Went to confession and Mass. Our priest gave an incredibly moving homily about marriage, as the Gospel message is about the king who invited everyone for his son's wedding. Father reminded us that the Bible begins and ends with marriage and that Jesus wants to marry us. I knew that but never thought about it in such direct terms and I was extremely moved.
In case anyone's interested, here's a link to a post about accessibility improvements made to the Groups.io (mailing list/forum hosting service) site. https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/41373
Blind and visually impaired people fear smart glasses backlash https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmx2qlz7ney2o
Newswire: Tek Talk of 10/12/26 at 8 PM Eastern welcomes Jeff Bazer of Vispero to discuss their newest Focus Braille displays
From: otr-announcements@groups.io <otr-announcements@groups.io> On Behalf Of Alan Lemly via groups.io
The Pat Price Tek Talk Training Room Zoom meeting link follows:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/839935813?pwd=eXFMRHpxNnhFZlRiMHAzRWNWYXM3Zz09
Meeting ID: 839 935 813
Passcode: awz
Special note: We are proud to announce that Tek Talk Programs can now be heard on ACB Media 1. Please visit the ACB Media Network Home page at https://www.acbmedia.org/ for upcoming events.
Major sections of this newswire are at heading level 1. Contact information is at heading level 2.
Newswire
Tek Talk welcomes Jeff Bazer of Vispero to discuss their newest Focus Braille displays.
Presenter Contact Info
Email: jbazer@vispero.com
Website: https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/blindness/focus-blue-family/
About 10 minutes before each program dial the Zoom numbers or work with your computer link found on your Zoom invitation.
Zoom invitation
The Zoom meeting invitation for this Training Class is the following:
Hi there,
Larry Gassman and Alan Lemly are inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Tek Talk welcomes Jeff Bazer of Vispero to discuss their newest Focus Braille displays.
Time: Meets Monday, October 12, 2026, from 8-9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/839935813?pwd=eXFMRHpxNnhFZlRiMHAzRWNWYXM3Zz09
Or iPhone one-tap:
+19292056099,,839935813# US (New York)
+13126266799,,839935813# US (Chicago)
Or Telephone:
Dial by your location
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
Meeting ID: 839 935 813
Passcode: awz
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/u/cnnUjZ1oh
Podcast feed
Those wishing to subscribe to past Tek Talk program archives can do so using their mobile device and podcast app of choice or using their computers and podcatcher program of choice. The link with which to subscribe follows:
https://accessibleworld.org/feed/podcast/tektalk
Subscription information
Special note. To subscribe to our Tek Talk Discussion list, send a blank email to: tek-talk-discussion+subscribe@groups.io. You will receive a reply and just reply back without putting anything in that message.
To subscribe to our one-way announcements list, send a blank note to: aw-announcements+subscribe@groups.io. Follow the above instructions to get subscribed.
Contacts:
Larry Gassman: Accessible World Co-Chair
Phone: 714-449-1958
Email: larrygassman1@gmail.com
Alan Lemly: Accessible World Co-Chair
Phone: 601-919-6907
Email: walemly@gmail.com
The Accessible World, a division of Helping Hands For The Blind, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, seeks to educate the general public, the disabled community and the professionals who serve them by providing highly relevant information about new products, services, and training opportunities designed specifically to eliminate geographic and access barriers that adversely affect them.
Alan Lemly
Lookie lookie! During the Artimus II lunar flyby two astronauts at a time were at the windows taking images and having conversations about what they were seeing. We didn’t hear those in the live coverage but all the astronauts described the conversations as incredibly fruitful, and the coverage made vague promises that maybe that audio would be available some day. Well that day arrived! This link is to the Artimus II audio page where you can download short and long versions of those recordings, plus lots of other stuff. Just downloaded it myself and can’t wait to listen! https://www.nasa.gov/artemisaudio/
BrailleNote evolve KeySoft first update is here
https://www.humanware.com/news/product-announcements/braillenote-evolve-keysoft-update-1/
Amazon Alexa Comes to the Orbit Player
From: orbit-reader@groups.io <orbit-reader@groups.io> On Behalf Of Tech Support via groups.io
Dear List Members,
We are excited to announce that Amazon Alexa is coming to the Orbit Player!
Ask Alexa questions and explore Audible audiobooks, Kindle content, news, podcasts and music, alongside the Player’s familiar tactile controls.
This capability was developed with support from the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC), St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
The software will be available on Monday, 12 October, through an over-the-air software update.
User guide and setup instructions:
https://www.orbitresearch.com/support/orbit-player/
Services and content depend on your account, region and any required subscriptions.
Alexa is a third-party app and is offered on an as-is basis. Technical support for third-party apps is not available from Orbit Research.
The full press release is included below.
Press Release:
Amazon Alexa Comes to the Orbit Player
The affordable, modern book and media player now brings together voice interaction and tactile, button-based controls
Wilmington, Delaware and Mumbai, India - 10 October 2026 - Orbit Research, in collaboration with the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC), St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, today announced the introduction of Amazon Alexa on the Orbit Player, adding a new dimension of voice-based interaction to a device designed to make reading, learning and accessing digital content easier for people who are blind or visually impaired.
Users can now interact with Alexa directly through the Orbit Player, adding a powerful new voice-based way to explore information, books and other digital content. They can ask Alexa questions and use services including Audible audiobooks, Kindle content, news, podcasts and music, complementing the Player’s existing capabilities for reading, learning and entertainment.
Orbit has integrated the Amazon Alexa app for Android with the Orbit Player and made it accessible through the Player’s tactile, button-based interface and Orbit’s own screen reader. Users can navigate and interact with Alexa using the same familiar controls used throughout the Orbit Player, providing an easy and intuitive way to use the wide range of information and services available through Alexa.
“When we at the XRCVC, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai had our first look at the exciting new Orbit Player nearly 2 years ago, a seed germinated in our mind that this device with its versatile features had even greater potential. What came to mind was why not have Alexa run on this device? Our discussions with the Orbit Player developers led us over time to conceptualize a partnership which today has culminated into that seed bearing fruit. We are confident that this Alexa capability will empower Orbit Player users even more for their learning, play, or work. Congratulations Orbit team for helping our dreams see reality,” said Dr. Sam Taraporevala, Executive Director, XRCVC, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
“When we created the Orbit Player, our vision was to make it much more than a book and media player. We wanted an affordable, powerful, modern and expandable platform that could combine purpose-built accessibility with mainstream technologies and services,” said Venkatesh Chari, President and CEO of Orbit Research. “Alexa fits that vision perfectly. It takes a popular service that people already know and use and makes it easily accessible through the Player’s familiar tactile, button-based interface, designed from the outset for intuitive non-visual use. And it is only one example of what we believe this platform can become.”
The Alexa capability will be made available to existing Orbit Player users through an over-the-air software update starting Monday, 12 October 2026.
Amazon Alexa is a third-party application made available on the Orbit Player on an as-is basis. Orbit Research does not provide technical support for third-party applications or services.
For more information, visit www.orbitresearch.com
About Orbit Research
Orbit Research develops and manufactures innovative and affordable assistive technology for people who are blind or visually impaired. The company was founded with a mission to make advanced, no-compromise assistive technology products widely available by making them affordable. Orbit offers products spanning refreshable braille displays and notetakers, tactile graphic displays, accessible book and media players, accessible graphing and scientific calculators, and magnification products. Orbit’s products are used in educational institutions, workplaces and homes around the world, with a focus on practical design, durability and affordability. For more information, visit www.orbitresearch.com
About the XRCVC, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
The Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC), St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (www.xrcvc.org) recipient of the National Award 2024 (Inclusive Education) of the Government of India, works towards inclusive education, accessibility of products and services and awareness and policy engagement for inclusion of persons with disabilities in the society. It is a state-of the-art resource center housing over 250 assistive technologies, that supports the development of accessible products and services for persons with disabilities through research and collaborations. The XRCVC draws on its extensive experience and expertise in accessibility, and works closely with technology developers and organizations to inform, test and support the development of inclusive products and services for persons with disabilities.
Media Contacts
Orbit Research
Carla Morris
Orbit Research LLC
Tel: +1-888-606-7248
Email: morris.carla@orbitresearch.com
www.orbitresearch.com
XRCVC, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Dr. Sam Taraporevala, Executive Director
Tel: +91 9869378436
Email: sam@xrcvc.org
Best Regards,
Orbit Research Team
The Vatican and Microsoft Launch a New Font for the Microsoft 365 Office Suite: Michelangelus
Commissioned by the Fabbrica di San Pietro and created by studiogusto®, it has been developed for the Microsoft 365 Office. Over 500 glyphs and four styles transform the artist’s handwriting into a system that is accessible and free to use worldwide, creating a dialogue between historical heritage, design and technology. The post The Vatican and Microsoft Launch a New Font for the Mic...
The Tech-VI announcement list celebrates its sixth anniversary today. It began on October 10, 2020. My reasons for starting it actually began in the 1990s, when I was working for Blazie Engineering. I was keeping up with blindness assistive technology even then. I had been a technology enthusiast since the 1970s when I was exposed to products as low tech as talking clocks and 4-track tape recorders and as high-tech as the Optacon, the Speech Plus Calculator and the Kurzweil Reading Machine. In addition to selling their own products, Blazie Engineering became a one-stop shop for various blindness products, including DOS and Windows screen readers, Braille translation software, speech synthesizers and Braille embossers. I was keeping up with updates to some of those products and forwarding them to my co-workers at the company. How many of them cared enough to read all of those emails I’ll never know but they never asked me to stop so I kept emailing them updates.
In 1998, I began working at AbiliTech, where I was providing technology training to blind children and adults. Most of my co-workers were doing the same type of work and I continued to keep up with various types of blindness technology. I once again took it upon myself to send out regular updates to my teammates on products like JAWS, Connect Outloud, Kurzweil 1000 and other products.
In the late 1990s, Amy Ruell ran a wonderful list called Amy’s Filters and Forwards. Amy was subscribed to many mailing lists and she used that list to forward relevant announcements to her subscribers. Those messages were related to blindness and blindness technology. At one point, Amy began charging a small annual fee for the service, which I gladly paid. I even considered reaching out to her to ask if she’d like assistance in collecting announcements for the list in exchange for me being a part of the business. As she and I had never made contact at that time and she would have likely had no idea of who I was, I decided against it.
In 2002, I moved to Associated Services for the Blind, now VisionLink, where I ran their computer training program. During my 14 years working at that agency, I continued to send my co-workers updates on all types of software. Nobody asked me to stop doing it. I never received a visit from HR, warning me to stop spamming the fourth floor staff.
Even when I moved to Comcast in 2016, I continued to send some updates to members of my team related to Web accessibility and software that we used.
I was also sending various updates to other mailing lists. For the most part, they were received positively but I eventually wondered if it was time for this type of service to have its own dedicated list. I knew about and had great respect for Top Tech Tidbits and I had probably been reading their newsletters since they first started. However, what I wanted to do is to carry on the work started in Amy’s Filters and Forwards, where announcements would be sent individually as separate emails, rather than combining them into a weekly newsletter. I briefly thought about charging an annual fee for the service. I decided against it for several reasons and I stand by that decision. I didn’t know if enough people would be interested in subscribing to a list where they might receive a substantial amount of emails on certain days dealing with blindness technology but the only way to find out was to try it. This is how the Tech-VI list was born six years ago on October 10.
One thing that I had to decide on was the name for the list. I wanted a name that would indicate that this was a blindness technology list. My original name was VI-Tech. I was quite happy with that name and would have chosen it but at the time there was a discussion list called BlindTech. I didn’t want people to confuse the two and so I felt that I had to come up with another name. I reversed the name and came up with Tech-VI. In all honesty, I didn’t care for the name at all. It felt very unnatural but, for whatever reason, I went with Tech-VI for the list’s name.
As of today, we have 1955 subscribers and the subscriber count continues to grow. I am still amazed, pleased and humbled that so many of you trust me to provide you with this information and I take that trust very seriously.
At this point, I’d like to offer a few reminders.
1. Please remember that I do not write most of the emails that I distribute. They come from a variety of sources and I always try to ensure that the original source link is provided in the message. If I have my own comments to offer regarding a specific post, I always place it at the top of the message, prefaced with the line “From the Tech-VI list owner.”
2. If the message is something that I wrote, I will clearly put my name in the subject field, such as “From David Goldfield’s Blog.”
3. While this list is and always will be free of cost, I am setting up services for those who wish to send monetary donations. Donations will never be required or even requested but they will always be appreciated. You’ll be able to donate using either Ko-fi or PayPal. I’ll alert all of you once that has been set up.
4. While this list has a focus on blindness technology, I am not available to provide free email support or free training. If you’d like to discuss paid training opportunities, feel free to visit my training page on my Web site. You can also email me with inquiries at info@DavidGoldfield.com. I am also open to discussing possible employment opportunities where my skill set can be utilized; serious offers only, please. Feel free to email me at info@DavidGoldfield.com.
5. If you’d like to browse the Tech-VI archive going back to the very first message from October 10 of 2020, you can do so via this link.
6. Feel free to let others know about the Tech-VI list. I don’t have the time or resources to engage in promotion or advertising. The subscription address is tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io.
7. Finally, I would like to thank all of you who have chosen to subscribe to this list, whether you just joined this week or you’ve been with me for the past six years. Your loyalty and trust are so appreciated. Also, if you are inclined to do so, I will always appreciate your prayers for me and for my family.
I wish you God’s blessings and peace.
Tailscale Exit Nodes for You and Grants for Family Tech Support https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2026/10/tailscale-exit-node-remote-support/
Easy ways to make your Google Forms more accessible (video) https://blog.pope.tech/2026/10/03/easy-ways-to-make-your-google-forms-more-accessible-video/
The web needs interactive lists https://sarahmhigley.com/writing/interactive-lists/
Honing stagecraft and visual presentation as a blind or partially sighted performer https://soundwithoutsight.org/honing-stagecraft-and-visual-presentation-as-a-blind-or-partially-sighted-performer/
the only way to start an email to someone in Australia when you live on the other side of the world
Deque named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Accessibility!
We believe this placement reinforces our vision of accessibility engineering as the path to digital equality.
Learn more: https://accessibility.deque.com/2026-gartner-magic-quadrant-digital-accessibility
RE: https://mastodon.online/@windowscentralbot/117410789169608849
In light of this change to M365 Family, what happens if family members have accumulated more than 2 TB of storage? This is a very bad decision and I predict Microsoft will either reverse it or at least modify it.
Connecting the Community: Upcoming Calls for Proposals for Accessible Publishing Events https://inclusivepublishing.org/blog/connecting-the-community-upcoming-calls-for-proposals-for-accessible-publishing-events/
votraxsc01-speech 1.1.0 is out! The Votrax SC-01 for NVDA and SAPI 5, and it finally says P, T and K.
The stops weren't "the chip": MAME's model kept the mouth closed too long, so "people" came out "eople" and K sounded like A. Fixed in the chip model itself, checked against recordings of a real SC-01-A, with Votrax's own patent to back it.
- P no longer sounds like T: on the real chip a P is a soft breath, and the model's hiss was far too loud next to the voice. Balanced now, and S and Z stay bright.
- P gets the low "thump" a real SC-01 board makes when a stop opens.
- Faster rates keep their consonants: no more "eigh-een" for eighteen.
- About 125,000 words now come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary instead of 1970s spelling rules: "seventy", "city", "window", "select", "cancel" and "dialog" all come out right.
- Capital letters rise in pitch in NVDA.
- The project is renamed votraxsc01-speech, since it was never only for NVDA. Old links redirect.
NVDA add-on:
https://github.com/tgeczy/votraxsc01-speech/releases/download/v1.1.0/votraxsc01-1.1.0.nvda-addon
SAPI 5 voice installer (includes the add-on's voice as SAPI):
https://github.com/tgeczy/votraxsc01-speech/releases/download/v1.1.0/votraxsc01-1.1.0-setup.exe
Release notes:
https://github.com/tgeczy/votraxsc01-speech/releases/tag/v1.1.0
Question, and I think I know the answer to this but I am being thorough. Does NVDA have a keystroke to output the application version and build number, similar to JAWS Control+Insert+V?
Microsoft cuts 4TB from Microsoft 365 Family, sparking backlash and cancelled subscriptions