Welcome to the twelfth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
The show is segmented by chapter, making it easy to move between segments of the podcast if you have an app or player that supports chapters. Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.
- Introduction 0:00
- Register for the webinar, how to engineer an AI prompt on Feb 25 0:53
- National Federation of the Blind President, Mark Riccobono 2:02
- On Innosearch doing the heavy lifting 42:08
- Flock accessibility, learning a language, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses 45:26
- Remembering Ed Potter 49:01
- Recommending a captioning service 51:13
- Some potential downsides of buying through Innosearch 51:44
- When accessibility breaks 54:16
- Tech tip, battery health 57:34
Transcript
Speaker 1: Live the life you want.
Speaker 2: Access On.
Jonathan Mosen: Welcome to this edition of Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. The NFB president, Mark Riccobono: joins us for a wide-ranging discussion on technology topics. The Federal Trade Commission proposes sanctioning accessiBe for what it says is product misrepresentation. Technology advocacy played a significant part in the Federation's recent Washington seminar. And it's here. Now, you can listen to NFBRN, the National Federation of the Blind Radio Network. It's Jonathan Mosen welcoming you to episode 12 of the podcast from the Jernigan Institute where there is never a dull moment. One of the things that we have been working on this week is putting together our boutique webinar that's happening soon, and if you haven't registered for that yet, I'd like to encourage you to do that. I think you'll find it interesting. AI tools are becoming ubiquitous in our lives as technology rapidly advances.
To get the most out of these tools, it's important to ask the questions the right way. This practice of communicating what you want to an AI model is called prompt engineering and it's crucial for making sure you get the information you're looking for as effectively as possible. Now if you attend this boutique, you'll learn about why prompt engineering is important, how to craft a good prompt, the effects of different phrases on AI responses, real examples of how this can be useful in daily life. Registrations are open now for How to Engineer an AI Prompt. This is the boutique that's happening on February the 25. It begins at 2:00 P.M. Eastern and it goes for 90 minutes. To register, find the events page at nfb.org/cena, that's nfb.org/ C-E-N-A and we look forward to seeing you on February the 25.
The National Federation of the Blind focuses a lot on technology in its day-to-day advocacy efforts. So inevitably we're going to be talking about some of the NFB's work from time to time and have President
Mark Riccobono: on to discuss some of the things that we've been working on. And it's that time now, particularly with Washington's seminar having just concluded and a number of other initiatives to talk about. I know the geeks will be interested in this. We're sitting here with a ZOOM H6essential and a couple of Sennheiser mics. We are actually recording this in the conference room of the office of the president, so sort of the room where it happens and President Riccobono is with us. Thanks very much for being here.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, thank you. My first official appearance on Access On.
Jonathan Mosen: Yeah, it's nice to be welcomed to the office of the president.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, anytime.
Jonathan Mosen: Technology plays such a big part in the Federation's advocacy, can we talk first about something that's been around for a long time and this is the topic of accessibility overlays and just how the organized blind movement should be responding to that, making sure that we're open to new possibilities, but also alerting people to potential dangers and misrepresentation. There's been something pretty significant that's gone down the last little while in this area.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, well, accessibility overlays that term specifically I think is newer, but the concept goes back to the early part of this century. I won't call out any companies, but I know 2006 or '07 time period was the first product that I think I was really aware of and there probably were others before that. The idea being that people wanted to build these tools that would fix all the problems after they were already made by the developers. And as the organized blind movement, we try to be open to what we can do with technology to make fixes, but we've also been very skeptical from the beginning because we know that accessibility is about good design, it's about inclusive design, it's about good coding practices that are good for everybody, and the overlay environment is fraught with problems.
We've all encountered them, I think using websites that have these tools where the content still is not fully accessible or for that matter, easily usable. And so we have always been worried about the core problem of we really should be focusing on teaching good design, good inclusive practices. And then the secondary thing is that the promotion of these tools by some companies has really played on the stereotypes about blind people, about people with disabilities, about trying to make sure that you don't get sued by a person with a disability and really harmful marketing practices that only serve to make it more difficult for a blind person to get employed by a company, for example.
Jonathan Mosen: So how do we make sure that we are open to the possibilities of new technology because particularly in the last two or three years, AI remediation may well have really made a bit of a difference, but also being vigilant about those marketing practices that you talk about. And also I guess to be quite honest with you, snake oil. Because you're right, we've heard here at the National Federation of the Blind about sites that have deployed this technology and it's actually made the technology worse.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, I think this is where our having a highly qualified and competent technology group to help inform our advocacy discussions, but also bringing to the table our policy group and our elected leadership to have the conversation with these companies. And I think what happens is you can get pretty far by sitting down with the executives that are working on these products and whether they get it or whether they don't. And a lot of it comes down to number one, how open are they to the feedback you give them? We experience a lot of folks who, they'll listen to us, but then they go do their own thing. They don't really ask questions, because we didn't validate what they already wanted to do. And then you get another group of CEOs who they may push back, they may not agree, but they listen and they come back with critical questions about, well, why do you think this or that?
And then the other part is, how open is the company with us as blind people in terms of being transparent about what their tool does? How does it work? How does it interact with the user? What control do I have over whether the tool is used or not used? What does it do to the coding? And then what are the practices on the other side? Is the company incentivizing people just to slap this widget on their website and not worry about the design, or are they actually working with these companies to build good design while using this as a bridge to the future? So you can get a lot of it from those discussions, but at the end of the day, I think we have to make some decisions based on our experience.
And you know what, we may decide down the line that a tool that we really thought horrible approach, fixes the World Wide Web for us. And I think the Federation will be the first to say mea culpa and thank goodness, you got it done. But so far and not just from one or two blind people, a collection of blind people working together, we haven't seen that silver bullet product come out.
Jonathan Mosen: And that brings in the Federal Trade Commission who have intervened in this particular discussion in quite an emphatic way of late.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, the Federation, we first raised concerns about what was happening with accessiBe in 2021, and as part of that, the board of directors decided to send accessiBe back their sponsorship of the National Convention. They had sponsored the convention, had signed up as a sponsor, and we decided that there was enough concern about what they were doing and especially the treatment of blind people who were telling them that their marketing practices were harmful, that we should push back pretty hard on their work by sending their sponsorship back. The convention passed a resolution and we've tried to raise pretty loudly our concerns about what they were doing and we got a lot of feedback from folks across the accessibility industry about how important those actions were, but we didn't want to leave it there. We felt it was important to continue to try to work to change and shape the direction of accessiBe if they were willing to listen.
We did have them at our National Convention. They said they wanted an opportunity to apologize to the community and to show that they were now getting it right. And we are always willing to listen and frankly, I mean, I don't know if they thought about it this way, but standing in front of the largest gathering of blind people anywhere in the world, you can't flim flam them.
So it's almost the best accountability you can give. And I would say the presentation was received with much skepticism. I don't think it convinced a lot of people and concerns continued to linger throughout the accessibility community. We in the Federation haven't found real partnership or change at accessiBe. They've engaged with us very little since that time. I know that a number of people for some time had been threatening to file with the FTC. We were invited to join some lawsuits that were considered against accessiBe for their marketing practices.
None of those lawsuits, at least none that we were invited to join, ever got filed. I think the folks working on them decided not to go down that road. But obviously complaints did go to the FTC and we were glad to see the FTC step in with a very strong ruling. And so we've entered our comments to say we support their findings and their direction because there's a lot of harm that can be done by mismarketing products that are in the disability space. It's already hard enough for us to get jobs to convince people that accessibility is important without companies who are claiming to be making it better, actually making it worse. That public perception thing is really strong and we really need to be worried about that.
Jonathan Mosen: As I understand it, the FTC is proposing to impose a pretty hefty fine on accessiBe, I believe it's a million dollars because they have misrepresented their product in the FTC's view. So that's a pretty substantial slap on the wrist there to say, you cannot say that technology like this cures accessibility or immunizes you against lawsuits or anything that they have been claiming.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, and I think that comes from the way that they have gone about and done that. Rather than just claiming it, they've aggressively marketed it in such a way that what's happened is a lot of customers have bought into it and they've still gotten sued.
Jonathan Mosen: What happens from here then? So we've passed on our comments as the National Federation of the Blind and say, yes, we think you're on the right track. How long does this process take?
Mark Riccobono: Well, it's a great question. It was a 30 day comment period. I would hate to speculate about how fast the Federal Trade Commission will move from there. In the current environment, I don't have much confidence about exactly what will happen, but presumably they'll, after the 30 days go ahead and enforce it. We haven't had much experience with FTC activities, so it's not a typical avenue that's been used in our advocacy work. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out and may be instructive for future routes that we may take for some of our work.
Jonathan Mosen: These repercussions were proposed under the previous administration. Could that potentially make a difference? Could it be that new leadership of the FTC decide not to pursue this?
Mark Riccobono: Well, you have to assume yes. It's a little hard to tell. I expect though that regardless, even if it's not enforced for whatever reason, the fact that it was out in the public and out for public comment is a pretty big black eye that I think the effect is still there even if it doesn't get enforced. But I will say that the other piece is a lot of businesses, big and small have been impacted here. I mean, they've used this tool, many of them have been sued. So I don't know all of the things that's on the docket for the FTC, but I think there's a pretty good case here that this is really not a partisan issue in the United States. That there's folks from regardless of where you come on politics, that you can feel the impact here and that might help it, but I certainly wouldn't want to predict.
Jonathan Mosen: In a way this segues is nicely into one of the things that the Federation has been focusing on once again at this year's Washington seminar. And that is providing guidance via legislation on what actually accessibility in the context of websites is. Can we talk first though about the Washington seminar because there may be some people who aren't aware of what this is. It's been around for 50 years now. It's just extraordinary. I guess as somebody who's read about this, but has now been watching at least a little bit of it go down firsthand, the degree of coordination and organization and thought that goes into this event is quite something to see. Could you tell us, give us an overview of the Washington Seminar and what it does?
Mark Riccobono: The Federation has sent elected leaders elected by the blind to represent the blind, blind people to Washington since the 1940s. And we've from time to time had larger groups come to Washington, D.C., but in the 1970s when we had a number of critical issues we were working on, we started at that time something called the March on Washington, and it was a concentrated time when we brought contingent to the hill and visited every member of Congress.
And it's not to say that we don't talk to members of Congress, visit with them in their local communities all year round, we do. And in fact, we do have times once in a while where we fly people in to do some special issue advocacy in a smaller form. But we've found that there's so much synergy that comes from bringing a concentrated big group in all at one time, visiting every congressional office and focusing on some core issues.
And the real value that we see after more than 50 years is that they know us. They know we're coming. The folks who have been there expect us. They expect us to come well-prepared, to not waste their time, to have substantive things to say. And new members of Congress figure out very quickly that we're not just another group stopping by, that we have a long history on the Hill. Oftentimes, especially with new members of Congress, they'll have Hill staffers that have worked in other offices and so they'll already know us.
And this is how we build those relationships over time so that when there is a rapid fire situation that we need to react to, we already have some scale, some relationship. The real power, I think beyond that though is just taking over the halls of Congress. When you can hear dozens of canes going down the hall and guide dogs clicking away, walking down the hall, it leaves an impression with folks that's really significant.
Jonathan Mosen: And every year there are usually what, around three key issues that the Federation focuses on?
Mark Riccobono: Yeah. And you say, why three? Well, we found you only get so much time, especially if you get an actual member of Congress. And of course our list is much longer than three, but you only get so much time. And so we try to focus in on a number of key priorities that we can have everybody well-trained on, well versed on and prepared to talk about. And then we sprinkle in some strategic meetings here and there. For example, we know that there are key members of Congress might be working on autonomous vehicle legislation. We may focus on that or once in a while we have some other side issues.
So we try to focus on three simply because it's manageable with the time we get in front of a member of Congress.
Jonathan Mosen: The first one, again, circling back, relates to websites and accessibility. This one has been around a while. It's one that the Federation thinks is very important, because it keeps coming up. And this relates to the fact that there are no clear legislative guidelines about what we mean when we say a website should be accessible. And it means that particularly small businesses want to do the right thing, but they don't know what the right thing is.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah. This is one that we believe from our work and our legal program over the last 20 years, we believe we've clearly set the precedent that the Americans With Disabilities Act does apply to digital spaces like websites and mobile applications. Unfortunately, the courts have sometimes not quite agreed in some places. So there's a split. And this is sometimes problematic for our advocacy work. It's definitely problematic for the businesses that want to say, "Well wait, we don't have a clear obligation here."
But most importantly, it's a mess for the businesses who say, "Well, I want to do the right thing, but it's not clear what I should do. And even though I'm trying to do the right thing, people still sue me." So it's a catch 22 and this bill, after many years of thought, negotiation, talking to the business community, really cuts something that should make the situation better for blind people. That's A, number one, our goal for all people with disabilities, but also will give greater certainty to the business community, which we're okay with if we're actually getting accessible websites and mobile applications.
Jonathan Mosen: And what's the official title of that bill?
Mark Riccobono: It's the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act.
Jonathan Mosen: And what's its status right now?
Mark Riccobono: Well, it's a new congress, so we're working on getting all of our bills reintroduced with bill numbers and new sponsors where we need them. We expect some changes on our bills related to our lead sponsors, but we have great support for this bill. Number of key players in Congress continue to want to champion it. So as soon as we have a bill number, we'll start promoting that and asking people to support that.
Jonathan Mosen: Is there bipartisan support? Because on the surface you'd have to say this might be the worst possible time to try and advance an agenda like this. Is that true?
Mark Riccobono: Well, worse possible. I mean, it's certainly an uphill battle, but the beauty of what the Federation has been doing for decades is we continue to talk to members of Congress, getting them to recognize that our issues impact everybody on all sides of any political line. And we try to tailor our messaging to the people we are talking to.
Obviously, Republican, conservative members of Congress are going to have different interests than Democrats, but we believe that we can appeal to those interests in favor of making America better for blind people. And it's hard to say, I mean, there's been times when, yeah, things are an uphill battle, but you find champions in interesting places. And our strategy this year at our Washington seminar has really been to talk about disability laws, disability rights, and the funding for programs that exists today. And I think that's actually going to help us find some of those champions.
And even now hearing some of the reports that have come from our activities on the Hill, I think our members have been surprised by certain members of Congress that they were sure would never be with us who said, "Look, we're going to stand strong for disability rights and for funding for these programs." So you never know until you open up these conversations. And the beauty of it is we're not lobbyists coming speaking for somebody else. We're coming with our own lived experience, which is rare. I mean, mostly the people they get in their offices or someone representing someone else and we're there and can say, "Look, I just had this barrier this morning when I was trying to do something."
Jonathan Mosen: One of the pushbacks that the Federation might get is for people who tend to have a conservative economic outlook to say, "Well, if you're a market, then a business should aim to serve that market and the market will take care of that. That it doesn't make sense for businesses to exclude potential customers. And we believe in market forces to sort this out. We don't believe in any kind of government intervention. That's not what we stand for." How do we respond to that?
Mark Riccobono: So one of the things that we've put into this effort is creating some clear responsibility for the third party platforms that a lot of particularly small businesses use. So there's a local entity here in the Baltimore area, it's a farm. They sell a lot of great products and bought a lot of stuff from them. And I called them one day because their website's really not that great.
They said, "We're farmers. We're not website developers." A lot of businesses out there like that. So they often get some third party platform that will easily allow them to have a website, they have no idea what the coding is, or if they want to put a shopping cart, they select that widget and it goes on their site. So they're not doing any of that backend coding work. And so our website bill addresses that by making sure there is some accountability and liability for those third party platforms and to give small businesses some degree of protection when it's really the platform that is causing the issue.
And that's really key because these platforms we've looked at, studied, can't we bring some kind of case against these platforms? Very hard to do in the way the current laws are written. So that's one thing I would say is that this bill actually makes it better for small businesses. It gives them more protection, and yes, there's a market, but also the small businesses that are even trying to appeal to that market are unintentionally getting shut out, because of the platforms that they're using and they don't have a clear mechanism to hold those platforms accountable today.
Jonathan Mosen: Is there any call to action you would suggest for people who are interested in seeing this bill advance at this stage, or is it too early in the session to give that information at this point?
Mark Riccobono: Never too early. So I would call people's attention to nfb.org/washington-seminar. That's where all of our fact sheets for our current legislative priorities can be found and that page will definitely be updated when we have our bill numbers. Get familiar with the bills, the names, the facts, and yeah, call, email. If you're with your member of Congress and your local district, tell them it's important, call it to their attention.
And each of those fact sheets will refer you to who you should talk to and who you should refer your member of Congress to if they want more information. And the beauty of it now if you're hearing this, is that they've heard from hundreds of blind people already on Capitol Hill, so the folks that are paying attention, they probably have already heard about this bill and they'll be more primed to pay attention to it if you continue to pitch for it.
Jonathan Mosen: And through the Nation's Blind podcast and this one, Access On, we’ll keep people informed about progress on any specific calls to action. I also wanted to cover the accessibility of medical devices, which is an incredibly important serious issue in our community and in the latter stages of Living Blindfully, we had a pretty moving discussion from people who talked about their quality of life being so significantly impeded because they couldn't manage their own medical care when there's no technical reason why that shouldn't be the case. This is another one that in the last few years, the Federation has been going hard on.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, and this bill is going to be, I think, more challenging in current environment because at the end of the day, it does have to be done through a regulatory scheme through the FDA. Getting it passed I think will be more challenging. The flip side though is that it's something that most people can relate to, because so many people, members of Congress included, are using devices to track aspects of their healthcare at home and elsewhere, and understanding the barriers that might be there if you are blind, not too difficult, it's something that like you say, the stories are so compelling.
So the bill's really important, it really does call on there being a non-visual access requirement for devices that have digital displays. And non-visual from our perspective, we like to say that no vision techniques or low vision techniques, so we know that if we make the non-visual access standard stick, that will also work for people with low vision. And we're hopeful that even just bringing up the bill helps the medical device community continue to hear the stories and recognize they need to be doing something on a voluntary basis, but based on how heavily medical devices are already regulated, we believe that regulations are going to be the key because a medical device manufacturer is not going to do something if they think somehow it's going to put their device out of compliance.
So we just would like to see that clarity, but right now it's a little hard to tell how heavy that lift is going to be, but that's where those stories come in. And so what we really need is to continue to collect stories of people who are having this trouble. We need your stories, we need you to send them, either write them or send us voice memos about the struggles you're having, because those stories and the permission to use them when talking to members of Congress or the media, really critical in helping people put a face and a heart to why this is important.
Jonathan Mosen: Yes. One of the questions I've been asked a lot of late is, what is the point of an organization like the NFB in 2025 when anybody can be a social media warrior and start a petition or whatever? One of the things that's really clear to me being on the inside of this is that the NFB has the reputation and the networks and the tenacity, and it can get through often in ways that individuals find it very difficult to. So the more data that we have from the grassroots, from blind people about anything, and this relates to inaccessible websites or apps and inaccessible products like these, it really does give us the ammunition we need to do the best job for members.
Mark Riccobono: Absolutely. And I mean social media has certain power, but it's hard to sustain. You can get a sizzle, but in terms of really getting something to sustain for a period of time, very difficult, very challenging. And then it depends on you already having the audience. So this is where we can use all the tools and social media is just one of those to collect all these stories together.
Because the other thing is it's very easy for people to dismiss one story or two stories as well, it's just something that's particular to you, but when we can bring it together in the collective way that we do, it really helps. But a lot of these things, when we talk about a medical device, you're moving an entire industry and that's really not something that one person can do alone.
Jonathan Mosen: Do we see any sense at the moment that there might be some medical companies who are moved by those stories that we've already imparted and that there might be some change on the horizon voluntarily?
Mark Riccobono: Yes. I mean, we've gotten some interest from some of those companies, but the products and their development are, it's a long cycle and you really never know how things are going to come out, but we do, especially on the diabetes side, had some good engagement from a number of companies. We hope that will continue in other areas, and I think this is where the more that blind people are saying, "Hey, we need this."
Talking to the companies about it, raising awareness, and I would say, I mean someone out there might have a cousin who's fairly high placed at one of these companies. The more that we can make those personal connections and get them talking with the organized blind movement, the faster we can move some of these things.
Jonathan Mosen: Yes, sometimes it's really as simple as that, that there's one champion on the inside who's kind of the Jiminy Cricket, the conscience of the organization, and it only takes one person to start to champion it, and it's amazing what can move.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, definitely.
Jonathan Mosen: Yeah, so the Great Gathering-In is the beginning of the Washington Seminar where people get together and discuss what's coming up and other things too. And I believe that will be, if it's not there already on the Federation's YouTube channel. We also covered, broadcast live the Washington Seminar beginning the Great Gathering-In on NFB's internet radio station, which is called the National Federation of the Blind Radio Network. We call it NFBRN for short. So this is quite an exciting development, and actually I've been delighted to see how much enthusiasm has been expressed after that announcement was made.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah, the Federation has a tremendous depth of content. That's always been part of our strategy is creating avenues for blind people to share their own lived experience and wisdom with each other and then to use that to educate the general public. And so we have a lot of content.
We've really, for some time the last couple decades really relied on our website to be that portal to get to that content, but we've had the request many times over to find new ways to invest in new ways to curate, especially our audio content. And so it's been a discussion for some time. We have a lot of priorities, so the timing was right for launching the NFB Radio Network, especially now with adding an additional podcast to our suite of activities, thinking about how we deliver content in new ways. And I'm particularly excited to take in what suggestions people have for what else we should do with it.
We've just seeded it with content we have, and I know that the wisdom of our community of blind people will very quickly start to say, "Yeah, yes and, we need this." And I think there's a lot of opportunity to take full advantage of the talent that blind people have. Even here talking about legislation, that's a lot of questions that people might want to ask, so maybe there's some interactive discussions we can have there or on medical devices.
I mean, there's so many topics and we know that if you're a blind person and you want to know something, you can't just go ask ChatGPT and get an answer that is truly informed by the real experience of real blind people in a way that you can in the organized blind movement. So I'm hopeful that it'll be a real inspiration to people that have lost hope when they've lost their eyesight, and that it will continue to be that shot in the arm that we all need after a hard day. Come home and turn on NFBRN and hear about another blind person's struggle and how they overcame it.
Jonathan Mosen: I really enjoy it. And I think internally, we've been talking about the box of chocolates effect of NFBRN, because sometimes I switch it on and there's a really interesting article from The Monitor that I may have missed a long time ago or I may have forgotten about or I want to hear again. And then at other times there's material from the Kernel Books. It might be the latest episode of the Nation's Blind podcast, but there's always something really interesting and on point on, and I find myself sitting enjoying the content and then thinking, I'm going to switch this off when this is over, but then something else comes on that's equally as compelling.
Mark Riccobono: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Jonathan Mosen: So it's rolling out, and one of the things about starting new radio stations is that it can take a while for the various directories to propagate, so we know that it's working on the Nation's Blind Alexa skill, so you can tell Alexa to open Nation's Blind. It is I believe in the Victor Reader stream in the blindness category, and it's going to be in the Blazie products as well. It's popping up elsewhere, right?
Mark Riccobono: Yes, absolutely. And over the next weeks you'll discover it and many more places, and I'm sure we'll send out some emails and other communications about it. And again, really want to get those ideas about what else can and should be there, and I'm just really interested to see what our community does with it.
And the other thing I'd mention here is this radio network will automatically switch over to any live event that we have, so you can catch a live event in process, and some people may not have known that this skill was already there, so when there's a presidential release or a Great Gathering-In or for that matter, a general session of the National Convention that we're offering live, it's going to be live on NFBRN, so there's truly always content. It's always blind-centered, blind-focused, and please give your ideas, what would you like to have there?
Jonathan Mosen: And the way to do that, because we've talked about providing stories, we've talked about ideas. The comms team are the best place to receive those, right?
Mark Riccobono: Yeah. I think for right now, certainly [email protected] is a great avenue for that. There will be other avenues coming up, but that's one we definitely know will get to the right place. The other thing I'd say is if there is a piece of Federation content, maybe it's a lost piece of Federation content out there that is really something that was meaningful to you, send us a note about that and we'll try to get it in there and we'll even try to give you credit for it. I think about, there's a particular very simple short Braille Monitor article from 1995 that I often quote to people, I'm probably one of only four people that remembers it, including the author, but it's a great article.
And one of these times I'm going to maybe record something and give it to the communications group because it's a good way to expose a piece of content that's philosophically will get people thinking. So you may have things like that out there, or like a really great convention presentation that again, has gotten lost because we have, what, 80 years of content, so some things are timeless just because of how they speak to the lived experience of blind people,
Jonathan Mosen: And we have the library here. It is a fascinating place to just talk to Nicole who looks after that library about what is there and history. It reminds us, I guess we're temporary custodians of something very special. Yes. Well, it's a pleasure to catch up with you. Thank you so much for your time, and of course we look forward to having you in future editions of Access On regularly.
Mark Riccobono: Anytime, and keep up the great work and thank you to the listeners who I know really help make this podcast what it is because you are letting us know what we can do to be most effective to keeping your Access On.
Jonathan Mosen: Always good to catch up with President Riccobono and I'm sure that we'll hear from him in the near future. Let's move on to some listener comments for the remainder of this episode though, and we've got some listener feedback from David Goldfield on Innosearch.ai, which we talked about several episodes ago. He posted this on Mastodon and sent it into us to say, you can use it here on Access On if you like, and it might provoke a little bit of discussion.
He says, "During the interview, Jonathan asked if a service like Innosearch would cause online retailers to feel that they don't have to focus on accessibility since Innosearch is doing the heavy lifting, my words, not his. Later in the interview, one of the folks from Innosearch talked about the possibility of their service expanding into food and grocery delivery. At that point, a light bulb went off in my head regarding Jonathan's earlier question. We know that many retailers have their share of accessibility challenges and barriers perhaps more than their share in some cases. This usually happens for one of three reasons.
One, there isn't enough advocacy and communication on the part of users. They're complaining to each other, but not to the companies who can potentially make a difference and fix the problem. Two, advocacy isn't working because the companies with the problems just aren't getting it and don't care. Three, the companies who are receiving feedback are attempting to fix accessibility issues but are struggling due to a lack of training, knowledge, and understanding.
"To that end, my answer to this question is that if one website can do enough heavy lifting that causes 500,000 retailers to suddenly be incredibly accessible, then let it happen. Sure, you could certainly make the argument that sites like Innosearch would then be taking responsibility off the other retailers who perhaps need to do a better job. Even worse, if Innosearch suddenly went away due to an unsustainable business model, many people would go into shock as they would have to deal with a set of substandard experiences and the advocacy would have to continue full strength.
However, we already depend on other adaptive products to pick up the slack where others have failed. I use Aira to assist me to navigate environments that could have provided innovative ways of being more accessible to me with existing technology, but which did not. I use AI technology to describe pictures sometimes due to a lack of people applying alternative text descriptions. Believe me, if Innosearch starts offering food delivery from Instacart and DoorDash, you'd better believe I'll use it if it means not having to fight the unlabeled elements and inconsistent behavior while swiping."
Thank you for that articulate and thought-provoking response, David. Much appreciated and I look forward to further listener comments on this question. If you'd like to contribute on this or anything else you're hearing on Access On or raise something new, [email protected] is the email address, all joined together. [email protected] can attach an audio clip if you want using your voice memos app or the voice recorder on the PC or Mac, whatever works. Or you can just write the email down as David has done.
Speaker 5: Hi Jonathan. This is Jim East from the Greater Gainesville chapter of the NFB in Florida. However, I'm currently recording from Georgia where we have snow in the Savannah area where I'm currently visiting. I want to comment briefly on three things that have been discussed a lot on Access On and thank you for doing such a great job with the podcast. The first I wanted to talk about the discussion that someone was speaking in the last episode about Flock.
Many non-profits, especially faith-based organizations, choose an app or some other thing like Constant Contact, which I get emails from from one of my organizations, but also my home church uses something called Realm and when I was on the board, I objected to Realm because nothing about it was accessible. It's called Realm and it was decided to use it, I don't know by the majority because of cost, because of the different things it does, but to my knowledge today, it's still not accessible.
It's not a job thing for me. I'm a member, but they're having to go around and send me things externally that I can't access on Realm either for communication. It's tax season in the US and people are getting their giving statements and things like that, and it's taken weeks for me to get some of the information that I've needed, so I empathize with the person about these communication challenges. Secondly, I want to talk about the situation with Duolingo, which I tried for a while and had challenges with.
There's games on it that are time-sensitive and getting back with it in time that may have been fixed. I don't know. I know you said it's getting faster, but what I have used, because I studied Spanish in school for five years, but I brush up by using YouTube videos. There are some very generous college professors and Spanish teachers that teach regular primary school and secondary school that offer very kindly lessons on YouTube, and this is all free, so I recommend people checking out YouTube and doing a search for Spanish class or Spanish lessons.
And lastly, I want to talk about Metaview. The glasses are great. The review that was just posted was awesome, but I want to comment that my experience with tech support calling the Meta Ray-Ban Help desk is a little bit clunky. You get some people that are very invested, that are representatives that know their stuff, and you get others that just haven't a clue like the one I had today. They do basically what an AI could do. Whatever's on their screen, they'll read to you, but they absolutely have no knowledge. Some of them will admit they don't own the glasses or have never handled the glasses. You can tell they're working from home and it's a job they've been assigned to this desk and that's what they're doing. But I had a critical issue today where some things I was recording from today's Snow event.
I was told first off that I needed Wi-Fi to be able to access my information, which was not true because I live in an RV right now as you may remember, and you can access your information from your glasses and import it to your phone, iPhone that I use without Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi does a lot more. Yes, but you can do that. The glasses are great. I love them. Your podcast had a lot to do with why I got them, and so thank you for the great job you do, and I look forward to the next podcast.
Jonathan Mosen: Thank you very much, Jim. We appreciate the contribution. Let's go to Walt Smith now who says, "I was terribly saddened to learn that Ed Potter had passed away, but I wasn't surprised. I talked to Ed and Sue late last year and had some email exchanges with him. He was no longer actually able to use the telephone conveniently, so we agreed on email. I first met Ed through the old Voicespondents Club. That's a cool portmanteau word, isn't it? An audio pen pals group that used small open reel tapes for correspondence around 1977 or so. My wife and I visited Ed and Sue in their home in Goldsboro several times when we lived in Raleigh, which was a convenient stop anytime we were headed east for any reason, and the Potters always welcomed us. I was one of the original subscribers to Playback and provided several comments and reviews that he chose to include.
As David Goldfield pointed out, it was doing very much the same kind of informational dissemination 50 years ago that you are doing so well today. Every issue of Playback was eagerly looked forward to. I only just got off the phone with a few minutes ago, and as always, she was incredibly gracious and thankful that I'd called persons wishing to express their sympathies or to relate to their favorite Ed Potter memories may do so by using the following email, which Sue assured me she will continue to monitor.
That address is [email protected]." That's edplayback, all joined together, @nc.rr.com. Walt continues, "I don't feel that it's my place to share her phone number, but she told me that she'll be more than grateful to hear from any of Ed's old friends by way of email. Again, I can only feel that another piece of my life has slipped away. Ed was such a fantastic multi-faceted person that I don't believe that anyone who ever came in touch with him failed to hold him in the highest respect and affection."
Thank you Walt for that wonderful tribute. Maurice Mines is writing in now and he is the president of the National Federation of the Blind's DeafBlind division. He says, "One of your listeners asked a question about captioning. I have personally had very good luck with OneTap, but I don't know how much they would charge a person for captioning. The major benefit of this particular service is that you can control the speed of the scrolling. That may be helpful." Thank you very much, Maurice. It sounds like OneTap might be worth checking out. And that was Rick Roderick who was talking about this.
And the next email comes from Cy Hoestre who says, "Hi, Jonathan, loving the new show just like I loved Living Blindfully. Thank you so much for your continued work on this type of podcast. It is so valuable to so many people. I'm following up on your segments about Innosearch. I thought the segment was great and signed up for the service. After listening, I did think of a couple of ways that Innosearch could be slightly more expensive than shopping directly with retailers. So I wrote to customer support and I wanted to share my thoughts and their responses. First, I couldn't find a way to use gift cards or rewards programs when shopping through Innosearch. I couldn't, for instance, use an Amazon gift card to buy something from Amazon or use rewards miles to book a flight. Innosearch confirmed that I was right about this and did not say they were working on anything regarding this issue at the moment. Second, I brought up that the merchant on an Innosearch purchase appears as simply Innosearch.
So if you have a credit card that gets you rewards points or cash back for purchases in certain categories or from certain merchants, you won't receive those points when buying from Innosearch. Innosearch also confirmed this and added that they were currently working with their payment processor to accurately categorize transcriptions to try and resolve this issue. They also just started offering 1% cash back on all Innosearch purchases that you can spend when you shop on their platform in future. So one day you may actually be able to get more cash back than you otherwise would by buying through Innosearch though, that cashback will be split between your credit card and your Innosearch account.
Finally, on the subject of credit cards, you brought up Instacart and I know a lot of blind people use that app to shop." It's a glorious thing, Sy. It's a glorious thing. He says, "There is a co-branded Instacart credit card with Chase. It has no annual fee and it gets you 5% back on all Instacart purchases. If Chase approves your application for the card, all your Instacart purchases become 5% cheaper. Since it's usually a lot easier for us to shop online than in person, I figure it's worth saving whatever we can on those fund service charges." Well, that's news you can use right there. I thank you so much for sharing that.
Now, let's hear from Tina Hanson who says, "I'm sure we've all had to deal with apps that started out with good accessibility only to see it broken. When they get updated, how can we ensure accessibility stays strong from update to update?" Yes, it's a good question, Tina. It's one of the reasons why I choose not to have my apps update automatically, and I do that because usually I'm pretty plugged into social media and if it takes me a while to get around to updating my apps, hopefully I've found out somewhere that an app that I might depend on has become inaccessible. It can happen from time to time. Maybe there are new people working on the code or maybe there was just an innocent breakage, which will get fixed in the next release because maybe the company you're dealing with has a good reputation and you trust them to do that.
Obviously, one of the most egregious examples of this problem was Sonos, where they completely rewrote their app. And even though it's accessible now, whereas initially it was not, it was very difficult to use with a screen reader. The usability, the fluidity of using the app has never been the same. It's interesting to note that Sonos now has a temporary new CEO in place while they seek a permanent replacement for Patrick Spence, who is no longer with the company and the new CEO has expressed a desire to mend fences, to rebuild trust with users whose trust has been severely damaged by what went on with Sonos in 2024, the National Federation of the Blind wrote to Sonos before the release of that app and said, "We have it on very good authority that the app that you're about to release is going to severely degrade the ability of blind people to use it. It would be responsible to release it in this way." And Sonos went ahead and did that.
That got a lot of flak from many quarters. It wasn't just an accessibility problem, it was a feature set problem. It was a user experience problem, and now Sonos is trying to get their reputation back. The president of the National Federation of the Blind has written to Sonos's new chief executive congratulating him and urging him to work in a spirit of partnership with the blind community on improving the Sonos experience and rebuilding that trust. But that's just one example of when accessibility can literally break overnight. In terms of how we ensure it doesn't happen, I suppose we just have to be vigilant, Tina. It will happen from time to time, and when it does, hopefully the company's concerned or the developers concerned will take swift action to restore accessibility.
We mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we had other members of the CENA staff on the podcast that we do have our Inaccessibility tracker form. You'll find that if you go to nfb.org/cena and if we start to see a sudden surge about a particular app, we are likely to reach out to that app developer and let them know that there are blind people who want to use the app and they're having problems with it. But it is certainly an occupational hazard, that's for sure. Literally in some cases, I mean, if you depend on a particular app for your job and it breaks, it is not a trivial matter.
We've got a tech tip. It's an interesting one too, and I looked it up. I said to the ChatGPT, I said, "Is this true?" And the ChatGPT said, "It is true." So it must be true. This tech tip comes from Robert Jackwis and he says, "During cold weather, keep your phone next to your body. Lithium batteries tend to fail in sub-freezing weather. And of course, so many of our devices are powered by these things. They can do interesting things in sub-optimal conditions as you know." So thank you, Robert. That's a very useful tip, and if you have a tech tip that you would like to share with us, just write to [email protected] and put tech tip in the subject so it draws it to my attention. And you're welcome to use that address to comment on anything that you like relating to access technology for possible inclusion on the podcast.
That concludes this episode of Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us. Attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon. [email protected]. That's accessonnfb.social on Mastodon.
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.