6:00 PM, and that I will see her there after work.
Speaker 4: I've prepared an email to Bonnie Mosen about your dinner plans, and you can find it ready to send in your email app. You can review and send it whenever you're ready. If there's anything else you need, just let me know.
Jonathan Mosen: Can you search YouTube for me?
Speaker 4: Sure. I can search YouTube for you. What are you looking for?
Jonathan Mosen: I'm looking for some videos about the National Federation of the Blind and Waymo self-driving vehicles.
Speaker 4: I found some-
Speaker 6: Logos appear. Waymo. Let's talk autonomous driving and the National Federation of the Blind. Live the life you want. Cars speed down a street as the sun sets on a bustling city.
Speaker 7: We leave our homes every-
Jonathan Mosen: Okay, that was great. Now, I want to hear some music. Are you up for that?
Speaker 4: Sure. I can play some music for you. Is there a specific song or artist you'd like to hear?
Jonathan Mosen: I'd like to hear Come Together by the Beatles.
Speaker 5: Close button. Appear button.
Jonathan Mosen: Okay, that worked well. Can you add an event to my calendar today?
Speaker 4: Sure, I can help with that. Could you let me know the details of the event you'd like to add, such as the title, time, and any notes or location information?
Jonathan Mosen: The title is lunch at 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM, and it is at The 1920 Restaurant.
Speaker 4: I've added the event lunch at the 1920 restaurant to your calendar today from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM. You should see it on your screen now.
Speaker 5: Here, calendar date, lunch, April 29th, 120:00 PM-1:00 PM, The 1920 Restaurant. Open a calendar, but close button.
Jonathan Mosen: This is all pretty impressive. Can you give me some perspective on where you think you are a better option to use than Siri?
Speaker 4: I can certainly help with that. While Siri is great for quick tasks on your Apple device, I'm designed to provide more comprehensive responses and perform a broader range of actions, like searching the web, playing music from various platforms, and even booking reservations. It's more about the type of interaction and the depth of information you're looking for. Does that help clarify?
Jonathan Mosen: It does. So you mentioned searching the web. Let me ask you this. Can you tell me how I would ensure in a Zoom meeting that I am playing audio in stereo?
Speaker 4: To ensure you're playing audio in stereo during a Zoom meeting, you'll need to enable the original sound option. Here's how you can do it. First, open Zoom and go to settings. Next, select audio. Then check the box that says enable original sound from microphone.
Once that's done, when you're in a meeting, you'll see an option to turn on original sound in the upper-left corner. Doing this will allow stereo audio to be transmitted. Keep in mind, both you and your participants need to have this enabled for the best experience.
Jonathan Mosen: All right. That's useful information. Thank you. What do you think you'll be able to do in the future that you can't do now?
Speaker 4: As technology evolves, I could potentially offer even more personalized assistance, like deeper integration with smart home devices, more advanced language understanding, and enhanced capabilities for creative tasks. The goal is to continually improve and adapt to meet users' needs. What future capabilities would you find most helpful?
Jonathan Mosen: I'll tell you that for only twice my normal fee. So you're saying at the moment that you wouldn't be able to adjust my thermostat even if it's HomeKit-enabled or turn on the television? That kind of thing?
Speaker 4: That's correct. At the moment, I can't directly control smart home devices even if they're HomeKit-enabled, but who knows? Maybe in the future, that might be something I could assist with. It's always interesting to hear what features users would find valuable.
Jonathan Mosen: This has been useful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: You're very welcome. If you have any more questions or need assistance, feel free to ask. Have a great day.
Jonathan Mosen: If you'd like to try this for yourself, you can download Perplexity from the iOS App Store.
Speaker 8: Registration is now open for our 2025 National Federation of the Blind National Convention from July 8th to July 13th at New Orleans, Louisiana. Our national convention is the largest gathering of blind people in the world. It is the premier event for training, support, and information for the blind community.
The national convention offers hundreds of sessions, dynamic presentations, and countless opportunities, as well as a chance for members to participate in decision-making in organizational policy. Register today at NFB.org/convention.
Jonathan Mosen: It is always good to get your wide and varied and numerous listener comments for Access On, and let's get into it this week with an email from Jenny Sparks. And she says, "I have been using the Stamps.com application for desktop computers and for iOS for several years. I used the desktop app until about three years ago when it became unusable with any screen reader. For the next couple of years, I could use the iOS app on my iPad with reasonable success."
"However, recently, the app no longer works at all. I tried to use the website, and it is mostly unusable. You can type the address of where you wish to send the material, but the combo boxes that let you choose which mailing service you want are completely inaccessible with a screen reader."
"I tried both NVDA and JAWS. I consider myself a competent JAWS user and can usually figure out how to make a site at least usable if not completely accessible. I am sure I am not the only one who uses sites like this for shipping. If there is any way you could talk to these folks and explain to them how to fix the site, I would be very grateful."
Thanks so much for your email. We'll definitely add this one to the list of companies that we should contact and check into. If anybody else has any feedback on Stamps.com, or for the moment at least alternatives to Stamps.com that might do the job, please let us know. Be in touch. [email protected].
Let's go to Hungary now, and Peter says, "Hi, Jonathan. I jumped on the Access On train from the first episode after you stopped Living Blindfully, and I didn't regret it. I hope your move to the United States went well and the installation is getting near its end for now. My question is, do you or anyone in your audience know about an AI audio dubbing that is accessible more or less with a screen reader?"
"I've tried quite a bit recently, but without real success. I was experimenting with Veed.io. That's V-E-E-D.io. Also Maestra, M-A-E-S-T-R-A, Speechify, ElevenLabs, and Kapwing audio dubbing. The latter worked at a very basic level producing a very bad quality translation with all numbers pronounced in a Slavic language, perhaps Czech, and the user interface was terrible with JAWS. For myself, I don't mind listening to content in English, but most of the Hungarian blind community seem to lack the language skills required for that, so I am searching for something that would dub an English-speaking video or audio file to Hungarian."
"In this procedure, the original voices are cloned, the content is translated and made pronounced by the cloned voice. If I remember well from one of your old Mosen at Large episodes, Apple Podcast has this feature at least between some languages. I couldn't find a solution though to make English material available in Hungarian. Thanks in advance for any advice from your audience, and once again, congratulations for your new job and the new podcast." Thank you very much, Peter from Budapest.
Even though they have branched into all sorts of areas since they were originally founded, this is exactly what ElevenLabs was founded to do, Peter. And I don't know. You didn't specifically mention what you found was a shortcoming of ElevenLabs that has caused you to discard it, but that would've been the one that I was going to suggest.
So if anybody else has any suggestions, or you want to comment further on what it is about ElevenLabs that doesn't cut the mustard, as we say, for you, do be in touch, and we'll see if anybody has any thoughts on which of these tools might do the job for you. So what we're wanting is to take English audio and then make it available in Hungarian voiced by the original voice, and there is certainly a lot of technology like that around these days.
Apple is automatically transcribing podcasts, but I don't think they're doing translation. I may be wrong about that, but that's not a feature that I'm personally familiar with. So let's outsource this one, Peter. Hopefully somebody has some suggestions.
Let's go to Shiva, who is in Pretoria in South Africa, and this email says, "Hi, Jonathan. What a delightful, interesting, and really excellent presentation on creating PowerPoint presentations using a screen reader. Although I have been creating PowerPoint presentations for several years, there are so many useful tips that I will now incorporate when I create PowerPoint presentations."
"The sequence of the information presented, the pace at which it was presented, and your excellent knowledge of PowerPoint presentations all combined to provide blind users with excellent skills to create presentations with confidence and professionalism. Thank you once again for an excellent presentation. If you have time in your future Access On podcasts, would you please consider doing a brief spot on sharing PowerPoint presentations on Teams or Zoom?"
Thank you very much, Shiva, for the very positive feedback. It's much appreciated, and yes, your wish is our command. We've actually done this on the webinar where we went into great depth on Zoom and Teams and Webex and Google Meet, and there is a pretty unique feature relating to sharing PowerPoint presentations accessibly in Microsoft's Teams. So in a future episode of Access On, very soon, in fact, we will go through running that.
It is also timely for us to mention Scribe for Meetings at this point because Scribe for Meetings from Pneuma Solutions is a platform-agnostic way of sharing PowerPoint presentations. So if you're on a Zoom call or a Google Meet call, and you don't have access to this accessible PowerPoint presentation sharing system in Teams, which is pretty cool and a very good feature of Microsoft Teams, you might want to check out Scribe for Meetings from Pneuma Solutions because the slides can be circulated via a URL, and they are kept in sync when you run the PowerPoint presentation. It really is a very good accessible tool that they have put together.
And from Scribe for Meetings, let's talk about Scribe for documents. Debbie Gillespie is writing in, and she says, "Hi, Jonathan. I totally agree with your position regarding the accessibility of a manual. If the play and rewind and fast-forward or any other graphic is not properly labeled, it doesn't matter what is shown in the remediation. Ultimately, it still doesn't tell me what that graphics function is and does, making that manual inaccessible."
"Mike was looking at this from an overall perspective and I understand that, but ultimately, yes. You can read about the installation, what the features are, and so on, but if you are unable to determine what each graphic represents and use that graphic as a training tool to teach yourself a product, then that manual doesn't work."
And now we go to Sacramento in California, and we hear from Peggy Kern who says, "Hi Jonathan and listeners. I recently moved from my Windows 10 desktop computer to a Windows 11 laptop, since Windows 10 is going bye-bye, and I wanted to get a new machine before the tariffs hit."
"I love my new laptop, but there is one thing I want to fix. I like to play music through my computer while working out. With my old Windows 10 desktop, I just use the big, connected speaker, and if the volume was too soft, I used the knob to turn it up. The speaker on the laptop being smaller, doesn't always give a high enough volume level for some of my MP3 files, even with one amp turned up all the way."
"So I thought I'd get a Bluetooth speaker and found one that had comments from users about its volume and base. The only problem is that when I pair it and the power is on, the speaker won't play, and the computer speaker is disabled, so I can't do any tweaking. I'd like to have a plug-and-play situation where I could use the computer speakers most of the time and just switch to louder speakers when I want to work out. Would USB speakers do that? Is there something I might be missing on this Bluetooth speaker which I am ready to send back? Any thoughts would be appreciated."
Peggy, unless this is some sort of proprietary Bluetooth speaker that's doing something a bit unusual, if you've got a Bluetooth-capable laptop, I would've thought that it would be using a standard Bluetooth protocol like 4.2 or 5.1 or any number of other Bluetooth variants, and in theory, it should just work. And presumably, there is a volume on the speaker itself, and you should be able to crank that up and down and have it work.
What you might want to do is go into the Windows volume control, I like the old Windows volume control myself, and you can get that by pushing Windows with R and typing MMSYS.CPL. The good old classic Windows volume, that's the one I like. MMSYS.CPL, go in there, and see if the speaker is visible. You might need a Braille display or somebody who can see the screen if when the Bluetooth speaker is connected, you're losing all speech.
But I think you're a JAWS user, so what you might also want to do is force JAWS to use your computer's onboard sound and not have it simply go with whatever the default window sound card is, because at least then, you would be able to keep speech going while you're trying to troubleshoot this problem. If you go to the utilities menu and then choose sound devices, you should be able to force JAWS to always use the laptop speakers and not any other device that's connected.
The first thing to ascertain when you go into that audio applet is to see whether the device is showing up at all. It sounds like it is because you're losing your speech, so that would suggest that it's recognizing a sound device. And it might just be that the mute checkbox is checked, or there's a volume control that's got turned down all the way to zero or something like that in that MMSYS.CPL applet, and you might just be able to fix it that way.
Alternatively, you might want to go and change the sampling rate. If the sampling rate is set very high, you might want go into advance and set the sampling rate down to, say, 44 kHz 16-bit stereo, because it could be some sort of compatibility issue with a screen reader that's causing it to play up.
Now, there might be some audio purists who would be angry at me for suggesting you do that, but I mean, really, for the purposes that you want to put the speaker to, going down to 44 kHz, 16-bit stereo is not going to kill the experience for you. And at the moment, you don't have an experience anyway, so I'd give it a try.
And the final thing I would check is whether the checkbox is checked for exclusive mode, which you will probably find in the advanced settings of the playback properties for your device under MMSYS.CPL. So you find the device, you go to properties, you'll find all these things in there. If the exclusive mode is checked, uncheck that, and I'm hoping that the combination of changing the sampling rate and then turning the exclusive mode off may do the job for you.
There are a few things there that I would try, but it may well be that going with the USB-powered speaker option is easier, and that's certainly an option. There are lots of USB-powered speakers out there, so I hope that helps and that you can get this resolved.
Nikoslav is writing in, and says, "Hello, Jonathan. Congratulations on your new role as host of the Access On podcast. Although I am not based in the United States nor a member of the ANFB, I've been following you and the new show with great interest." Well, thank you.
"I wanted to share my experience regarding a listener's question about the inability to select playback speeds other than normal in YouTube. A while back, I enrolled in YouTube's beta feature that allowed changing playback speed up to 4X. Once the beta period ended, I noticed that only the normal speed option remained."
"At first, I assumed this was simply a result of the test concluding. Struggling with that annoyance for a while, I decided to uninstall the YouTube app and then reinstall it. After doing so, I was once again able to access the full range of speed settings and accelerate playback as desired. I hope this helps clarify what might be happening for other listeners. Wishing you many years of success with Access On and continued health and wellbeing." Thank you very much, Nikoslav, and I hope that helps. Let's find out from others whether that does the trick for them.
And we're going to Ireland for this next contribution. Flor Lynch is listening, and he says, "A workaround that works for the issue where the speed sliders don't work as they did before in the YouTube iOS app, at least for the moment, is to firstly load screen recognition and accessibility voiceover by locating it and then double-tapping it. That done, screen recognition will appear as an additional option in the rotor."
"Then in the YouTube iOS app, when you come to the playback speed 1X button, locate screen recognition in your rotor, where it's an on-off toggle, turn it on. Now, when screen recognition is on, there are additional features available, including the former speed slider, and additional add plus and minus buttons to fine-tune the speed up-and-down slider by 0.05 or 5.0. It works."
"There's a lot more information here that becomes available when screen recognition is turned on. I would therefore suggest that screen recognition be used judiciously here so as to avoid unwanted verbiage and unneeded complexity. I also alerted Apple accessibility to this issue when I discovered it a few weeks ago. They have verified it and are in contact with me. They have alerted the Apple team who are in contact with YouTube developers." Thanks very much, Flor, and it certainly doesn't hurt either to let YouTube Accessibility know that this is having a high impact on our community.
Anexis: Hi, everybody. So I am messaging in to respond to the listener that mentioned the playback speed essentially being broken on the YouTube app. That is correct. Last I checked, they have not fixed it, but I think I checked maybe a week or two ago, so I have not checked extremely recently. And that also affected me as well because I generally listen to my videos at two times speed. It is very slow to listen to at normal speed. Also, after listening to podcasts for a very long time in two times speed, I just can't get used to normal speed anymore.
I have found a workaround as an alternative, and it also has a really interesting plus to it. So what I decided to try, because I was getting very tired of listening to normal speed for a week, I decided to download the Google Chrome app on my iPhone. I also did it on my iPad, but I wanted to try it on my iPhone first.
And I decided to see if the player works there still, and it does. When you play a video on YouTube, I usually use the Watch Later playlist for this, but I'm assuming that it works if you just choose to search for a video and play it that way. But essentially, when you play a video on the YouTube website that show more player controls, go to playback settings. There, you should find the playback speed, and when you click on that, you should be able to find a two times speed, and it works perfectly fine. And as a plus, at least in my experience on the iOS app, you don't get as many ads, so you actually run through more of your videos.
Jonathan Mosen: That is Anexis with that tip. Thank you so much for sending it in.
And Daniel Garcia is responding to Noelle's email. Daniel says, "In response to the listener who wanted a talking thermostat, the VIP3000," hmm. Sounds like a thing from Harry Potter, like the Nimbus 1000.
No. This is the VIP3000, which you can find apparently at BlindMiceMegamall.com, is still available. Daniel says, "I have one of these in my home, and I'm very happy with it. Worth the price tag," says Daniel. Thank you for the recommendation, Daniel. Much appreciated.
Steve Bauer: Jonathan, it's Steve Bauer with a response to the question about talking thermostats. For, well, I don't know, probably the last 25 years or so, I have used in my house is the VIP3000 talking thermostat. It works on conventional and heat pump systems, and it was specifically designed for blind and visually impaired users. It offers audio playback of time, date, indoor temperature, temperature settings, and it gives audio programming instructions.
Speaker 11: Indoor temperature is 71 degrees.
Steve Bauer: It was actually created by a company called SmartWay Solutions. They're in New Orleans, Louisiana. The thermostat comes with a free lifetime warranty. I purchased mine from One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning. I think they're in Pennsylvania. Their phone number: 724-225-1644. It's 724-225-1644.
Now, this is not a smart thermostat. It's all contained within itself. It runs on four AA batteries, and does a fantastic job, and it is indeed 100% accessible.
Jonathan Mosen: There you go. Thank you very much, Steve. Good to hear the thermostat in action. Let's hear from Jennifer Wenzel now who says, "Hi, Jonathan. I listened to your latest podcast episode today, and as always, found the information you provide extremely valuable. I also enjoyed listening to your perspectives on AI and technology."
"I would like to add to the answer you provided the listener who asked about accessing information from slide presentations. If the person is using JAWS, they can access information using the Picture Smart feature. I've used this myself with a great deal of success. Information from slides being shared is provided in a results window, which can easily be navigated. You can enable the feature by executing the layer command, insert or caps lock with space, and then P for picture smart. Pressing enter here may bring up the content, but sometimes, using W for Window gives better results."
I love to read this information with my [inaudible 00:57:50] connected to the computer, but splitting sound and reading with JAWS speech also works well. As slides are advanced, you need to continue to ask Picture Smart to capture the content, so it is not as good as having the content ahead of time, but can be useful in the moment.
Thank you very much, Jennifer. Picture Smart is a very useful tool in a range of contexts, including that one. There was a lot of debate a couple of years ago. It seems to have died right down now about whether blind people want descriptions of people at the beginning of meetings. Some blind people found it helpful and interesting, others found it irrelevant and time-consuming and time-wasting, and others found it a bit othering if they were the only blind person on the call and people were going around giving these descriptions.
Well, if you're on a Zoom or Teams call or some other online meeting, you've got the choice now because you can use something like Picture Smart to get those descriptions yourself of who is on the screen, and some people do use Picture Smart for that as well. So that's a very good tech tip, Jennifer, about Picture Smart to end the podcast with for this week.
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 on Mastodon. AccessOn@ NFB.social. 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.