Welcome to the thirtieth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
- Introduction 0:00
- Register for our Technology Advocacy Boutique 1:00
- Plenty of technology-related sessions at national convention 2:05
- Highlights of our Autonomous Vehicles Boutique 8:31
- Third party tools and Facebook 34:48
- Accessibility regression with the Samsung Smart Things app 41:21
- 1Password, the WeWalk app, and setting up an HP printer when blind 42:19
- Problems with JAWS and Thunderbird, and trying to find the ultimate Windows email client 47:44
- Apple Watch and hearing aids 52:46
- Apple WWDC feedback 55:15
- Tech tip: optimizing laptop function keys for screen reader use 57:12
- Closing and contact info 58:54
Transcripts
Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
Speaker 2:
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. The promise of autonomous vehicles and the advocacy still required to make them available more widely. With our national convention less than a month away, we look at some technology-related events you can attend.
More on using the Facebook website and some technical challenges when using third-party workarounds. And in our tech tip, if you're buying a new laptop, how do you make the function keys work the way you want?
It's Jonathan Mosen proudly coming to you from the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. And another little milestone for Access On, this is episode 30. Thanks so much for helping us to get there. It's wonderful to see more and more listeners every week.
And before we go onto the main part of the show, let me give you a preview about the next accessibility boutique. Whether in school, the workplace, or everyday life, we often encounter products or services which are not accessible. While lawsuits get most of the attention, many products and services are made accessible through the efforts of their users, so we're going to be doing an Advocating for Accessibility Boutique on June the 24th.
And some of the things that we'll be covering there include what information you need and how to gather it, getting through to the right department or person at a company, how to compile a Detailed Issue Report, what you can try when a company doesn't respond. We'll look at the National Federation of the Blind's Inaccessibility Tracker form where you can share your experiences.
Why not do it now while it's fresh in your mind? Register for the Advocating for Accessibility Boutique. To find out more, you can go to nfb.org/cena. That's nfb.org/cena. And if you choose the Events and Training link there, you'll be able to register.
In case you haven't stumbled upon it yet, I also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that the agenda for the National Federation of the Blind's Convention being held in New Orleans next month is out now.
And if you are interested in technology, whether you consider yourself an expert or a novice, there is plenty for you to find on the agenda. Please head over to nfb.org/convention, that's nfb.org/convention, and start thinking about all the things that you can attend.
But I did want to draw your attention to a few things that are coming from us at the Center of Excellence in Non-Visual Accessibility at the National Federation of the Blind. We are going to be up bright and early and bushy-tailed and raring to go on Tuesday, July 8th at 8:00 in the morning. And we're going to be doing, Comparing Apples and Androids. That's brave of us, isn't it? It's happening in Gallery Three.
Do you own a smartphone? Have you wondered whether the grass might be greener on the other side? Join the CENA team as they compare the experience of using an iPhone running voiceover and an Android device running talkback. We also, at 10:00 that same day, July the 8th, have a presentation called What's New with AI.
If you stay in the same place, you'll be able to just enjoy that one as well. AI services are constantly improving, bringing new features and exciting improvements for the blind community. We'll discuss the latest features in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude, including how to generate tactile graphics and create text descriptions of YouTube videos.
And then from 2:00 until 4:00 that same day, July the 8th, it's the Accessible Device Showcase in the same place, Gallery Three, join the NFB's Center of Excellence and Non-Visual Accessibility as we showcase new and exciting access technology. This will be a great opportunity to get your hands on new Braille displays, tactile graphics, smartphones, and other access technology.
It's like a little bit of the International Braille and Technology Center coming to the convention. And we're looking forward to that. And this is interactive. You'll be able to get your hands on this technology.
On July the 9th from 6:00 until 7:30 PM, I'm really looking forward to this one and I hope to see you there. It's called Access On Live. And appropriately enough, the room that it's happening in is Studio Seven.
It says here, "Join Jonathan Mosen," so I guess I should be there for this one, "and an expert panel for a live edition of the NFB's Access On technology podcast. Bring your tech questions, comments, and opinions. This is going to be fun. I hope you'll join us since you're listening to Access On. And we'll record a live episode.
I know I'm dating myself, but I remember those old particularly American shows, comedies, that sort of thing. And they used to use these canned laugh tracks. Someone would push a button when they thought it was appropriate to have a bit of laughter in there. And there was a little bit of pushback about this, so they got live audiences in.
And sometimes you'd hear at the end of a show, I remember this in the '70s, maybe early '80s, and the announcer would come on and say, "Such and such a show is recorded on tape before a studio audience."
Maybe I need an outro that says that on the day. But that's Access On Live July 9th at 6:00 in the evening. And there's a plethora, plethora, I tell you, of fascinating sessions relating to tech, so do check out the agenda. And there are also some tech specific items on the general session.
Now, if you are unable to attend the national convention in person, you can register for the virtual experience and you can attend the convention virtually where the general sessions and some other meetings are concerned via Zoom, or you can also watch it on the NFB's YouTube channel.
In the Presidential Report, President Riccobono will undoubtedly talk about some of our advocacy efforts and other initiatives in the technology space.
And right after that, we have a piece called Access On Through Collective Action: Mobilizing Leadership through Blind-Centered Technology Perspectives. And I will be presenting that in my role as executive director for Accessibility Excellence here at the National Federation of the Blind. And then Accessibility, AI and Community Engagement: A Growing Relationship Between Meta and the Organized Blind Movement. This is going to be presented by Maxine Williams.
She's vice president, head of Accessibility and Engagement for Meta. And following that, Copiloting Accessibility in Partnership With the Blind: Reflections on the Past Decade and the Future at Microsoft. We'll hear from Jenny Lay-Flurrie who is vice president, chief accessibility officer at Microsoft.
On Sunday, July the 13th, the final day of the convention, you will be able to hear general session Blind-Centered Innovation through JAWS for Windows: Celebrating 30 Years of Commitment to Leadership Into the Future. And that's going to be presented by Ryan Jones, who is vice president of Software Product Management at Vispero. And he's also going to be joined by Glen Gordon, software fellow at Vispero.
And right after that presentation on July 13th, you can hear Accessible Independent Checkout: Blind-Centered Leadership Makes All the Difference. It's presented by Jake Konerza who is director of Digital Accessibility at Target. This is a topic that's come up here on Access On because there are concerns that not all shopping experiences are as accessible as technology now allows them to be. And we mentioned there that we have been doing some work with Target on this, so I'm sure you'll find that presentation of interest.
You may remember that sometime ago on Access On, we spoke with Brandon Biggs. He's also on the general session agenda. He's going to be talking about the Quest for Equal Access, Innovating Blind-Centered Maps and Diagrams. Brandon is chief executive officer of XR Navigation.
To find out more about the National Federation of the Blind's National Convention, you can head over to nfb.org/convention. That's nfb.org/convention. And don't forget that if you would like to register for the virtual experience, it is some way for you to be a part of the fellowship and the learning that comes with these national conventions. It's a wonderful experience.
There is a lot of interest in autonomous vehicles. Many of us dream of not having to deal with rideshare refusals and all of the hassles and just being able to go into a vehicle and have it drive us somewhere.
And recently, the Center of Excellence and Non-Visual Accessibility conducted a boutique on this subject. And we're going to play you some highlights as we look at the latest developments in autonomous vehicles.
You may recall the excitement when Mark Riccobono drove a vehicle at the Daytona Speedway that was fully accessible to blind people. And Anil Lewis, who's our executive director of Blindness Initiatives, picks up the story in conversation with Karl Belanger.
Anil Lewis:
I think it's important to state that it was interesting hearing Kevin say within the next decade we thought that we were going to be working developing partnerships with individuals to really refine the interfaces that allowed a blind person to drive a car, but we ended up developing partnerships with the autonomous vehicle industry that allowed us to get feedback from a lived experience perspective of blind people to make sure that as this technology was being developed, that it would be accessible to the blind individuals.
I'm really proud of the fact that through that public demonstration, although our initial goal was not the one that we eventually achieved, gave us prestige and status within the industry forward. Then it was the Google car right; now it's Waymo. Actually came to us for our advice on how to really develop the technology in a way that made sure that blind people would also be able to access the vehicle. Our CENA staff have been active in those discussions with the various manufacturers.
And I think that the blind driver challenge gave us a unique perspective because a lot of people thought that that was just an autonomous undertaking, that the car was doing all the driving. And I rest assured, as one of the individuals who was slated to do that if President Riccobono was not able to, it really wasn't.
It really was us getting information from the GPS, the LiDAR, all the other computer systems that would allow us to make decisions on where to turn, when to turn, how fast to go, how slow to go. And that gave us insight with respect to all of the data that's out there that's available for these algorithms that the autonomous vehicles use to drive safely in their environment.
The same information we were getting was only a small percentage, of course, of what the computers can process, gave us that information to navigate around Daytona. We've been really impressed with the ability for that technology to provide autonomous vehicles the ability to transport us from place to place.
It might be helpful to give the attendees a little bit of perspective of the discussions and input that we provided to these manufacturers because they came to us with some pretty interesting ideas. I guess the best way to frame it is we were looking at helping them create a door-to-door experience, and evaluating that a lot of them were overly concerned about how do they get the blind person from their front door to the vehicle?
And they were trying to find all these various technological methodologies to make that possible. Luckily, we were able to explain that blind people are able to navigate independently through their environment.
Putting a lot of time, energy, and resources in doing that as opposed to putting the time and energy and making sure the vehicle itself is safe and the interface used by the blind person to control the vehicle is accessible, we redirected them in that way. Maybe you want to share some of the things they were asking like, "How does a blind person find a vehicle?"
Karl Belanger:
Yeah, they had a lot of questions. They didn't really understand how a blind person would use their environmental cues to navigate or interact with their surroundings. They would know the building they just came from, whether it be their house or a building they had gone into previously; they'll at least have a general idea.
And we talked to the vehicle manufacturers and companies really about how the main thing that was needed was just an audible alert for when the vehicle arrives so that the blind person can locate exactly which vehicle it is, especially if it's a busier area where there might be multiple vehicles, say, having a button to trigger the horn or some sort of sound effect from the vehicle so that a blind person can hear and orient to it was really the main thing that was needed for getting to the vehicle.
Anil Lewis:
And we had some pretty interesting discussions. Some of the things we also suggested was the hot potato, cold potato piece, how you could use primarily the phones because that's what we thought would be the real interface because it's just like using a rideshare app. But that phone would tell you when you're getting closer to the vehicle with maybe a higher vibration or moving it away from the vehicle; more you're getting closer, not getting closer.
I don't think anyone really adopted that particular intervention, but some of the things we also talked about was many of you who do the rideshare know that the drivers say, "I'm in the red car," so that wasn't going to be helpful. "I have my headlights on," and that's not going to be helpful.
But as Karl said, having the horn guide you to that space. I'm pleased to see that Waymo actually gives the user the control to actually blow the horn as you get close so you can direct yourself.
One of the interesting pieces that I really liked also about the technology is as you approach the vehicle, identified your car, you are the only one that can actually unlock the doors. Because one of the things we were talking about is as a blind person, if you're hitting that horn, you may be letting other people in your environment know; you may be putting yourself in some type of risk or whatever.
If someone's able to access that vehicle, you could put yourself in some type of danger or jeopardy. But you are the one that unlocks the vehicle with the touch of the keystrokes. I had the opportunity to actually ride in a Waymo vehicle [inaudible 00:14:16]. I think we'll show that video as well.
But we talked about form factor. We gave them suggestions on tactile ways that they can represent things. And it was really an interesting discussion because many of them were also working on cross-disability accessibility, so trying to find ways of merging our recommendations into strategies that they would be using to help other people with other disabilities interact.
We are still actively providing this type of feedback. If you're actually interested in being a part of that collaboration with some of the car companies we've been working with, please reach out to us and let us know.
And then I'll also tell you Waymo itself is actively providing rides in I think San Francisco, Austin, I think maybe Phoenix. I know they're coming here to Atlanta, so I'm excited about that. And the experience is really, if you've caught Uber or Lyft, it's very similar.
You order the ride through the app, you put in your destination. As I said, you can find the vehicle. It'll give you walking directions to the vehicle on the app. It allows you to blow the horn to navigate through sound. You unlock the vehicle, you climb in, you put on your safety belt.
And just to give you a sense of it, it's still a traditional car; has the backseat and a driver's seat and a passenger seat up front. Now they are allowing individuals to pick up the full backseat and the passenger seat.
You're still not allowed to ride behind the steering wheel because there's still actual steering wheel. And maybe Jesse will talk about some of the policies that we have to address in order to get that particular thing to shift.
But my experience when I got in the car was really surreal. You hit a ride in the app and the car, it's give you audio feedback as well, but then it takes off. And if you can see, you actually see the steering wheel still making the appropriate turns as you go through.
That first four or five minutes of the trip, it really was like, wow. But after that, you settle in and it's just like another ride. The ride is really just that smooth.
There's always room for improvement. I'm very pleased with what I've seen and been able to participate. I'm hopefully going to be traveling to San Francisco again, and hopefully I'll get a chance to take a ride in an autonomous vehicle and view any of those cities and the growing cities that are coming. I encourage you to do it as well.
Karl Belanger:
Another thing the vehicle manufacturers were asking us about is getting to the vehicle, getting in it, but then during the ride we talked about the importance of having audible controls for whatever in-vehicle controls there may be. Controlling things through an app is one piece, but then if there's in-car AC or dashboard controls, making sure that those are done in an accessible manner as well.
Anil Lewis:
So that people can control the music as well. I think that Waymo is doing that. Just having independent ability to do everything a sighted person would do in that car.
Karl Belanger:
Right. And at all phases of the drive, making sure a blind person knows exactly where we are, exactly what's going on, and has full control over the experience as any other individual would.
Anil Lewis:
Just like anything else we do, we get to the point where we have that ability, but it really doesn't serve us until we make sure that, again, the policies that are put in place, support that I talked about, the steering wheel, that's required by law. Many things are still required by law that inhibits the perpetual innovation.
We talked to them about with the autonomous vehicle, maybe we can change the seat configuration totally; maybe have individuals facing each other in the vehicle. And some of them are looking and exploring those types of things as well.
Karl Belanger:
As Anil mentioned, there are a number of a ton of advocacy work we're doing in Maryland and other states around the country as well as nationally; everything from various requirements to getting these deployed in more cities.
And one of the people on the forefront of this who's been heavily involved in autonomous vehicles advocacy for the National Federation of the Blind is a member of our Advocacy and Policy Team, Jesse Shirek. Welcome.
Jesse Shirek:
Hey, thank you Karl. Really a pleasure to be with you and Anil here today and pleasure to talk to everybody about autonomous vehicles. I grew up in a really rural part of the world. I grew up in Grafton, North Dakota, which is in the upper northeast corner of North Dakota. I was a good 40 miles from the nearest Target or supermarket, a major supermarket, major shopping mall.
And essentially as a little kid, I thought I was able to do everything, but as soon as one of my friends would hear that I was blind, they would get the pity in their voice, and they'd say, "You'll never be able to drive."
Transportation is such a critical aspect of how we live in the world and how we interact with the world, so getting into the advocacy and policy space was really exciting for me. Really early on when I started working for the National Federation of the Blind, my supervisor and the executive director of the Advocacy and Policy department, John Paré was holding a department meeting.
And he said to us at the time, this was 2020, "There's this new thing in the Phoenix area. It's called Waymo. A person can take a ride all by themselves with no driver in the car." And he said, "I called the local chapter president and encouraged her to take a Waymo ride." And she said, "Well, you're crazy. I'm not taking an autonomous vehicle ride. Why don't you do it?" John said, "Well, I'm in Baltimore, you are in Phoenix.
I really think this is a great opportunity." And he said, "She's going to do it. She's going to report back to us the next week." The following week she reported back that it was a phenomenal experience, that it was incredible to be in a vehicle without a human driver. And so that really inspired me.
Shortly before I got into the advocacy and policy space with the National Federation of the Blind, I was working in a different role. I came out of NFB leadership. I used to be an affiliate president. And so I was driving to Washington Seminar with John, and I was going to be doing some mentoring at Washington Seminar where we advocate on the Hill. And John was telling me about Senator Thune.
Senator Thune is a senior senator from South Dakota. He's also a very big autonomous vehicles proponent. At the time, there was a federal framework to make autonomous vehicles permitted in different areas around the country. And one of the major elements to this framework was to include a driver's licensing provision. One of the that we've been concerned about it as blind people is what if they make autonomous vehicles available, but then they require a driver's license, an operator's license to ride in an autonomous vehicle?
From the very beginning of our advocacy work in this space, we've been fighting against the requirement to have a licensed driver or to have a driver's license that depends on eyesight in order to operate an autonomous vehicle. Making this connection for me with Senator Thune was really eye-opening coming from the Dakotas.
I started working in this space, and shortly after I was getting ready to travel to our national convention. We have several major partners in the autonomous vehicles space, including Waymo, including the Autonomous Vehicles Industry Association, including PAVE, which is a coalition that deals more with education in the autonomous vehicle space. And one of my points of contact, Stefania, reached out to me from Waymo, and said, "Jesse, we're really concerned.
On July 13th, there's going to be a hearing in San Francisco, and this hearing is going to create a permit that would allow for commercial autonomous vehicle service in the city of San Francisco." At the time, this is during our national convention, so it's right prior to the 4th of July. And she said, "We're about to hit the 4th of July holiday. I'm not going to be able to get anybody at this hearing."
And so I was at National Convention, and I took that and ran with it. Connected with our California affiliate president, Tim Elder, and spoke with their caucus in California to get members of the National Federation of the Blind to advocate with the California Public Utilities Commission. And that actually passed. It became legal to operate commercial service in San Francisco in addition to Phoenix.
And then it expanded to Los Angeles. And as Anil said, it's moving on across the country. But one of the things that was really interesting about this was that if the National Federation of the Blind didn't have grassroots advocacy in place, we wouldn't have been able to it so quickly in order to help our partners and ensure that our rights are protected and that we will have access to autonomous vehicles across the country.
Shortly after that, president Riccobono was invited to testify in front of the Data and Information and Commerce Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He was one of four individuals.
There was an academic, there was Jeff Farrah from the Autonomous Vehicles Industry Association, and a person from the Auto Innovators provided testimony, so these four individuals... And we were at the table, and President Riccobono was clearly able to emphasize the need to make sure that we wouldn't be bought from the technology by having requirements for a driver's license permit, but he also brought about some of our other federal initiatives, which, as Anil alluded to, purpose-built autonomous vehicles.
In order for there to be purpose-built autonomous vehicles, we need what are called federal exemptions. Currently, a steering wheel is required in an automobile, a rear view mirror is required in an automobile, side mirrors are required in autonomous vehicles.
And some of the autonomous vehicle companies have decided to try to phase these things out, but they need exemptions in order to do that, so one of the things that we have advocated for was increased numbers of exemptions, but especially increased numbers of exemptions if they focus on accessibility at the core of the design process. We really, from a federal level, are pounding on Washington's door to make sure that autonomous vehicles exist publicly, but also that they will be accessible to all blind and disabled people.
Shortly after, this occurred in 2024, a bill was introduced by representative Greg Stanton from Arizona and the lead co-sponsor from Florida, Representative Brian Mast. They brought forth a bill called the Autonomous Vehicles Accessibility Act which would codify into law that a blind person could not be discriminated against for not having a driver's license, but also to come up with an infrastructure study that would study how autonomous vehicles would interact in the physical environment in a city, in a place like Baltimore or in a place like San Francisco where you have very unique elements to the environment. And it would study best practices for autonomous vehicles and accessibility.
Moving on to state legislation, we thought it would be a great idea to have autonomous vehicles in Maryland, so we, we as in the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, our local affiliate, passed a resolution at our state convention in 2023 encouraging the Maryland General Assembly to adopt a state infrastructure so that we could bring autonomous vehicles to Maryland That passed unanimously.
After that passed, we were in the process of bringing a statewide bill. Before we had an opportunity to have a state bill introduced to create an autonomous vehicles framework in Maryland, a local delegate, Delegate Jazz Lewis brought a bill that said that there'd be a person with an operator's license required in the cabin of all autonomous vehicles, whether they're light duty rideshares, whether they're delivery vehicles, or whether they're heavy duty trucks.
And of course, this was the nightmare that we've all been trying to avoid in the National Federation of the Blind. And it demonstrates the need for the passage of a federal bill that would ban discrimination on the basis of licensing. I testified along with our partners at Avia and a number of other community stakeholders against this bill.
The Teamsters Union testified in favor of it. A couple of notable items, you might be wondering why people would want to require a licensed driver, but there are some people out there that don't believe that these vehicles are ready for prime time, even though they're already operating commercially and several cities.
They question the liability aspects of it. Who would be responsible if there was to be a lawsuit? Somebody was injured in an accident; there's no human driver that can be sued or that would be responsible. That's another piece and another reason why we need a strong federal framework.
And the third component is I think the loss of jobs. People are concerned about losing their jobs as commercial drivers, which is understandable, but we also have to look at how many jobs would be created by the perforation of autonomous vehicles? If you're looking at a significant percentage of the population blind or low vision, then you're looking at increased transportation opportunities and more jobs for many individuals.
Another piece of legislation I'd like to address, in Kentucky they tried passing an AV framework in 2023 and it passed through their House and through their Senate but was vetoed by the governor, so the following year after it failed in Kentucky, we got wind that this had happened, and again with our partners in the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association and Waymo and PAVE, we advocated for the passage of this framework in Kentucky. And it was vetoed by the governor, but in 2024, the Senate had enough votes to override the veto, so it actually passed.
In Maryland, we did get a bill introduced in both the House and Senate to create a general framework for autonomous vehicles. This didn't pass in 2025. I did testify along with members from our Maryland affiliate, our partners. It didn't pass just because I think the idea is a little too new. But we believe if we bring this bill back next year that we will get this passed.
And one of the reasons that we think it's so vitally important to get an autonomous vehicle framework passed in Maryland is because the National Federation of the Blind headquarters is here in Maryland. And our CENA staff, Jonathan Kennedy and Karl are all here in Maryland, and we want them to have every opportunity to test the autonomous vehicles that are coming onto the market to ensure that they are accessible and to be able to recommend the best practices for accessibility.
I want to mention that I had an opportunity when I was in Phoenix in December, we were celebrating Congressman Stanton for introducing the AV Accessibility Act, and I took the opportunity to take a ride in a Waymo.
And for me growing up as a blind person, I've never been in a moving car alone. When I ordered the car, it was just like ordering an Uber or a Lyft. I walked up to the car, like Anil said, pushed the button to unlock the car, opened the handle, put my suitcase in the car, and stepped in. And I sat there for a minute before I buckled my seatbelt just soaking in the moment. As the car started, I made a phone call to my wife just to say, "Hey, you're not going to believe this.
I'm in an autonomous vehicle and I'm having the first private conversation I've ever had in a vehicle with you in this moment." And it really illustrated how much more efficient a blind person could be working when you don't have a rideshare driver maybe asking you questions about your blindness, maybe being much more the opportunities for independence.
My wife has worked guide dogs for 30 years and we've dealt with discrimination after discrimination with rideshare drivers, and one of the nice things about these autonomous vehicles is there's no driver in the vehicle to discriminate against a person who's using a service dog or any other characteristic that they might discriminate against.
I think this technology is incredible. It's here now and it's quickly moving across the country. And we'll just encourage you to keep an open mind. And if we do call on you and ask you to help advocate, we hope you'll step forward and help in the advocacy efforts.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's Jesse Shirek from the National Federation of the Blind's Advocacy and Policy Team giving us a bit of a background on autonomous vehicles. We also heard Anil Lewis, who is executive director of Blindness Initiatives here at the National Federation of the Blind, and Karl Belanger, who's a non-visual accessibility specialist on the CENA team at the National Federation of the Blind.
And we would be interested in hearing about your experiences with autonomous vehicles if you've had one. Have you been in an autonomous vehicle? What was it like? Did you find it easy to locate the vehicle when it turned up? What about getting to the other side and the experience while you were in the vehicle?
And I think it probably evokes quite an emotional response for many blind people who take that autonomous vehicle ride for the first time, so be sure to tell us about that too. Drop us an email here, accesson, that's all joined together, @nfb.org, [email protected]. If you'd like, you can use an app like the voice memos app on your smartphone to record something or if you have something nice and fancy set up on your PC or your Mac, you can do it that way as well.
You can also just write the email down. And I will read it out, [email protected] to be in touch on this subject or any technology-related subject that you think might be of interest to Access On listeners.
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Oh, do you want a chance to announce our Give 25 winner at the convention banquet? Become a federation challenger. Ask friends and family to make donations and indicate that you prompted their giving.
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Let's go on to some listener feedback. And we're starting with Stefan Hudson. He says, "Hello, Jonathan. Unfortunately, I have yet another potential issue to add to the pile of things for the NFB to discuss with Meta. This one has to do with balancing security with accessibility. For many years, I've been using a program called Miranda NG to send and receive messages on Facebook.
It's a third party app that's very lightweight and easier to use than having to deal with the Facebook and Messenger sites in a browser. From time to time, my Facebook account is locked due to what Facebook calls suspicious activity. This is almost certainly due to the use of Miranda NG, as there's never anything suspicious when I review my activity.
While that's certainly annoying, all I normally have to do is confirm that I'm who I say I am by entering a code sent to my email address and off I go until the next time it happens.
"There's also a new option to approve logins on a separate device, which I accidentally turned on when unlocking my account, and this is where the problem begins. According to my research, approving logins on another device seems to be a default form of two-factor authentication when no traditional methods are set up.
When this setting is enabled and a new login attempt is made from an unrecognized device, a notification is sent for review. The user can choose to either approve or deny the login attempt from another device that's already logged in.
If there aren't any devices logged in at that time, then a code is sent to the email address associated with the account instead.
"This is a pretty good way to make sure accounts are secure, but there seems to be no way to turn this setting off unless you enable another two-factor authentication method, and Miranda NG doesn't support two-factor authentication at all so I'm locked out of using Miranda NG entirely.
I have no choice but to use either the website or the Windows app, and I don't know if the Windows app works any better than the website.
"To be fair, the website is technically accessible, but it's not as easy to use when it comes to sending and reading messages, which is why I prefer Miranda NG. I completely understand why Meta has implemented this, and under normal circumstances it probably wouldn't be a big issue for most people who use the official Messenger apps.
That said, I believe taking away user choice is a problem, especially when that choice affects accessibility. We shouldn't have to sacrifice accessibility for security, but these days it feels like we do. And now that choice has been unintentionally taken away.
"The rollout of default end-to-end encryption is another issue that would likely make it impossible to use Miranda NG at all, so I wonder if this could be brought up in talks with Meta. It's entirely possible that they won't let users disable this setting. After all, they said the old basic site was removed for security reasons.
But it probably doesn't hurt to ask. While I'm grateful Meta has been willing to listen, I would honestly deactivate my account if I didn't have a reason to keep it. That's how tired I am of dealing with these issues and waiting for fixes. I've sent this feedback directly to Facebook Support as well, so there's a record of it somewhere. As always, I appreciate everything you and the NFB do to advocate for accessibility."
Thanks for making that case so clearly, Stefan. I will mention it to Meta. I suspect that you are right. There is a trend in these social networks, at least the big commercial ones, to clamp down on third-party apps and what the application programming interfaces can do. We've seen this with Twitter, now X. we've seen it with Reddit and we've seen it with Facebook.
To be fair, for some time there was a period some time ago where there was a third-party quite accessible tool for Facebook, and API changes and deprecations meant that that wasn't able to continue, so I suspect that is what's going on.
The key thing that we are focusing on with Meta now, and the talks are ongoing about this, is just cleaning up the Facebook desktop experience because it's not a good experience at the moment. There are all sorts of issues. We have made some progress.
And we don't believe that we are done by a long way, but one of the recommendations that we made to Meta was the JNK navigation keys on the Facebook website stopped working some time ago.
There are actually two things going on. One is that there used to be a protocol that was actually worked out between Freedom Scientific and Meta, but it was a protocol available to anybody who wanted to implement it where if a website was using certain keys for its own purposes, you could encode that in a way that told JAWS don't use your traditional navigation quick key function for these keys on this particular website; let the website's command override instead.
And that was an option that JAWS has, so if you didn't like that, you could override that option and always use navigation quick keys. But somewhere along the line, it all got broken on facebook.com. We don't have the JAWS overriding navigation quick keys back, but now we do have the JNK keys back. And that is a direct result of the ongoing advocacy that we are doing here at the NFB. If you go to facebook.com, for now you will need to disable your navigation quick keys, whatever that is called on your screen reader, and JAWS you would push insert Z to disable the virtual cursor.
If you're in NVDA, the best thing to do is just disable the navigation quick keys while staying in the default mode. You can push insert, shift, and space to do that. And then you will find, you should find that JNK are working again after some absence.
As I said, we are not done here. There are lots of things going on on facebook.com that are not desirable, and that also includes the extraneous block quote characters that are everywhere, but it's good to have some progress to report. And we are continuing to encourage Facebook to keep working on this so that we have a truly accessible desktop experience.
Let's follow up with Gareth Williams. You may remember he was reporting a problem with his Samsung TV. And he writes, "Hi, Jonathan. Thanks for airing my problem with the Samsung SmartThings app on the podcast. Your suggestion of using screen recognition has in fact proved a successful resolution.
Although I would consider myself a fluent voiceover user, this was something I had never stumbled across. Needless to say, this does not excuse Samsung for messing up their app. Many thanks."
Well, thank you, Gareth, for letting us know. I'm glad that that was able to work around the issue. I agree screen recognition is a troubleshooting tool. It's a tool of last resort, and it does not excuse a software developer from making their apps accessible, so hopefully Samsung will come through and fix what has become broken.
That said, sometimes we just need to get the job done, so we need to use those tools from time to time while we advocate for something more sustainable and permanent.
Onto the next email which says, "Hello, Jonathan. My name is Jason, and I am from the capital chapter of the Pennsylvania affiliate just over an hour up the road from Baltimore. Regarding one password, I was wondering whether you pay for the service as a subscription or if it is free for you.
I ask because I am still running 1Password 7 as it seems that when I tried downloading the 1Password 8 app, it wanted me to purchase a subscription and it wouldn't let me get past that screen. I store most of my passwords in Apple Passwords and Google Password Manager now, but 1Password is nice for bank account and credit card information and secure notes that Apple and Google Password managers don't seem to allow you to store as efficiently. Thus, I wanted some clarification on that."
Jason, yes, I'm personally paying for a subscription to 1Password. And it's a family subscription, so I give it to my kids. I'm trying to encourage them to practice sensible security practices, and 1Password is great for that. My wife has it as well, and I'm her technical support person. It's nice to have a use.
And I use it as well, so I'm happy to subscribe. I personally like 1Password. It works cross-platform. I think that's what they've moved to now, that you do subscribe. They're going for a cloud-based approach.
There are other password solutions that may do what you want that will store things locally on a cloud service like Dropbox, for example, and encrypt the data. I haven't explored a lot of those yet. I believe that Bitwarden may have a version that will do that. And Bitwarden has become quite popular in the blind community.
I think after Glen Gordon talked it up on FSCast actually, there are a number of blind people who looked at that. And it's also a good package. I think if you do a comparison between Bitwarden and 1Password, there are some advantages of 1Password, but it may just depend on whether you're willing to pay for them or not. And like anything, I think it's user interface choice.
Some people will just feel that Bitwarden makes more sense to them from a user interface point of view. You might want to check out Bitwarden and see if that's a better option for you given that you've moved a lot of your password management to another tool.
And Jason's got more he says regarding navigation apps. "I wanted to mention one that I don't think has been mentioned on the podcast yet, and that is the WeWALK app made by the manufacturers of the WeWALK Smart Cane.
I have tried the actual Smart Cane in the past and thought it was overall too short and too heavy for my liking and ended up selling it, but it was the older version and not the second edition. That being said, their navigation app can still be used standalone without connecting it to a Smart Cane and works quite nicely."
Thanks for that tip, Jason. Yes, I think any federationist who's used to the NFB cane is going to find the weight of the WeWALK cane a bit of a challenge because our canes are so light.
Once you get into that, it's very hard to go back. We do now have the second generation WeWALK Smart Cane at the International Braille and Technology Center, and in one of our publications, whether it's this one or the blog or the Braille monitor or wherever, we will eventually publish an evaluation of the second generation WeWALK Smart Cane.
But thank you for mentioning the app and the fact that you can use it even if you don't have a WeWALK Smart Cane.
And Jason's continues, "I was also wondering if you had any tips for setting up an HP printer without sighted assistance. Their Windows HP Smart app did not seem very accessible with NVDA and did not read most of the prompts on the screen. I think NVDA has commands to navigate the screen in a way that mimics using the mouse, and that may have helped, but I'm not extremely familiar with them.
I ended up turning off NVDA and having a sighted person assist me with the setup process. The only thing that was accessible was creating an HP account with a username and password, but I think the HP Smart app opened a standard web page in Chrome for that specific step.
Then Chrome prompted me to open HP Smart again. Overall, the process was still frustrating, so I was wondering if you or other listeners have had similar experiences. Thank you for all you do, and I have greatly enjoyed the podcast."
Well, thank you, Jason, for writing it with such an interesting message. I have not had the pleasure of trying to set up an HP printer from scratch recently, so I wouldn't want to suggest that my knowledge is in any way current. Let's just open this up. Have you purchased an HP printer recently and have cause to set it up?
How did it go for you? Maybe using optical character recognition may help. You can also use Aira if you have access to that. They support a range of remote tools including remote incident manager, which is very accessible. Or as you did, you can just seek sighted assistance, which is sometimes just the pragmatic thing to do even though we shouldn't have to resort to it in 2025.
There's no reason why an app like that should not be fully accessible. But let's see if we can gather some experiences, [email protected]. That's [email protected] if you can help Jason out with this one.
Rich Yamamoto:
Hi, Jonathan and Access On listeners. This is Rich Yamamoto coming to you from Kansas City. I wanted to clarify the problems that I was having with Thunderbird/Betterbird, which is the fork of Mozilla Thunderbird that I have been using because I've seen that it's actually a cleaner interface in a lot of different ways.
The problem is mainly with JAWS. I don't have any issues with it using NVDA, but I'm trying to use JAWS more just because NVDA is also doing some interesting things in Microsoft Office that I can't necessarily explain very well, but it's crashing a lot in Word and PowerPoint, and JAWS isn't doing that. In JAWS though, the reading pane is not being read with the arrow keys or the JAWS cursor or anything like that nor is the composition area.
I can use the To field and the CC, BCC, all of those things, the subject, but when it comes to typing in the message body, I can type just fine, but I make mistakes just like everybody else, and I can't view the text that I'm reading in the message body. I think that's a problem. And I don't know if there's a setting I haven't changed or something else that I need to do, but that is also to me a serious issue that for a little bit I've just been using Outlook to negate this issue.
And also, I'm on the modern Outlook interface. And it's not horrible, it's not great, but it gets the job done, I suppose. And it seems to do better with the sign in with Google authentication system there than classic Outlook was doing, so that's always good. But my preferred is to use Windows Mail, but apparently when you type in Windows Mail in the Start menu, it brings up modern Outlook now.
With eM Client, the problem that I've noticed is that every time you arrow through a context menu or a menu on the menu bar, it will say menu, menu, and then the file menu, Alt + F, and then it will read the menu option. It's very verbose, and it's way too verbose for easy, efficient navigation, and so that's why I haven't really been using eM client.
And it's been a couple months since I've used that, but I don't know if that's been fixed or anything like that. But I can't really test it because my demo expired and I don't really want to buy it again, so that's why I'm looking for an alternative or an accessible solution to my email quandaries.
I like the Mac Mail program just because it works. Everything is seamless and integrated, and it all works great. I've yet to find a calendar app for the Mac, but that's a whole different situation. But I want something like Mac Mail. And maybe I'm just taking that experience for granted and I have to just finagle a bit more on Windows. I don't know.
Jonathan Mosen:
Thank you very much, Richard. That does sound like it might be fixable if the issue with Thunderbird is the way edit fields are behaving. I don't know whether you've given Vispero tech support a call, but it might be something that they can change in terms of the dimension of a cursor way in the advanced part of setting center in JAWS. Or maybe somebody can give us some hints on how they may have overcome that because it doesn't sound like it has to be a showstopper.
Obviously, while it's behaving the way it is, it's a showstopper because, sure, you've got to be able to review what you're writing and proof it. Let's see if anyone has any hints. It would be interesting to get other people's impressions of how they're getting on with the modern Outlook.
We know that Microsoft has put quite a bit of accessibility work into this. They're continuing to do it. They've also worked with screen reader developers on this. I do check into it from time to time to see what progress they're making, and it still feels a lot less fluid and efficient.
Part of it is to do with some of the features that aren't back yet, but part of it is also just to do with the fact that it's fundamentally an HTML environment, and sometimes you get popped into cursors in your screen reader that don't seem appropriate to be popped into at that particular time. Certainly the modern Outlook is a work in progress. I do understand what you're saying.
You are a bit spoiled with Mac Mail in the sense that you've got that unified inbox, and a lot of people truly do appreciate the concept of a unified inbox. Let's see if anyone can help with the Thunderbird now that you've clarified that further. But if you've not had a chat to Vispero tech support, it might be worth doing that and see if they can assist you.
This email comes from Riley who says, "Dear Jonathan, I'm writing to you today on behalf of a blind client who uses hearing aids. They recently bought an iPhone 16 Pro and an Apple Watch Series 8, and I have a question about how they can connect them to their hearing aids.
My client would like to know if they compare both their Apple Watch and iPhone to their hearing aids at the same time and use them simultaneously. Alternatively, do they need to disconnect from one device to connect to the other each time they want to switch between watch and phone?"
Riley, the answer is it depends. And it's also a counter-intuitive answer because you would think that if a hearing aid had embraced Apple's own Made for iPhone protocol, it would work, but it does not. And that's because at the moment, the Apple Watch does not support the low-energy Bluetooth protocol required for Made for iPhone hearing aids to pair as audio devices with your Apple Watch and therefore to work with voiceover.
There was no announcement in the Global Accessibility Awareness Day material from Apple saying that this was going to change with the 26 versions of their operating systems, and I think they would make a bit of a noise about it if it were going to change, so I think we can assume it's not going to change with the next release of Watch OS.
Why I say that this is counter-intuitive is that if you don't have hearing aids that have embraced the Made for iPhone protocol and have instead just gone for standard Bluetooth, which is the approach that Phonak have taken, then yes, you can pair your hearing aids to your Apple Watch and you should be able to switch seamlessly between devices, although I've had mixed results with this.
But what should happen is when your watch goes to sleep and you start using your phone, you should be able to hear the iPhone again. If your iPhone goes silent, you put the iPhone in standby and you wake the watch up. It should work. And a lot of the time it does; some of the time it doesn't in my experience. It's not like AirPods where this is pretty seamless between iPhone and Apple Watch. Unfortunately, we don't have that yet, and there are no signs at this stage that we are going to.
There are Apple Watch apps for some hearing aids, and that could be useful because you might be able to pair a little Braille display with an Apple Watch and control your hearing aid from the Apple Watch. And I suppose that's progress of sorts. But for audio, it is not a happening thing with the Made for iPhone hearing aids.
And speaking of iPhone, some final thoughts on iOS 26 and related things. Marissa says, "I wanted to thank you for your recap with your fellow co-hosts of the Apple WWDC 2025. While I am looking forward to the redesign of iOS 26, I hope that there are a lot of stability and bug improvements in the OS overall.
"Also, there really wasn't much mentioned on Global Accessibility Awareness Day by Apple as it relates to any new voice over features or enhancements. While I understand that no operating system is going to be bug free, I hope that this next version of iOS 26, iPad OS 26, et cetera, et cetera are stable, that voice over doesn't have as many issues as it does in the past, that users of Braille are able to use their Braille displays and other methods within the Braille ecosystem to accomplish daily tasks.
As a low vision user, I wonder, as Heidi was mentioning, about the new design and how it may complicate being able to visually see things if the contrast is not good enough. I hope there is a way to these settings so that they can conform to more pleasant and usable experiences by low vision users."
It is a concern, Marissa. I believe I have seen in one of the many articles I've been reading about iOS 26 that they understand the accessibility implications of the liquid glass approach and that there are ways to address it. But certainly if people feel able to, particularly when the operating systems go into public beta, which should be next month, the developer betas are always a little rough and ready at the beginning.
So anyone who jumps on now is taking a bit of a risk, but some people are going to take that risk. But I hope that when people do get onto the public betas, if they find some issues there, some concerns, that they let us know and that they also report directly to Apple about them.
Time for an Access On tech tip. This week, it comes from Karl Smith from the NFB of Utah Salt Lake City chapter. He says, "I have a tech tip for those purchasing a laptop. Often, the function keys on new laptops have alternative functions from those we are used to, such as turning on and off the WiFi or changing the volume or screen brightness.
This is very inconvenient for those of us who use screen readers or magnification software and use the function keys for our normal work. Different laptop brands offer various ways to turn these alternate functions off, making the function keys perform as we are used to. Some brands have apps for this or even sometimes requiring users to go into the BIOS to do the job.
When buying a laptop, look for a lock icon on Escape key. If this lock is present to toggle the function keys between their two functions, all you need to do is press the Fn key along with the Escape key."
Thank you, Karl. That's a very useful tip. And I have seen people struggling along with having to do all sorts of contortionist keystrokes to get their JAWS or NVDA functions that are associated with the function key row. And then when I show them how easy it is to turn it off, they're quite relieved but also frustrated that they didn't know it before.
Usually it is possible to disable those system functions from the function keys so you get them back to the way that we, as screen reader users, prefer them. And if you have a tech tip, Access On all joined together at nfb.org, and you can put tech tip in the subject line.
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].
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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.