Welcome to the forty-ninth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
In this week's episode:
- Introduction 0:00
- Karl Belanger introduces technology self-advocacy 1:53
- Kennedy Zimnik, Identifying accessibility issues for low vision users 20:40
- Jonathan Mosen on Putting it all together with real world examples 31:10
- Meta AI in Puerto Rico 50:05
- An overview of the smart glasses market from a blindness perspective 51:38
- Closing and contact info 1:07:29
Transcript
Speaker 1: Live the life you want.
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen: Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This week, we bring you highlights of our webinar on advocating to improve the technology we use. Learn about the National Federation of the Blind's technology self-advocacy toolkit, as well as other tips and tricks. In Puerto Rico, access to Meta AI on Meta's Smart Glasses wasn't available, now it is.
And a consumer overview based on published data of the smart glasses market from a blindness perspective. It's Jonathan Mosen, at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and it's a pleasure to welcome you to episode 49 of Access On. Before we get into the primary topic for today, which is self-advocacy and how to do it effectively, something we care a lot about at the National Federation of the Blind, let us tell you about something that is approaching fast, which is sort of appropriate that it's approaching fast, given the subject matter.
Speaker 2: Lace up, and join us for a 10-K walk or run across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on November 9th, 2025. This is your chance to forge connections with your community, empower others to get active, and support education, independence, and opportunities for blind people. If you cannot attend in person, you can still participate virtually. Our chapters, divisions, and affiliates can even complete the challenge as a White Cane Awareness Day activity during Blind Equality Achievement month. Register at NFB.org/Movers.
Jonathan Mosen: As you're aware, if you're a regular Access On listener, the National Federation of the Blind regularly hosts webinars on a range of technology topics, funded through the Non-Visual Accessibility initiative from the State of Maryland, and we bring you highlights of some of those on Access On. Today, we're bringing you highlights of a boutique on a vital topic, and that is how to advocate when something isn't as accessible as it ought to be.
Now, the National Federation of the Blind has produced a self-advocacy toolkit, and I encourage you to check that out. If you go to nfb.org/cena, that's nfb.org/C-E-N-A, that is the acronym for our Center of Excellence in Non-Visual Accessibility here, at the National Federation of the Blind. You will find the self-advocacy toolkit there, but we'd like to speak to some of it. Now, let's begin with highlights of this presentation, starting with Karl Belanger.
Karl Belanger: Why should we advocate with companies? Many companies have a lot of users, a lot of demands on their time. One of the ways they find issues is through customer reports and complaints. And a company will do testing, generally, may or may not do accessibility testing, depending on the company, but in general, will test their products, but even then, they don't catch everything.
So customers reporting bugs, requesting features, et cetera, is one of the main ways companies improve their software. For blind users, accessibility is part of that. It's another piece of the puzzle. When a company's developing a product, it really impacts our access to the software and our ability to use it.
But not all companies are aware of accessibility, and may just not even know about what a screen reader is or how accessibility can benefit them, and so it's important for us, as individuals, to when we have a product we're paying for, when we have a company we care about, to be willing to advocate with that company, to say, "Hey, I want to be a customer. I want to use your product, I want to give you my money, but here's this problem I'm having.
Here's one area where my needs as a blind user are not being met by the current way your app or website, or what have you, is built, and here's specifically what's going wrong." And that's one of the most important parts. To do this well, is to make sure that you're giving them actionable specific information. And you don't need to be a technical nerd, or an accessibility consultant, to have the words to tell a company what's going on, or what's going wrong with their software.
As I'll talk about, and then demonstrate a little bit later, just giving them clear steps as to what place you are and what's going wrong, and what your screen reader is or isn't doing, can often be enough to guide them in the right direction to make their product more accessible.
All right, so what goes into a good accessibility report? I'll go into all of these in more depth later, but here are some of the key pieces that you want to include when doing an accessibility report to a company. First off, how you're accessing the products. What operating system? Are you on a Windows computer or a Mac? Are you on iOS or Android? Are you accessing a native app, or are you using it through a browser, like Chrome or Safari or Firefox?
Also, what access technology are you using? Are you using JAWS, Zoom texts, iOS magnification, TalkBack, whatever the case is, state that, and also the version of those tools, if applicable, and we'll get into that later, because different technologies react different ways depending on the technologies being used, and as technology advances. So if you're using an older version of a piece of technology, knowing that might help them pinpoint something they're doing that relies on bleeding-edge tech, or other things like that.
What you're trying to do, and this is simply are you searching for a product? Are you making a purchase, accessing some other piece of information? What's happening? What can't you do? What is working weirdly, or isn't working at all, or isn't reading right, things like that. What should be happening?
If you know what should be happening in an interaction, for example, if you tab to a field and it says "Edit," what should be happening is it should say the name of that edit field and help you to know what to put in there. You can include potential solutions if you want. If you're somewhat technically inclined and can say that, "Oh, this form field is missing a label," or "You are misusing ARIA, Accessible Rich Internet Applications here," by all means, include that, but it's not necessary.
And then if you're reporting multiple issues, which is certainly fine, repeat the last few pieces, what's happening, what should be happening, and if you know a potential solution for it, for as many issues as you're reporting with that company. You may want to include accessibility resources, such as the web content accessibility guidelines, the iOS or Android accessibility documentation, things of that nature, and then just close the letter, offer to work with them, and things like that.
So before we get into all the specifics of those points, I just want to cover a few things that may get you in trouble if you're doing a accessibility report. I've already addressed this a bit, but one of the things you want to avoid is being too general. Just saying "It doesn't work, it's an inaccessible, I can't read it," that may be all true, but it doesn't give a company anything to go off. They don't know where to look for the issue. They don't know what page it's on.
If it's on something like Amazon or Facebook, they may have tens of thousands of pages, so if you just say "Some part of your site doesn't work," there's really nothing they can do with that. You want to avoid ranting, or throwing accusations around. I certainly get that banging your head against the proverbial wall for an hour trying to figure out what's going on with an issue, or having some form not behave right, because it's saying that the form filled in red is incorrect, but you can't figure out which one is in red, and everything looks right, but it's important to keep your emails professional, and keep everything at a low temperature.
Because if you go off on them, or call them names, or things like that, it doesn't do much for your credibility. And if you do that repeatedly, your email is just going to get probably sent to spam.
Another one is constant pinging of, "Hey, I have this issue, did you fix it yet? How about now? What's the update? Did you fix it?" I certainly get the urge to, especially if it's something that's vital for your job or a personal situation, you want it to get fixed as quickly as possible, but just as when you have a kid sitting in the backseat going, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet," it doesn't work very well to do that to companies.
So a follow-up every week or two, occasional polite inquiries is great, just try to keep the frequency to a reasonable level. And finally, while it might be a little cathartic to say, "Hey, if you don't fix this, we're going to get the NFB involved. If you don't fix this, I'm going to file a lawsuit. I'm going to report you to the DOJ," et cetera, as a first line of communication, that's not going to work.
What a lot of companies will do if they get emails threatening legal action of any kind, is they'll forward it straight to their legal department, and anything else you write will go right to their legal department. So, instead of going potentially to the developers that could fix the issue, it's just going to go right into the litigant folder, for if you ever actually file a legal response. So you want to gather your information, such as your operating system and access tech versions.
These are generally in help or about sections. iOS and Android will have a lot more tied to the operating system than Windows will, so you'll want to get into some of those things. Like for example, iOS, you probably don't need to give a voiceover version because it's just tied to the version of iOS. Android has separated TalkBack from the operating system, so you may need to give a TalkBack version, same goes for voiceover on Mac, it's with the operating system, and Narrator on Windows. And so get that, then the area you're working in.
So if you're on a webpage, generally the best way to do this is go to the address bar, then Control-A to select all, Control-C to copy, and just paste the link to the page onto the letter you're writing. If you don't have access to that, or it's a mobile app where you don't have a URL you can give, giving specific steps, like "Search for a product, choose a product that has multiple sizes, and then on the product page, all the sizes just appear as text, and I can't select any of them to pick it before adding to my cart," something like that.
And then what we want to do is go through, and for each issue, as I said earlier, what's happening? "Take the items that you have on your checkout page, when I tab through a set of links, I just hear random URLs that end in page numbers that are just gibberish. These need to have proper labels." Or "When I tab through your form, all I hear is edit, edit, edit, edit. Whereas, they need to have labels so that I know what information you want in this form."
Or there are no headings on this page. Screen reader users can use H to navigate through headings to be able to navigate the page structure, whatever. Things like that, just a simple sentence like that can cover both what is happening and what should be happening. Then, as I said earlier, if you want to discuss how you think the issue could be fixed, if you have some knowledge of HTML, in the headings example, you could say "Headings are HTML elements that provide structure to a web page.
They define different sections of the page, either topics or different articles, and describe the basics of nesting headings and the heading tag," and things like that. If you have the knowledge, and want to take the time to do that, more power to you, companies will be very appreciative. If you don't, that's fine.
And then go through, for each one, just repeat that, talk in depth about each issue you're having. And one thing I will say, if you have 10 form fields on one page that all have the exact same problem, you can say "All 10 fields on this page are unlabeled and just say edit or convo box as I tab through them." Once you have all those things get written down, it's time to formulate your letter.
What you want to do then is find where to send the reports. You can take a few different options. If they have accessibility contacts, you can email them directly, and that's probably your best bet. If they don't, you can try to look for a web manager, or web@-type email address on the company website. Or as a last resort, support@, info@ emails. They're not as ideal, but they can still work, and using those to get the details is just as well.
In the beginning of an email, once you know where you want to send it, start cordially, "Hi, I'm Karl Belanger. I use XYZ product with JAWS 2025 on Windows 11," then you could go into, "Unfortunately I'm having some issues with your product and wanted to bring these to your attention to let you know so that these can hopefully be resolved." And then you get into the errors. So the first one might be "On your product information page, when I go to select a size, they just appear as lines of text, and when I press enter on them, nothing happens.
These should be properly tagged as some sort of control so that I can operate them from the keyboard, and include the link to a product page. Then when I'm on your checkout page, your credit card info fields are unlabeled and just say, edit, edit, edit," or "Your checkout button isn't labeled and there's a clear button right next to it, and I want to make sure I don't hit the wrong one," whatever the case may be.
Once you've gone through and talked about all the issues you have, and outlined everything, then you might want to include some resources. As I said earlier, you can include things like the web content accessibility guidelines, which is a nice set of guidelines and standards that a lot of people are standardized around, governments have adopted into their laws.
US section 508 includes them to help inform people about what should be done to make their site accessible. If it's an iOS or Android app, both Apple and Google have comprehensive accessibility documentation to allow for developers to make their products accessible. Finish off the letter by thanking them for their time, offering to provide more information if necessary, potentially, if you're willing, offering to work with them to make sure these issues are resolved, and end the letter cordially, and then send it on.
Sometimes the company doesn't have a good email field, or it's only a contact form on their site, and you never got a response, so it may be time to take it to social media. And if you take it to social media, there's a few things to know.
One, not every company account will want to engage with things like this over social media, so I would definitely recommend looking for whether or not the company account handles customer concerns or tech support, or things like that, over social media, and which account it is, because some will have a main account that's more for sales and promotional stuff, and they'll have a separate account that handles more support or customer service type issues. Again, as a last resort, just sending a message to the main account can work, but if they have a support account, I would definitely recommend using that.
The way I would recommend handling this is start with a message basically just saying, "Hey, I'm a blind user who's having some issues using your product. I would like to talk to someone who might be able to help resolve these issues. Is this the right account or is there another account I should reach out to, or can you provide me an email address?"
This is especially important on X, because of the 280-character limit, you want to try to get into a direct message conversation, and/or get off the platform and on email to have a better flow, and so you're not just writing 100 280-character messages to get all your points across. Another benefit to using social media if a company is unresponsive or resistant, is that it can bring public awareness to a problem. Not that you really want to push for that, or capitalize on it, but public awareness never hurts in getting a company to actively fix things or improve things.
Related to that, as I mentioned at the beginning, companies often work off the squeaky wheel gets the grease mentality, in that if you have one customer complaining about an issue, yes, that issue definitely should be looked into, but it's not going to be given as high a priority, unfortunately, as if you have 10 or 50 or 100 people writing in about a given issue.
Furthermore, if you do have friends who use the product, get them to write in as well, but it's very important that everyone in the group do their best to follow guidelines like these and not give into some of the pitfalls I discussed earlier in this presentation. Unfortunately, one person threatening a lawsuit or calling the developers names, or insulting them, may just get the whole group tuned out.
Lastly, many companies don't have any desire to not make their product accessible. They don't want to exclude people, they just don't know, or haven't thought about The impact. Making a product accessible brings a lot of advantages. It makes it easier for everyone to use. It makes it better for any number of different reasons, and it opens up new markets. So if you have a product that isn't accessible, and then you make it accessible, all of a sudden, a large, decent-sized community of blind users, who never had access to it before, now suddenly can access a product that they never did before.
Another piece that you can consider doing, I did not include this in the toolkit, but it is another thing that you can try if you want, is recording a screen share or demo. Generally, the simplest way to do this is if you have a free Zoom account, start Zoom, start a new meeting. It can just be you.
Slow your screen reader down to a reasonable rate, check the box to share sound, and share the window of the application that you're having an issue with. And then just talk through what you're doing, the keys you're pressing, why this is a problem, and then that provides a really powerful way for a site owner to both see and hear what issue you're having.
Jonathan Mosen: Now, let's move on to look at how we identify issues that might be affecting low-vision users from accessing a website. To take us through this, here is Kennedy Zimnik.
Kennedy Zimnik: Karl has been speaking from a screen reader perspective, and I just wanted to jump in really quickly, for about the next 10 minutes, and talk about low-vision accessibility, and the different pieces that you're looking for in low-vision accessibility, and what you would say to these companies, and the vocabulary you would use when talking about low-vision accessibility.
So when we're talking about low-vision accessibility, I'm not going to be using any special software today. ZoomText is a popular one, there are a couple other ones. Windows has a native magnifier, and other systems also have native magnifiers. So I'm just going to be using Chrome right now, and I'm just going to be using the features that come with Chrome, including resizing the page and also using a focus indicator.
So three things that I'm looking for when looking at low-vision accessibility and determining whether something is low-vision accessible, is color and text contrast, so making sure that the text has high enough contrast to the background, or image contrast as well, so contrast in general.
And then I'm also looking for a visible focus indicator as I go through the screen. A visible focus indicator is usually a black or blue box that follows along your tab order. As you tab through all the different links on the screen, there should be a visible box that follows that tab order. That's important because some people have the screen resized to just show something that's in the middle of the screen, so whatever you're focused on is in the middle.
So as you tab through, you want this focus indicator to be very clear on where the focus is on whatever you're using. So you could be zoomed in very far, you could be zoomed out, and I think tab orders are useful for everybody, not just somebody that is blowing up the screen to a high percentage. And then the third thing are elements resizing and changing, and menu items changing, and adapting to the change in Zoom, or the change in percent as we press control-plus in Chrome.
I have some inaccessible websites I'm using, and I'm going to go through and describe how I would talk to a company if I was trying to get them to see these low-vision issues and understand why they're important to fix. I have this awesome recipes website up right now, why don't I go ahead and show you what happens if I just press the tab key.
As I press the tab key, it's a pretty basic website, there are some things at the top of the website, and then the main part of the website, recipes, chocolate cake, mom's spaghetti, filet mignon, mega burger, then there's some info about each item underneath that, that includes a picture. Let's just go through and check the tab order real quick. And again, I'm not using any special software, anybody can do this on any browser.
If you just press the tab key, a visible focus indicator, or a blue or black box, should... It's usually blue or black because that's high contrast on the background, should pop up on where my focus is moving. So I'm just going to press the tab key.
Now, if you can see the screen, you might see a very light pink circle when I'm on some things. So there's this pink circle on... I'm not even sure what this button is. And then when I tab again, now whatever focus indicator they have are two white brackets on a white background. So part of the focus indicator is it has to be a visible focus indicator. So if I were writing to a company about this, and I noticed that there wasn't a visible focus indicator, I would maybe explain why the focus indicator is important.
For example, if you have your software set up to follow the focus around, it has to be indicated in a clear way so I know where, on the page, I'm actually focused. And then I would maybe either take a recording, like Karl was talking about, or do a screenshot of what is actually there versus what you expect to be there. This just helps people think about it and see it, especially if they've never seen or conceptualized things like this before.
Something else that I mentioned is text contrast and image contrast. So I actually have the Mars Commuter website, and we have this kind of a light blue, grayish text on a navy blue background of the website. So I'm going to click over to my WebAIM contrast checker. You can just get this by Googling "Contrast checker," or "WebAIM contrast checker." There are a few ones, but I really like the WebAIM one. How you actually use this, is it automatically tells you whether the text color that you've selected, and the background color you've selected, has high enough contrast.
So the one that automatically pops up on the site when you first open it is this blue color on this white background, and they have some examples. So they have WCAG AA pass, WCAG AAA pass. We're really just interested in the AA. If it's AAA, if it's passing AAA, then that's great. Also, it has normal text, large text, and then also graphical objects and user interface components, so that's like a search box, what color is the outline of the search box, things like that.
So if you ever are wondering whether what you're looking at has high enough contrast, there's something that you can do. You can either guesstimate the color of the foreground, or the text color, using this color picker and this color wheel. And if you think you're good enough at guessing, then that's great. There are a few other things you can do. You can also, something a little bit more complicated, is you can inspect the element in Chrome to find the exact hex value of the color that the text is.
You can do that if you know how to do it. I sometimes do it. But something that's easiest, at least for me, and unfortunately, it does involve a mouse, but I will describe what I'm doing, and you can get to the hex value with a keyboard, and everything else with a keyboard, it's just this one color picker that is inaccessible to screen reader users, so I am using a mouse.
It's a little dropper tool. So you go to the foreground color, and then go to the color picker, that's how I opened this, and go to the dropper tool. Now, wherever I move my mouse, there's a little circle, and in the middle of that circle, there's a square. And in that square, I can see it's a very zoomed in color of the color of the text.
So I'm going to click that color, so that's my foreground color, and it automatically put in the hex value and showed me what the color is, and then I'm going to do the hex value or the color picker of the background. So let me go to the background section, and then choose color picker. I'm going to choose the dropper tool, and I'll get this background color. Now, it automatically changed on the bottom of the site. Now, we have normal text, WCAG AA fail.
So in your letter to people, you can describe this process, you can even include the link, "This is the WebAIM contrast checker. Please check it for yourself. This is how I did it. These are the steps I did to determine that there wasn't enough contrast." And you can also cite WCAG itself, or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So contrast, this is one of the first guidelines, the visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to one. That's what the WCAG contrast checker checks against, so that's just something else that you can cite.
The last thing that I look for in low-vision accessibility is how the site resizes if I zoom to 200%. An accessible site, if you zoom in, and I'm just doing control and the plus button to zoom in, the menu items should change and move themselves, so everything stays in this window no matter how much you zoom in. This, of course, doesn't. So as I'm zooming in, these menu items, send me to Mars, Hotels, things to do, these should be changed in some way.
There's a couple of different ways to do it. You could change the organization of the links, and stack them on top of each other. You could also do a hamburger menu. So this is our NFB.org website. This is, of course, accessible. So this is what all this low-vision accessibility should look like. So let me start out with my tab key. The first time I pressed tab, it got to the logo, and there is a black focus indicator showing that's where I'm focused.
And as I move my tab key, it's very clear as to where my focus is moving towards. The text contrast, it's the more you test, and this one is a little bit more obvious to people that don't know much about accessibility, if text is hard to read, it's hard to read for everybody. If you have dark text on a white background, it's going to be okay, most of the time. We have black text on a white background on the NFB site, we also have blue text on a white background, that's all fine.
And if I resize the page, the menu items are shifting and moving. I'm at 150% now, but I can still see all the menu items because they're shifting. Once I get to 250%, now these menu items have moved to a hamburger menu, and I can still access them at the same time just like I could before, and it's not going to require any extraneous scrolling to the left or right to try and find what I was looking for.
So those were three quick things that you can talk about when talking about low-vision accessibility, and the angles you can go from, and how you want to explain to these companies. Jonathan, are you ready to talk about from the industry perspective, self-advocacy?
Jonathan Mosen: I certainly am. Let's try and put all this together. And I want to cover just a couple of nuances, and then talk about sometimes when extreme advocacy might be necessary. So by way of background, in my career, I've both advocated for better tech outcomes for blind people, and I've worked on product management, so I've been on the inside of technology.
And while much of that product management work has been in access technology, I've still seen many kinds of user feedback come in, and the way that different approaches either motivates or demotivates people. If you're an individual advocating for an outcome that's important to you, the approach that you take might vary a bit depending on who is developing the products that you're wanting to influence.
If you're experiencing an issue with a product that's been developed by an individual developer or a small indie company, the outcomes may be more likely to be at either extreme, in my experience.
So they might take enthusiastic interest in your feedback or they may just ignore you entirely because they think they got bigger fish to fry. Those of us who go back to the early days of the iPhone in particular, may have had the experiences where we've contacted an individual about an app that they've developed, and we've told them that we're using their product with voiceover. And in some cases, they didn't even know that iOS contained a screen reader. Hopefully, more people are more aware now.
But I've talked with many indie app developers over the years about what the experience is like from their perspective, of being contacted by a blind person for the first time, and being made aware that blind people are actually using their app. We certainly understand here, at the National Federation of the Blind, that one of the biggest barriers blind people face to living the life we want is people's misperceptions of blindness.
So in many cases, these developers had no idea, either that blind people were using this blank slab of glass, which appears, on the face of it, such a hostile environment for us, and then they may not have given any thought to the facts that a blind person would want to use their specific app. Interestingly, when I hear these stories from the indie developers, what I very seldom, if ever, hear, is a story that includes a potential customer who has ranted and raved and yelled at them, motivating somebody into some sort of action.
I'm not saying that it never happens, but I've not heard of it happening. And when you think of it, most of us have probably been yelled at and ranted at at some time in our lives, and we know how that makes us feel. It triggers an emotional fight or flight response. I know very well, through my decades of advocacy, that accessibility is a human right, but sometimes we have to educate when we advocate, frustrating though, that can be.
When you're working with an indie developer, or a small company perhaps competing with much bigger players, you have a much greater likelihood of getting to someone who is the decision maker, because there's no front line customer service where they typically say something like, "Isn't there somebody sighted who can help you?" So that's both an opportunity for you and a responsibility for you.
It's a responsibility to appreciate that this person is the chief developer, because they're the only developer, they're answering tech support questions from you and others because there's no one else to do it, and that's time that they're not spending on development. Now, AI could change this. It is possible that more indie developers will outsource most tech support to AI, in which case it may become harder to reach the human who can fix things even in those smaller entities. So we'll have to wait and see for that.
As we've already outlined, it's important to make this interaction count. If you are reporting an accessibility bug, articulate as well as you can, how to experience what you are experiencing. If can get dialogue going with an indie developer, it always helps if you can convince them that the blind community is an untapped market.
And to be clear, I'm not saying that accessibility should depend on how many people are going to benefit from a problem you're going to ask be addressed, but it is difficult for developers to succeed when there are just under 2 million apps in the iOS app store alone. Indie developers, who may have a minimal marketing budget, and who may be trying to make a living full-time as a developer, are sometimes looking for niche markets, so there's nothing wrong with appealing to their self-interest.
Others are going to be more motivated by impact. They want to make a difference in the world, and the idea that their app could be more inclusive than other apps in this class of product could make all the difference to the work they're prepared to put in. It's about how to motivate those smaller developers to devote some of their scarce time to accessibility, because retrofitting for accessibility is more time-consuming than doing it right from the beginning. Now, larger companies are a different dynamic.
It can be difficult to get past that first-level tech support. Typically, in those larger companies, first-level tech support is trained to help people with user error and make notes about any issue that seems like it might be some sort of bug, or something worthy of escalation. The difficulty is it is a lottery, in terms of whether first-level tech support understands what a screen reader is, how important accessibility is, and whether they clearly communicate the issue to those who write the code.
It can be frustrating to have responses that they've noted your, quote, feature request, unquote, for consideration. While it is desirable to be clear and polite, you can still be firm. And if someone is telling you that accessibility is a, quote, feature request, unquote, it is totally okay to tell them that you are not making a feature request, you actually are reporting a critical design bug that's worthy of urgent attention.
I want to discuss more complex advocacy, and be clear, that there are times when the gloves have to come off. There are times when you genuinely have done what you can, where you're dealing with an issue that truly is having a huge effect on your ability to live the life you want. And one example of this for me, and many other blind people in recent times, was the Sonos debacle.
For those who are unfamiliar, Sonos is an ecosystem of audio products that lost significant goodwill last year, and I suspect market share, and I can certainly tell you stock price as well, when they released a complete rewrite of their app with more bugs in it than you'll find at a summer picnic. Eventually, the CEO was forced out of the company as a signal to consumers that they really were sorry.
Now, I own a lot of Sonos products. I had written a book on Sonos, as an access technology author, which was responsible for getting a lot of blind people into the platform. I corresponded with the CEO, and I was hosting a podcast at that time, whose numbers put it in the top 1% of listened to podcasts.
Now, in April, 2024, when I heard that Sonos was completely rewriting its app, I wrote to then CEO, and I began by expressing appreciation for the company's accessibility track record and how so many blind people now loved and trusted Sonos, and how they had invested in those products precisely because of that track record.
I told him that the Living Blindfully podcast, which was one of the most listened to in the blind community, had heard from many concerned listeners following the announcement of the redesigned Sonos app. Because when you hear something like, "Oh, we've rewritten this from the ground up," it sort of sends a shiver down your spine if you've been around long enough. So these concerns related to the risk that the new app could break accessibility for blind users, and that could potentially lock us out of our hardware.
I highlighted an interest in the upcoming browser based-interface as well, and whether it was going to be usable with screen readers, and I requested to be connected with somebody on the product management side of Sonos who could speak to these issues, and hopefully give me some reassurance. And I extended an invitation for a representative to appear on the podcast to discuss the company's accessibility efforts and engage with its blind customer base. In the past, I'd found him very responsive, so I considered it a very ominous sign that he didn't reply at all.
Later, just a few days ahead of the new app's scheduled release, a beta tester of the new Sonos app did something brave. He contacted me and he blew the whistle on an accessibility disaster, despite breaking the non-disclosure agreement. I didn't have the beta app myself, but I considered him credible, and I believe that if I didn't take action, there was a real risk of blind people experiencing a significant erosion of their ability to use the devices they paid for.
So, I wrote to the then CEO of Sonos. Again, I needed a subject line that would stand out. Now, you've got to careful about crying wolf, but in this case, I didn't hold back. The stakes were so high that I couldn't hold back, so the subject of the email was "Seeking your intervention. I think Sonos is heading for a significant PR crisis over accessibility." I strongly urged that the new apps launch be paused until accessibility issues were fully addressed.
I emphasized that releasing an app with known accessibility shortcomings could not only be damaging to Sonos reputation, but potentially unlawful. I shared the company's own statement acknowledging only, quote, basic support, unquote, for screen readers at launch, as evidence that accessibility wasn't built into the development process. I also relayed disturbing feedback from that blind tester who found the app unusable with voiceover on iOS, citing serious issues, like unresponsive navigation, erratic scrolling, and inability to explore by touch.
The same user reported that the new web interface was completely inaccessible. I noted the growing frustration within the blind community, with many people feeling betrayed about investing heavily in the Sonos ecosystem, and I explained that this situation was already sparking discussions about legal remedies, and I conveyed a personal deep sense of dread, having spent thousands of dollars on Sonos devices.
I stressed that accessibility should not be an afterthought, and that the company's failure to design inclusively from the beginning breached the trust of its blind users. I offered to use my podcast platform to help spread constructive messages, such as the idea that you should really disable your automatic updates so you don't get this horrible new app, but I cautioned that this was not the image that Sonos wanted circulating in our community.
Finally, I offered to connect Sonos with blind users eager to collaborate on accessibility. We wanted to be a part of solving the problem and get this back on track. I urged him to act swiftly, pause the rollout until the app was truly inclusive, and do the right. He didn't reply to that email either. And based on the credible evidence, I took a risk, and I published a detailed blog post sounding the warning before the app was released. I linked to it on my own social media channels, and people shared it widely. And when Sonos released the app as scheduled, it was every bit as bad as the tester said it was. But then something interesting happened, sighted people hated it too. Sonos hadn't only broken accessibility, they'd taken away core functionality users depend on.
Now, initially, you couldn't even set an alarm to wake you up in the morning, which is a pretty core Sonos function, or a sleep timer at night. They took queue management away. The list is so long of the features that we're missing at launch, that it's just too long for me to go through in the time that I have left. The scale of what Sonos had done created an opportunity. As a rule, it is very difficult to get the tech press to cover accessibility defects, and there are complex reasons for this.
Some of it relates to fear on the part of journalists, if they call out some big tech companies, that they'll be blacklisted, so they're very selective about when they do it, and journalists have told me this personally. The second major reason is that editors don't think accessibility is of interest enough to their readers, so they don't cover it.
But the Sonos app was so disastrous the tech press was happy to pick up my blog article, link to it, and say, "See, this thing is so bad they've even locked blind people out." So where there are synergies and potential coalitions, it's good strategy to leverage them. The more people that you can demonstrate are affected by something, the better. There was another important thing I did at that time. I contacted the National Federation of the Blind. Now, I wasn't working for the Federation then, but I respect and believe passionately in the effectiveness, and the moral authority of collective advocacy.
The NFB has Sonos equipment at the Jernigan Institute, and it's well aware of the popularity of Sonos due to their past accessibility. As an individual, I was in a rare position. Few people have such a prominent platform, like Living Blindfully was, the National Federation of the Blind can ensure that effective high quality advocacy is available to all of us, and the NFB was able to offer something important and precious that I, as an individual, could never have delivered, and that is collective advocacy.
Sure, in this, and some other cases, I probably made a difference as an individual, but the NFB is the organized voice of blind people from every state in this country. We are well known and respected because we make good change. We get results. I've been an advocate for a long time, and I've even made a living out of it. Most people though just want to go about their lives and use technology without all the hassle, and that's where the NFB is pleased to help. Because it's what we do.
We often already have ways to get past that first-level tech support, and we're often equipped to move these issues along and advance them. The NFB often has good relationships with key people in the technology companies. Now, we have to be selective about when we use them, but they often exist, and we can use them. Even during my time at the Federation, which is, well, full-time, about eight months now, I can tell you that we have prevented many accessibility fires before they got started because of those relationships.
If we don't have a relationship with a particular company, we are expert at cultivating them, and our reputation and profile helps with that. The reality is though, that there are far more accessibility issues in the world than we can ever hope to have the resources to address. You can assist us by reporting your inaccessibility experience, and the best way to do that is to use our inaccessibility bug tracker form, which is on the same page where you can find the advocacy toolkit.
So, if you go to nfb.org/cena, and then look for the link for the accessibility toolkit, you will find it there. I encourage you to use it to report specific barriers when you use inaccessible websites, mobile apps, desktop apps, or digital tools. We will collect contact information from you, and then we want you to tell us the kind of digital experience you are reporting, whether it's about a website or a mobile app or a desktop app, or something else.
Once you make that choice, the form reflects that change, and it asks you relevant questions about the name of the product or platform that's affected. We can't guarantee to wave a magic wand and get everything fixed that people report via this form, but with this data, it gives us credible and useful information for identification of inaccessibility issues. It produces clear documentation for the companies responsible, which can really help us if we make contact. And there's no doubt that if we see a sudden surge in submissions about a popular app, it factors into our advocacy priorities, so do make the most of that inaccessibility form.
We are so fortunate to have a prolific chatty group of listeners who regularly get in touch. [email protected], if you would like to do that. You can attach an audio clip, so we can air your voice if you would like that, or you can write the email down. Here's a good news story. Well, at least it ends well.
Alpedio Roland says, "Good morning, Mr. Mosen. A member of the NFB of Puerto Rico recently bought Meta Ray-Ban glasses but cannot use them to full capacity because Meta is apparently treating Puerto Rico as a foreign nation. When will Meta and other stateside companies understand that Puerto Rico is a US territory and its citizens are US citizens? On the other hand, Meta is also charging more for people who buy the glasses in Puerto Rico. Is there any way that the NFB can talk to Meta to stop them from discriminating against Puerto Rico?"
Thank you so much for drawing this to our attention. As soon as I received this, and it was a few weeks ago now, I did reach out to some of our contacts at Meta and they have confirmed that the issue is now resolved. And here at the National Federation of the Blind, we in turn reached back out to members of National Federation of the Blind of Puerto Rico, to say, "Can you now use Meta AI on your Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses?" They have confirmed it is working, so that is an excellent outcome, and we hope you enjoy the full capacity of those Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in Puerto Rico.
Now, there's a lot of interest in smart glasses, I'll come back to some of the things that we are doing here, at the National Federation of the Blind, in this area, but this interesting email comes from Elijah Massey, and he says, "Here is a comparison of the latest smart glasses with cameras released recently or will soon be available. There are a lot of options now, with many similarities, but some significant differences between them, and all of them are pretty affordable, between 300 dollars and 800 dollars. I will be comparing the Ray-Ban Meta second-generation, Oakley Meta HSTN, Oakley Meta Vanguard, Meta Ray-Ban Display, AGIGA EchoVision, Envision Ally Solos, and Solos Echo V and V2.
I have not tried any of these glasses myself, although I use the original Ray-Ban Meta, and pre-ordered the EchoVision, and information is limited since most of these either have not been released yet or were released very recently, so some details may turn out to be wrong. However, I think it is important to compare all of them side by side, so people can decide which pair of smart glasses is best for them."
Regarding the Ally Solos glasses and Solos AirGo, the Envision Ally Solos glasses are the same as the Solos AirGo V, except they have slightly modified firmware with better audio cues to make the glasses more accessible, and to allow the user to change the Bluetooth name of the glasses. Envision stated that they may make more changes to the firmware in the future, but not what these changes might be. Neither the Ally Solos nor the Solos AirGo have an AI assistant that runs on the glasses themselves, but rather, they connect to an app on your phone which receives pictures from the camera and processes them, sending them to the AI they use, and playing responses back over Bluetooth audio.
The Ally Solos connect to the Ally app, while Solos have their own app for the AirGo V that provides their own AI assistant. Another consideration to be aware of is that the Solos AirGo V2 will be coming out near the end of this year, and they are a significant upgrade over the AirGo V. It may be better to wait until those come out and test to see if they work with the Ally app, since they are likely compatible with the protocol the Solos AirGo V uses. It is also possible that Envision may upgrade their Ally Solos to the AirGo V2, although they have not said anything about this yet.
Similarities, all of these glasses have speakers and microphones and support Bluetooth audio, so you can connect your phone to them and hear your screen reader through them, as well as audiobooks, GPS apps, et cetera. You can also make phone calls using the microphones on the glasses. All of these glasses have one or two cameras, and can use AI models to describe what the camera can see. The primary way of interacting with these AI models is by voice, asking a question via the glasses microphones, and hearing a response from the speakers. All of these glasses either require being connected to a phone to use them, or at least require a phone for setting them up, and they all support both iOS and Android.
Cameras. All of the Meta glasses have a 12-megapixel camera, 3024 by 4032 pixels, and can capture 3K video at 30 frames per second, or 1080p video at 60 frames per second. The Ray-Ban Meta second-generation Oakley Meta HSTN and Meta Ray-Ban display, all have a 100-degree field of view, while the Oakley Meta Vanguard have a 122-degree field of view, meaning that the camera on the Oakley Meta Vanguard can see a wider view of what is in front of you.
The camera on the Oakley Meta Vanguard is also in the center, while on the other Meta glasses, it's on the left, although the camera is angled so that its view is still centered. The AGIGA EchoVision have a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera in the center, and AGIGA has said that the view is 50% wider than the Meta glasses, probably meaning a 150-degree angle. The Ally Solos and Solo Ergo V have two five-megapixel cameras, 2084 by 1944 pixels.
I am not sure how the two cameras are used together, but multiple sources claim that the Solos AirGo V have two cameras, so perhaps Envision either sends two pictures to the AI on each request or the glasses combine them somehow. The Solos AirGo V2 will have one 16-megapixel camera.
Battery and charging. The Vanguard Meta second-generation and Oakley Meta HSTN have eight hours of battery life with normal use, plus 48 more hours with the charging case. They can be charged to 50% in 20 minutes in the case. The case is the only way to charge the glasses, and it is charged with USB-C. You can fully charge the case in 3.5 hours. The Oakley Meta Vanguard have nine hours of battery life with normal use, and the charging case provides 36 more hours on a full charge.
When continuously playing audio, the glasses last six hours. You can fully charge the glasses from the case in 75 minutes. The Meta Ray-Ban Display have six hours of battery life, with the case providing 24 more hours, and the Neural band has 18 hours of battery life. However, the amount of battery life you get will depend on how you use the glasses.
If you continuously record video, or continuously stream video to your phone for Be My Eyes or Aira, or Meta Live AI, you may get as little as 40 minutes to an hour for any of these Meta glasses. The AGIGA EchoVision Pioneers Edition will have six hours of battery life with audio playback and average AI usage. Although, if you use live AI continuously, you could get as low as 30 minutes or an hour.
The full release edition will have significantly better battery life, at least 50% greater battery capacity. The glasses will come with a charging case similar to the Meta glasses, although you can also charge them using USB-C even while you are wearing them, and there is a neckband with a battery that you can buy to charge them while wearing them.
The Ally Solos and Solos AirGo V have 15 or 16 hours of battery life. They charge with USB-C with no charging case, and they fully charge in 1.5 hours. You can get three hours of battery life from charging them for 15 minutes. If you continuously play audio, the glasses will last 10 hours, while a continuous phone call will cause them to last seven hours. I'm not sure which scenario most resembles continuously using Ally for the entire time. The battery life of the Solos AirGo V2 is not yet known.
AI image description. The Meta AI usually responds in less than a second, although its descriptions are significantly less detailed than Be My AI. However, there is a setting under accessibility that enables more detailed descriptions, and this makes the descriptions better, although still not as long and detailed as Be My AI. You can also ask any questions you like about the image. When using Meta AI, I rarely notice any hallucinations or inaccurate descriptions.
I have not tried reading documents with the glasses, but I have heard that by default, it will summarize documents instead of reading all of the text, although you can ask them to read the entire document, and that should work. Usually, to use Meta AI, you say, "Hey, Meta," and then ask a question, such as, "What am I looking at," or "What doors do you see?" There is also a live AI mode where you can have a continuous conversation with the AI without saying, "Hey, Meta," although it cannot continuously monitor the camera, and will only take a new picture when you ask it something.
The live AI also often overhears what other people are saying and responds to that, or what you say to others. Although, you can pause live AI by tapping the touchpad. The AGIGA gives very detailed descriptions, and specifically gives very detailed descriptions of people, much more detailed than how Meta AI describes them. The AGIGA glasses can also read entire documents using OCR, using a custom model specifically for this, I'm pretty sure.
You can trigger the AI, either by saying a wake word or asking a question, or by pressing one of the buttons on the glasses. There is also a live AI mode that can continuously describe what the camera sees without you having to say anything, and I think you can also ask questions in the live AI mode without saying the wake word. However, you can mute the microphone on the glasses in live AI mode, so the AI will not respond to your conversations.
Envision Ally can give very detailed descriptions, and you can customize how detailed its descriptions are, as well as its personality. You can also give more custom prompts to tell it more information, or have it respond in a certain way. Ally also uses specialized models for reading text and some other tasks. Ally works in two ways, you can call Ally, which will start a voice conversation where it is always listening for questions, or you can message Ally, sending text questions and getting text responses back. Both should work with the glasses.
With Ally Pro, you can create shortcuts, where you type a prompt and whether to call or message Ally, and which personality to use, and you can trigger these shortcuts from the start screen of the Ally app from Apple Shortcuts, or with Siri, and perhaps using a button on the glasses. Although I am not certain about this, I do not think Ally has a wake word. AGIGA AI and Ally both seem to have pretty good response times, and they have been improving, although they probably do not respond as quickly as Meta AI.
Third party services. On the Meta glasses, you can make video calls with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Be My Eyes, and you can make IRA calls through WhatsApp. You can also send and read messages using Meta AI through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and your phone's messaging app. There is an AI service from NOA, which is spelled N-O-A, that you can use through WhatsApp, and if you send a picture or video to it from the glasses, it will send a very detailed description back. You can also ask questions about it or send audio messages.
The Meta glasses will often read only part of the message, and it can take 15 seconds or more for the whole process, although having WhatsApp on your phone makes it significantly faster and lets you read the full responses quickly as well from your phone. The NOA AI service was designed for the blind and to be good at tasks useful for orientation and mobility, like having a good understanding of left and right, and finding things like doors and crosswalks.
PiccyBot also has a WhatsApp AI service, where it will describe images or videos, and you can ask questions as well. It will respond with a voice message, meaning that the Meta glasses should play the entire response. Meta is also creating an SDK for their glasses, where apps running on your phone can stream pictures and video from the camera, and the Seeing AI app will be adding support for them.
Hopefully, other AI and navigation apps for the blind that use the camera will add support as well. Humanware is also writing an navigation app for the Meta glasses. Meta AI can also integrate with your calendar, with Audible, with several music services, and with some fitness tracking devices, like Garmin and Strava, at least on the Oakley Vanguard. The AGIGA Glasses support Be My Eyes and Aira directly from the glasses and not using your phone or WhatsApp as an intermediary.
The AGIGA Glasses will also support finding public transportation routes, and describing them using the Transit API, although it will not do live bus tracking or give you directions along the way. It is meant more for choosing a route and preparing before you leave. The Ally Solos do not claim support for any third-party services right now, although Solos sells an SDK that lets developers use the camera on their glasses from their apps, for $1,999. Envision has also said that they plan to try to add support for services such as Aira and Be My Eyes, and possibly others, with Aira being the most certain, I think. Ally can integrate with your calendar and has access to weather data and your current location.
Pricing and availability. The Ray-Ban Meta second-generation start at 379 dollars. The Oakley Meta HSTN start at 399 dollars. The Oakley Meta Vanguard started 499 dollars, and the Meta Ray-Ban display start at 799 dollars. All of these glasses come in different styles and colors, and with different lens types. The AGIGA glasses are not available yet, but can be pre-ordered for 599 dollars. When the glasses come out, there will be a subscription for the AI, but if you pre-order, you will get a free lifetime subscription.
Thank you for that detailed summary, Elijah. We are testing several of these products that are not yet released, at the International Braille and Technology Center right now, and when we're not under non-disclosure, and when products are released in shipping, we will be producing a comprehensive comparison of some of these products on Access On. Certainly, this is a hot topic area right now. What do these glasses do? How well do they describe the environment to a blind person, and what are the hallucinations like?
How speedy are they? We are heartened by the competitiveness of this market right now. It is always good for consumers to have choice, that encourages innovation. Of course, with choice comes consumer complexity as well, in terms of which one is right for me, and that is exactly what we seek to do here at the International Braille and Technology Center. We get this technology in, we put it through its paces, we come up with objective comparisons and demonstrations, so do watch this space, we will be spending much more time on some of these new glasses products going forward.
That concludes this episode of Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip, or just write it down, and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon, [email protected]. That's [email protected] on Mastodon.
To subscribe to an announcement-only email list about upcoming episodes, send a blank message to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org, or phone us, 410-659-9314. That's 410-659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind podcast right from where you heard this podcast.