In case you missed it: the new Our Perspective is out. Kolby and I on how much of life assumes you can see, from dance to school to music. The title is hers: her sister can show her a dance move and it still doesn't make sense to her. https://pnc.st/s/our-perspective/7bc54486/it-doesn-t-make-sense-to-me
and hears an audio demoing this connection and how simple it is to even allow you to use your computer from your iPhone. @Tamasg https://mindly.social/@Tamasg/117413523331730640
I got a radio dongle 3 hours ago. I created a totally accessible Windows interface for it in the last 30 minutes with Claude. I would totally hug this AI if I could. this is way too cool!
Employers worry accommodations will be expensive. The reality: most workplace accommodations for blind employees cost little or nothing. A screen reader license, some flexible document formats, a willingness to describe the whiteboard. The expensive thing is the talent you lose by assuming otherwise. #NDEAM
Chapter 97 - Build 276
What to try first:
If you are coming from build 273 or 274, also try the Queue changes from build 275. In Settings, Playback, turn on Keep finished episodes in Queue. Finish an episode, confirm it stays marked played, and check that automatic playback finds the next unheard episode. In Queue, try None, By podcast, and By folder. Use the VoiceOver Actions rotor to move an episode to the top or bottom of its current group, or move a whole group. Pick up an episode or group, drop it before or after another, and cancel a move. Check order, focus, and responsiveness.
In Discover, open a podcast you do not follow. Set Episode description to Off, Brief, then Full in Settings, Accessibility. Focus its episode rows and check that VoiceOver reads the matching description after the title and details, including for an episode you cannot play. Empty descriptions should add no extra speech.
For a BBC episode that previously showed an insecure-media warning or failed to download, try playback, seeking, and a background download. Its verified media path now stays on HTTPS. Tell us the show and episode if playback or download still fails; other publishers and unverified routes may still show the existing warning.
In Settings, Playback, try Dynamic-range compression at Light, Balanced, and Strong on quiet and loud speech, then turn it Off. Enable Equalizer and adjust Bass, Speech, and Treble with VoiceOver. Compare each band, return it to neutral, then disable EQ. Check that choices persist after relaunch. Try a downloaded episode and Personal Audio, seeking, speed changes, background playback, headphones, Bluetooth, and AirPlay. Report distortion, clipped words, delays, unexpected volume changes, or sluggish VoiceOver. Some streams, including live HLS, may not support these effects.
Behind the scenes, simulator test retries and failure reports were fixed.
Kashe's story:
Kashe had the soup recording on while she put away the last of the dishes. Renata's voice was quiet until a cupboard door closed in the recording. Kashe reached for the phone, found the new compression control, and tried Light. Then Balanced. She went back to Light and replayed the sentence about the garlic.
Renata called as the kettle clicked off.
“Did you make the soup?”
“I found the recipe,” Kashe said. “I'm still deciding what to do with it.”
She left the interview queued for the drive tomorrow. Some choices could wait until she had her coat on.
Earshot Podcasts https://testflight.apple.com/join/u8dj5UTr
In case you missed it: this week's Technically Working is Damashe solo. The big thread is one we started together: can something be accessible but unusable? He also gets into rebuilding his home network and why coding with LLMs keeps going sideways. https://technically-working.pinecast.co
New Seeing Eye post: solo day. The solo route went well, the balloon stopped being scary, and we are freelance now.
World Sight Day is October 8. Preventing preventable blindness matters, full stop. But not all blindness is preventable. I've been blind since birth; no screening changes that. So while we fund eye care, fund the other stuff too: access, training, employment, the things that make blind lives good right now. Prevention and equality aren't competing causes.
Join BITS and as a perk get 25% off Auphonic. Yet another perk from an organization wanting to make a difference for those whishing to do more with technology.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM)! We understand that access to quality employment helps people who are blind or have low vision live more independent lives. #NDEAM is a great time to check out ACB’s employment-related resources, including ACB Job Connection, which lists nationwide job announcements. Check out ACB Job Connection here: https://www.acb.org/jobs
Wrote this for VoiceOver users thinking about switching from Apple Podcasts to Earshot. What transfers, what doesn't.
https://payown.substack.com/p/switching-from-apple-podcasts-to
Version 1.2.4 was just released to the App Store of #Earshot
Here’s what’s new:
Add audio files from Files to the new Personal Audio section in Library. Earshot saves your place and remembers a playback speed for each file. This update also expands Siri and Shortcuts playback actions, lets you share episode links, adds podcast search and sorting options, and offers an optional Home Screen badge for downloaded unheard episodes. Launch, Library, Queue, and folder picker responsiveness have improved. Personal Audio import and reset cleanup are more reliable.
Get the app for free at the following link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/earshot-podcasts/id6770760602
Thanks for everyone’s support.
The new Our Perspective is live: Kolby and I on how much of life is built around sight, from dance to school to music. Her sister can physically show her a dance move and it still does not make sense to her. Listen and subscribe: https://pnc.st/s/our-perspective/7bc54486/it-doesn-t-make-sense-to-me
Damashe flew solo on Technically Working this week. Episode 182 picks up a conversation we started: what does accessible actually mean? A talking vending machine can tell you that you pressed 10, but it can't tell you what's in slot 10. Accessible and usable aren't the same thing. He wants your take: https://technically-working.pinecast.co
Better late than never, TW182 has been published correctly this time… https://pnc.st/s/technically-working/75def27d/solo-report
New Our Perspective tomorrow morning: Kolby and I on how much of school, dance, and music is built around sight. Her sister can show her a dance move and it still does not make sense to her. Subscribe so you do not miss it: https://pnc.st/s/our-perspective
The most common question I get about employment and blindness: should I disclose? My take: disclose what you need, when you need it, and lead with the solution. "I use a screen reader; here's how I do the job." You're not confessing a problem. You're briefing a colleague. #NDEAM
Day four with the new Seeing Eye dog. Pre-solo route went OK. He still looks back for our instructor, but he is checking on me more. We will get there.
He got a ball yesterday and he is obsessed. Every time we walk in the room he wants to play. He has been mouthy with my hands too, not biting, just letting me know he is there. I think we are bonding.
No name yet. Starts with D, six letters.
RE: https://dragonscave.space/@payown/117373140314148724
So it doesn’t get lost, here’s some audio attached to this post of me using remote incident manager on iOS with a Mac keyboard to connect to my Windows machine.
Alphabet spent $44.9 billion on capex in a single quarter and guided up to $200B this year to build AI datacenters. Meanwhile, stock TalkBack has been rebuilding the entire screen traversal tree three times per swipe for half a decade or more.
In just one week of off-hours hacking between dayjobs and other responsibilities, a few blind hackers made Backtalk, a fork of TalkBack cutting swipe lag by 300ms, fixing the braille keyboard rotation, adding raw touch passthrough for games and on-device vision models, bringing back power user features from old TalkBack days, adding a ton of customization, such as per-sound and per-haptic toggles and more ways to flip the braille keyboard, and much more.
Two blind engineers on industry-standard salaries could completely turn this platform around in six months if they paid us. I know what I'm doing, Google engineer gods/universe. But until they decide that's worth 0.0002% of a single quarter's capex, Backtalk exists.