Welcome to the seventy-sixth 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.
- On this week's episode of Access On:
- Join us for an Access On webinar on outdoor wayfinding 0:00
- Create your own secure private network with Tailscale 1:58
- Apple memories, and making surround sound recordings 38:08
- BBC domestic streams, and NFB Newsline with Alexa 42:27
- The Renpho MorphoScan Nova smart scale 45:26
- I just became an NFB member 51:31
- DocuSign accessibility 52:43
- New Windows-based Braille devices 53:47
- John Ternus 55:33
- Sonos blamed my blindness 56:18
- Tech tip, moving apps on the taskbar using the keyboard 58:06
- Closing and contact info 1:00:11
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. This week, join us soon for our Access On webinar all about outdoor wayfinding. We review Tailscale, a way to create your own private network of all your computing devices. There's a new powerful smart scale on the market which has accessibility pluses and minuses.
And in this week's tech tip, how to reorder apps on your Windows task bar all from the keyboard. It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland welcoming you to episode 76 of Access On. First, let's look ahead to our next Access On seminar. It's going to be a discussion about outdoor navigation.
Mike May is going to be joining us for this one and I don't think there's anyone on the planet who knows more about outdoor navigation from a blindness perspective than Mike. So, we're delighted that he's going to be with us and we're going to be having a look at the state of outdoor navigation when a mainstream solution might work for you.
What are the benefits of blindness specific navigation? We'll go beyond apps and have a look at some hardware as well. And I mean, how timely is this? Because we're going to be doing the outdoor navigation Access On webinar the day after Memorial Day, the official start of summer.
So, this is going to be happening on Tuesday, May 26th from two until 3:30 PM Eastern and you can register by going to nfb.org/cena, that's nfb.org/cena. Choose the events and training link from there and reserve your place.
And even if you can't attend in person once you've registered, it guarantees that you will be sent a full recording of the webinar after the event. Today we're going to be focusing on some technology that you can have a lot of fun playing with and setting up and expanding, but it is genuinely practically useful. So, let me start by painting the picture.
You're away from home, maybe you're at a hotel for a national or state convention, or you're at a coffee shop or you're visiting family. You have your phone or your laptop with you and suddenly you think, oh no, you get that syncing feeling and you think I have this file and I really need this file and it's on my desktop computer at home.
Maybe it's on my network attached storage device at home and I need this file. Or here's another scenario. Maybe you just want to use your home internet connection for a bit of extra privacy while you browse or maybe you like Bonnie and me have a cable subscription where they only let you see certain TV channels when you're in your home.
If you go out and try and stream those channels, you can't do that on the move. Under normal circumstances, all of those things are difficult and secure, or they require setting up really complex software that most of us don't have the time or the expertise to deal with. The technology I'm about to introduce today here on Access On is called Tailscale and it solves all of that.
It creates what's called a private mesh network and it does so in a way that's almost magical in its simplicity. When I set this up recently, I kept thinking, "It's got to be more complex than this. What steps am I missing?" And I was very surprised with how I just set this thing up and I had it working within minutes.
All you have to do is install a small app on each of your devices. If you have a laptop running Windows, install it there. If you have a desktop running Linux, install it there. If you have a Mac of any persuasion, install it there. If you have an iPhone or an Android device, you will want the app for them.
Once you install the app on every computer device that you have or every computer device that Tailscale will support, all those devices can talk to each other directly securely from anywhere in the world as if they were all plugged in to the same home network. Many of us have Austin on our minds as National Convention gets closer and we're all looking forward to that.
So, if you are sitting in a hotel room in Austin or something occurs to you while you're at general session and you have your laptop or your phone with you, you can go back and check something that's on a desktop or another machine at home as if you were side by side with that machine.
Tailscale calls your private collection of connected devices a tailnet. Tailscale is built on top of something called WireGuard. WireGuard is a VPN protocol. VPN stands for virtual private network. You've probably heard of the term VPN before, often in the context of apps that claim to make your browsing private or let you watch streaming content from other countries.
WireGuard is the underlying technology that makes secure encrypted tunnels between devices. It's open source, widely respected by security experts and considerably faster and simpler than older VPN protocols. What Tailscale does is take WireGuard and add a brilliant layer of management on top.
Instead of you having to manually configure encrypted tunnels between every pair of devices, which is a real headache, Tailscale handles all of that automatically. It figures out the best way to connect your devices directly to each other, punching through firewalls and complex home router configurations without you needing to touch any settings.
If a direct connection isn't possible, it falls back to routing your traffic through its relay servers. But crucially, even if that's necessary, your data is still end to end encrypted. Tailscale can't see your traffic, nobody can. The practical upshot of all this is that you don't need to be a network engineer to use it. It is very straightforward. You install the app, you sign in with your Google, Apple, Microsoft, or GitHub account so you don't need an extra password to remember. You sign in with something you already have and within minutes your devices are connected.
If you're intrigued by the ease of use and the security and the utility of this, you're probably thinking more sure, but it's probably expensive, right? Well, this is another interesting thing about Tailscale. For personal use, it is completely free. The personal plan supports up to six users and up to 100 devices, which is more than enough for most households and extended families. Tailscale is upfront about how this works. Their business is selling to companies and enterprises and they're making the business decision to make this free to personal users because personal users cost them very little to run.
In an age where so much is free because companies are trying to make money out of us through ads or various things, it is quite refreshing to see that you are not the product, they're not trying to sell your data. Their free plan is free because they want you to love it, tell your employer about it, and then the employer pays for a business plan. I do worry a bit about how long this model might be hanging around for, but it is here right now. It's been here for quite some time and it is very generous. So, to get this going, you want to go to Tailscale.com, that's T-A-I-L-S-C-A-L-E.com and sign up with whatever login service you prefer, Apple, Google, Microsoft, et cetera, and get yourself an account.
You then want to download the version of Tailscale for the devices that you have. If you're an Android user, you'll want to get it from Google Play. If you're an iOS user, you'll want to get it from the app store. You can download other versions from the Tailscale website itself, including the Windows app, which is an accessible in store. One of the first things that you should enable after setting up Tailscale is a feature called MagicDNS. Just like when you connect to the internet, every device on your tailnet gets a numerical address, something like 100.64.x.x. That works, but who wants to remember those convoluted numbers? MagicDNS automatically gives every device on your tailnet a human-readable name.
When I lived in New Zealand, the computer that runs the internet radio station I run and own Mushroom FM was in the same room as my other computer equipment. So, on the primary desktop that I used to produce content like this, since it was all on the same network, I mapped the drive on the computer that I call the mushroom pot to M column and I could browse that drive and look for files at any time. Licensing provisions for internet radio are much less strict in New Zealand, so I wanted to leave the mushroom pot in New Zealand and I left it with my daughter, Heidi and her husband, Henry. And I have used other tools such as RIM from newer solutions to get into that computer when needed.
Now though, I can map the mushroom pot to M colon again and it just appears anywhere on any of my computers for me to browse as if I were right in front of the computer. To make that easier, I call the mushroom pot computer mushroom pot on my tailnet and I've enabled that friendly DNS. There are plenty of things that you can configure in Tailscale and you do that once you have an account and everything's set up by going to login.Tailscale.com/admin. You may need to sign in again with your authenticator provider of choice if you haven't signed in for a while and then you will see the dashboard there. I'm there now. I can confirm that by checking the window title.
Speaker 3:
Machines, Tailscale personnel, Microsoft, Earth.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'm on the machines page right now. Let's go to the list of links.
Speaker 3:
Links list dialogue.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I will press DN.
Speaker 3:
DNS8 of 29.
Jonathan Mosen:
And press enter. Now we don't get any feedback, but if I navigate around this page.
Speaker 3:
DNS heading level one. Manage DNS and NAMA servers of your network. Link read documentation about DNS. Heading level two tailnet DNS name. This unique name is used when registering DNS entries, sharing your device to other tailnets and issuing TLS certificates. Link read documentation about tailnet DNS name.
Jonathan Mosen:
The text descriptions of the links are clear. You can also bring up additional documentation if you really want to get into the weeds. This is a busy page. There's plenty to configure, but I also know having used it for a while that what I'm looking for is at a heading level two. So, I'll press the number two.
Speaker 3:
DNS heading level one. Tailnet DNS-
Jonathan Mosen:
Again.
Speaker 3:
... naps heading level two. NAMA servers adding level two. Search domains adding level two. MagicDNS adding level two.
Jonathan Mosen:
This is what interests me for now. Our performance sale.
Speaker 3:
Heading level two MagicDNS automatically register domain names for devices in your tailnet. This lets you to use a machine's name instead of its IP address, link read documentation about MagicDNS, disable MagicDNS button.
Jonathan Mosen:
You want to make sure that this is enabled so you can give your devices friendly names. Having done that, I'm going to bring the list of links up again.
Speaker 3:
Linked list dialogue.
Jonathan Mosen:
And type MAC.
Speaker 3:
Machine two of 18.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we'll go to machines. We don't get any feedback that the page has refreshed at this point, but it has and there's now a table on the screen.
Speaker 3:
Five columns and seven rows. Column one, row one. Machine link the tail view from
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the name of my Synology NAS. Of all the configuration that I've done with Tailscale, getting it working with the Synology NAS was by far the most complicated thing. It did involve a little bit of work. In the end, I found that the best way to get it done was at the command line by logging into the Synology NAS that way and typing prompts.
I got there in the end and it's worth doing because I have terabytes of data on that Synology NAS. Music, movies that I've ripped from DVD and Blu-ray discs, recordings I've made of the kids over the years, lots of radio shows and podcasts that I've done. There's plenty of material on there.
So, it is wonderful to be able to access that drive for pulling files down from it or for adding files to it anywhere. And now I have several drives that pertain to the Synology NAS that are mapped on my File Explorer on my laptop. And even when I'm traveling, they appear as if I were at home with the Synology NAS close by.
So, it was a bit of a bear getting that going, but it is so worth it. And the other thing about the Synology NAS is that unless there's an internet or power failure, it is always on. And I'll talk about the significance of that in a Tailscale context in just a little bit. Since I'm in the table, I'll press control alt down arrow.
Speaker 3:
Link the tailview for mushroom pot joints.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now there's the mushroom pot. That is the machine that's in New Zealand. I am nowhere close to that, but I do want to be able to access it. So, now that I'm on that row, I'm going to press control shift right arrow to navigate this row of the table.
Speaker 3:
Addresses. See all addresses for the version. 1.96.3 Windows 10, 22H2, column three of five.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's running Windows 10.
Speaker 3:
Last scene connected column four or five.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, I can immediately see that the mushroom pot is connected and doing its thing. That's actually quite useful in itself.
Speaker 3:
Machine action menu. Actions for mushroom pot button menu collapsed. Column five of five.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's press the space bar and have a look at what actions are available for this machine and this applies to any machine that you have in your tailnet.
Speaker 3:
Context menu. Action for mushroom pot menu. Edit machine name. One of eight.
Jonathan Mosen:
The machine name is not locked in stone. If you want to call it something else, you can go here and edit the name.
Speaker 3:
Edit machine IPV4. Share.
Jonathan Mosen:
If I wanted to share access to the mushroom pot, that could be quite useful. We obviously have a team of wonderful people working on mushroom FM and if something ever happened to me, it would certainly not be a bad thing to have somebody else go in there and maintain it.
Speaker 3:
Enable key expiry 408.
Jonathan Mosen:
This is a default that I have changed. By default, keys expire, which means that after a while, Tailscale will require you to log back in again for security reasons. But if you have devices that are always on that you're not traveling with like a NASA or a desktop computer, there is an advantage. There's a convenience in not having that key expire and I've set that to be the case in the mushroom pod.
Speaker 3:
The recent activity, five of eight. Edit route out settings. Six edit ACL tags. Set remove eight of eight.
Jonathan Mosen:
And you can remove it from your tailnet if you want to. So, those are the options that appear for a Windows computer. The options may vary. Some may not be present depending on the device that you have, but there will be at least a subset of these options available to you for each device. I talked about the advantage of computers always being on for certain Tailscale functions. So, let me go back to my coffee shop scenario. By default, when you connect to your tailnet from a coffee shop, only traffic destined for your devices at home goes through the Tailscale tunnel.
Your general web browsing still exits through the coffee shop's internet connection and that's fine most of the time and it's actually better for speed because you're not sending all your traffic on a detour through your home. But there will be times when you want all of your traffic to exit through your home connection.
Maybe you want to use a banking website that behaves strangely on networks it doesn't know about. Maybe you're traveling internationally and there are just certain sites that aren't going to work for you because you need to be at home for them to work. These are the kinds of scenarios where an exit node comes in handy.
Exit node simply means that you designate one of your home devices. Maybe it could be that Synology NAS, we were just talking about because it's always on and it's always connected to the internet or maybe a desktop that stays on and has a reliable internet connection as an exit node.
Once you've told Tailscale which computers should be exit nodes from your phone or your laptop, you can choose to route all your internet traffic through that device with just a tap or a click. From that point, as far as any website's concerned, you're sitting at home. There's a 2-step process to getting this going. First of all, you have to specify on the device itself that you want that device to be an exit node.
There's an option in the system tray for the Windows client, for example, where you set this up and then you would go into the admin console that we just saw with Tailscale and confirm that that is indeed what you want to do. I have the iOS app up on my iPhone right now, so I'll go to the top of the screen.
Speaker 1:
Tailscale VPN status. Connected. Switch button on.
Jonathan Mosen:
If I want to disconnect myself from my tailnet for any reason, I can do that right from the top of the app. Although in practice, I find myself just staying connected to my tailnet all the time. It doesn't do any harm. And if you're not using an exit node, then it really doesn't affect the phone in any way while giving you access to your own private cloud if you will. I'll flick right.
Speaker 1:
Mesonet. Connected. Open settings, button.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, it's to Tailscale's great credit that they have done a very good job of making the products accessible, certainly on every platform that I have tried. I'll flick right.
Speaker 1:
Exit node. None. Open exit node settings. Button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll double tap.
Speaker 1:
Done. Button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 1:
Choose exit node. Cutting. Exit node. None. Status, not active.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, at the moment, there is no exit node. That just means that the phone's going to work as it always does and the traffic will go through the cellular network or the wifi network I'm connected to. I'll flick right.
Speaker 1:
Exit node. Recommend it. Mason cloud. Status, not active.
Jonathan Mosen:
If I double tap this, all my traffic will go through my Synology NAS, which means that it will make it seem like I am at home even when I'm not. I'll click right.
Speaker 1:
Exit node, Mason Cloud. Status, not active. Exit node, Mushroom pot. Status, not active.
Jonathan Mosen:
I made the mushroom pot an exit node and the reason for that is that it's back in New Zealand and every so often there are TV programs or something that I want to watch in New Zealand that I can't watch from here in the United States. But by choosing the exit node as New Zealand, effectively it makes my phone appear like it's in New Zealand and I'm able to do all of those things.
But now here's where it gets really interesting, particularly for those who travel a lot internationally. Historically, there was a frustrating problem. If you wanted to use both Tailscale and a traditional private VPN at the same time, you couldn't. They conflicted with each other at the network level.
You had to choose one or the other, which was an annoying trade-off. Tailscale has solved this by partnering with Mullvad and that is spelled M-U-L-L-V-A-D. They're a highly respected privacy focused VPN service and they're based in Sweden. They're known in the industry for their iron commitment to user privacy. They keep no logs and user activity.
And through this partnership, Mullvad's VPN servers appear directly inside Tailscale as additional exit nodes. That means that you stay connected to your tailnet able to reach all your home devices while at the same time routing your general internet traffic out through a Mullvad server in a country of your choice.
Mullvad has over 650 servers across more than 40 countries and 74 cities, including the US, the UK, Canada, most of Europe, Singapore, and many more. So, let's say that you are in London, you're traveling from the United States and you want to access a US-based streaming service that's blocked in the UK while also being able to pull files off your home NAS back in the United States. With the Mullvad integration, you can do both at the same time or within a single Tailscale app. There's no juggling multiple VPN apps. There's no configuration conflicts at all anymore. Mullvad exit nodes do cost you.
It'll cost 5 dollars a month for five devices and you manage that within the admin console that we just saw previously. So, it's all very accessible. Payment is also accessible. They use Stripe for that. This is an optional feature.
You don't need it in order to use all the other features of Tailscale that I've been demonstrating. But if you travel frequently and you care about privacy, it is a remarkable combination and pretty good value for money as well. So, while I'm in the iOS app and I'm in this screen for exit nodes, I will flick right.
Speaker 1:
Location based, 50 countries. Button.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll double tap.
Speaker 1:
Exit node, Albania. Status, not active.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now I can flick right.
Speaker 1:
Exit node, Albania. Exit node. Argentina. Exit node. Argentina.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, there's two flicks for each one. It will be nice if that were improved, but you can go through, choose the country that is appropriate for your use case and then go ahead and connect and that really is all there is to it. You'll continue to access your tailnet and everything else or the other traffic will go to wherever you've sent it.
I'll briefly take a look at the Windows client. It is sitting in the system tray of this computer that I'm demonstrating with and I haven't had to think about it really since I installed it and just connected with my username and password. I'll press Windows with B.
Speaker 3:
Pass bar show hit and icons button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And right arrow.
Speaker 3:
Tailscale connected. Click for options, button one of nine.
Jonathan Mosen:
This is why I've made sure that it always appears in the system trade because I can just quickly check to make sure that Tailscale is connected. If I press the application key, I can invoke a context menu.
Speaker 3:
Context menu connect, connect and check. Most of net sub-menu.
Jonathan Mosen:
If I write arrow here.
Speaker 3:
Add another account... admin consult... log out.
Jonathan Mosen:
This could be useful if your employer embraces Tailscale because then you could have a home account and a work account and switch between them as needed. I'll left arrow and I'll down arrow.
Speaker 3:
This device thinking...
Jonathan Mosen:
Now that's this device, it's called ThinkingPad because this is my Lenovo ThinkPad that I'm demonstrating with.
Speaker 3:
Network devices sub-menu.
Jonathan Mosen:
And if I write arrow here...
Speaker 3:
My device is sub-menu. It's iPhone 17 localist.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, there's my iPhone. And there's the Synology NAS called Mosen cloud.
Speaker 3:
Mushroom pot.
Jonathan Mosen:
There's the mushroom pot.
Speaker 3:
Studio.
Jonathan Mosen:
And the studio computer that I'm actually recording on.
Speaker 3:
iPhone 17.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we're back around again. So, it's all visible from here with this little applet that sits in the system tray and makes it all work. And to prove that it makes it all work, I'm going to press Windows with E to invoke File Explorer.
Speaker 3:
Home list box.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm in File Explorer. I'm going to press alt D to get to the address bar.
Speaker 3:
Address bar edit home.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'm simply going to type M:/ and press enter.
Speaker 3:
Items view multi-select list box working on the... M, items view, multi-select list box.accessibility.
Jonathan Mosen:
There we are. I am now browsing a computer all the way over in New Zealand, the Mushroom FM computer and I'm browsing the Mushroom FM user account. So, if I press MU.
Speaker 3:
Make music, 13 of 27.
Jonathan Mosen:
I can press enter on music and we'll see all the music that Mushroom FM has. It's going to take a while, I think, to bring that up so it's not going to...
Speaker 3:
And music, I have new multi...
Jonathan Mosen:
There we go. It's not going to be as immediate as it would if you were sitting right in front of the computer. But now we can down arrow.
Speaker 3:
50S abridged. 50 Super 560S music. For 70S music, 80S music.
Jonathan Mosen:
And so on. We have various other categories here that we can down arrows or I can use first letter navigation just like I can anywhere else in file to explore. So, if I press the letter Novelty. We have mobility material in there as well. So, you can also copy to and from. I will say that we also have Dropbox that we use a lot on Mushroom FM.
And if I download something on my computer and put it in a Dropbox folder, it's going to turn up on the Mushroom FM computer a lot more quickly than it would if I had copied it using Tailscale. So, it is important to use the right tool for the right job, but being able to browse every part of this computer as if I were sitting in front of it has a lot of value.
And of course, I can do this from the files app on my iPhone as well so it's pretty flexible. Tailscale is installed on your devices, but what about everything else at home? Your printer, your smart home hub, your router's admin page, those devices don't run Tailscale. So, normally you couldn't reach them remotely.
And this is the problem that subnet routing solves. You designate one device on your home network ideally something that stays on all the time. So, again, probably the same device that you want to be your exit node. It could be a NAS or a desktop computer as your subnet router. That device then acts as a gateway advertising your entire home network through Tailscale.
Any device on your tailnet can then reach any other device on your home network, even the ones that have no idea what Tailscale is. For example, if you have a Synology NAS, you can set it up as a subnet router. Then when you're traveling, you can reach your printer, your router's settings page, your smart home devices, or anything else on your home network through the NAS acting as a bridge.
I could be traveling for work. Bonnie could ask me to print a document. I can do that and make sure that the document ends up being printed at home. You tell Tailscale which subnet to advertise approve it in the admin console just like you have to approve an exit note and you're done.
We don't use this for our smart home because as I demonstrated a couple of episodes ago, we have our own website for that, but it could be handy if you don't have a setup like the one that we have and you want to be able to configure smart home settings from some distance away. Next, Apple has a much loved feature called AirDrop and that lets you wirelessly send files between Apple devices that are near each other. Tailscale has something similar and they've called it Taildrop, but there are two important differences. It works across all platforms and it works over any distance.
So, with Taildrop, you can send a file from your iPhone directly to your Windows desktop on the other side of the world just as easy it is if they were in the same room. Here's a comment scenario. I'm in the iOS Files app now and I have a file on my local device that I would like to send somewhere else. It's this one.
Speaker 1:
IOS and iPad OS26, the Mac Stories Review app, ePub file 09/21/25, 3008.1MB.
Jonathan Mosen:
I go to triple tap, which is the equivalent of a long press on this file because I'm in the files app on my iPhone.
Speaker 1:
Copy, button. Move button. Share button.
Jonathan Mosen:
There's the share button. I'll double tap.
Speaker 1:
IOS and...
Jonathan Mosen:
I should stress though that I did have to do a little bit of configuring and massaging of the share sheet and iOS, which is quite character building that Shishi. I'll flick right.
Speaker 1:
IOS and iPad OS26. Send copy, but air draw, mail, but to doist, WhatsApp, messages, signal, button. Dropbox, drafts, install paper, Pixie Bot, Gemini, Tailscale.
Jonathan Mosen:
There is Tailscale. So, I'm going to double tap that.
Speaker 1:
Send via Tailscale. Heading.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'll flick right.
Speaker 1:
Done. Button. My devices. GLMT 3600B.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now I have a list of all the devices that I have in my tailnet and it's asking me which one do I want to send this file to?
Speaker 1:
Mosen cloud, mushroom pot, Studio with ThinkingPad, Windows...
Jonathan Mosen:
And I want to send it to the ThinkingPad.
Speaker 1:
ThinkingPad.
Jonathan Mosen:
Which is actually the last on the list because they were in alphabetical order so I'll double tap.
Speaker 1:
Selected. ThinkingPad Windows.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the one. Now I'm going to go to the top of the screen.
Speaker 1:
Send via Tailscale.
Jonathan Mosen:
And flick right.
Speaker 1:
Done button.
Jonathan Mosen:
And double tap the done button. And now I'm back to where I was previously. So, there isn't any progress indicator or anything like that. It's just gone away to send the fire in the background. Now in case you were skeptical, let's just make sure it really did turn up so I'm back on the ThinkPad.
Speaker 3:
A music file explorer.
Jonathan Mosen:
And you remember that we were in the music folder on the Mushroom FM computer, so I'm going to go to the list of folders by pressing shift tab.
Speaker 3:
Navigation page review.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's right the navigation pane. That's what it's called and I will type DOW.
Speaker 3:
Start a quick access downloads pin.
Jonathan Mosen:
There we go and we'll press enter on downloads because that is where things turn up on a Windows computer when you send them via Tailscale and now I'll tab.
Speaker 3:
Items view multi-select list box. The day expanded. iOS and iPad OS26, the Mac stories review.5/.
Jonathan Mosen:
There you go. It's really as simple as all that. I just sent it via tail drop via the share sheet on my iPhone. It is now in my downloads folder on my ThinkPad. And that's also the way it works if you send a file to a Mac, it'll appear in the downloads folder of your Mac. So, what happens if you send a file to an iPhone, which tends to be more walled garden and sandboxed and locked down? So, let's go through the process in reverse. This time sending from a Windows computer to an iPhone. I have a book that I want to send to my iPhone.
Speaker 3:
The lights in my life bookprint IRSP 2025.PDF.
Jonathan Mosen:
I found it in File Explorer. I'm going to invoke the context menu and it's a busy little context menu, but if I arrow through it, I will eventually get to.
Speaker 3:
Send with Tailscale...
Jonathan Mosen:
And I'll press enter to begin the process.
Speaker 3:
Leaving menus, see user.
Jonathan Mosen:
You might be forgiven for thinking that nothing's happened. In my experience, what does happen here is that a window pops up but it's not automatically given focus. That may vary depending on your machine. If it happens to you like it happens to me, just I'll tab into the window that Tailscale has brought up.
Speaker 3:
Send with Tailscale.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we're in the send with Tailscale window. It just contains two controls. We have a list here.
Speaker 3:
The lights in my life bookprint IRS PDF 272020.
Jonathan Mosen:
And what you can do is queue these things up if you want to. So, you can go around your computer and find files that you want to send somewhere else. Choose send to Tailscale from the context menu for each of those files. When you go in here, you will find that there is a list of files that you haven't sent yet. If I press the tab key.
Speaker 3:
Toolbarge iPhone 17 localist button.
Jonathan Mosen:
We have a list of machines and we left and right arrow through this list of machines. And not all machines on your tailnet may be eligible for Taildrop for various reasons. For example, on my Synology NAS, I have not yet created the correct folder. I'll talk about that a bit more in a moment.
Speaker 3:
Toolbox and click button. Toolbox iPhone 17.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's the one I want. I want to send this to my iPhone. So, I'm going to press the space bar to initiate that transfer and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:
Tailscale. Now, Taildrop file received. Tap to open. The lights in my life book_print high-res PDF September 2nd, 2025 PDF.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you activate that notification, you will be placed in a folder on your iPhone where Taildrop files go. You can copy them from there if you want, or you can just open them in an appropriate app. Now, one thing to be aware of, if you have a Synology NAS, Taildrop needs a folder called Taildrop to exist as a shared folder on the NAS before it can receive files.
You can create that in the Synology file manager settings. Once you've set it up, it is a seamless process. It will stay set up. There is support in a few travel routers for Tailscale. A travel router is a small device, typically about the size of a deck of cards and you take it with you when you travel.
It plugs into the hotel's ethernet port or you can connect it to the hotel's wifi and it creates its own little wifi network for all your devices. So, instead of logging each device into the hotel's network individually, which can often be a bit of a pain with those captive portals that many hotels use and also, of course, they can charge you sometimes for multiple devices.
You just connect everything to your travel router and the router handles the hotel network connection once. So, as far as the hotel is concerned, you're only connected with one device, but you can connect as many devices as you like behind that router.
Although it's not relevant to Tailscale, since we're talking about Travel Routers, I'll insert this here particularly given that we're coming up to national convention. One of the big advantages of traveling with a travel router is that it can get online those devices that don't have a web browser but which you might use.
For example, if you have a Brailliant or a Mantis and you get NFB-NEWSLINE content on that Brailliant or Mantis, you can't update your content if you can't connect to the hotel internet and there's no web browser on that device.
But with a travel router, you simply connect using a device that has a web browser like your laptop or your smartphone to connect the travel router to the hotel wifi and then you connect your Mantis or you're Brailliant to the travel router and or your NFB-NEWSLINE content will continue to update.
The most popular travel routers for Tailscale users are manufactured by a company called GL.iNet and you can find these on Amazon. They're routers, including models like the Beryl, that's B-E-R-Y-L-A-X, which is the one I ended up buying. Run a version of open source firmware that has Tailscale built right in. You log the router right into your tailnet. This is a one-off process.
So, once you've done it once, it sticks, thankfully, because it really wasn't the most accessible process in the world by any means, but it's logged in now for me and it's working brilliantly. So, when a device connects to the travel router, once you've logged into your tailnet, those devices don't need Tailscale installed at all. So, you plug your GL.iNet travel router into the hotel ethernet, you connect your devices to its wifi and instantly all of them are tunneled back through your home network. Again, a big advantage here is if there's certain content that's restricted to you being at home.
Your laptop can reach your home NAS if your NAS is still on or a desktop if that's still on at home, your phone, which might not be able to install certain apps and certain configurations benefits from your home exit node automatically. The travel router handles everything. I was pleasantly surprised at the price point. GL.iNet routers with Tailscale support start at affordable prices, generally in the range of 50 to 100 dollars depending on the model and they are genuinely worth considering if you travel frequently with multiple devices. Be prepared for a few headaches getting logged into your tailnet.
It really is not that pleasant and maybe we can have a chat to them to see if that can be improved. But once you've done that, actually choosing the WiFi network. If you need to hook into or rebroadcast the WiFi, that's actually a pretty straightforward, accessible process, which is what you're going to do most often once you've done the initial setup.
So, that is a look at Tailscale. To find out more, go to Tailscale.com, create an account if you wish, download the apps for your respective devices and install them after creating that account and you'll be set up in very short order with a powerful encrypted network that allows you to do all the things that we've just been discussing in this last half hour or so.
And if you're using Tailscale, do let us know how you're getting on with it. [email protected] if you want to be in touch. We will take a break and when we come back, just a few of the enormous number of listener contributions that we've received. Make a difference with the National Federation of the Blinds.
Keep NFB Advancing Give 25 campaign. Each year, thousands of Federation members and friends contribute to support blind people, but we still need your help to fund our programs in 2026 and beyond. When you give 25 dollars between May 15th and July 7th, you're entered into the Keep NFB advancing drawing. Each 25 dollar increment is a chance to win.
Your support helps us continue to build a network that advances the lives of all blind people across America. You could win prizes like roundtrip transportation for two to the 2027 NFB National Convention, hotel accommodations, registration, banquet ticket, or 2,000 dollars cash. What a chance to win the BrailleNote evolve from HumanWare?
Become a federation connector. Ask friends and family to contribute before national convention and indicate that you prompted their giving. The Give 25 Drive supports the Kenneth Jernigan Fund, Sun Fund, Tenbroek Memorial Fund, and the White Cane Fund. You can choose a fund when you donate. To enter, visit nfb.org/give25donate.
That's nfb.org/give25donate. Call 410-659-9314, extension 2430, or send a check to National Federation of the Blind and mention #Give25 and the fund in the memo. The winner will be announced July 8th, 2026. Thank you for your generosity. Casey Weeks has been in touch. [email protected] gives the email address, by the way, and Casey says, "I enjoyed the discussion about Apple when it took place. The discussion on the different programs people used along with the talk about the speech synthesizer was actually pretty interesting. In a way, we have it pretty easy nowadays, sort of.
Yes, the interface is more complicated nowadays, but we do not have to worry about changing out floppy discs whenever we want to load a different program. Speaking of which, there was this program that I had the pleasure of using back in the day on an Apple 2E and I think the program was called Letter Talk Plus.
I remember the program had a way to edit text but also had a few typing games. My memory is a little fuzzy on the program itself, but I wish I had it to run on the Apple emulator that was linked to in the show notes. It would be interesting loading it for old time's sake. It is kind of fun to go back every so often, isn't it, Casey?
I don't recall that one myself, but Jason Smith seems to have an extraordinary collection so he may have it in his collection. Onto another subject, says Casey. I have on my desk a Zoom H2 essential recorder. It is an interesting shape for an audio recorder. It sort of looks like a minutia version of the Blue Yeti X USB microphone.
Anyway, I would like to eventually make a surround sound mix through REAPER if I could. When I turn the front microphone and the rear microphone on, I get two-way files on the memory card for the Zoom H2 essential. One file is the front microphones of this recorder and the other file is the rear microphone of this recorder. Both files are in stereo when I have the recorder set to stereo.
How do I bring both files into REAPER and have REAPER mix them in a surround sound mix of some kind? I would settle for a quadraphonic mix if nothing else. Thanks, Casey. I actually picked up a Zoom H2 essential recently because Bonnie and I went to Florida. I took a week of vacation and we went to the Kennedy Space Center among other things and I thought, I want to get some good recording out there.
It was a very fortuitous decision because we got to watch a SpaceX rocket launch and I did record it on the H2 Essential. It is a fabulous little recorder for this use case and of course you can adjust the pickup pattern of the microphones. I'm very glad I got it actually.
It's the kind of thing you can carry around with you if ever you need to do a quick bit of recording somewhere when you weren't expecting to. And of course because it's 32 bit float, you can take care of levels afterwards. Now, to give you an answer to your specific question, I will preface it by saying I have not yet tried this.
It is something I might want to play within the context of that rocket launch, but here is what you do as I understand it. And if there's somebody who wants to elaborate on this or correct it or give us more step by step, then by all means, feel free and we can learn together.
But my understanding is to get a quad recording from these two stereo files, you would use REAPER's routing and rendering to a multichannel file. So, you would load your two stereo files, you'd put them on separate tracks in REAPER. So, you'd have track one, let's say, for the front microphones and then you'd have track two for the rear microphones.
Then it starts getting interesting because you've got to set up track channel routing at that point. So, typically you would have the front tracks left and right channels to become the first two channels of your quad file and your rear tracks left and right channels to become channels three and four of this quad file.
And then you'd render into a format that supports multi-channel audio. I believe that SWS, which people recommend you install with REAPER alongside OSARA does have some options here to make this process easier, but it's not something I've played with. So, that's a very broad definition of what's involved.
I'm sure if you did some Googling or ask a local AI or something like that, you should be able to get step by step in terms of how to put a file like this together. Good luck with your epic recording endeavors there, Casey. Amanda Schmeling is in touch and we're continuing to talk about access to BBC Domestic Streams.
She says, "Hi, Jonathan. I used to have the BBC Sounds app and I wanted to listen to BBC Radio One. With the BBC app that they have out now, I cannot find that station. Amanda, I would suggest checking out some of these third party radio apps that people have been talking about of late.
I was inspired to give Triode another look by Luis's recent message to Access On because I bought Triode early on. This is a radio app produced by the people that used to make Twitterific, the icon factory. And then I just got using another app. I must say I'm very impressed with Triode. It's fully accessible, but it also has a lot of streams that I haven't found anywhere else, including most of the BBC streams.
I'm a bit out of the demographic for BBC Radio one. Now, Amanda, I have to say, so I don't recall whether I saw BBC Radio one there or not, but certainly a lot of other BBC streams were including BBC Radio three Rewind, which I have not seen on other apps. That's the one that helps you sleep and it's all very relaxing and excellent.
So, you might want to check Triode out if you have an iPhone and just see if the BBC stream you want turns up there. Amanda also asks, how do I get NFB-NEWSLINE working on my Amazon Alexa device? Well, you can enable the NFB-NEWSLINE skill in two ways.
You can open the Alexa app and search for NFB-NEWSLINE in the skills section. Or you can ask Alexa. You can just say, enable National Federation, and then you can say, "Ask National Federation to give me instructions." And Alexa will walk you through enabling the skill. Now there is a one-off first time setup process.
The first time that you use the skill, you have to log in with your NFB-NEWSLINE credentials. Say, Alexa, ask National Federation to log in. Then you'll be prompted for your identification number and security code. Just speak those and when you're logged in, every command that you give needs to be prefixed with Alexa Ask National Federation. Here are a few that might be helpful.
Alexa, ask National Federation to read the Braille Monitor. Alexa, ask National Federation to read next section. Alexa, ask National Federation to read a little slower. Read much faster or read much slower. You can change the voice as well and you can say, "Alexa, ask National Federation to email me this article."
If you want help, you can say, "Alexa, ask National Federation to give me instructions." If you would like a detailed walkthrough in video form, the National Federation of the Blind has a training video on YouTube, which is called NFB-NEWSLINE Training Accessing on Amazon Echo and that covers the whole workflow for you. I hope that that's of some help and happy reading.
Let's go to Rod Khan who says, "Hi, Jonathan. Please can you let me have the info regarding the weighing machine that you use?" Well, that's a very good question actually because since we did that webinar last year where we talked about smart devices, I have got something new. It is still from the same company, Renpho, which is spelled R-E-N-P-H-O, which is a company that seems to produce very reliable products and I'm happy with them.
And this product is called the Renpho MorphoScan Nova smart scale, not the most attractive of names, but it's M-O-R-P-H-O scan Nova smart scale. Now, standard bathroom scale tells you one thing, which is of course your weight.
That number does matter, but it doesn't tell you the whole story of what's happening inside your body. When Renpho emailed me about this, I thought there were a couple of features that just made it a must buy for me. The MorphoScan Nova, which is Renpho's 8-electrode top tier body composition analyzer does quite a bit.
Most smart scales will send a small electrical current up through your feet to estimate body composition. And that'll give the scale a reading of your lower body and it then makes a guess about everything above the waist. But the MorphoScan Nova doesn't do any guessing.
It includes a retractable handle with four additional sensors on top of the four electrodes under your feet. This allows for dual frequency bioelectrical impedance analysis and that means that it can measure your upper and lower body independently for a more accurate total picture.
The handle sits in a magnetic dock on the scale itself and when you're ready to weigh in, you step onto the scale with bare feet, you lift the handle off its base and you hold it out at about a 45 degree angle. They tell you to do this and I'll tell you more about the telling in just a little bit. The scale then runs the current up from your feet across your torso and out through your hands.
Don't worry, it's not going to buzz you or anything. You don't really feel it, at least I don't. It maps your body in segments, left arm, right arm, trunk, left leg, and right leg. If you have a family member who can see it, you might be interested to know that the handle also has a 4.3 inch full color screen built right into that handle.
And as you stand there holding the handle, the screen shows your data in real time. You can use the left and right buttons on the handle to scroll through nine pages of metrics. There are also buttons to adjust the volume and to change units. But what really drew me to the scale was that it does talk. Yeah.
The scale provides voice prompts to guide you through each step of the measurement process. You hear when to step on. It'll tell you when to pick up the handle and you hear when to hold steady and critically you hear when the measurement is complete and it's safe to step off. After a while, it'll even play a little jingle.
And I found that this has been a problem in the past with smart scales, not all of which tell you when it's measuring is done and you find yourself either standing there for a long time hoping you've waited long enough or getting off the scale too soon so you don't get an accurate measurement.
So, when you've gone through this process of it's sending little electrical signals through you, what have you actually got at the other end of the process? Well, what you get is over 50 body matrix, including segmental muscle and fat analysis. Among them, you get weight, BMI, body fat percentage, muscle mass, bone mass, water percentage so you know whether you're drinking enough of that stuff or not visceral fat, basal metabolic rate, and protein levels. Because of those eight electrodes, you also get muscle and fat readings broken out separately for each arm, each leg and your trunk.
That kind of segmental data used to require a trip to the clinic or a gym with a professional grade machine and all the reviews indicate that the accuracy is genuinely impressive for a consumer device. It does sync with Apple Health as well. The Renpho app isn't too bad. It does provide you with historical data, trend analysis, and it allows you to set and track goals.
If you're not an Apple Health user because you use another brand of smartphone or you just don't care to, you can also sync with Google Fit and MyFitnessPal. Now it's not perfect. The weight reading itself is fine. The app reads weight reliably with a screen reader. The trouble is the deep data.
The full color screen on the handle is of course showing you graphs and charts and segmental bodied diagrams that the voice doesn't broadcast and the app, while better, doesn't expose every matrix in a way that voiceover can always pass cleanly. It sort of works, but with so much data it can get a little bit confusing because it's not a nicely structured table or anything like that.
Here is a workaround that I have landed on and it actually does work pretty well. When the detailed results come up in the app, I summoned Siri and use the describe the screen command. If you haven't used this before, this is a really nice feature since Apple and ChatGPT got a little bit integrated.
If you've got a screen where there's data there and you're not sure you're getting at it, you can say describe the screen and it will take a screenshot and send that screenshot to ChatGPT asking you first if it's okay to do that. ChatGPT then reads the data back to me in plain language, body fat percentage, muscle mass per limb, visceral fat rating, the full picture. It's not native accessibility, but it is a workaround of sorts. It would be nice if we could just get Renpho to produce that information in a more friendly way. But for people serious about tracking body composition over time, the scale puts a remarkable amount of information in your hands and now an email that warms the heart.
Good to read this. Hello, Jonathan. My name is Lexi. I am a high school senior writing in to let you know that I just recently became a member of the NFB. I am part of the Missoula Montana chapter and so far I am loving it. I just got back from the NFB of Montana State Convention in Helena, Montana on the 20th of April. It was honestly the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I got to be with a lot of other people just like me and we shared a lot of common tools for technology. We got to learn about NFC tags, AI, and how it's shaping the world of technology for the blind and so much more. I can't wait to see what National Convention in Austin, Texas has in store for me.
One more note, I am also a board member just recently elected at our state convention. I am honored to be joining the National Federation of the Blind. Thank you all so much. That is absolutely epic. Thank you so much, Lexi, for writing in and all the best for your future with the National Federation of the Blind.
We look forward to seeing you in Austin, not too long from now. Rick Roderick is writing in. He says, "Hi, Jonathan. Would you be able to get someone to come on the show about DocuSign?" I get requests from businesses with that system, but it is totally dysfunctional with voiceover. Rick, this is a very timely email because we are working on this internally at the moment.
In my experience as an end user, DocuSign is the best of them. There's often a mode in a DocuSign contract that says press enter to enable screen reader mode. You do that, you can tab around or use navigation quick keys, find out where to sign and complete the process in a very straightforward way.
But there may be a knack to creating these things accessibly. We're learning about that internally right now, actually. So, watch this space. We'll see if we can elaborate further for you. If anybody in the meantime does have direct experience on what the trick is to creating accessible documents and contracts using DocuSign, by all means, share your wisdom with us [email protected] if you want to be in touch.
Here's David Mandel who says, "Hi, Jonathan. I hope that the NFB will acquire all of the currently available Braille Windows computers, the BBook, the insideSUPRA, and I believe there is one from Japan and there might be one other. It will be interesting to compare and contrast these various features.
It seems to me that if you're going to pay some 7,000 dollars for such a unit, one should be able to get at least a one terabyte solid state drive or even two terabytes. I personally think that 512 gigabytes of storage is somewhat underpowered for such an expensive unit. However, I do appreciate the 32 gigabytes of memory. I also wonder why HumanWare is not providing an i7 ultra processor rather than an i5.
It will be interesting to hear your evaluation of these units at some point. Well, DaVit, I'm reading your email on a Braille Node Evolve now in preparation for producing a review of that. I've been using the device for almost a month now and we will have a couple of people from HumanWare on the show soon to discuss some of these issues and you can be sure that we will present our findings to you here.
We also have just taken possession of the insideSUPRA, so we're taking a look at that as well. And of course, we do have the BrailleSense 7 coming too. The BrailleSense 7 is running Android rather than Windows, so not quite in the category that you're talking about.
There's also the BT Braille, which is running Linux from Blazie Technology. So, there's a lot happening in the Braille space right now, which is super exciting. We'll endeavor to bring it to you here on Access On. Of course, we call it as we see it and we'll give you an impartial evaluation.
Let's talk John Turnis and Christopher Wright says," Hi, Jonathan. I hope the CEO change at Apple means the products will get better and we'll return to the Steve Jobs era where Apple had seemingly unlimited potential. I realized Jobs was an awful person to deal with, but at least he had good ideas and got things done. I firmly believe Apple's software was much higher quality prior to 2011 or 2012.
Then again, maybe a lot of this is wishful thinking. Perhaps a lot of the reason for the lack of quality is because everything is rushed and that probably won't be changing in the short term. As for accessibility, only time will tell what happens.
Thanks, Christopher and we'll conclude our look at listener comments with this one from Michael Bullis. I recently purchased two Move 2’s for my screened in porch and no matter how I tried, they wouldn't stereopair. Finally, I called Sonos support for assistance. After being on the phone and linking my screen with the support person, they still wouldn't pair.
During our conversation, I had mentioned that I was blind so the support person concluded that it must be something I was doing and that a sighted person was needed.
When I pointed out that she was seeing my screen and would know if I was hitting a wrong button, she said it still must be my blindness that was causing the problem. After hanging up, I decided to do a deep dive into my router and discovered that one of the was misnamed on the router. When I forced the router to rename everything, the Move 2 was correctly identified and I was able to pair the speakers.
I sent a lengthy complaint to CEO at Sonos.com, not figuring I would hear anything, but next day, lo and behold, I was contacted by someone at the CEO's office who said he had reviewed the transcripts of my conversation and I had been clearly mistreated.
He sent me a gift card for either another Move 2 or Sonos headphones. So, while customer service at Sonos is still woefully inadequate, the result in my case was ultimately positive. Interesting and frustrating story, Mike. Thanks for sharing it and it's one of those things where do you disclose or do you not disclose?
Because sometimes when you do disclose, even though the blindness and the blindness technology has no relevance at all, it can take the whole thing off track. We have a tech tip and this week it comes from Nolan Krab. He says, "Hi, Jonathan. First, my sincere commendations for a magnificent podcast and for the webinars.
People who aren't experiencing those are missing out hardcore. Whoa, thanks for the recommendation, Nolan." He says, "I tend to put Windows apps I use frequently into the task bar so I can zap them open quickly by holding down the Windows key and tapping a number between zero and nine.
In years past, I've experienced periods of frustration when trying to use the JAWS drag and drop feature, which I find isn't always reliable. I felt a real need to rearrange some of the apps in my task bar and I've learned you can do it reliably every time with the keyboard. Follow these steps.
One, tap Windows plus T to give focus to your task bar. Two, use your right and left arrow keys to move among the items on the task bar until you find the one you want to move. Three, hold down alt and shift and tap either left arrow or right arrow and JAWS will announce the position of your task bar icon as it moves.
Four, when you have the icons in the order you prefer, tap Windows key D to give focus to the desktop and you're done. The beauty of this approach is its reliability. I realize most of us aren't reordering the task bar the way my mother moved furniture around to punish me when I was a child.
Okay, she never did that, but it's a great analogy. Interesting though, mine moved furniture around the lot when I was a child not to punish me, but just because she liked rearranging things. But there may be times when altering the order so you remember where things are more consistently could be helpful. Thank you, Nolan.
Great tip, and if you have a tip that you would like to share, well that will be very welcome. Send it into Access On all joined together at nfb.org and put tech tip in the subject line. That concludes this episode of Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind.
To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on MasterDON. [email protected]. That's [email protected] on MasterDON. 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 phonics 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.