NC_2024_04_03
Celebrating 1,000 episodes, NoCillaCast discusses tech tools like iPhones and Aira aiding the visually impaired. Emphasis on improving information accessibility and assistance options for the community, alongside CES gadget releases.
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The podcast host kicks off the episode by sharing exciting updates about their upcoming trip to Texas and the remarkable milestone of reaching the 1,000th episode of the NoCillaCast. They introduce a valuable web accessibility tool called SilkTide, designed to assist in testing websites for accessibility. Engaging in a conversation with Oliver Emberton from SilkTide, they explore the tool's features, including color contrast checking, alt text, and a screen reader simulator. Through a live demonstration, the host and Oliver showcase the tool's versatility on various devices and browsers, underlining its significance in ensuring inclusivity on the web. Referencing Arnold Schwarzenegger's ethos of helping others, the host shares a heartwarming personal anecdote about aiding a neighbor with macular degeneration in selecting a new iPhone, highlighting the gratification derived from aiding those in need.
The narrative delves into a tale of assisting an elderly friend with transitioning to a larger iPhone for improved visibility. Amidst challenges concerning pocket space and accessories, the decision to craft a blanket for the friend emerges as a thoughtful alternative. The duo embarks on the task of setting up the new iPhone, encountering compatibility issues along the way and seeking technical support from the carrier. Despite roadblocks, they successfully transfer all data to the new device, navigating through setup intricacies and Face ID troubleshooting. The host introduces the friend to new iPhone features and gestures, later involving a trusted Apple consultant to ensure a seamless transition. Throughout this endeavor, the emphasis rests on the intrinsic value of altruism and fostering meaningful connections over material gain. Transitioning from the iPhone setup, the conversation segues into discussions about cutting-edge gadget releases at CES, highlighting innovative products such as a 3-in-1 charging stand and an International Travel Charger, with a teaser on Satechi's forthcoming mechanical keyboard, exemplifying their dedication to enhancing technological experiences.
Shifting focus, the speakers delve into their technological journey, shedding light on Aira, a service providing real-time visual interpretation support through trained agents. Their exchange revolves around personal encounters utilizing Aira for tasks like navigation, label reading, and engaging in outdoor pursuits autonomously, accentuating the service's versatility and empowerment for individuals with visual impairments. The main speaker shares their preference for relying on the phone over glasses for specific tasks, detailing the user experience with the feature-rich Aira app. Extolling the personalized assistance provided by adept agents, the speaker highlights the paramount privacy concerns associated with the app while commending the platform's well-trained personnel. They delineate the profound impact Aira has had on their daily life, from tech aid to mundane yet essential activities like reading labels, lauding the service's evolution with innovative AI integration. Furthermore, the conversation veers towards the speaker's podcasts centered on Braille education and tech reviews, emphasizing the critical aspect of information accessibility within the visually impaired community. Wrapping up, the main speaker stresses the importance of varied assistance options while extending avenues for further engagement and connection.
The narrative delves into a tale of assisting an elderly friend with transitioning to a larger iPhone for improved visibility. Amidst challenges concerning pocket space and accessories, the decision to craft a blanket for the friend emerges as a thoughtful alternative. The duo embarks on the task of setting up the new iPhone, encountering compatibility issues along the way and seeking technical support from the carrier. Despite roadblocks, they successfully transfer all data to the new device, navigating through setup intricacies and Face ID troubleshooting. The host introduces the friend to new iPhone features and gestures, later involving a trusted Apple consultant to ensure a seamless transition. Throughout this endeavor, the emphasis rests on the intrinsic value of altruism and fostering meaningful connections over material gain. Transitioning from the iPhone setup, the conversation segues into discussions about cutting-edge gadget releases at CES, highlighting innovative products such as a 3-in-1 charging stand and an International Travel Charger, with a teaser on Satechi's forthcoming mechanical keyboard, exemplifying their dedication to enhancing technological experiences.
Shifting focus, the speakers delve into their technological journey, shedding light on Aira, a service providing real-time visual interpretation support through trained agents. Their exchange revolves around personal encounters utilizing Aira for tasks like navigation, label reading, and engaging in outdoor pursuits autonomously, accentuating the service's versatility and empowerment for individuals with visual impairments. The main speaker shares their preference for relying on the phone over glasses for specific tasks, detailing the user experience with the feature-rich Aira app. Extolling the personalized assistance provided by adept agents, the speaker highlights the paramount privacy concerns associated with the app while commending the platform's well-trained personnel. They delineate the profound impact Aira has had on their daily life, from tech aid to mundane yet essential activities like reading labels, lauding the service's evolution with innovative AI integration. Furthermore, the conversation veers towards the speaker's podcasts centered on Braille education and tech reviews, emphasizing the critical aspect of information accessibility within the visually impaired community. Wrapping up, the main speaker stresses the importance of varied assistance options while extending avenues for further engagement and connection.
Brief Summary
The host celebrates the 1,000th episode of NoCillaCast and introduces SilkTide, a web accessibility tool. They share stories of helping neighbors with macular degeneration choose new iPhones and assisting an elderly friend with tech setup. Discussion shifts to CES gadget releases and Aira, a service aiding individuals with visual impairments. The main speaker emphasizes the importance of information accessibility and varied assistance options in the visually impaired community.
Tags
host
1
000th episode
NoCillaCast
SilkTide
web accessibility tool
macular degeneration
iPhones
tech setup
CES gadget releases
Aira
visual impairments
information accessibility
Transcript
[0:00]
NC_2024_04_03
[0:00]
Music.
[0:16]
The alert amongst you will have heard me say Wednesday just now,
which is your hint that the show is out super early because we're off to Texas
this weekend to stand in the rain and look at clouds where the eclipse was supposed to be.
It also means there will be no live show this coming Sunday.
We will return to our usual tomfoolery on Sunday, April 14th,
but don't worry, we're keeping our streak alive as we begin to approach the
1,000th episode of the NoCillaCast.
[0:43]
CSUN 2024: Silktide Website Accessibility & Content Checker
[0:43]
Most of us are currently abled, so the accessibility tools we're learning about
from CSUN's Assistive Tech Conference might not yet apply to you.
But if you create content for the web, you probably want as many people as possible
to enjoy what you create.
This next interview from CSUN is about a free, beautiful, easy-to-use tool to
analyze your web pages to make sure they're accessible to those with different kinds of impairments.
[1:07]
When I'm doing web development and I'm kind of pushing in my community towards doing this.
I like to test my sites for accessibility for the work that I'm doing.
And one of the things I've been using is the Wave Accessibility Tool,
which allows me to do that, gives me feedback on exactly what's right and what's wrong.
It's maybe not the cleanest, prettiest thing I've ever used in my life,
but I'm here with, and I've forgotten your name one more time,
Oliver Emberton from Soaktide, who is a free service that's going to help us
do a better job of testing our sites for accessibility. Is that correct?
That's very correct. Yes, we went out of our way. We've been using Wave for about a decade or so.
We went out of our way to look at Wave, to look at Axe, to look at all of the
major free tools out there.
And we took all of the best bits
of all of them, and we shamelessly stole them, and we made them better.
Okay. And we're giving it away for free. Well, that's my language.
So, in general, what I'm used to being able to do is to just look at my website
and see, have I missed any image descriptions?
[2:04]
What about contrast is a big one. That one's always really hard for me to fix
because it doesn't ever tell me what to do about it. It just says, nope, it's wrong.
And so I guess another number, and it says, nope, it's still wrong.
You know, hot or cold, hot or cold. Well, I know why that's tricky,
because the thing with color is you can suggest colors, but sometimes there's
a human judgment component, right? Should you make it lighter?
Should you make it darker?
Should you rotate all of your oranges around to become reds?
Reds are easier to make contrasting than orange, for example. People don't know that.
Right. Just give me a hint. Yeah, yeah. No, fair enough.
I mean, we provide contrast tools. It's built in there. much like.
[2:42]
All of these others, right? We'll give you the color dropper,
we'll scan your page, we'll automatically find the text where the contrast is
too low, where the contrast is good enough, and we'll tell you things like this
text could be larger, or you could bump the contrast. So, you know, choose.
Oh, okay. So, make design choices that can still achieve the same goal?
That's the aim. Okay. Okay. So, how does this work? Is this a separate app or
a plugin? What is this? Yeah. So, right now it's a Chrome extension.
So, it's completely free. You just Google for for Silktide in the Chrome store,
and then you just install it.
And it takes like one mouse click, and then you have an array of free tools,
which includes the color contrast you mentioned, and a whole ton of other stuff,
like a screen reader simulator, for example. A screen reader simulator? How does that work?
Well, it's kind of what it sounds like on a tin. So we work with screen readers all day long, right?
[3:32]
And if you've ever had the experience yourself, you'll know it's really,
really difficult to set up a screen reader. Screen reader is a lot of work, right? Right.
Typically, many, many hours installing an awkward piece of software.
Unless you're on a Mac and it's already there.
Well, I don't like to brag. Yeah, that's true. But even then, right.
So I do use a Mac and it's still tricky because you have to go through like a learning process.
There's like an entire wizard. It's not easy to learn. I didn't say that,
but it's at least already there.
Yeah. Yeah. And I've been using one of those for years and I still get lost.
I still sometimes get trapped somewhere and I'm like, how do I get out of here?
And I reset the whole thing. So what we did is we just built a one-click button
inside this tool that just simulates the screen reader inside any web page you're viewing in Chrome.
So you just go to the page that you want to test, and you push the button,
and now you're using a fake screen reader, which works just like NVDA,
except we tell you how to use it down the side of the screen so you don't need
to sit there and do a three-hour course.
So you don't need to learn the screen reader. It's already there.
An example where I was using this with XPathWD in our development process with
Helma and Mike Price and some others is.
[4:39]
We were trying really hard to make sure we had labels on everything so that
screen readers would be okay.
But I discovered by using a test screen reader that there were like two areas
out in the middle of nowhere that were reading things out audibly.
And that's not what we wanted.
Didn't realize we were causing that. But you'd be able to see that with Silktide.
Yeah, and that's exactly why you need it, right? Because you can do all of the
abstract learning that you like.
You can sit there and read the theory, but there's no substitute for actually
experiencing it yourself.
Exactly, exactly. I mean, imagine if you were making TV back in the day.
I remember this. You're making TV for black and white TVs. How old am I? Don't ask.
[5:17]
And so as late as in the 90s, they were making TV ads and they had to make sure
that they still worked on black and white televisions. Sounds crazy.
And you can try and guess what that's like, or you can just find a black and white television.
And if you don't do that, you can do all the theory. You can be like,
oh, I think this color works. And I think, no, you just need to try it.
There's no substitute for that. The problem has been with screen readers is
that's incredibly hard and we were like can we make that something you can do in?
Two mouse clicks which it now is That's a fantastic idea.
So Can we take a look at it and see how this works?
All right We're gonna do a live demo here.
So now this the audience is Audio and video are you gonna be able to hold that
still enough up in the air? Oh, I see your point.
Shall we try this? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to talk through what's going on because
there's audio-only listeners as well. Okay.
So I'm just going to open the extension, which is one click up here.
He's got a website open called fakeuniversity.com.
Yeah. To protect the guilty, we decided to make a free website,
which is deliberately riddled with all manner of accessibility issues.
[6:27]
So this opened up a sidebar on the left that says SoakDyed, and it's got a bunch
of different options for accessibility checker, color contrast,
alt text, screen readers.
All right. Yeah, all sorts. So the sort of thing that people will often want
to do is they might want to go into, say, focus order.
This is one that I like. So if I click on focus order, this shows you the order
of parts of the page as you would tab through them.
So if you're using assistive tech, you can see how you would step through.
So what we're seeing on screen is a purple line with numbers on it.
And so when it gets to each button, it's got the number there.
I see eight. And then there's a picture of an image. That's nine.
And that would have been also useful in what we were doing. We had a banner
that was in the order four.
So you'd get content, content, content. Here's a picture for no reason.
This would have visually really told it to us. Absolutely.
And then in the same way, I'm sure we've all been here where you're like,
well, what's the alternative text on this page?
If you want to see it, you can click on this and we'll tell you the alt text,
for example, is missing on this image and we'll tell you what it is on other
parts of the page so these are actually all missing alt text in fact this is
kind of a bad example let me show you a website that does it well,
So now it's on the BBC. Oh, the Brits got to bring this up.
Well, of course I do. I am still technically, legally half British. I heard you're a Texan.
I am indeed a Texan, and I won't deny it. And I prefer Texas to England.
Don't hold it against me.
[7:52]
Controversy. You're finding it here. Spicy take. Anyway, but what you can see
is alternative text on the screen overlaid over these images.
So yeah, on every image we can see what the alt text is and we're seeing a lot
of green on the BBC website.
That's right. But one of the things that we found is that when we were looking
at websites or testing or improving websites, you want to see the alternative text in context.
You want to know what it applies to without doing lots of extra work.
So the idea of this is it just makes it really, really obvious. Oh yeah, excellent.
So I'm going to come back out of that. Let's go back to the fake university
website. and I'm just going to show you the screen reader simulator because
this is definitely one of my favorite things.
So is this going to be talking out loud? I should move the mic down to the speaker?
I'll turn the sound up a little bit. It's going to be hard to judge.
We'll see how this goes. So if I click on this...
Link.
[8:47]
Button toggle navigation. Heading one choose your future. List with zero items.
Paragraph embark on an extraordinary educational journey at.
[8:58]
Okay, I'm going to mute it now because that's going to get annoying very quickly.
So we all know what a screen reader is like.
The idea of this is that we've made a sidebar that gives you,
firstly, immediately obvious controls on how to use this, right?
So previous, next, and select.
So you can go through here. I can select this button, for example, if I wanted.
[9:17]
And then everything that's being spoken out loud is shown here as a transcript. script.
So if you're not able to remember what was just happening, you can read it later on.
The idea is, for example, I might be a web developer working on this and I don't
have perfect memory for one, or I don't want to turn this audio on and listen
to the robot voice throughout my day. I can just leave it silently there and read the narration.
And then there's a whole ton of stuff because of course a real screen reader
has things like you might skip to headings and so on, right?
And when you're doing that, you need to know your shortcuts.
There are various shortcuts for landmarks, headings, links, form inputs, etc.
We've simulated all of those and you can run those and see how they behave on your site.
Oh, that is really slick. I like this. And it isn't ugly.
All right. This is a hard one. You know how I feel about contrast.
Let's see the contrast color checker. OK, so there's a couple of things here.
So the color contrast checker, we've got a tool here designed to help do the
thing that you would expect, which is, you know, you can pick out any two colors.
That's just a silly example.
But you can pick out any colors you want if you wish.
So you can do, for example, that. that. We also have a... Well,
hang on one second here. We're apparently... We're getting the hook.
[10:32]
Okay, one hour to closing time. Okay.
So going back to the color contrast checker, I think that's got the thing I
wanted was that when you go...
When he's flipping through, he's able to see and choose different colors right
on the fly and see whether it fixes the contrast.
I've had to go back into my web design, into the HTML, and change it in order
to see and then rerun the wave tool.
Yeah, so I will be honest. At the moment, we do let you change.
Sorry, you can see here the colors. We're highlighting.
I don't know if you can see this. This part of the page where the contrast is not good enough.
We'll show you what's going on. But we don't currently give you a tool here
to preview changing that color.
Now that you said it out loud to me and put me on the spot, I'm like,
that's a good feature. We should do that. Well, I thought I just saw you do it a second ago.
You picked two colors and you said that's not a good example.
No, no, no, you're right. Yeah, so that's, sorry, that's something else.
That's for like, you can look at any two colors you'd like.
So, for example, I could go, how does that color contrast with,
say, that color? And yeah, that you can.
Yeah, so just take that little tool there and stick it over in the other color
checker so I can get it right.
[11:44]
In the, when we're going back to the, not just color contrast,
build this capability you have here over into when I've got a fail.
Ah, I see. Where I can say, okay, let me pick, let me darken,
darken, darken. Okay, good enough.
I got my 4.52 to 1 contrast ratio.
That makes perfect sense. I, well, I have been working on this project for a
while. I'd be very happy to take this back to the team and say, oi, guys, sort it out.
[12:09]
I love it. I love it. All right. This is, this is really fantastic. Fantastic.
Is that all the high points there? There is just one more thing I'll show you
because it's easily missed.
Everything you've seen here works on different devices. So if I wanted,
I could have done that on an iPad or I could have done it on, say, an iPhone.
So he's got a simulator running on all of these.
That's right. And so even things like the screen reader or things like the focus
order will work on all of those devices.
Oh, my gosh. This is spectacular. And it's free. It's 100% free and it always will be.
Is that because you're a wonderful human being or you've got a business plan on something else?
It could be that or it could be I'm very bad at running a business.
You're going to have to decide for yourself.
All right. Well, Oliver, this has been fantastic. Again, it's Silk Tide.
And you just look it up in the Chrome store. You can run it on Microsoft Edge
or on any Chromium browser, I assume.
At the moment, it is literally just Google Chrome, but we are working on other browsers as we speak.
Not on Edge. Usually everything that works on Chrome works on Edge.
Well, actually, it might. It might do. You know what? I don't know.
I'll try it. I'll let you know if it doesn't. Okay. Absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.
[13:19]
After I got home, I tried out Silktide with Microsoft Edge, and it worked perfectly.
So that answered that question.
One of the nifty parts of having this as an extension in the browser is it also
means you can check your work when you're building your website locally,
even before you ever push it up to the public.
So in Microsoft Edge or in Google Chrome, just go to the place where you look
for extensions for your browser and look for Silktide and check out your websites today. day.
[13:46]
Lupe and Her New iPhone with a Little Story About Arnold Schwarzenegger
[13:46]
I recently read Arnold Schwarzenegger's book, Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life.
It's such a great book in so many ways. One of the things Arnold really dislikes
is how people say he's a self-made man.
He argues in the book about this by pointing out how many people helped him get to where he is today.
[14:04]
It's really great fun to learn how he set his goals to be a bodybuilder in Austria
before the sport really existed there.
Then he set his goals to be an Olympian. Then he had a vision to be a movie
star, then a comedic movie star, and then the governor of California,
and then finally to run the President's Council on Physical Fitness.
But it was the very last section of the book that struck me the most,
and that was when he started working with the Special Olympics.
He talks in this section about the best thing in life, which is helping other people.
The entire book is written very much in his voice, and you can hear his passion
for what he has gained by the experience of helping others.
I highly recommend the book, and this idea has so much relevance for doing the
podcast and things I do in my personal life.
I get so much energy out of helping other people.
[14:51]
Ten years ago, on the 500th anniversary of the Nosilla cast,
I told you about a crazy power outage we had in our neighborhood.
The only good thing that came out of it was that we ended up meeting our delightful
neighbor Lupe as a result.
Steve helped her with her circuit breakers, and we've been good friends ever since.
After I got to know Lupe, she asked me if I'd help her pick out a new iPhone.
You know how much I love to spend other people's money, so we toddled off to
the Apple store together and we picked out a shiny new iPhone 7 for her.
[15:20]
Fast forward to now, and Lupe's getting up there in years and unfortunately
has macular degeneration, which has seriously compromised her vision.
She doesn't get out much anymore, so her iPhone is really her lifeline more than ever.
She suggested to me a while ago that she needed a new iPhone,
so I went over to visit her to figure out which iPhone to buy for her.
My first thought was to see whether she needed voiceover yet,
but she assured me that she could still see well enough to do what she wanted to do.
While email is no longer an option for her, she could still call people,
listen to messages, and read texts with a magnifying glass.
[15:54]
I suggested that if she was going to get a new iPhone, she might consider one
of the big iPhones, such as an iPhone 14 or 15 Plus.
I figured the much bigger screen would make the very large text she needs fit
more on the screen and be overall easier to read.
She asked to see my phone, which is the medium-sized iPhone 15 Pro.
She compared it to her iPhone 7 and said, well, it was a little bit bigger.
Let me try to slip it into the pocket of my house coat.
Well, it just barely fit. It was pretty snug. Then she tried to fit it in this
little bandolier purse she throws around her neck when she's moving about.
And again, it was snug, but it did fit.
She declared that a bigger iPhone like the Plus was out of the question.
I told her, I said, hey, I'll sew a bigger pocket on your house coat and I'll buy you a new purse.
But she pointed out, she said, I have three house coats. And she just decided this wasn't gonna work.
At this point, I didn't know what problem a new phone would solve for her if
bigger wasn't an option.
Her iPhone 7 was working just fine, and it fit those pockets and purse.
She didn't need a faster phone, nor one with a better camera.
Well, the next time I went to visit, she brought up this phone thing again,
and we had essentially the same conversation.
I'm not against the idea of buying gadgets someone doesn't need,
but I couldn't figure out what problem I was solving by recommending a new phone,
and what phone should I even recommend?
[17:14]
I did notice one problem I could solve. Lupe was really, really cold.
She says she has to keep the house cold because having the heat on dries out
her eyes. I gotta tell you, even I was cold in her house.
So, rather than buying her a new iPhone, I crocheted an afghan for her.
It really was a labor of love, and I chose a pattern of cream,
gold, and purple, because purple is her favorite color.
The pattern was a dream to crochet. It's super soft, and it was a really fun pattern.
If you're wondering, it was the Seaside Ripple Afghan from Mary Maxim.
[17:46]
Now, remembering what Arnold said, it's helping others that gives us the most fulfillment.
I knew that every time she wrapped herself in this blanket, not only would she
be warmer, she'd know I'd been thinking of her when I was making it.
So, just a few days after I brought her the blanket, she called me in distress
because she was having battery problems on her iPhone 7.
She said it was going from 100% to zero.
Now, I assumed she was having a charging problem, so I dashed over with a new
charger block, lock, a fresh lightning cable, and a wooden toothpick to pick
lint out of the connector port just in case that was the problem because it often is.
But I should have listened more closely to exactly what she was saying.
She was telling me that she would charge it to 100%, so not a charging problem,
but then it would be at 0% shortly thereafter.
[18:32]
I opened up the battery settings on her phone and I gotta tell you,
I put a screenshot of this battery graph in the show notes to illustrate what she was saying.
I've never seen an iPhone battery graph like this before.
It looks like an L. It shows the battery level going straight down from 100%
to 4% and then it hovers there for a few hours before suddenly tanking to zero.
Now remember how I said I couldn't figure out why I should get her a new phone
just because her phone was working fine? Yeah, not so much now.
Lupe and I went through options on the Apple website to choose an iPhone iPhone 14 for her.
I still couldn't talk her into the plus size phone, and I didn't think there
was really any reason to push an iPhone 15 on her.
We debated the merits of AppleCare Plus, and even though she doesn't leave the
house all that much, she did like the idea of the version that gives you theft and loss protection.
She told me to get her a screen protector so she'd be covered there as well.
[19:26]
When I was checking out her charging situation, I noticed that the very long
cable she uses was frayed near the connector, so she asked for a new long charging cable as well.
I found a nifty three-meter braided USB-A to lightning cable from Belkin for $30.
And a couple of things are cool about it. Braided, always good,
but has a little rubber strap for coiling the cable that's really nice.
It also has a magnetic disc on that strap and then a matching magnet with 3M
sticky stuff on the back so you can stick it to something.
So she can take the end of the cable and just stick it to this thing that sits
on her table all the time, and that way the end of the cable doesn't fall on
the floor. floor. She really liked that feature.
At her age and with her vision, it turns out chasing down a drop cable on the
floor isn't nearly as much fun as it used to be.
Now, we ran into a few challenges setting up her new iPhone the next day.
She didn't have enough storage space on iCloud to run a backup,
and I didn't have the login info available to clean it up to be able to make room.
We did the ad hoc network dance where the old phone scans the swirly graphic
on the new phone, and then they they have this whole little conversation between
each other to transfer all of her data.
In less than a half an hour, all of her apps, data, and wallpaper were there,
and the accessibility features for enlarged text were all set up on the new
phone. It was really cool.
[20:45]
While this worked swimmingly, we ran into a big snag. The iPhone 7 has a physical
SIM, and the iPhone 14 has an eSIM.
Now, it's really easy to move from a physical SIM to an eSIM. I've done it myself.
But the process requires iOS 16 or higher on both phones. iPhone 7 was back
on something like, I don't know, iOS 14.
[21:05]
So I had to make that dreaded call to AT&T.
Now, you're going to be shocked to hear this, but I have nothing but good things
to say about my call with AT&T.
While there was a long wait time, they offered to call me back in 11 to 13 minutes,
and they actually called back right at 11 minutes.
We were soon connected to Lala, and she simply could not have been more helpful.
Lala gave careful instructions, but you know, not so slow that it drove me nuts.
She had kind of a cute way of telling me to look for things in settings.
She'd say, gently scroll down to the bottom. Take your time. I'll wait.
She was also pretty funny when we were working on actually moving the phone
number between the two phones.
She said, if we're lucky today, I can move it using the IMEI 2 number.
I laughed at how she said that, like you had to be lucky. And I said,
boy, it's funny how the more you know about technology, the more you realize
it's at least 20% witchcraft.
She laughed and said, don't you know it? She said, I'm going to use that line.
Anyway, once the phone number transferred, for it. She was successful.
I was ready to hang up, but she insisted on testing a few more things.
She told me to turn off Wi-Fi and test making a phone call, sending a text message,
and accessing the internet. Her thoroughness was awesome.
I had a few other things to clean up on the phone, and she insisted on staying
with me until everything was working properly.
As I told her, I could not possibly have been happier with the tech support I got from Lala at AT&T.
[22:32]
Now, once we had her phone functional, I decided to see if she'd be willing to give Face ID a try.
I explained that her new iPhone doesn't have a home button, but Face ID should
be able to unlock her phone even more quickly.
I'd been kind of dreading that change from Touch ID, but Lupe is smart and a
quick learner and was delighted with how well Face ID worked.
She's patient with the fact that it doesn't work all the time and doesn't seem
to mind typing in her passcode, you know, from time to time.
Now, a little update from when I first wrote this, I went over to see her today
and Face ID has stopped working and I'm not sure why.
I tried turning off requiring attention, which I thought that might be it,
and we actually erased the Face ID reading and had her do it all over again,
but it's not working ever right now.
So I've got to noodle why that would be, but I'll get back to her and get it fixed.
Now, she also told me to tell her son how much she owed me for the phone and
accessories. groceries and
I had to wonder, what's this guy going to think of hearing that from me?
Hi, I just helped your elderly mother with something. Can I have $1,200?
It pretty much couldn't have sounded any dodgier if I'd asked for the money
in Target gift cards, right?
Well, luckily she explained to him that it was the nice neighbor who had crocheted
her the Afghan, so he knew I was legit, but it could have all been part of my master plan.
[23:50]
Well, a little while after I left her, I got a phone call from her asking me
how to delete a a phone call.
I wasn't clear on what she meant, so I trotted over and I asked her to describe
what she wanted to do in more detail.
She explained that her son had called, but then she didn't know how to delete the call afterwards.
Took me a while to figure out what she meant. She was talking about quitting the app.
She used to do this by double-clicking the home button and then swiping up.
I didn't bother explaining to her that she doesn't need to quit apps,
but instead I taught her the gesture to swipe in an arc with her thumb from
the bottom of the screen. She picked up the gesture pretty quickly.
I told her that this was the gesture I had the most trouble adapting to when
I moved from Touch ID to Face ID.
I had her practice it four or five times, and by the time I left she had the hang of it.
I also today taught her to use the gesture to swipe down from the upper right
to get to Control Center and hit the flashlight. flashlight and she got it right away.
I had her do it two or three times and it was just like, yeah, I know this now.
So it's such a delight to work with smart people. It's just so nice.
[24:56]
Well, the final process of helping Lupe was to give her Pat Ningler's phone
number. You've heard me mention Pat a lot of times.
She's an Apple certified consultant and one of the most patient and gentle people I know.
It's not that I wanted to stop helping Lupe, but I'll be out of town for a few
days and I was afraid there might be something, maybe I forgot to set up for
her, and I didn't want her to have to wait nearly a week to get sorted out.
I would trust Pat with my own grandchildren.
In fact, I've done that. And so I trust her to take good care of Lupe while I'm gone.
Also, when it came time to do
the screen protector, I told her that Steve was better at it than I was.
And then when I finally, when we actually got the screen protector,
I said, oh, okay, I can do it for her.
And she goes, no, no, I trust Steve. I want Steve to do it.
So So Steve's the one who put on the screen protector.
Now Lupe keeps insisting that she must do something for us to pay me back.
And I told her all I want is for her to be my friend.
As Arnold explained, helping people is one of the greatest joys in life.
I may let her buy us lunch when we get back, but only because it would make her happier.
All right, let's head back to CES for some more cool gadgets. digits.
[26:05]
CES 2024: Satechi Qi2 and Magnetic Travel Chargers
[26:06]
A longtime manufacturer favorite, I would say, of the Apple community is the
Satechi line of products.
And I am here with Chris Martinez to talk about what they've got this year. How are you doing today?
I'm doing super. So let me show you what we're going to be announcing.
Before you start, I always forget to tell people this. This is an audio podcast
and some people will be on video.
So use a lot of detail to describe what you're looking at. Absolutely. We'll do so.
So first and foremost, we're launching our new ChiTu product portfolio.
So T2 is the evolution of MagSafe.
MagSafe meaning you can magnetize your device to charge it. And charge now at
15 watts without being licensed by Apple.
You were skipping ahead of me. I'm sorry. Love it though. Want to make sure
the audience knows. That's why this is cool.
100%. So with this device here, you charge your Apple Watch on the back,
five watts. It's also fast charging.
It also provides charging for your AirPods in the front.
As well as, as you said, the new Qi 2 module that charges up to 15 watts.
This also provides vegan leather, so a soft finish touch.
Does this articulate where I attach my phone?
It does have an articulating arm here. Also, what's unique, it folds completely
flat, so it allows you to travel.
[27:17]
Oh, that's nice. You can see the design, how flat and flush that is.
It's like a standard stand-up stand, except it folds flat for travel. Exactly.
And that's what we're trying to do. Empower the consumer to travel easily while
empowering them to power all their different devices.
And what's the name for this? This is our new 3-in-1 stand, a foldable stand.
And what's the price point on that? That's going to be $129.
And then its little brother, which has a similar design minus the watch module, is at $79.99.
Charging two different devices, your AirPods as well as your device,
also charging at a full 15 watts. And as you can see, also flat folds.
[27:56]
Everybody's in love with this kind of a design now because of standby mode.
Absolutely. Everybody loves to have their phone up on the stand.
It's the perfect way to charge and know what time it is.
Exactly. And to your point, what we did is we're taking advantage of that.
So these are going to be announced tomorrow, available in about the May timeframe.
[28:12]
What we're also going to be announcing later in the summer is a couple of new variants.
So this device is similar, but it also allows you that complete display.
Pad version for the consumer. This is more like what is that like seven inches
by four inches and then each of the pads lay flat.
Exactly. It completely lays flat versus the other vertical design but this also
allows is for consumers to utilize nightstand mode for your watch or the articulating
arm to also use standby mode.
Very nice. Also fold completely flat for travel has the same vegan leather soft
touch all aluminum design all the way around.
So whatever your look is. Now I'm excited about this wallet looking MagSafe stand looking thing.
Describe this. So this is our new magnetic wallet that launched with the iPhone 15.
In addition to it being available on our site in four different colors,
it also has exclusive colors on Apple's website.
What this allows us to do, $39.99 is MSRP, but what's unique about this is in
addition to it being a wallet, it also has the built-in stand.
So it allows you to have a stand.
Also holds four separate cards, room for four cards inside.
And you can see the window here, so you can have your own ID there.
[29:30]
Very light design in four unique colors.
And so you'll continue to see, and it's also vegan leather, so you can feel that soft touch.
And you'll continue to see newer products and newer designs leveraging that
same technology. I really like this idea of MagSafe, and a wallet,
and a stand, it's kind of getting it all done.
Exactly, and that's what we're looking to do, is have a complete family of products
that is empowering the consumer to leverage the magnetic capabilities of their device.
Very cool. Alright, got a couple more products down here? I'm going to show
you one additional product at least, because I know you've got to go.
This is our new International Travel Charger. So this is 145 watts of power
that's going to give you the ability to fully charge your MacBook.
[30:09]
So, four USB-C PD ports out. What's also unique about this, it allows you to
simply remove this power adapter.
So, it's taking the US AC adapter. Exactly.
So, you can pull the US adapter out, and then it comes with all these three
different travel adapters for all your international travel.
It also comes with a nice little mesh mat to carry everything with you.
And this is going to debut at $129.
I love it. This is basically a throwback to something that Apple had years ago
with our adapters, was you could pop the plug off and put the international
plugs on, or as someone from New Zealand would say, put the U.S.
Plug on, which is the international plug to them.
So you said it was 140 watts?
[30:49]
145 watts. 145 watts, and so... It'll pull up to 140 watts of power.
Depending on the combination of things you plugged in, right? Exactly, exactly.
Now, wait, there's one more product I'm going to have to show you.
Oh, I knew he was going to do it.
Satechi, which is known for all the different type of products to fully immerse
yourself with your desktop. we're launching our new mechanical keyboard.
So the new mechanical keyboard is going to be launching, it gives you that nice clicky feel.
You can see and feel that. So we're announcing that also in the next,
the day after tomorrow, we'll be having a press release.
But that really rounds out the overall portfolio that we're gonna be having
that expands the consumers ability to both beautify their desk and have a full performance.
Very good, thank you Chris. This is fantastic. That was a lot of products in
a short amount of time. Well, we have a lot more coming, too.
There you go. Keep an eye on Satechi, S-A-T-E-C-H-I, and where would we go to
buy those products? Satechi.net. Very good. Thank you.
[31:46]
Well, I am really jonesing for that 3-in-1 Qi 2 stand, that foldable stand.
That looks really cool for travel.
And remember, when I was hearing this, I didn't completely understand all the
things that were cool about Qi 2, but this works for your Android phone if it supports Qi 2.
[32:04]
Support the Show
[32:04]
Hey got any extra money laying around why don't
you head over to podfeed.com slash patreon and figure out
[32:13]
Interview with Chris Cooke About AIRA (no blog post)
[32:10]
a way that you can help support the show i mentioned last week that when steve
and i were at csun's assistive technology conference we had the great pleasure
to meet chris cook who works for the oregon commission for the blind she's a
serious tech nerd so of course we're you know we were instant friends she kept
reaching into her purse and pulling out gadgets It was awesome.
I asked her to come on the show now to tell us about the visual interpreting surface.
I think it's pronounced Ira that she's so wild about, and everybody at the table
said it's the best thing ever. Welcome to the show, Chris. Welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Did I pronounce the name
of Aira? Is that pronounced correctly?
You did. Good job. That's right.
So it's spelled A-I-R-A for anybody who's looking for it. But we're not going
to let you hear about that to start with.
I just want a little bit of background on you, Chris. How did you get into being such a tech nerd?
[33:03]
Well, I think that I can honestly say that I grew up at a time when there wasn't
a lot of really cool tech until I was probably ready for college.
And so then I just took it on.
So I am totally blind. And I grew up with the Perkins Brailler and all those
low tech types of things.
And when I got to college, there were no computers and I did note taking with
the slate and stylus and all that kind of good stuff.
So then after college, I had a good friend who visited one of the national conventions
and she saw this wonderful thing from Australia called a Eureka A4 computer.
And it had a braille keyboard and speech output and the thing created and composed
music among many other things along with note taking and calculator and a little
database and there were some other kinds of apps that it did.
But the main thing was that it could transcribe music and print it out.
Well, I was just starting a little career as a part-time school music teacher,
and I could use all the help I could get because it was a private school and
they didn't have any money.
So they needed whatever I could provide in terms of curriculum.
So she said, you've got to see this thing.
[34:29]
So I took it on and learned how to use it.
And And that was the beginning of my tech journey, because then,
of course, I was connecting it to a printer.
And then I wanted a really mainstream computer, and this was the early 90s by that time.
And so I got different computer equipment, including a little touchpad that
I could control the computer and the speech output and how much it read to me.
And those were the DOS days. So I just continued on going and kept my old stuff around.
And my mom used to say, oh, yeah, give her a new piece of technology,
slide some food under the door, and when she figures it out, she'll come out.
[35:14]
So that's kind of the story that I built along the way for myself.
Sounds like it's in your DNA just to be a tech nerd.
It is it really is I've had so much fun along the way learning new stuff and
trying to be on the cutting edge of things and really enjoying myself along the process,
Oh, that's great. Like I said, I could tell we would be friends from the minute you opened your mouth.
Actually, from the minute you reached into your purse and said,
check this out, I pulled out a piece of tech. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
And then, of course, getting on the iPhone bandwagon six months after it was
accessible to us with voiceover, getting a 3GS iPhone.
That was in very early 2010 that I got my first iPhone.
And I remember just sitting down with it one evening and just learning all I
could and downloading apps and adding contacts.
And I was just going like a house of fire. So it was just great.
I loved it. Now, you're probably not still on DOS, I'm guessing.
[36:16]
Boy, I wouldn't be doing anything in the world if I was.
No, no, I'm dragging my feet about Windows 11.
But I do use a Windows PC for work.
And also, I'm an Apple fangirl and have a Mac or two in my collection.
And also, of course, iPhones and things. And I did get a little bored last year
and decided that I wanted to learn Android because some of the students I teach
at the agency where I work were coming in with Androids.
And we just, you know, we're all in the Apple ecosphere and we really didn't know Android.
So I took it on. And so I also have an Android phone that I really love because
it has a British voice on it and it has Touch ID.
And those are two very important things to me, British voices and Touch ID.
Why does Touch ID make a difference to you versus Face ID?
[37:11]
Face ID creeps me out. I know probably they know everything about me anyway.
There's cameras everywhere, but I don't know. It just creeps me out.
So I just really love just putting my finger on that little place and knowing
that I'm in control of when it unlocks.
And it's my finger. It just doesn't seem as personal as my face. I don't know.
It's just my little weird idiosyncrasy. An emotional reaction to it, right? Oh, yeah.
Very visceral. Don't want it. Don't want to have anything to do with Face ID. Just don't.
How do I really feel about it?
I want to tell an Android story from CSUN. I won't reveal where the person worked.
Actually, no, I think you were with me. There was a guy named Earl that we were
talking to, and we won't say where he worked.
And we were talking about how we've been tempted to maybe take on using an Android
phone for a month or two months or three months.
Just immerse yourself and just give it a try, a good, honest try.
And he said, doing that is like
sucking on a cavity. You keep doing it again to see if it still hurts.
Oh, no. That's painful. That's terrible. I thought that was the best analogy.
Oh, man. Oh, dear. No, no. I didn't think it was that bad. Okay.
Okay. A little bit better than that.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I dragged in here to talk about Aira. Oh, that's right.
[38:40]
I have a feeling we could go on forever. Oh, yeah.
So the way you introduced me to the concept of Aira was you were talking about
the Envision glasses that you had on that were based on the Google Enterprise
platform, I think. Is that right?
Yes, that's correct. Okay, but Aira isn't hardware.
So, why don't you start at the beginning and maybe give us the history of Aira and what it is.
Sure. So, Aira was founded in 2015 by a couple of college students,
and they were very much thinking about their friend who was blind and how he
wanted access to visual information.
And so they were thinking about wearables and glasses and things and so they
founded this little company i believe uh we'll say the san diego san diego area and um so uh.
[39:34]
It started out that they did have glasses. And so what Aira is,
is a visual interpreting tech company.
And so they provide just that visual interpretation on demand with trained folks that are called agents.
And then the folks who subscribe to the service are explorers. Explorers.
And so I tried the service out on a demo by one of our clients in 2017.
And at that point, they did have these big glasses.
And you had to hope that someone was available to answer your call because they
didn't have very many agents at that time. And they were just getting started.
So the idea is the agent sees what you see through the glasses? Yeah, that's the idea.
[40:25]
And then we were on a video call. And so if you're out and about,
you're likely wearing bone conduction headphones, or you could be listening
to your phone speaker, but that's just a little unwieldy.
So at that time, you're making a video call and you're using glasses.
And I was so impressed when I was a part of this little demo that one of our
clients showed us because after crossing the street a couple of ways,
which they don't tell you when to cross the street, they can read the walk signal
for you if you'd like, but you're in charge of your street crossing.
Crossing and then we got to this building and
there was no way to enter because they had the door locked and so there
was arrows pointing you know hey enter this other direction so
we did and then there was water on the floor and so they alerted us to the the
wet floor you know environment and different things and so I was so blown away
by the amount of information and the confidence that I got from knowing real
time I didn't have to fumble around and go to that locked door and And then
try to figure out, okay, where's the other entrance?
And, you know, it's just a real hassle when you get in.
[41:35]
Unknown sort of unpredictable situation so fast
forward a year later one of my colleagues said that
she had a very successful time going through the
portland airport because there
was free ira access so ira grants
free access because companies sign
up and pay to have
the access access given to anybody who
is using the service and it's a geo-fenced area so
once you go into that area your phone recognizes
because you're connected to the iris service that you have free access so there's
a way to find out all those free access locations including many airports there's
starbucks um i think at&t i believe bank of america several universities there's
just a a whole ton of Aira access points.
Let me bring that on you for a second here. So we haven't talked about what
does Aira cost if you don't have free access?
[42:38]
Well, that can be variable. So I would just direct people to the website where
they can find out more information about the pricing plans.
[42:49]
For instance, there are plans for people who belong to one of the consumer organizations,
organizations, either NFB or I believe ACB as well.
Um, and so I, I hesitate to quote plans, information, uh, national federation
for the, of the blind and American council of blinds. So, okay.
But I mean, is it, is it a dollar a month, a thousand dollars a month?
Is there, you know, just any kind of just a ballpark? Yeah.
Um, I would say you were looking
at maybe a dollar a minute oh you
pay per minute yeah you buy
blocks of minutes okay and so there
might be 30 minutes 50 minutes um okay 100
minutes that sort of thing and the price goes down the more minute the the more
minutes that are in a block but you're paying more because you're buying an
old cell phone plan then when we used to care about minutes is basically yes
exactly Exactly. Yeah, that's the idea.
Okay, so I might use my own minutes to get from the taxi to the front door of
the airport, but as soon as I get in the airport, now I'm not using my own minutes.
That's one of the examples, right?
That's the idea. Yep. And so then you're switching over to the Aira Access offer, the free offer.
[44:09]
And then the agent that you call can always switch things over in case they
don't happen to, but they should switch over automatically.
Okay. Okay. So you mentioned that you had a first big adventure.
Was it during that demo or is there another story to tell there?
[44:28]
Oh, there's another story with that.
So what happened is I signed up after I heard my friend go successfully through
the airport, and I thought, I have to have this.
And so I had lots of aha moments and lots of cool things happen,
successful shopping trips and street crossings and all kinds of things.
But the very, very best thing that I did was I took a trip with my very best
friend who is also blind and we went to Seaside, Oregon.
We went to the coast, two blind ladies on vacation by ourselves. ourselves.
It was so fantastic because we didn't depend on anyone else's time,
no one else's car, no one else's schedule.
It was really fantastic. We took the bus down there and the driver kept wondering,
what's going on with these ladies?
There's nobody here. Nobody's meeting them. We said, we're fine.
You sure you know where we're going? We're fine. Yep. Okay, bye.
[45:25]
So the bus took off and we just called Ira and said, hey, we want to go to lunch.
So Ira walked us. They're tracking They're walking us on the map.
So they have access to maps and they're watching us as we travel on the map on their dashboard.
And so they're directing us to the nearest, you know, hamburger place.
And so we're just walking along. They're telling us what streets we're coming
up to, whether you need to turn or cross.
And and then of course not only are
they seeing us walking um our location on
the map but they're also looking out our phone camera so
they can see where we are in real time so let's
stop let's stop you a second so your phone camera so are
you having to hold it up in front of you do you i don't
know put it in a carrier on your chest how are they looking out your phone's
camera yeah i've done both um i have i
travel with a guide dog and so it's handy to have
hands free but i've traveled with a guide dog for so long that i'm used to having
uh you know bags or something else in my other hand so it it works okay for
me but it doesn't always work for other people to just hold the phone in one
hand so a lot of people get a holster lanyard type thing,
with a pouch and it can hang around your neck and then your back facing camera
is what is watching the world so so they're looking through your phone's camera
through the app but they're They're talking to you through headphones, I assume, right?
[46:53]
It's the best way to do it because then you can hear your environment.
And a lot of us have gotten bone conduction headphones so that we can hear the environment around us.
And we're hearing the agent talking with us.
[47:06]
One of the people at lunch, I think it was Michael Babcock, was saying that
one of the things he really appreciates about the IRA representatives is that
they know when to talk and when not to talk.
Like if you're listening to the at the airport for gates being called they wouldn't
talk during that as soon as it's done then they would talk to you again things like that,
Yeah, I would think that they would do that. You can also tell them what level
of information you want. Do you want a high level of information?
I mean, do you care what the person looks like that's coming toward you or that
you need to maneuver around?
Or do you just want them to be quiet and walk with you? You know,
I always tell them, hey, let me know if there are any stray dogs that are roaming
around because I want to know for my guide dog's sake if there's any other,
you know, presence of any other animals in the area.
So, you know, that sort of information, you can communicate with them and tell
them what you want to know.
Do you tell each person when you call or is that in your profile or something?
[48:07]
It's probably in my profile somewhere. I haven't filled, you know,
filled that out for, you know, six years almost. So, but I think it's in certainly
my guide dog and his presence, you know, the fact that that's the way I travel.
That's in my profile for sure. So, and then you, so do you use Aira every day,
once a month, only on travel?
Oh, goodness. No, probably every day. At least I've already used them today.
So, yeah, I use them around the house. Oh, yeah, sometimes.
[48:42]
Um if i want to know if i got something clean or uh
when does the milk expire for instance because those
expiration dates are really a pain to find and they're little and
they're different places and they're hard to read and this kind
of thing and i could use it for that i'm always
looking at condiments and a friend of mine got violently
ill um he got food poisoning like
so bad he woke up in the hospital like he ate some relish
and the next thing he knew he was in the hospital little oh and it
was and so now i'm terrified of all condiments oh yeah
yeah real serious about but it's so hard to find those
little labels i know i know and i
think they're used to looking at them for us and so
this one one lady said uh her uh
the agent said oh yeah i buy this kind of sour cream
or whatever i know exactly where this expiration date is so
it really helps their lived experience can help us
out um oh yeah i definitely use
them i use them for so many things um but
just to to tell you about the thing about
the big adventure was that um when i
went to seaside is that i got to walk on the beach all
by myself with my guide dog for about half
a mile and we looked for shells on the sand and they took pictures and they
can take pictures of whenever i said if you see a good photo op let me know
so i have lots of pictures of my guide dog with the sun shining on his fur and
the beautiful waves and the sunshine.
[50:11]
It was a gorgeous clear day that day.
[50:13]
And then they can save them and send them to you via email with descriptions,
or they can also save them in the Aira app.
So there's a place for your photos in the Aira app.
And is it all working because you're wearing Google Glass or are they taking
it with your phone or how does it work?
[50:32]
Okay, good question. So I found the glasses were a little bit more work than
I wanted to deal with because you had to connect them to Wi-Fi,
like hotspot kind of a thing.
And that was a bit more than I wanted to deal with. So I was then using my phone camera.
And since then they have gotten out of
the whole glasses thing entirely and just focused on their software
and their delivery of that visual interpreting experience
so they no longer use glasses
that they make or that they um you
know bring in as a part of their service um the services available on the envision
glasses if you want to use those glasses to be the the vehicle for which your
video feed is coming through those glasses.
But in terms of Aira itself, it's not in the hardware business anymore.
Okay, but you do use the Aira service with the Envision glasses?
[51:38]
Um, I have, um, I'm more likely to use it with my phone.
Cause if I just want to do a little something or if I don't have a need to be
walking about and, um, you know, hands-free like, um,
a lot, uh, in my daily work or my, whatever I'm doing, if I'm not doing a lot
of traveling and such, then I'm probably not going to use the glasses.
I'm going to use the phone.
I see. So I see. So the experience you launch the app on the phone and press go,
go and then so next call an
ira agent yeah so there's a button for call an ira agent
and then you are um waiting and
there's little musical tones to let you know you're you know you're
in the queue and then so and so answers and you know you know um they want to
know what i want to do today it's not how can i help you it's what would you
like to do today and they're very firm about that they're not like oh we're
way up here side of people helping you down there blind people you You know,
they're absolutely not that way.
So it's all about what would you like to do today?
So it's Aira visual interpretation on your terms.
What would you like to do? So they work for you.
[52:49]
Oh, yeah. They're generously helping. Exactly. It's they work for you.
You're in charge. Oh, absolutely. We're always in charge.
We ask them, you know, if they can help us in certain ways.
Like, I'd like to do this task a certain way. Could you give me what you're seeing?
[53:09]
Yeah, so it's absolutely, it's a really awesome, amazing concierge service that
I am so blessed to be able to pay for.
But even if someone has a plan that is more limited, you still get five minute
free phone calls every 12 hours if you have a paid plan.
And there's a lot you can do in five minutes if you're organized.
You can have your computer up and going.
They can look at your screen through the Team Viewer app.
If you have that on your computer, those annoying CAPTCHAs that are the bane
of all of our existence, sighted people have trouble with them as well.
Well, you know, we can get the CAPTCHA sorted out.
We can, you know, order something online that I'm not sure what it looks like.
Or we can finish a checkout process or to click on something that we couldn't find.
You know, there's a lot of things. Or if you're in your kitchen and you just
want to read the back of a box of directions.
[54:13]
And, you know, if you want to do that or find those expiration dates for those
products, You really can do a lot in five minutes if you're organized.
[54:22]
That is really, really interesting. I think they must have fantastic training
based on the fact that both you and Michael and Marty Sobo, who was also at
lunch, all three of you, as you were starting to tell me about it,
they're both like, oh, man, it's the greatest thing ever.
I totally rely on this. I mean, it wasn't like just the nerd liked it.
[54:41]
You know, these two guys were just 100% in, too.
Do right exactly and they do
get i believe about 100 hours of training um so
um and reading a map is one of the qualifications for
um being able to uh serve as
an agent because people do need to be
able to read a map you need your know your cardinal directions your
north south east and west and how to tell people how
to go get places and you know it's an
important skill of that i run into so many many
people who can't i remember calling a restaurant and saying no
sorry on the west side of the east side of the street and
she said they did not know no she did she said the right side i
said facing what direction she says what do you mean and we
were on for quite a while i said okay in california the ocean is to the west
it's really easy here oh no right yeah so they're they're very highly trained
they're all individuals though and you get to know them after a while if If you call a lot,
it's not like you know anything terribly personal about them, of course,
but you get to know their voices and kind of what they've enjoyed.
I think about what they've enjoyed working with me on.
[55:53]
Oh, there's so many ways in which Ira's been a part of my life, everything from...
[56:00]
Of course, the daily living kind of tasks, but they've also helped me on the
tech end of things to set up computers.
I recently set up a Mac and voiceover didn't come up talking because I wiped
it clean and started from scratch.
So for whatever reason, it didn't come up. Yeah, you know, it didn't.
And then I've set up other computers.
[56:21]
I also publish digital sheet music online.
So before I put it up online, they don't have to know anything about music.
But if they could tell me if my margins are okay, if they look at the PDFs,
and I want to know, are the margins okay?
Did any of the music run into any of the notes, that kind of thing.
Um on the creative end
um i once took a three layer
um strawberry blueberry white kind
of layered um fourth of july jello salad kind
of dessert to a um a potluck and i wanted to smooth out the whipped cream on
top so they helped me do that i held the phone in one hand and i had the the
spatula the other we're smoothing out whipped cream and then i wanted to make
a flag that was shaped like blueberries.
[57:13]
Like take blueberries and put them down on top of the whipped cream in the shape of a flag.
And so they helped me make sure they were all nice and even and that it was flag shaped.
And that was amazing. And then they took pictures of my awesome creation.
And of course, I still have those.
And being able to take pictures, that's another thing, and share them with people.
I mean, all of the fully sighted people do that.
And I'm a part of that community now because not only do I occasionally take
my own pictures but mostly I have them take pictures like my animals I have
two cats and a guide dog and if they're all snuggling together or something
cute's happening you know I can quickly grab my phone call Ira and say hey we
have a photo op here can you please take a picture.
[57:58]
So, do they tell you, move a little to the left, move closer,
move right? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep, yep. They do all that.
Yeah, they make sure. And then when I'm hanging out with people,
I can say, hey, I just had a really cute moment with my cat the other day. Do you want to see my pic?
That's what everybody does. And because I have Aira, I can be a part of that
same experience and share those same things with people and feel very typical, normal.
Every day, this is what we do.
It's just fantastic. I've said this before on the show, and I do it with tongue-in-cheek,
and yet it's not something that sighted people, I think, innately understand,
is that blind people want to do everything that sighted people can do.
Yep, exactly. That sounds really obvious, but I can't tell you how many times
people have said, well, why would anybody ever want to do that if you can't
see? Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow.
They're not being obnoxious. It's literally never occurred to them that why
would you want to do that? Well, because everybody wants to do that, you know?
Of course they do. Yeah, it's about sharing your life and your experience.
And, you know, people resonate with pictures. And I know they're cute pictures,
because I know my animals are super cute.
And that's one of their favorite things to do, by the way, is take pictures
of people's pets. So they love it.
[59:11]
Yeah let me turn to the uh dark side question
because i know someone in my community or many of them are wondering right
now what about privacy concerns you've given somebody access
to your phone your phone's camera not only
outside when you're walking around but inside your house how do
you reckon that yeah so they um signed some pretty strict confidentiality um
agreements agreements and so um what i don't have any worries about that because
i have trust in the service and i also know that their job is on the line if they screw up,
And so when people have that kind of, you know, if their job depends on them
honoring those privacy statements and, you know, agreements that they've signed,
then I feel really comfortable with that.
[1:00:03]
Yeah, I would think compared to, say, volunteers, for example,
that would be a different thing, right? right?
Yeah, exactly. And I explain that to my students that I teach too,
because I let them know about volunteer services like Be My Eyes.
That's great and out there for everyone and IRA that's paid.
And I let them know, you know, if you just want to know about the expiration
date on your milk or how long you need to bake your pizza, call Be My Eyes.
But if you want to do something more confidential, like look at your medical
report or your bank statement, or I've even,
before I found the joys of doing TurboTax with my phone app,
I've even had them help me fill in my tax return online.
And they're not doing my taxes, but they're filling in information and they're
helping me avoid all the upsell that TurboTax is going to do and try to get
me to buy the next level of their product.
And I don't want that. And it could be really easy to miss that kind of thing.
So I trust them. I've never been let down.
And they've always been there for me in that way.
So I have complete confidence that they know what they're doing there with the privacy concern.
No, there's some futuristic stuff coming to Aira, right?
[1:01:20]
What's happening next? Yeah. So it's really interesting.
Aira's name, because everybody says, He says, what does that mean? A-I-R-A.
First, people are not sure how to say it, and that's understandable.
And you have to train your phone to not say Aira.
I think it's got Aira now. I've trained it to do that.
But A-I-R-A stands for Artificial Intelligence Remote Assistance.
Now, Suman Kanuganti, who is co-founder of this tech company,
Aira, back in 2015, I think might have been thinking he's a visionary.
So he might've been thinking about this at some point, but artificial intelligence,
of course, we hear lots and lots and lots about AI and.
[1:02:03]
And so what is being rolled out now is the ability to either take a picture
in real time or access the photo gallery and have Aira's AI analyze the picture
and send you back a description.
And you can text the AI as we can with the service like Be My Eyes has an AI.
So Be My AI is something similar. But the
advantage that someone has if they have an account with Aira is that if they
have any doubts about the image or it's more complicated than the AI is giving
them resources to understand or they need a further explanation or they want to confirm something,
they can always then send the picture to an agent, to one of the Aira agents.
And the agent can confirm what the description has given them,
you know, what the explanation is of the image.
And then if they have another question about it or they really don't feel satisfied
with the answer or the level of detail, then you can call an Aira agent as your last step.
And then you're using your minutes at that point when you call an Aira agent
and then you can discuss that image or that document, whatever you were looking at with the AI.
[1:03:26]
Okay, so that triple layer of being able to get something for free from the
AI and then some written assistance and then talk on the phone if you need to.
[1:03:36]
Right, exactly. So I think it gives people another way to access.
And I just got it yesterday. So I've been playing with it a little bit.
And it seemed to return timely results. And I was timing probably seven or eight
seconds, I had the image description.
[1:03:55]
And I decided that I was running out of time at the end of my day.
So I was going to play with it some more.
But I will be interested to query the agent if I had any questions.
But I was satisfied with the results that it returned.
Interestingly enough, I did teach this audience that's listening to you right
now, I taught them how to use Be My Eyes and Be My AI in order to add captions.
They're amazing in Be My AI. I mean, better than I would write.
I used it yesterday to do it, by the way. It's really something.
[1:04:32]
That's really great. That's really great. Interestingly enough,
I took a picture of a package of food, but I forgot to turn the lights on in my kitchen.
So it said, hey, it's either underexposed or there's not enough light.
And so I thought, oh man, I think I forgot to turn the lights on.
So i went and turned the lights on and then i was looking at the at the package and uh i appreciated,
not that i needed to know this but i appreciated that it said it
was raw bacon as opposed to cooked bacon so that's
a level of detail that i haven't had before um because sometimes you might need
to know whether something is fully cooked or if it looks like it was fully cooked
or like it's still raw you know so it was a big old package of bacon and i got
to what i really appreciate from your descriptions is there's so many things
I don't think about. I've been thinking about the big picture.
How would I get from the door to my gate at an airport? That's a big problem.
But little things like smoothing out whipped cream, that would have never occurred
to me that that would be something you wouldn't be able to do.
So I forget just the everyday little tiny details.
And also the thing about the water on the floor, that really sticks with me
because Because that isn't just turn left, turn right, open the door,
straight ahead is the elevator.
[1:05:54]
You're going to fall if I don't tell you this. That's really different.
And the other thing I was thinking about was when I was kind of describing it
to people from what you told me, I said, it's just like having a friend right
there with you all the time, but it's better than a friend because the friend
isn't chattering away about nonsense.
This person has one job and it's to assist you in doing what you are trying
to do. too. So it's really better than having a friend there.
It's fantastic. Yeah. And yeah, and friends are not going to think of absolutely everything.
And they have just a list of things that they normally are going to communicate to you.
And so, yeah, it's just fantastic.
I love it. I've tried to help people.
The one thing I've learned walking, my mother taught me this,
was never take somebody's arm. You can offer an arm.
But then I don't think about everything. It's like when somebody gives me driving
directions, they're in the car and they forget that I don't know to turn left.
You don't think about everything you know in order to convey it,
but these people are trained to do exactly this one thing.
This is really interesting to me and I appreciate your giving us all this info on it.
Before we wind up, Was there anything else you wanted to make sure you told us about?
[1:07:11]
Wow. Um, I, uh,
I think what I just want to leave people with is the myriad of options that are out there.
And I think just deciding which option is best for which situation.
If you need a high level of assistance with something technical or detailed
or safety related or something that you think, hey, this would be well served by human interaction.
Option then i would just say um if
there's a way you can you know earn a little extra money or find
a little place in your budget it is so worth having that
option because there are the ai options there are
the volunteers but having options i think
that's what a lot of us appreciate is that
we do have options and we can use the best tool
for the situation and so just to kind
of keep that that in mind of you know um there's a
place for all of these services and we hope that people are able to really avail
themselves and enjoy all the independence that they offer yeah that's fantastic
so before we close out though we do need to talk about your podcast tell us about what you do uh,
in the uh in the podcasting space because i'm sure people are going to want to know,
Oh, well, thank you. Thanks for asking.
[1:08:36]
So I've wanted to do a podcast for a long time, but I was really kind of afraid of all the editing.
And so finally, Michael and Marty from the Unmute Presents Network came to me
and said, Hey, would you like to join us and do a podcast?
And so at first, these two things came right on the heels of each other.
They asked if I would do a podcast once a month. And so I chose to do a podcast
on Braille. So it's called At Your Fingertips, Braille Then and Now.
[1:09:09]
And I talk about things related,
all things Braille, something from the past, like maybe a skill that I learned
a long time ago or a tool that was developed a while ago that we still use,
like the Slayton Stylus or a tool, you know, that was then but is still used.
And then I talk about something related to what we're doing now or something
we're looking ahead to the future.
So whether it's a new Braille display or one of my episodes was talking about
making or buying greeting cards in Braille and where you do that.
And so we talked about all the ways to either make them or buy them and the
different advantages of doing each one.
And so that drops usually on the first Thursday of the month.
And so if people subscribe to the Unmute Presents network, then they get all
the shows on the network.
And there's some great shows over there. I was recently on the KD Talks Travel
show, and we were talking about preparing for the CSUN conference and all the
concerns I had about all my electronics and gadgets and everything.
[1:10:13]
The other podcast that I'm on that I really have so much fun with is Michael
and Marty and I do a podcast called Digital Bytes. That's B-Y-T-E-S.
And we have a little format for the show.
It's kind of a three-pronged approach. we review
an app one of us will review a
piece of hardware whether it's a new pair of headphones or a
keyboard or a speaker something like that and
then the other thing is just a tip and whether it's
you know how to shut voiceover up when
it keeps repeating the time every minute you know or something like
that um or um coming up
soon i'm going to do an android tip because we know know
that we love apple but um we there's some android folks
that are going to feel really left out if we don't talk about android sometimes
so i'm going to be presenting an android tip
soon so um our show um
is each week and we record our digital bites and it's not real long but it's
useful and we feel like it's helpful for people to have a variety of things
to enjoy whether it's a tip a piece of hardware or an app that they would enjoy
so those are the two main podcasts that I'm on.
Fantastic. I thank you so much for coming on the show.
If people wanted to connect with you, is there a social media platform? Please say Mastodon.
Yes, I will say Mastodon.
[1:11:41]
And I'm Creative Chris, even though I'm really techie.
You should find me at Creative Chris on Mastodon.
I think you need to tell us the server too, but I can look that up.
Oh, yeah, it is. the it is the tweeze cake um t-w-e-e-z-e cake tweeze cake and
just think cheesecake and you're close.
[1:12:08]
Uh, it is its own thing. It's Tweetscake.
I think we need one more thing, but I'll find it and make sure it's in the show
notes so people don't have to follow the platform. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm new to Mastodon in the last, say, nine, ten months or so,
so I'm still learning my way around.
That's a lot of fun, though. Yeah, that's where you can find me.
And I'm hoping to get the atyourfingertips.tech website up and going as well in the email.
But I haven't been too busy working and trying to get everything recorded and all that sort of thing.
But I will have that up and going at some point.
Very good. Very good. Well, I expect we will have you back sometime soon because
anytime you want to talk about a new piece of tech that you found and want to
come on the show, I would love to have you.
Oh, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
[1:13:02]
I told you Chris was awesome, right? I did a little more research on exactly
what her Mastodon handle is.
It's at creativechris at tweezecake.social. And of course, there's a link in the show notes.
The link to the chapter for this segment is actually a link to the Unmute Presents
podcast because her segments, At Your Fingertips, Braille Then and Now,
and Digital Bites, Those are all folded into the same podcast,
into Unmute Presents with Marty Sobo and Michael Babcock.
So you've got the link there, and you can just look for Unmute Presents in your
podcatcher of choice if you'd like to go directly there.
[1:13:40]
Well, that is going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email
me at allison at podfeed.com anytime
you like? If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over.
Remember, everything good starts with podfeed.com.
You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeed.com slash mastodon.
If you want to listen to the podcast on YouTube, I'm not sure why people do,
but they do, you can go to podfeet.com slash YouTube.
If you want to join in the conversation, you can join our Slack community at
podfeet.com slash Slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nocella castaways.
You can support the show, like I mentioned earlier, at podfeet.com slash Patreon,
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And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, which will not be this
Sunday, but a week from Sunday, head on over to podfeet.com slash live on Sunday
nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nosilla Castaways.
[1:14:32]
Music.