Welcome to the fifty-second episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
- Introduction 0:00
- Vispero's CEO responds to NFB concerns 0:57
- Gabi Leibowitz from ElevenLabs discusses the partnership with the National Federation of the Blind 11:39
- Closing and contact info 58:43
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
Speaker 2:
Access on.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. On this episode, Vispero CEO Rhonda Bassett-Spiers responds to the concerns of the NFB. We speak with Gabi Leibowitz about a partnership between the National Federation of the Blind and ElevenLabs. We demonstrate ElevenReader from ElevenLabs. What does it do? And why might you use it? And we show you how NFB members can sign up to get the ElevenReader Ultra Plan for free.
It is Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland welcoming you to episode 52 of the podcast. A busy one as always, so let's go straight into it with more on the Vispero situation. Last week in episode 51, we brought you a letter that National Federation of the Blind President Mark Riccobono, wrote to Rhonda Bassett-Spiers, the relatively new Chief Executive Officer of Vispero, and she has replied to that letter. I'd like to read that one in its entirety.
She writes, "Dear Mark, thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive letter. I greatly appreciate the time and care the National Federation of the Blind, NFB, has taken to share these concerns and perspectives. The NFB plays a critical role in representing the voice and lived experience of the blind community. We value the open dialogue we've established through our past conversations and ongoing collaboration.
At Vispero, our purpose is to empower individuals who are blind or have low vision to achieve independence and access opportunities. We recognize that fulfilling this mission requires transparency, accountability, and close partnership with organizations like the NFB to ensure our decisions reflect the needs and lived experiences of the community we serve. We take the feedback outlined in your message very seriously.
The issues you've raised regarding pricing and licensing, clarity, feature access, account functionality, data privacy, technical support accessibility and blind leadership within Vispero directly address areas that are core to our mission and values. I'd like to address each of your points individually to provide background and context.
Pricing and licensing. We recognize the importance of affordability and clarity to the communities we serve. For many users, the home annual license has been a bridge to independence, education and employment. In 2018, when the Home Annual license was launched, the subscription price for JAWS was 90 dollars per year. The price was increased by 5% in 2021 to 95 dollars, and again in 2025 by 10% to 104.50 dollars. This represents just 2 price increases over an 8-year period.
The Home Annual license remains central to our mission to keep JAWS accessible and affordable. Despite not being profitable, we continue to offer it because it aligns with our mission: to support the blind and low vision community and to ensure individuals have affordable access to JAWS for personal use. Earlier this year we removed the Home Annual license option from our website requiring our loyal customers to contact us directly to make a purchase. This decision was made after discovering that several businesses were purchasing this lower cost license rather than true Home users.
While we recognize this may create a minor inconvenience, the process helps ensure that the product remains available to the individuals for whom it was designed. To support this change, we also published a blog post that explains the different licensing options and helps customers select the right product for their needs. I'd be happy to share this link if you would like.
I'd like to reaffirm that the Home Annual license remains a core offering for Vispero. Going forward, any updates to pricing or licensing will be communicated clearly and collaboratively. We welcome the NFB's feedback as part of this process.
Feature access and AI Page Explorer. I understand and appreciate the community's disappointment regarding the exclusion of AI Page Explorer from the Home Annual subscription. We intended to design the specific feature for professional and academic and environments. We users frequently engage with complex data-rich systems. However, we also recognize that innovation should never feel like exclusion. We are actively reviewing how to make AI-driven functionality more broadly available and we have many new capabilities planned for release across our product portfolio in 2026.
As I mentioned in our recent conversation, we would like to work closely with the NFB and other community representatives early in our development cycle to gather feedback and ensure our innovation plans align with user needs. To that end, I reached out to Beth." Just a note from me as the narrator that Beth refers to Beth Braun, the Federation's Chief of Staff, "Friday, November 7th to schedule a call with you and your CTO to review our product strategy and gather your input. As a company, we will not always offer identical functionality across all product tiers. However, we are committed to providing upgrade paths where possible we have always listened to and responded to customers contact us with specific needs.
Vispero account and data privacy. The new Vispero account was introduced to strengthen our connection with users and create a more unified experience. By enabling registration, we can simplify license management, cross-device personalization and lay the foundation for future AI-driven features that adapt to individual user preferences.
We also share the concern about data collection and want to assure users that only information essential to software functionality is required. We will be publishing a clearer explanation of what data is collected, why, and how it is protected. We also share your concern about reliability. We are designing the system so that temporary cloud outages will not disrupt product access. And we will provide additional transparency on these safeguards.
Technical support access. We appreciate the feedback regarding the transition away from email-based technical support. Currently, only about 7% of customers use email to contact our support team. The majority, choosing to call and speak directly to one of our fully staffed technical support representatives who can address issues immediately. We implemented the web form to help capture key details upfront and enable our team to respond more efficiently.
However, we fully recognize that accessibility must always come first. For users who require immediate assistance or who may find the web form difficult to access, our call center remains available to provide direct support. Our goal is to ensure that every customer, regardless of circumstance or technology access has a reliable and responsive way to reach our team. The call center remains our primary channel for achieving this level of service.
Blind leadership and representation. We share your deep appreciation for the extraordinary contributions of leaders such as Glen Gordon and for the generations of blind professionals who have shaped JAWS and other Vispero products. Blind leadership and lived experience remains fundamental to our innovation model. While some roles have evolved as part of our broader organizational transformation, we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that blind professionals continue to have a meaningful influence across our products, research and customer experience teams.
As reflected on our website, our leadership team includes two members of the blind community, Matt Ater and Ryan Jones, who both play critical roles in shaping the company's strategy, direction and user engagement. Their expertise and advocacy continues to strengthen our organization, ensuring that our decisions reflect the perspectives of the communities we serve.
Looking ahead, we plan to expand our formal engagement with blind advisors, advocates, and users through ongoing listening sessions and advisory panels. We would greatly value the NFB's partnership in this effort. We have developed a community outreach and engagement strategy to build stronger, more direct connections between Vispero and the community, and I would welcome the opportunity to review our plans with you to gather your feedback and insights.
Additionally, as we discussed on our call, I would greatly appreciate any recommendations you may have to help Vispero as we continue our efforts to recruit and hire blind engineers. Looking forward, a more collaborative partnership. As I mentioned when we met, I want to and I'm committed to working differently together proactively rather than reactively. That means inviting NFB's input earlier in Vispero's product planning cycles, hosting regular briefings to discuss upcoming updates and feature roadmaps, partnering on communication to the broader community when changes are on the horizon.
Our goal is to ensure that the voices of blind users help shape every stage of development and that communication around change is clear, respectful and transparent. We are proud of our shared mission to empower people who are blind or have low vision through technology. As we integrate AI and next generation tools into JAWS, ZoomText and Fusion, our vision remains constant: to ensure every user has the independence, confidence and opportunity they deserve.
Thank you again for your partnership and for holding us to the high standards we strive to meet. We look forward to continuing this conversation and working more closely with the National Federation of the Blind to ensure Vispero's innovation always advances accessibility for all."
So ends the letter from Rhonda Bassett-Spiers, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Vispero. Now obviously the dialogue will be ongoing and if you have any comments that you'd like to make on the Vispero situation, you are welcome of course to be in touch, [email protected] is the email address, that's all joined together, [email protected]. You can attach an audio clip or send us a link to an audio clip in cloud storage or you can just write your thoughts down and we will include a selection here on the Access On Podcast.
In the past you've had to make a choice. If an audiobook version of something that you wanted to read wasn't available, you'd have to settle for text to speech unless you were also a Braille reader. But if you wanted a narrated version and it wasn't narrated by a human, you would accept an inferior product just to get the book read.
ElevenLabs has changed that dramatically with its ElevenReader app. We're going to talk about that and also a very exciting opportunity for members of the National Federation of the Blind to take us through this. We're joined by Gabi Leibowitz from ElevenLabs. Hi Gabi, great to have you on Access On.
Gabi Leibowitz:
Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Jonathan Mosen:
Tell me a little bit about ElevenLabs for those who perhaps haven't heard of it. It's really revolutionized the way that we work with audio, hasn't it?
Gabi Leibowitz:
It really has. ElevenLabs was founded about three years ago, which technically isn't a long time, but in the startup world is ages and it was founded by two best friends who are Polish, Mati and Piotr and they were watching Hollywood movies dubbed in Polish and all of the dubbing was done by one actor doing all of the voices and they sort of had that classic infomercial thought, there has to be a better way. And so that was the idea behind ElevenLabs originally was this instant dubbing while maintaining the identity and the sound of the original actor's voice.
From there, they've really created this incredible audio AI platform that is truly unmatched. The sort of flagship product is text to speech where you can turn text into highly realistic and human sounding voice. We have a library of 7,000 different voices to choose from. All of those voices speak from 30 to 73 different languages, so you don't have to choose whether the reader that you've picked is going to only read in Spanish or only read in English. Each reader reads in many, many languages and you can also now change the emotion with which the readers are delivering the text. And so we've really created the ability for you to instantaneously turn text into highly engaging realistic emotion filled audio.
Now the ElevenLabs platform has a variety of tools including speech to text, so you can analyze audio and turn that into highly specific texts that's able to distinguish between different speakers. You can create conversational agents on our platform, so essentially AI that you can speak to. You can create sound effects on our platform. You can now create music. And then about a year ago we came out with this product called ElevenReader where you can upload PDFs, links, pieces of text and have that read out by one of our many highly realistic voices. And so you're no longer listening to this robotic disengaging text to speech sound. You're listening to something that feels that it's being read to you by a human.
Jonathan Mosen:
One of the things that's really intrigued people about ElevenLabs and something that's been used widely in the blind community is the ability to clone voices. So you may want to clone your own and where that can be handy is if somebody, for example is learning Braille and they don't have the proficiency yet to read out loud, say for a podcast like this, then their own voice can read listener emails that come in.
That's one example. Also, when I was doing another podcast some time ago, we got permission, we licensed a voice that we used for that podcast and got the authority to put whatever script we needed in and it meant that we could turn around the audio really quickly if we had some deadline and we needed a new sweep narrated for the podcast.
Gabi Leibowitz:
Yeah, voice cloning has been really important, especially for the accessibility community. So about a year ago we were approached by a couple of non-profit organizations called Bridging Voice in the Scott-Morgan Foundation who essentially told us that our voice cloning technology was being used by patients who have ALS, also called motor neuron disease, head and neck cancer and other conditions that degenerate your ability to speak.
And they were creating these highly realistic clones of their voices so that they could continue to communicate with the sound of their own voice even once their ability to physically talk went away. And so that voice cloning feature has been really useful in the accessibility community, not just for these individuals with permanent voice loss but also for the blind community.
And not only can you instantly speak any piece of text in your own voice, once again, you can do it in 73 different languages, so congratulations, you can speak German, you can speak Mandarin. So it really, really speeds up that process and allows you to make content that is not just accessible from an ability perspective but also culturally accessible.
Jonathan Mosen:
I have heard some audiobook narrators on social media lamenting this development because they say no matter how good AI is, you still can't match the emotion of a particular human reader reading the book. And so there's that, but then there's also a sentiment that, well, maybe this thing I love doing, narrating audiobooks is becoming a bit of an endangered species. What would you say to those audiobook narrators?
Gabi Leibowitz:
To those actors, I would say first of all, it's a fantastic point. I am an actor myself. I studied theater in undergrad and then became a speech language pathologist, so I really understand how AI can be seen as taking jobs and as a villain for creators everywhere. What we're really trying to do at ElevenLabs is collaborate with creators and have these voices receive compensation every time that they are used.
We also just opened up the Iconic Voices Library where we have some really incredible actors and also actors who have even passed away. You're able to license their voices and they get compensated through their agencies and are fully aware of everything that's being expressed in their voices. So we really do try to collaborate with actors in this endeavor.
I think the other thing I would say is that especially on our Impact Program, which is where I work, what we're really concerned with is accessibility, with people being able to experience the world and have access to information as quickly and easily as a person with full sight, full hearing, full ability to speak. And so we don't always have actors available who are able to read a PDF and read a link, but we still want people to be able to access that information. So really these voices are able to democratize access to information in a way that an actor can't necessarily, but we definitely are not trying to replace actors. We see ourselves as a tool to be used alongside voiceover acting.
Jonathan Mosen:
It is so amazing to hear an audiobook or even something that you might consider a little bit drudgerous, like some sort of work-related document being read by someone like Sir Lawrence Olivier or whatever, or John Wayne. It's an amazing thing. We did get some feedback from listeners who said there are certain types of content where some of those voices actively censor some of the words. Is that at the request of the estate that there is certain nervousness about certain material?
Gabi Leibowitz:
It can be. That is definitely part of our mission to keep the creators and the actors who so generously lend us their voices at the forefront of the conversation. We want each voice to have the ability to decide what is and is not spoken in their voice because it is a highly valuable asset. More so legislation in AI is moving quickly, but not necessarily as quickly as the technology itself. So often censorship is as a result of high-risk content or high-risk areas that we've chosen to stay away from because there are not enough laws in place or nuanced enough laws in place to keep both the voices and the listener protected.
Jonathan Mosen:
There is a service for blind people and others with print disabilities called Bookshare where a lot of us get material. Do you think there might come a time when Bookshare will become integrated directly into ElevenReader?
Gabi Leibowitz:
Gosh, I hope so. I really hope so. Often I find that I'll be looking into accessibility resources for audio content and I find that they're using ElevenLabs voices. So along with our nonprofit partnerships, we do also have a very active enterprise partnerships team and we work together to make sure that organizations, even for-profit organizations who are improving accessibility resources with ElevenLabs receive either discounted access or at least white glove service from us.
Because we believe so firmly that the voices in ElevenLabs are the best that AI audio has to offer, we want to give access to individuals who rely on audio to experience the world and to receive information and to learn. So yes, definitely we're trying to have as many partnerships as possible, which brought us to the National Federation of the Blind.
Jonathan Mosen:
Beautiful segue. Let's talk about that partnership and what is on offer for members of the National Federation of the Blind.
Gabi Leibowitz:
We are partnering with the National Federation of the Blind to give free access to our ElevenReader app. That's our app where you're able to upload PDFs, upload links, upload text, and have it read out by one of the many in our library of these highly realistic AI voices.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right, so there's a default number of hours, I think it's 10 for the free version, correct? And then there's a premium version which is unlimited and it's the premium version that we are offering to NFB members free.
Gabi Leibowitz:
Yes, for giving free premium access. We do not want cost to be a barrier for individuals who are blind or have accessibility needs to access this content. By partnering with the National Federation of the Blind, we're able to make sure that this content and this service gets in the hands of the people who really need it. So we're really appreciative of the National Federation of the Blind for taking on the responsibility really of distributing access to ElevenReader. And on the impact side, we're just so proud to be able to offer this for free.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we too are grateful for the partnership because there are so many blind people who are voracious audiobook consumers. So how do people avail themselves of ElevenReader for free through the National Federation of the Blind?
Gabi Leibowitz:
Great question. So we'll have some resources available on our website where you can access video tutorials that'll really walk you through this process, but essentially you'll make a free ElevenReader or ElevenLabs account and through that free account you'll be able to apply for the Impact Program. When you click apply for the Impact Program, a series of nonprofit organizations who are our partners will show up. Individuals who are blind or low vision and who would like to access ElevenReader specifically will select National Federation of the Blind as the organization through which they are applying.
They will then have to provide proof that they are a member of the National Federation of the Blind, and through that someone from the National Federation of the Blind will be responsible for accepting or denying these applications. Once the application is accepted, the account will immediately turn into a free premium ElevenReader account and you can start listening. You don't need to input any credit card information or deal with any discount codes. Your account will simply upgrade and you can start listening.
Jonathan Mosen:
And is there a limit to how long the premium access lasts for?
Gabi Leibowitz:
Right now we have that access lasting for six months, however that is mainly to reduce fraud. If after six months you're continuing to be a voracious reader and a voracious user of the ElevenReader, you are welcome to reapply. And given that we intend for this program to go on for a very, very long time, I'm hoping that your application will be accepted. So these licenses are renewable, but we'll start at six months, but as I said, you're not inputting any credit card information, so there's no danger of getting charged after those initial six months are up.
Jonathan Mosen:
As you say, those with ElevenLabs accounts already can sign in and one of the really nice things about this is that that means you have access to the voice clones that you've made in ElevenReader. Right now, I am a long way away from my little granddaughter who's about to turn three, and I do read to her. I go into my studio and read books to her pretty regularly, but it occurred to me the other day that if I clone my voice on an ElevenLabs account that she has access to through ElevenReader, there's no end of things that Grandad could read to her.
Gabi Leibowitz:
That is so sweet and a beautiful, beautiful use case for this. Yes.
Jonathan Mosen:
So the education use case is also a really important thing that ElevenLabs are thinking about. One of the things that we've been talking about here is we've been building this partnership and putting the building blocks in place is that for older people who may become blind later in life, they are more inclined to want to use very human-sounding speech and just continue their lifelong learning. And what you're doing is really opening up a wide range of textual content in an accessible audio form. I've heard you use the term democratizing audio before and that's a really good way of describing it.
Gabi Leibowitz:
Yeah. We found this really beautiful magical use case in the healthcare space with voice cloning for individuals who had permanently lost their voice and the Impact Program functions along three verticals. We have healthcare, education and culture. And within education we were really thinking about how within the Impact Program we can make the biggest impact with our technology and help the most people who need it.
And so for education, this is our initiative, democratizing access to information and not just thinking about the learner as a K through 12 student, but thinking about the lifelong learner. How can we make it easier for individuals to access information? To engage with information? It's one thing to listen to a book or an article in a robotic voice that you won't recall the information. It is far more engaging to listen to that same book article, research paper in an engaging voice, and you're more likely to retain the information.
So we really are getting at that lifelong learner and we're hoping to make an impact in education for adults. The ElevenReader app was started by Jack McDermott who actually has a Masters of Education, so we've been thinking about ElevenReader as a tool for students and for learners throughout the lifespan from the very beginning of this app.
Jonathan Mosen:
One of the things I've noticed in recent times is that ElevenLabs has spent quite a bit of development time on improving voiceover support, so we're in great shape to launch this partnership.
Gabi Leibowitz:
Oh yeah, our support team responds before I blink, so we've got a great support team on our hands and also I would love to be a resource when there's need.
Jonathan Mosen:
So people can search for ElevenReader and that's eleven spelt out rather than the numbers and find it ElevenReader in the App Store. There's also a website, so what I like is the synchronization. You can start something say on your smartphone and then pick it up in the browser?
Gabi Leibowitz:
Yeah, it's great. And we have an app in the App Store. We also have an ElevenLabs app, so there are lots of different ways to access this.
Jonathan Mosen:
Fantastic. So do check out ElevenReader and we'll be providing further information about making sure that you as a member of the National Federation of the Blind can take advantage of this generous ElevenReader offer. We're absolutely thrilled to be partnering with you on this, Gabi, and we look forward to staying in touch.
Gabi Leibowitz:
I am so, so thrilled about this partnership and really excited to see where it goes. So thank you for having me.
Jonathan Mosen:
We are going to take a look at the ElevenReader app now and for those interested in such things, I should say that this was the first ever recording that's been made in my new home studio, so let the fun begin. Broadly speaking, there might be two ways that you would consume content from ElevenReader. One is to get the content from within the app and there is quite a bit of public domain content that you can try. There's also an increasing amount of content that is new and that's either freely available or available for purchase from within the app.
The second way is that you can send content to the app yourself, and there are various ways to do this. You can upload content from within the app. This is a process known as importing and the ElevenReader app as well-integrated into the iOS share sheet. That means that if you are reading a web page or an article somewhere in some kind of reader app, normally you'll find a share button in that app and one of the options that will come up is ElevenReader.
I'm a big fan of utilities that allow you to set something aside for reading later. I stumble upon a lot of interesting material as I'm going through my RSS reader or looking at websites and I think I really must read that when I have a bit more time, but I don't have time now. And historically what I've done is used a service called Instapaper that's been around for a long time and it integrates pretty well with a wide range of apps.
What I've been trying in the last little while is to see what happens when I use ElevenReader instead of Instapaper and it does put a whole new complexion on the material that you are reading when you hear it in such human-like speech. So we'll show you some of this now. Let's go to the top of the ElevenReader app.
Speaker 5:
Click to open last played item button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there's a button here that you will sometimes see if ElevenReader knows the last thing that you read, you can double tap this button at the top of the screen when you first open the app and you'll resume the last thing that you read. And yes, it does remember your place. This particular last thing I read is a good example of getting content into ElevenReader because on a Saturday night when I was going through Mastodon, I came across an interesting article about the British group, The Zombies, and I thought I'd like to read that at some point, but it's not mission-critical. So I said it to one side by putting it in ElevenReader. I'm going to double tap now.
Speaker 5:
Go back button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I can go back to the previous screen, but let's flick right and explore what's here.
Speaker 5:
Read options button, progress, 0, 03 of 10, 22, adjustable.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's a progress indicator and you can swipe through this to move through the article.
Speaker 5:
Bookmark button.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you're reading a book maybe for study, you might want to set a bookmark to return to a particular place and you can do that here.
Speaker 5:
Seek back button. Play button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And here's the play button. I'm going to press play and you will hear the reading start in the voice that I've currently chosen as my default reader voice on ElevenReader. In this case, this voice is a professional voice that has been made available by ElevenReader and this is done by taking actual samples of somebody reading so it sounds very human-like. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6:
This one features the first ever U.S. release of the correct version of The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle thoughts on the new band-approved documentary, a recommendation for an upcoming book based on the obsolete Sony newsletter and an update about a new version, the e-book reader from the last newsletter.
The Zombies delivered their classic album, Odessey and Oracle to the record company with glorious mono mixes. The album was remixed for stereo before release and it was those stereo mixes that got released in America and most of the world. All of the subsequent U.S. reissues used the stereo mixes. Original mono UK vinyl pressings have always been scarce and expensive.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to perform the magic tap, a two finger double tap to stop that and of course I can perform a magic tap again to resume reading. Yes, parenthetically, it is really interesting how much time was spent on the mono mixes of The Beatles and some other British bands in the 60s. They were considered the definitive mixes at the time. I'm going to flick right.
Speaker 5:
Seek forward button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there's a seek forward button.
Speaker 5:
Playback speed one times button.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can adjust the playback speed. So let's see what effect this has.
Speaker 5:
Sheet grabber, half screen button, reading speed one times, adjust playback speed, 1.0 adjustable.
Jonathan Mosen:
To adjust the speed, you do have to double tap the button and then locate the picker item.
Speaker 5:
1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's see what 1.5X sounds like.
Speaker 6:
The band now controls its catalog and has just reissued their original mono Odessey and Oracle mixes on vinyl and CD, remastered from the original studio masters. These mixes are strikingly different and better than the-
Jonathan Mosen:
And you can go all the way up to 4X speed, so that's a remarkable speed rate. Let's try that.
That is very fast. Now you can go down to 0.0 and when you do that, it doesn't speak at all, so we can go up to 0.1 and it sounds very slow. So not really usable and you can hear the digital artifacts creeping in at that point, but you have considerable flexibility over the speed. I'll flick right.
Speaker 5:
0.5 times button. 0.75 times button.
Jonathan Mosen:
So you do have a few shortcuts. That means that you don't have to play with that picker item if you don't want to.
Speaker 5:
1.0 times button, 1.5 times button.
Jonathan Mosen:
So those buttons exist. And then if we go to the end of the screen.
Speaker 5:
Save settings.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can save the setting.
Speaker 5:
2.0 times, save setting, save setting.
Jonathan Mosen:
And 2.0 is the last preset that you have. So we'll save the setting and pop out of the screen.
Speaker 5:
Go back, read options button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And focus has gone to the top of the screen at this point, so we'll just go back down.
Speaker 5:
Chapters button. Select voice button.
Jonathan Mosen:
As Gabi mentioned, there are many voices from which you can choose, thousands of voices and there are ways of categorizing these voices to make it easy for you to find the one that you want. I'll double tap this button.
Speaker 5:
Sheet grabber expanded button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 5:
Voices search button.
Jonathan Mosen:
There is a search button here and we'll have a look at that soon because I'm logged into my ElevenLabs account and I do use ElevenLabs as a content creator from time to time, so I do have some voices that I have made.
Speaker 5:
Filter voices button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's have a look at what you can filter by.
Speaker 5:
Sheet grabber, expanded button filters, close button. Sort by, trending, switch button unselected. Latest. Switch button unselected. Most popular. Switch button unselected. Languages. Language filter button. Best for narrative and story. Switch button unselected, conversational, switch button unselected, characters and animation, switch button unselected.
Informative and educational, switch button unselected. Entertainment and TV, switch button unselected. Age, young. Switch button unselected. Middle-aged. Switch button unselected. Old. Switch button unselected. Gender, male. Switch button unselected. Female. Switch button unselected. Neutral. Switch button unselected. Reset.
Jonathan Mosen:
Because there are so many voices here, you can enable as many of these filters as you need. For example, if you are looking for say a middle-aged female narrator who is good for character voices, you can switch those things on and it will narrow the voices available to you accordingly. I'm going to perform a two-finger scrub to go to the previous screen.
Speaker 5:
Sheet grabber expanded, but voices search button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'm going to search at this point by double tapping.
Speaker 5:
Search, search, text feel, is editing, insertion point at start.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to type my name here and flick right.
Speaker 5:
Filter voices button, close button, recents, switch, favorites, switch, explore, reset, select, default. Jonathan Pro button.
Jonathan Mosen:
This one is called Jonathan Pro. This is not thankfully available in ElevenLabs itself, but some years ago I did go through the professional voice cloning feature. It must have been about two or more years ago now I think. And what I found was that it made a really good clone of my voice but not my accent. It kind of turned it into more of a British accent. So I'll double tap this.
Speaker 5:
Selected Jonathan Pro.
Jonathan Mosen:
What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. There you go. That's the little sample that it gives and every time you choose a voice, you will hear a sample like that so that you can decide whether that's the voice for you and if it isn't, you can keep auditioning voices. I'm going to go back to the previous screen.
Speaker 5:
Select voice button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now if I perform a magic tap ... Signed the band and gave them a tiny budget. It got them access to EMI Studios K/A Abbey Road. In June, 1967, right after The Beatles were wrapped up sessions for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The band was determined to make a record that reflected their own musical ambitions and the label left them to chase their own muse.
Hopefully you can hear my point that it sounds like me, but it doesn't sound like my accent. Mind you, these days, I'm not sure what my accent is because it's evolving in quite a bizarre way and I can hear it doing it, but I don't seem to be able to stop it. Anyway, you can choose from a wide range of voices, whether it's voices that you've made through the cloning process or voices that are available here and there are many, many voices to choose from. There is a button at the bottom.
Speaker 5:
Soundscapes button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And this is a nice feature if you are using the app for meditation or trying to get to sleep. Perhaps you are having a soothing story read to you, so I'll double tap this.
Speaker 5:
Sheet grabber, expanded button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 5:
Soundscapes. Close button, all switch button selected, focus, switch button unselected, sleep, switch button unselected.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to double tap sleep, which will filter the soundscapes available.
Speaker 5:
Selected.
Jonathan Mosen:
And will flick right.
Speaker 5:
Story. Switch button unselected, nature, switch button unselected.
Jonathan Mosen:
So again, you can have as many of these options selected as you like.
Speaker 5:
Ambience, switch button unselected, soundscape volume, soundscape volume 0.2 adjustable.
Jonathan Mosen:
At this point, if you have the soundscape set to its default volume, it's going to be fairly quiet, which is probably what you want because it allows you to hear the narrated content clearly, but have the soundscape playing away underneath.
Speaker 5:
Reset. Save. Sleep soundscapes. Soundscape/soundscape off. Image, a white logo on a blue circle, turn off soundscapes.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to flick right and we'll get the soundscapes now.
Speaker 5:
Soundscape/soundscape 011. Image, a blue and yellow circle against a black background. Deep sleep sin. Soundscape/soundscapes, relaxing white noise.
Jonathan Mosen:
So you do have to flick through twice to get to each option. I'm going to go to the deep sleep one.
Speaker 5:
Deep sleep sin.
Jonathan Mosen:
And double tap.
Speaker 5:
Deep sleep.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now that's quite quiet, but if I go back.
Speaker 5:
Soundscape/soundscape ... Turn off soundscape. Soundscape/soundscape off, sleep soundscapes, save, reset, save. Soundscape volume 0.2 adjustable.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we’ll turn it up.
Speaker 5:
0, 0, 0, 1.0.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now that that soundscape is enabled, I can continue reading my book. The Zombies were a bit out of step with the times and they concentrated on creating the finest monophonic mixes possible. When they delivered Odyssey and Oracle's CBS shrugged and asked why they hadn't made it in stereo, the band rushed back into the studio and somehow delivered stereo mixes even though they now say they'd already spent their budget. There you go. And so that's the soundscape. We can flick right.
Speaker 5:
Reset. Save. Sleep sounds soundscape ... Turn off soundscapes. Turn off soundscapes.
Jonathan Mosen:
So for certain kinds of content this might really add a little bit of atmosphere to the content that you are reading. Now I'm back on the home screen. The first screen that you will find when you launch the ElevenReader app, and I'll go to the top.
Speaker 5:
Click to open last played item button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 5:
Home button.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're on the home screen now.
Speaker 5:
Explore button.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you choose explore, there's a wide range of content available to you here, some of which is public domain, some of which is not.
Speaker 5:
Import button. Image, a black plus sign in a white circle.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now this is where you can import content, so let's take a look at this.
Speaker 5:
Import image. Sheet grabber half screen button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I flick right.
Speaker 5:
Import content. Paste a link button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's talk about how this would work in practice. Let's say that you are browsing away on Safari or some other web browser on your iPhone and you find something that you think I would like ElevenReader to read this to me. I think it will come alive if I can hear this narrated by a text to speech engine that is more human-like and not like the text to speech that I have on my iPhone. Even though some of those options are getting pretty good these days.
What you would do is you would go to the address bar. In Safari, if you're using a Bluetooth keyboard, you can press command L for location to get you to the address bar. The URL will be selected by default at that point, so then you can press command C to copy it to the clipboard.
At that point you have the URL that you need for ElevenReader on your clipboard. Choose this option that we're at now in the ElevenReader app and press command V for Victor and you have the URL in ElevenReader. It will go away and fetch the material. It does a pretty good job of getting rid of all the irrelevant links and verbiage that might detract from the user experience and it will import the article right into ElevenReader for you.
Speaker 5:
Upload a file button.
Jonathan Mosen:
ElevenReader supports a wide range of formats and by double tapping this button you'll invoke the upload screen that's associated with the files app on your iPhone and you can upload relevant content from the files app. The files app on your iPhone is very powerful and it'll integrate with a wide range of cloud services including of course iCloud itself.
So if you have iCloud drive installed on your PC, you can copy files into iCloud Drive. You might want to create a dedicated folder for ElevenReader content that you want to put in here and then you can just browse to that folder and upload the content from there. But it also integrates with Dropbox and OneDrive and Google Drive. All that's involved is to sign in once with your credentials for those services and then they're all available from the files app.
So that means that if you store your documents in OneDrive, let's say because you're a prolific Microsoft Word user, then your files app on your phone can access your documents folder on your PC and if you want to have a document read to you perhaps for work or something like that, then you can go ahead and have that uploaded to ElevenReader by choosing this button.
Speaker 5:
Create GenFM button.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're going to come back and talk about GenFM in a little bit and show you how that works.
Speaker 5:
Scan text button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right from within ElevenReader, you can press this button. The first time you do it, ElevenReader will ask for permission to access the camera. If you grant permission then you'll be able to take a picture of a document and it will that document right into ElevenReader and you can read it with one of its many voices. If I flick right again.
Speaker 5:
Write text button.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can double tap and you'll be placed in a text editor where you can write and save and that document will be in ElevenReader as well. If you want to for example, that means that you could copy some text to the clipboard from somewhere maybe in an email message and then paste it in here and upload it to ElevenReader.
As I mentioned when we were speaking with Gabi, one thing we don't have an ElevenReader at the moment, which we do in certain other apps like Voice Dream Reader and Dolphin EasyReader, is that there is no direct Bookshare support in the app at this time like there is with apps like Voice Dream Reader and Dolphin EasyReader.
So you would have to go to the Bookshare website, download the book in EPUB format and then import that book into Voice Dream Reader. You can do that via this app. You can also go to elevenreader.io and upload from your PC or your Mac or even your Chromebook for that matter if you want to do that. So a few extra steps, but once the book is there then you will be able to read it with one of the many voices that are available to you.
Now let's go back to GenFM. GenFM is a similar feature to that offered by NotebookLM from Google, which we have talked about on previous podcasts and boutiques and various presentations that the National Federation of the Blind's Center of Excellence and Non-Visual Accessibility has done. The way this works is that you provide ElevenReader with some content that you want summarized and GenFM will then produce for you a podcast-like presentation on the content that you've provided.
The big advantage of GenFM over NotebookLM is the huge number of voices that you have available to you to make this presentation exactly how you would like it. There may be some other benefits too, so let's try it. On the clipboard I have the URL of President Riccobono's 2025 report, which he delivered at our national Convention in New Orleans back in July. So I'm going to go to ...
Speaker 5:
Upload a file. Create GenFM button.
Jonathan Mosen:
That one and double-tap.
Speaker 5:
Create gen ... Go back button. GenFM, create an episode, pick the kind of content you'd like to import and listen to. Paste a link button.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's what I want to do. I'll double-tap.
Speaker 5:
Paste a link.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now I need to flick right.
Speaker 5:
Pick the paste link, write text button, import a file button, scan doc button, paste a link to an article or YouTube video. Text field.
Jonathan Mosen:
I double-tap.
Speaker 5:
Insertion point at end.
Jonathan Mosen:
I have a Bluetooth keyboard connected to I'll press command-V.
Speaker 5:
Hyphen report.
Jonathan Mosen:
I have the URL there now so I can flick right.
Speaker 5:
Choose episode format. Prime time your go-to format featuring two AI hosts and dynamic conversation. Expect witty banter and thorough topic exploration. Button. Bulletin. Quick, punchy and to the point. One AI host delivers the essential takeaways in a crisp radio news-style format button. Create a new episode.
Jonathan Mosen:
So it doesn't tell me which one of these is selected or maybe neither is. So let's go back.
Speaker 5:
Free bulletin. Prime time. Your go-to-
Jonathan Mosen:
We'll choose prime time.
Speaker 5:
Prime time, your go-to format featuring two AI hosts and dynamic conversation. Expect witty banter and thorough topic exploration.
Jonathan Mosen:
It again doesn't confirm the selection but I know that it's selected because I just double tapped it.
Speaker 5:
Bulletin. Quick. Create a new episode.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we'll double tap.
Speaker 5:
ElevenReader video.
Jonathan Mosen:
This generation process can take some time and you get the cool music in the background while it does it. You can explore the screen and get status updates on the progress of the GenFM project. It will tell you the different things that it is doing as it assembles this, but it doesn't speak in real time even if you keep focus on the status. So you will need to flick away and flick back and you may find that there is an update with progress.
There is a button that you can press that will notify you when the project is complete and I recommend you do that because then you can go back to ElevenReader to do other things or go to another app and you'll be notified when the project is complete. So we're going to go back and do other things while this GenFM works its magic in the background. Let's show you a few more voices because of course voices are the key thing that make ElevenReader so special.
Speaker 5:
Voices button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll double tap.
Speaker 5:
Voices.
Jonathan Mosen:
As we saw earlier in the screen, you can favorite voices because there are so many. So you do run the risk of finding an amazing voice and then thinking, what filter did I use or query did I use to find this voice? So if there's one that you really do like, it's a good idea to add it to your favorites so that you have access to it going forward.
Speaker 5:
Favorites, switch button unselected, explore, switch button selected, trending voices.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's have a look at trending voices.
Speaker 5:
Trending voices, button. Mark button, Titan, conversational young voice, deep. Bold and powerful button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, that sounds pretty interesting. So let's double tap that.
Speaker 5:
Conversational young voice, deep.
Speaker 7:
... Voice that actually sounds human. Well you are in luck. With thousands of users, I'm Titan and I can't wait to work with you.
Jonathan Mosen:
We'll flick right.
Speaker 5:
Rob button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And double tap.
Speaker 5:
Playing voice sample.
Speaker 8:
... Voice of the ocean are like nature's heartbeat.
Jonathan Mosen:
What we're finding is that the speechducks because voiceover has spoken and then when you double tap you are causing a click to occur which ducks the audio. So if you really want to hear a sample clearly what I've gotten into the habit of doing is toggling speech off with a three finger double tap before I play the sample. I'll flick right.
Speaker 5:
Bradford button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Here's one called Bradford. So I'll perform a three finger double tap.
Speaker 5:
Speech off.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now I can perform a single finger double tap on the sample.
Speaker 9:
Architecture is the thoughtful arrangement of space to uplift the spirit.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well that's very profound isn't it? I will perform a three finger, double tap again.
Speaker 5:
Speech on.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 5:
Voice collections. Voice collection best for audiobook narration button. A computer generated image depicting a room with bookshelves, a desk and other furniture in it.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll double tap.
Speaker 5:
Go back button. Best for audiobook narration. Amelia button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, let's hear from Amelia. So I'll do that trick again. I'll perform a three finger double tap.
Speaker 5:
Speech off.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now I'll double tap the sample.
Speaker 10:
Hi, I'm Amelia, a super high quality English voice. I love to read seriously, I'm a total bookworm. So what are you waiting for? Get me reading.
Jonathan Mosen:
All right then. So let's say that you like this voice. First let's get speech back on with a three finger double tap.
Speaker 5:
Speech on.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there is good implementation of the actions rotor in this app. So I have Amelia focused right now. Let me confirm.
Speaker 5:
Amelia button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now if I flick down.
Speaker 5:
Add to favorites.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right there we have add to favorites. So if you'd like the Amelia voice, you can just add that voice to the favorites. So that's the workflow you can go through, audition these many voices. When you find one that you like, just flick down, double tap to add to favorites. Meanwhile, our GenFM has finished so we can have a listen to what it has done with President Riccobono's 2025 report and flick right from the home screen.
Speaker 5:
Empowering Blind Lives: Advocacy and Change in 2025, Genfm with Brittany and Eric button.
Jonathan Mosen:
All right, let's double tap.
Speaker 5:
Select voice button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And it doesn't immediately play. So let's flick through here. Yes it does.
Speaker 10:
... Work and live independently basic rights most take for granted. Yet in 2025, blind Americans are still fighting court battles just to keep custody of their own children. Today we're exploring how one movement is changing that reality.
Speaker 11:
You know what's fascinating about this? It's not just isolated incidents. We're seeing systematic challenges to blind citizens' rights across the country.
Speaker 10:
Take Nicole Vega Cruz's story, a blind mother who lost custody of her six-month-old son purely because of assumptions about blind parenting. But here's where it gets interesting. The child welfare agency actually cleared her of wrongdoing.
Speaker 11:
So what was the real issue then?
Speaker 10:
The court's outdated beliefs about blind parents, but through advocacy and expert testimony, Nicole is not only getting full custody back, she and her baby were even granted special permission to attend the national convention together.
Speaker 11:
That's remarkable how organized support changed everything. Speaking of which, what really caught my attention was their approach to education reform.
Speaker 10:
Oh yes, they've built this fascinating network of educational advocates. Their first group helped over 20 families and the demand is so high that 37 states had people on waiting lists for their next training.
Speaker 11:
And they're tackling workplace discrimination too? The Amazon story particularly stood out to me.
Speaker 10:
That's such a perfect example of their impact. Jerusalem Crawley went from being denied basic accommodations to becoming an accommodations coordinator at Amazon, but here's what's really interesting. Nearly a quarter of all their support requests now involve employment discrimination.
Speaker 11:
That statistic really puts the scope of the problem into perspective.
Speaker 10:
And let's talk about their technology initiatives. They've launched this innovative podcast called Access On plus they're creating this comprehensive consumer reports lab specifically for blind users. They're literally testing every new indoor navigation system they can get their hands on.
Speaker 11:
That's fascinating. They're not just advocating, they're actively shaping how technology develops for blind users.
Jonathan Mosen:
And you can try that yourself. All I did just to recap was to paste the URL of the 2025 presidential report into the GenFM feature. It went away, it thought for a while and came up with that presentation, which does go on for some time. So that is the GenFM feature of ElevenLabs. A reminder, you can also choose the bulletin option if you want material summarized.
To use ElevenReader, you can sign up for an account which will give you 10 hours of use every month. The Ultra program gives you unlimited access and the ability to download a set number of files every month for offline listening. And because the National Federation of the Blind is an Impact partner with ElevenLabs, you can apply if you're an NFB member for the Ultra plan at no cost to you.
If you are using ElevenReader already, then you will have created an account with ElevenLabs and if you want to use the free plan, you can do that by signing up within the app. When you've done that, if you want to take advantage of the Impact Program, you can do so from the ElevenLabs website. In a web browser, go to elevenlabs.io and that's the number eleven spelt out. From there, you'll want to log in with your ElevenReader or ElevenLabs account. I'm using Google Chrome on my PC and I'm at elevenlabs.io at this point and I'm not logged in. And if I perform a window title command-
Speaker 12:
AI voice generator and voice agents platform, ElevenLabs, Google Chrome.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now I'm going to bring up my list of links.
Speaker 12:
Links list dialog, links list view, elevenlabs.io, 1 of 119.
Jonathan Mosen:
So it's a busy page, but I'm going to press L to log in.
Speaker 12:
Log in, 5 of 119.
Jonathan Mosen:
And press enter.
Speaker 12:
Sign in ElevenLabs, sign in ElevenLabs. Two regions and smart-glance highlights, sign in ElevenLabs.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to go to the first form field on the page.
Speaker 12:
Email required.
Jonathan Mosen:
And one password will take care of the rest. That's my password manager.
Speaker 12:
Items menu, ElevenLabs.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll press enter.
Speaker 12:
Leaving menus, sign an ElevenLabs document. Home, ElevenLabs.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'm now signed in into my ElevenLabs account. Next, I'm going to press the letter B to navigate me to where I need to be.
Speaker 12:
Unlabeled zero button. Platform switcher, click to switch platforms, button menu collapsed, create a voice button, notifications button, collate your profile, button collapsed as pop-up dialog.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the one I want. I want to go into my profile, so I will press enter to do that.
Speaker 12:
Expanded as pop-up, home, ElevenLabs, dialog upgrade button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now that I'm on the profile screen, I'm going to search for the word impact. So I'll perform a find on my screen.
Speaker 12:
JAWS, find dialog.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'm going to type impact, I-M-P-A-C-T.
Speaker 12:
Link apply for Impact Program.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there it is. Apply for Impact Program. I'll press enter.
Speaker 12:
Apply for Impact Program link, elevenlabs.io/app/impact programs AI.
Jonathan Mosen:
And once again, there is an explanation of the Impact Program here. But if I go to the last button on this page by pushing shift B, and at least in JAWS, it will wrap backwards from the top of the page.
Speaker 12:
Wrapping to bottom, apply for Impact Program button collapsed as pop-up dialog.
Jonathan Mosen:
There it is. Apply for Impact Program. When you choose this option, you'll be presented with a series of questions and you'll be told which are mandatory and which are optional. Eventually, you will get to a list of Impact partners and we will be there, the National Federation of the Blind.
When you complete the process, you will eventually hear from the National Federation of the Blind about whether we've been able to confirm your membership or whether we need to ask further questions. And if you're eligible, you'll eventually be upgraded to the Ultra Plan for six months. And when that six months is over, as Gabi says, you can reapply.
So that is ElevenReader. It's available in the Google Play Store. It's also available in the Apple App Store. You can also use it in your browser. If you're not a smartphone user, elevenreader.io is where you go. If you have any questions about this process, then you are welcome to email us at [email protected]. Remember, eleven is spelled out. It's not like the number 11. It's written out in full, [email protected]. We'll do our best to help.
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 Mastered, [email protected]. That's [email protected] on Mastered.
To subscribe to an announcements-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.