Tag Archives: technology

Live Caption Addendim: A Hearing Aid Horror Story

Posted on by John

I guess I should begin by noting that this happened to me because of my own hard-headedness. I should have gone in to have the aids maintained long before it got to that point, but it’s always hard to find a stopping point in busy life and work. I guess next time I’ll just have to schedule the appointment six months out and aim to make it there for the routine retubing. Anyway, here’s what happened.

Have you ever had one thing happen, then another thing immediately follows and something else follows on that until it feels like catastrophic failure… then you wake up? And breathe a huge sigh of relief? “Man thank goodness, I had no idea how I was getting out of that mess!”

Well this incident felt like that, except unfortunately it was not “but a dream.”

Monday night. My wife and I were wrapping up chatter about our day and about to pack it in for the night, me laying on my side and exerting pressure on the left-side hearing aid. Suddenly I realized the sound had become muffled. “Oh no, not again” I thought. “I know this stupid thing hasn’t become blocked by wax again.” Only when I reached my hand up to investigate, I discovered that the tubing had actually become severed from the earhook. Worse, it had split slightly at the top, meaning there was no way I could reconnect the pieces. My stress meter immediately shot up, and my brain whirred as it tried to come up with at least a minimal fix that could at least let me get to the clinic the following day. Figuring that since my left ear was the most important to hear from, I decided to connect my left-side aid to the right-side tubing so that I could at least nominally communicate. And then I went to bed, restless.

Tuesday morning: I awoke, called out of work, and prepared to settle into my recliner to await the clinic’s opening at 8:00 AM. As I turned on the SiriusXM Real Jazz station I enjoy waking up to and opened the book I was reading on my Mantis Braille display, I happened to reach up and touch the left-side hearing aid for some reason. And then that tubing, which had previously been attached to the right-side aid, also broke. It too would no longer stay attached to the ear hook. This meant, one of my greatest fears, I was completely unable to hear. By this point my wife had already departed for work, which was fortunately only a few minutes away. I sent her a frightened text, and she said as soon as she could get the day started and let those know who needed to know she would return home to assist me.

8 AM came, and no one answered the phone right on the dot. Then 8:10, then 8:15, at which time I left a message. Finally, on my 8:25 attempt someone picked up. I had to hook my USB headphones into the iPhone and turn them up to full volume, thus just being able to make out what was being said. The receptionist said a graduate assistant could see me at 10:30 AM, and I instantly felt much better.

So I put on my clothes, sat downstairs on the couch, and waited for my wife to show up shortly after 9:30. I had already enabled the iPhone’s Live Caption feature that I wrote about in the previous post, so I would know when she had reentered. At one point though, I saw the words “come on” scroll across my display and I thought she had arrived, but it was a false alarm. Yeah, that app, while very helpful, is far from perfect. I sure was curious what it could have heard though, in our supposedly quiet living room.

Once she did get there though, we were able to have a sort of halting conversation as the car sped toward the audiology clinic. She said it felt odd with the delay, as naturally it took me a few seconds to process what had just been said. And sometimes the transcript just isn’t correct, leading to hilarities. For some reason it often thinks people are saying expletives (the F-word especially). And at this point it doesn’t distinguish among voices, meaning what I’m seeing could be coming from a person or the radio. I hope that can be improved in future using AI. Still, it was truly a game changer, and perhaps even a lifesaver, in that kind of situation. The last time I lost pretty much all of my hearing due to an ear infection and needed quick treatment they just had to get started without asking me any questions, which can be dangerous.

In the clinic, the audiologist-in-training was also able to communicate with me, even as she repaired the aids. Usually, I’d just be sitting there waiting for them to plug the left-side aid in so I could hear them. It was great though, knowing what was happening in real time, well sort of real-time.

After that harrowing experience, I was more than happy to take my wife up on a breakfast at a local diner called Brigs. There are three locations in the Triangle, and they serve breakfast until early afternoon. The atmosphere was nice, and at the time we got there it wasn’t too loud, so I could actually communicate with the server. They had large and small cups of orange juice, and I wasn’t sure which to get because how does one define large versus small. I went with the former and was glad I did, as it was only the size of a normal glass. Along with that, I had a delicious sausage and cheese omelet and fruit. She chose to eat blueberry pancakes. It was nice just enjoying a rare meal together in the middle of a workday, and finally, happily, letting all of that stress melt away. Until my next misadventure.

On Braille Access and Live Captioning

Posted on by John

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you probably know that I have significant hearing loss. I could likely even be classified as functionally deaf. This has presented challenges not only in likely spaces like restaurants, on the bus, or even at work, but also sometimes at home. The issue there is that sometimes I’m trying to hear someone over a television or just the way the room is designed causes an echo that interferes with my hearing aid’s ability to clearly perceive the sound. This is stressful, to say the least.

So color me very excited to discover that in Apple’s latest update to iOS 26, they included a feature called Live Captioning. I think there is a Live CAptioning option that provides visual captions usable by those who are deaf but have sight, but the version I’m going to talk about is built specifically for those of us who are blind and also have hearing issues. Yay in itself is a revolution as even in most accessibility regulations they rarely consider persons with multiple disabilities. They have rules for blind folk, rules for deaf folk, etc, but not often an acknowledgment of the potential crossover, which I dare say is more common than we might think.

Anyhow, if you don’t know how to access Live Captioning and want to, here’s how. First, you have to have a Braille display of some kind; it can either be with a Perkins-style keyboard or using a QWERTY keyboard with something like the APH Mantis, which is what I’m using. If using a Perkins keyboard, access Braille Access by pressing dots 7 and 8 with Space bar. And all you need to do to envoke this feature with the Mantis in most cases is to press VO (Control+Option, or Control+Windows if you are more Windows inclined) with Y to enable Braille input, then press the letter A and semicolon as your dots 7 and 8 along with the Space bar. There are other items in the Braille Access menu that appears, which operates separate of your iPhone so you could use VoiceOver’s speech to view other content while it is open. It lets you, for example, take notes, view the time, or use Braille to open other apps.

But I’m just pressing up arrow (Space with dot 1 if using a Perkins keyboard) to navigate to Live Captioning and pressing Enter. You also have two options with this feature open, changed easily by pressing dots 7 (or the letter A with a QWERTY keyboard) plus Space bar: listen to audio or listen to microphone. Audio refers to the audio generated by the iPhone, and if you do this you can have it pick up spoken words even without the phone being turned up. I used this to, for instance, follow play-by-play of a Carolina Panthers game via the display while in a car with others (they beat the Dallas Cowboys on the Sunday prior to this entry’s writing, so I was thrilled as they’ve done virtually nothing over the last five years, but I digress). I’ve also used i to make sure I can hear narrators in an audiobook, as I find that after listening to their voice for a while as I also view the transcript I can actually understand them more.

If set to listen through the microphone, it’s as if the iPhone is recording. This means that you do not really have use of any other audio on the phone while in such mode. But the beauty of this is it will pick up conversations and other things, such as the TV, happening around me. I used this to speak to a coworker whom I’ve usually had a hard time hearing, just because of how things sound in our office and the fact that we’re positioned relatively far apart. I’ve also used it to chat with my father-in-law about work, and that went smoothly.

There is, naturally, a slight delay in between the words being spoken and flashing on the screen, and if you fall behind in reading the transcript, indicated by a braille box on either end of the display, you can just press a cursor routing button to jump to the end. And of course, the transcription is not always totally accurate, though it usually makes enough sense for me to get the gist of what was said. It can also be more challenging to follow if you have lots of crosstalk going on, as it doesn’t identify if a different character is speaking. But it was/is helping me to pick up at least a degree more than I had before, and every little bit helps. This is especially important as I continue to gain responsibility and standing in my career, not to mention that it’ll likely make family social gatherings not feel as difficult. So I applaud Apple for taking such a step. Let’s hope it’s only the beginning of what can be done to get this tech to truly help us all.

AI A-I-O!

Posted on by John

I am still writing this entry, for the time being. I say this as the AI revolution continues to take over, and I am not entirely sure what to make of it yet.

I was, and mostly still am, a skeptic. Of course I’ve used various AI apps like Seeing AI and Be My AI to describe photos and read documents for a while now. And especially where it comes to photo description, I’d taken the readings with a grain of salt knowing that AI often hallucinates and just plain makes things up. But it was no worry, as the descriptions weren’t serious and an error would have no real impact on me.

But lately, I’m seeing more and more people use this technology, often called generative AI, to create or edit documents or to help brainstorm when preparing to construct projects. This makes me nervous, because what is that going to do to human creativity long term? What does it do to our ability to learn now? These are deep philosophical questions about which we will no doubt debate for a long time.

But two things happened recently to change my mind a bit. Well for starters, I downloaded the Chat GPT iOS app so I could explore what all the fuss was about. In its suggested things to ask, it offered to play a World Capitals game. This immediately appealed to my nerdy GPS-coordinate, geographical tendencies. I knew the capital of Ethiopia, ADIS Ababba; and Bolivia, La Paz. I found out though that the capital of Bhutan is Thimphu. Hmmm, not likely I would have known that one. Anyway my free time ran out, at least for the next few hours, so I bit the bullet and opted to pay (for at least one month).

And in for a penny, in for a pound, right? So the first of the two things that really got me thinking about the potential power (and perhaps peril) of this and any so-called AI platform was my decision to query it about a project I’m hoping to launch. It’s a revamp of a podcast idea I had back in 2021, where I would explore books featuring characters with disabilities and see if I could land author interviews. Only this time I plan to be much more prepared, thanks in large part to the How to Build a Podcast segments on the Access On podcast. So I also asked GPT for suggestions on content, an author email template, and ideas on show structure, for which it supplied good answers. I guess the good of it is, at least for now, I still have to do a lot of the heavy lifting to really get this thing going. But the AI helped me get it off the ground in a way I may never have done otherwise.

And right on the heels of that, pretty much the day after I made the purchase, a work project surfaced that would also be a good candidate for AI intervention. I had to quickly generate four scripts of sorts, starting that Wednesday afternoon, and if possible have them done by Friday. Again I had GPT create the templates for me and I went in and filled in all of the relevant information, also editing the document so that things would be formatted correctly. It definitely reduced the time it took me to complete that, and I made the deadline.

So I continue to experiment with what all this and other such applications can do. I’ve since asked it for more geography games, and am enjoying guessing countries by three clues it gives me. I do suppose I will also use it for other work and hobby projects as well.

I just completed a work of fiction called Coded Justice, by Stacey Abrams, that explores the role AI could play in medicine. Of course it to some extent goes with the trope of AI gone rogue, but things get deeper than that. It’s the third in her Avery Keene series, and I’ve enjoyed all of them.

A Third

Posted on by John

So here we sit, April wrapping up and headed into the second third of 2025 already. I started the year off with hopes of being more verbose than I had last, but thus far it just isn’t happening. I guess to some extent the problem is I feel like I’m stuck in one big routine. Monday=Work,Home;Tuesday=Home/work,HOme:repeatedWednesdayAndThursday. Saturday and Sunday, resting up and preparing for next week’s festivities. It’s the rhythm of life, or something like that. This is not to say that nothing ever happens, it’s just mostly quiet. Let’s take a look at some of this year’s highlights, though.

Work

This year on the job has been interesting. We’ve started a rotation of regularly-scheduled classes, and April’s was a successful course on using Freedom Scientific’s JAWS for Windows screen-reader with Microsoft Outlook. I demonstrated and had my trainees try creating folders, adding meetings to their calendar, sorting messages using rules, and creating and editing signatures. It was fun, and I enjoyed working with the engaging group of Customer Service reps who opted to join me.

I’m also working intensively with someone in what we’re calling a JAWS Boot Camp, wherein I’m helping her to acquire the basic skills she can use to learn other tasks needed for a computer-based job position. This is a challenge, because it really requires me to think outside the box and come up with activities that can make harder-to-remember concepts manageable.

Travel

As far as trips go, we did take one journey right at the end of March to Virginia Beach to see my sister in law. This gave me an opportunity to break out my GPS apps, BlineSquare for GPS coordinates and a somewhat accurate listing of my surroundings; Google Maps for direction information and hotel reviews; and Ariadne GPS, because it allows me to run my finger along the iPhone screen and hear what streets it is encountering. I’m sure I’ve written about these apps before, but I just like that they let me hear so much about an area’s geography.

We also did a bit of a riding tour of Virginia Beach, traveling through Regent University which is a religious school. The best thing we did though was eat, and particularly at a place called Gus and George’s Spaghetti and Steakhouse. Although I’m still grumbling a bit about the fact that my spaghetti only had 2 meatballs in it, it and the before-dinner sallad were delicious.

Books

And of course, I’m always reading. I’ve already hit 30 as the month concludes. Currently engrossed in one called Death of the Author, by NNedi Okorafor. Split between Lagos Nigeria and Chicago USA, this story is about a young woman who has acquired a disability after falling out of a dead tree and becoming paraplegic. It addresses interesting issues of so-called accepting one’s disability, and the controversies that can arise if one chooses to modify functioning with the assistance of technology. It’s an interesting thing to ponder, and I would of course note that all of us modify our functioning in low-tech (canes, glasses, wheel chairs) and high tech (hearing aids, screen-readers, scooters) ways. Mostly this is done to achieve the highest quality of life we can manage, which constantly changes as technology improves, but hopefully it does not mean we are “ashamed” of our disability. These are and probably always will be delicate questions, since they are framed by each person’s experiences and the perceptions of those around them. In any event, it is a pretty good story.

And that’s about all I’ve had going on for these first four months. Hmmm, when seen through that light I guess there has been more going on than I thought. I hope whatever you’re up to has been relaxing when needed yet eventful when desired. More soon.

NIB 2024: A Day of Relaxation

Posted on by John

Ah, I meant to chronicle the rest of my time at the NIB 2024 Training Conference and Expo more quickly than I have, but alas work, cooler weather, and reading have interfered with my writing. (I’m already about to set a new record for books read [and listened to] in a year, as the old one is 79 and I’m already at 76). Anyhow, I wanted to capture at least one more day of attendance before it all becomes too distant in my ever-aging memory.

Wednesday, October 16: The day dawned crisp and cold. Most times I’ve visited our nation’s capital, the weather fluctuated crazily with temps in the 80s in the afternoon and snow at night. Granted those visits usually occurred in May, whereas October weather is more uniformly dreary. But the sun was actually out on this day as we meandered out of the hotel and across the busy street to a two-story McDonald’s. We don’t have many two-story restaurants here in North Carolina, but I guess you see them more in places where space is a premium.

I had a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin, while my wife probably ate a McGriddle (she likes sweet, I do savory). As we ate, she noted that there were some homeless individuals using the space probably to stay warm. I’ve also noticed that, sadly, that city seems to have a high population of unhoused individuals, perhaps because there are more services available? It’s an interesting question. Anyhow, she said there are signs that specifically say “No Loitering,” so if one wishes to remain for an extended time they must either buy food or devise other strategies to make themselves look occupied. I just hope we as a society keep moving in a direction where people will have fewer of these challenges, because the systems will work as they should.

Food consumed, we went to a little store to get snacks for later. I had a giant cup of grapes, because hey grapes are good for the brain. Back in the hotel, we milled about in the lobby for a while then decided to head down to the basement area to see what was going on in the conference. I then realized that I had missed the technology demo that was put on for the employees of the year, because at that time the app I was using to keep up with events was not sending notifications out. This was ok though, as I got to check out some of these devices in the exhibit hall. I’m always fascinated by what they have in these places, but also overwhelmed by the people pulsing from every nook and cranny. My wife had to keep me grounded and inside of the place. I held and listened to the Envision smart glasses speak. Those are nice and built specifically for blind folk, but at $2,000 I probably won’t be getting a pair. The Meta Ray-ban glasses are a likelier candidate, though I might just hold out and wait for a competitor as that market is now starting to come alive. Many of my trainees at work really want me to acquire those though, so I can show them how to use them.

Anyhow, I also checked out a Freedom Scientific workstation, equipped with a computer running JAWS for Windows and, more interestingly to me, a Focus 40 Braille Display. This is another device some of my trainees would like me to get for demonstrations, but alas. It had a whole lot of buttons and switches, and it is powered by a Perkins-style braille keyboard as opposed to my Mantis QWERTY device. I prefer the latter for writing, but the Focus does have many features that could make it desirable.

After checking those out, my wife and I decided to do a whole lot of, welll… nothing. Hey, one of the rewards of this trip was to be able to relax if one wished, and how often do you get to crawl back into bed and sleep on Wednesday afternoon. It was glorious, but I just wish I had drank more water as I tend to dehydrate easily if I do not and paid for this lacking later. Fortunately I was ok.

At about 5, we opted for another fine-dining experience and one we can no longer get in our area, and ventured to McCormick and Schmick’s. We had visited this chain in Raleigh for our “halfversary” after the first six months of marriage and fallen in love with it, at which point they took it away in favor of a Mexican restaurant. So we said whenever we got to a city with that establishment we would check it out again. Arlington did have a location.

This time, I ate some kind of salmon and mashed potatoes. It was delicious, if a little expensive. And as was the case in Raleigh, I loved the ambience of the place as it wasn’t too loud and we could easily have a conversation.

Before getting a Lyft back to our hotel, we walked around that area a bit exploring some of the ice cream shops and stores they had. You could tell we were in a different city, though of course it still had nowhere near the hustle of a New York or Philadelphia. I enjoyed the feeling.

And that was the crux of Wednesday, the midpoint of our trip. A little learning and a lot of rest. We sure needed that rest for Thursday’s tours, coming up in next post.

All Aboard for a Much-needed Weekend

Posted on by John

Do you have that person in your life who always gets you, no matter what? The one who, because of similar experience and an upbringing that involved many of the same challenges is someone to whom you always look for advice or just to vent. That person for me is my cousin: technically a year younger than me but seeming older in many respects.

For our early life, really until mid-20s, we were never that far apart. Both of us are totally blind and have significant hearing loss due to a condition called Norrie Disease, so we have to work hard just to fit in to this world. We went to college together and lived in an apartment (albeit a slum) for six years.

Then life rolled on, and we were both fortunate to marry wonderful women. That has though necessitated changes in our relationship, as is common for all adults really. Now, we usually see each other maybe three or four times a year (with the time from January of 2020 till May of 2022 being the longest we didn’t get to spend time together due to Covid).

Anyhow, that’s slowly, finally, starting to change. This past weekend, as my work life ramps up and I feel increasingly nervous about my hearing challenges, I decided to see if we could just have a marathon Saturday watching sports and talking about nothing and everything as I like to do. My cousin and his wife agreed to allow my visit, so I purchased round-trip Amtrak tickets from Cary North Carolina to Charlotte.

I had to get the 5:43 Carolinian train, being fully aware of likely delays as it makes its way all the way down from New York City. And delays indeed happened, with emailed announcements throughout the day that the train was getting later and later.

I had Lyft take me over to the Cary station after a long day at work trying to hammer out the material for our upcoming Microsoft Excel workshop. The building was cold, and I found myself wishing I’d chosen to stay outside in the beautiful Fall-like weather to wait. I sat, snacking and reading, and tried to make myself take a break so all of my devices would make it onboard with a little life left.

The train finally arrived shortly before 7, and as I feared I was given an aisle seat so couldn’t plug in as easily. I always feel weird about asking my neighbor if I can stretch the cord over their legs.

The ride down was uneventful, and we arrived in Charlotte around 10. Knowing I would want to pick up food on the way to my cousin’s house, I decided to try downloading the Jack in the Box app to see if I could place an order in advance of getting there. I get Jack in the Box whenever I visit the Queen City, because we don’t have any of those in our area. And this would have worked, if I had already entered my payment method or at least set up Apple Pay. Trying to do that at the last minute just… didn’t work. Choosing the menu items I wanted though was accessible. Anyway, the driver just rolled me close enough to the Drive-through window to put in my order and I collected the food and headed to my cousin’s house. I do love this tech that makes it so much easier to independently move around and run errands.

Because it was already nearly Saturday by the time I finally arrived, we just stayed up a little while listening to the NFL game in Brazil and scarfing down the food. Then we retired for the night. I’d already understood that we would mostly be spending Saturday together anyway.

Knowing these folks wake by 8 AM, I was crawling out of bed just as the smell of bacon and eggs permeated the air. My cousin texted me, and I headed on down to sink my teeth into it. A small cup of orange juice and a big, piping hot mug of coffee completed the morning.

As far as sports go, our Alma mater UNC Charlotte (they call themselves Charlotte in the sports world) played, and were pretty much slapped around by, the North Carolina Tar Heels. Bowling Green University gave Penn State a scare, and number 5 Notre Dame were nipped by the Northern Illinois Huskies in an awesome upset. The prime-time game, North Carolina State University versus the University of Tennessee, was a bust as State were dragged all over Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium.

While the games played, we chatted about our roles as Assistive Technology Specialists. We also noted the recent availability of high-powered, AI-driven Phonak Hearing Aids (NOTE: those may or may not be the right ones). Anyhow, I’m considering trying to get those, as they’re supposed to be really good at filtering out background noise. I have a hearing test (Oh fun! Except not), scheduled for September 18th, at which point I will begin this conversation with my audiologist. Where the money will come from for such a thing? Well… we shall see. No doubt I need it though, to help my rising career.

After our day of fun, we got food from a restaurant called the Skrimp Shack. (They mean Shrimp, but ok haha). I had a giant chicken “sammich” that I could not eat entirely, and a big styrofoam to-go plate of fries (the small is really small, the large is really large, no in-between). The food was really good, though.

And that was the crux of a great Saturday and weekend. I’m writing this as we speed back toward Cary on Sunday morning from 6:45 till 9:45. A bit of amusement: as we departed Charlotte, the conductor said we would be arriving in Cary, our next station stop, in 25 minutes. Cary takes three hours to reach, as suggested by the time I just posted, and it is not our next stop coming out of Charlotte. He meant a town called Kannapolis. I can only assume that it was too early in the morning for him, as it is for me of no or very little sleep. Although for some strange reason I feel hopped up on energy right now. Let’s hope that lasts till my Carolina Panthers (NFL) play the New Orleans Saints at 1, and hopefully start this season off right. You can’t get much worse than our 2-15 record the previous season. I do hope more of these restorative weekends are in store, and that you are able to find a way to lift your spirits when needed as well.

Tech-No-Dependence

Posted on by John

Friday morning, 5 AM. I roll over as my arm continues to vibrate, alerting me to the fact that work is imminent and I must arise.

I do what I always do and reach over to grab the iPhone as I stumble toward the bathroom to get ready. A quick check of the headlines reveals that a tech outage of some kind (one of my friends pointed out that it was neither an internet or Microsoft outage, but its exact nature still sort of eludes me) has occurred. Travelers stuck at airports nationwide, and worldwide again.

“Glad I’m not flying anywhere” I think to myself.

I head downstairs and eat my meager breakfast. “Hmmm, GoTriangle Access (our area Paratransit) has usually called by now”. The clock had struck 5:25, and the service regularly sends an update via automated call and text message giving us an estimated time of arrival for our vehicle. I know it has been broken before though, so I don’t make much of a deal of it and continue with my morning preparations.

I sit on the porch, basking in the warm July morning and getting some reading in, but as we hit 6:20 AM I become concerned. I am usually picked up between 5:40 and 6:15, so I finally decide to call the agency’s Customer Service. The person who answers sounds far away, possible on her regular cell phone. “I’m sorry,” she says” but we’re impacted by the same outage that is shutting everyone else down. I will let you know if we get up and running, but till then I apologize.” Oh great, this means I will have to get an Uber all the way across town.

Summoning the ride actually goes seamlessly, with the driver pulling the back door even with me, me hopping in, hopping out at work, and walking right into the door. Fortunately they seem to have gotten it where the GPS leads them directly to the correct door, which hadn’t been happening initially.

Into my office with about fifteen minutes to spare, at the appointed time of 7:25 AM I boot up my computer and prepare to punch in. Only the site I need to visit is also a no-go. We have a few other administrative tasks that were to be completed today, but at least at that time they are all grounded. And I’m fairly sure few others came in either, given that paratransit isn’t running. So, I opt to head back out with my wife and the family, as they are off to visit the Greensboro Science Center anyway.

I love technology, heck my very job is completely centered around it. But what this craziness showed us are the potential perils that come with being too reliant on this stuff. The funny thing is, this wasn’t even the only such occurrence I had this week. On Tuesday, as I innocently plodded along through my presentation on using the JAWS screeen reader on the web, my company’s internet stopped working. Since I was online remotely, I didn’t notice the outage immediately and continued talking to… myself! Folk were emailing and texting me, trying to alert me to the error, but like the indistractable instructor I am I didn’t stop to check the messages. I finally started to wonder after the third time I tried asking for questions with absolutely no response, not even any background noise. It was a good presentation, trust me, the best you would have ever heard.. if you’d been online to hear it.

Then on Thursday, my iPhone inexplically wouldn’t open some apps, like Safari, our local news app, and X (Twitter) while allowing me to access Facebook, YouTube, and a couple others. I tried resetting and restarting the phone, but no dice. This also impacted my ability to work with the employee I was training, as we use a security app to log into the software they use for Customer Service. I had this problem all morning, but after lunch for whatever reason everything was working fine. Yeah, go figure. It’s been a crazy week.

And I’ll end this post with a complete aside and an exciting announcement: my employer LCI, has named me Employee of the Year. This means I get to attend the National Industries for the Blind’s annual conference in October, in Washington D.C. This will be a fascinating experience, and hopefully one of many. So yes, while I bemoan some of the challenges it can create, I as a blind person am very thankful for the existence and rapid advancement of technology.

Half and Half

Posted on by John

So we have reached the end of the first half of 2024. The beginning of fiscal year 2025. And it has been and continues to be a year like no other I’ve ever experienced.

The first thing that tells us in which part of the year we are is the heat. And it has been, for most of us East coasters, extreme. If you know me though, then you know it’s hard to keep me inside when it’s not raining. Note I do know to listen to my body and seek shelter/water when told to by my various systems to do so. But understanding my need for heat, my wife got me this cool Neck Fan. Up until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Weighing about as much as a headset band, it fits comfortably around the neck and blows air out through upward-facing slats. I’m actually curious how it works, since obviously there are no blades to generate the air. But you can set it at three speeds, and I’ve found that at the middle speed it’s quite effective in keeping me cool and minizing sweat, which of course helps me retain said water. So that thing is going to make my summer a lot more enjoyable.

The second thing that tells me where I am in the year is the amount of books I have consumed. (Side note: do you said you’ve “read” an audiobook? Because my wife and I are having a little discussion about that as well. I guess as a practical matter you are listening to someone read to you, but assuming it’s still a standard book and not something that tilts more toward an audio drama I argue that you are still using many of the same brain components that are involved in textual reading.) Any way you slice it, I have taken in more books (45) than I ever had at this time of year. I think that stems from my low tolerance for stories that aren’t grabbing me, which means I sometimes flick through three titles before settling on one. Lots of historical fiction, as that’s what people seem to be producing in spades these days. I especially love travel and adventure, currently into one called The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West by Sara Ackerman in which a woman enters an air race from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1927. It has some of the same elements of a Lisa Wingate book, as there is a character in 1987 Hawaii who discovers that she will inherit an estate from her great aunt. I’m not sure yet how the stories are going to tie together, but I’m also enjoying these increasingly popular dual-timeline novels.

And the final thoughts I have regarding the first half of 2024 involve my job. I spent nearly these entire six months working with two individuals in particular. I taught one how to perform some actions required in customer service and to do some basic work in Excel. This was rewarding, as he grasped many of the concepts we worked on. But what I found even more rewarding is the work I’ve done with a woman who wished to start learning some JAWS skills. I’ve learned the art of repetition, and of coming up with strategies to try and make the material more memorable. When I informed her that our sessions would be ending, or rather transitioning into a larger course that I will lead on using JAWS with web browsers, she said “Aww, I want more!” This made me feel good, as admittedly I had hoped she was even enjoying any of it or at least feeling like our work was useful. It is still nice to do work that truly matters, and that I hope will help someone achieve their career goals someday.

and that’s what I got for you as we prepare to embark on the rest of this year and our lives. We shall see what kind of fun awaits us on the other side. How was your first half?

IN CASE OF BREAKAGE: A Needed Accessory for My Mantis

Posted on by John

First, I shall note that I’m not getting anything for promoting this website because… I’m not that big of a deal. Yet! Ha ha. I’m just writing about it because the product I acquired is something I’ve been needing for a long time and I figure that someone else may need or just want it too.

I listen to a biweekly podcast called Mystic Access. It’s run by a blind couple who also oversees a company that makes tutorials on blindness technology products. On their show, they do demonstrations of some of these products, along with many mainstream solutions, and talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that come with living as blind individuals.

As I listened a couple weeks ago, I heard them mention having acquired a case for the Mantis Q40 from a company called Turtleback Low Vision. As an assistive technology training specialist, I have to carry my Mantis up and down my hallway at work. To this point I had been holding it against my body in its default case, which is little more than a plastic shell affixed to the back, and hoping not to drop it. I also like to take it with me on impromptu car rides and would prefer not to have to lug my backpack on these often short journeys. So intrigued, I took a look.

This case does cost a pretty penny, $145 worth of them in fact. But as you may remember in my post about the NLS display, I dropped the Mantis in my office, broke it, and had to shell out a cool grand to have it repaired. So my calculation is that having a case that adequately protects the unit and allows me to move around easily with it was worth the investment.

And thus far it definitely has been. I ordered the case on a Wednesday and was told via the auto-generated email that it would arrive the following Wednesday. It actually got there by that week’s Saturday, only 3 days later. It’s a sturdy-looking leather case with a rubberized bottom that keeps it from shifting when on a table or even on my lap. But what makes me happiest is there is a good-sized zipper pocket on top of the case into which I can fit my iPhone and even my hearing aid batteries. So I no longer need to take the backpack everywhere I go to make sure I have my most critical items. I only wish the USB port area were a little more enclosed, as I worry that in a significant downpour the ports might be in danger. But this isn’t a really big deal as I could just bring along a waterproof bag in the hopefully rare cases I find myself in soakers.

And finally, I like the magnetic clips that hold the case shut. Older cases often used Velcro, which wears down rather quickly. With the magnetic option, this isn’t a worry. I would say overall that I have been very happy with this purchase.

#GAAD: On CAPTCHA

Posted on by John

Today, May 16, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Its purpose is to increase awareness of and understanding around why sites and components of sites need to be accessible. Of course complete accessibility refers to much more, ensuring that all areas of life are available to persons with disabilities. But I think this day has a primary focus of digital and web accessibility. In that spirit, I want to show what can happen when the various accessibility issues have not fully been addressed.

I made a post way back in 2006 in Live Journal, (remember that? Almost 20 years ago now!) In this post, I railed against CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (Taken from This site.) First, that’s a mouthful. And second, it has been the vain of my existence since its inception. In those days, those of us who were totally blind were pretty much left out of the experience entirely. This meant that, for example, we could often not sign into websites that had put CAPTCHA in place, because we couldn’t “type the characters you see on the screen.”

Eventually, and I’m sure with a lot of elbow grease and advocacy, web developers began to understand that there were a significant number of individuals who were being barred from accessing their products because of this spam-fighting tool. So they answered the call by creating audio CAPTCHA, where words or numbers are spoken aloud, often with some kind of noise in the background to make it harder for computers to pick up what is being said. The voice is also usually not completely clear. And this works for a lot of totally blind people, meaning they are able to “pass the test” and get done whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.

The problem? What happens if you have little or no hearing and partial or total blindness. I am totally blind and significantly hard of hearing, so even the clearest spoken language can be hard for me to follow. If they deliberately make it hard to understand what is being said, I will be lucky to get, say, two of the five words they say correct.

I had this happen just yesterday. While trying to complete a recovery of my Microsoft Outlook account (I locked myself out because I couldn’t remember the password, another issue about which I could write an entire entry,) I encountered one of these lovely CAPTCHA. I switched from visual to audio and must have tried eight different sets of words before I gave up in frustration. I’ll have to get that sorted eventually, but at least I’m still receiving email to my account. I assume it will be lost if for some reason I log out of my Outlook.

Ovviously, this can cause much bigger issues if one cannot access a site that uses either visual or audio CAPTCHA, and as far as I know deafblind individuals don’t really have a way to get past it without sighted assistance. I did try to have some of the various AI solutions locate and read the characters on the screen, but I don’t think they are easy enough to discern.

I guess I’m wondering why we even use these methods, in the age of two-factor authentication. Maybe a code could be texted to a user’s phone? I know this would not be a complete solution as some folks do not have phones that can read text, but it would allow many more to have easy access.

Alternatively, I’ve seen some sites that ask relatively easy math questions for the person to solve to prove their humanity. Whatever the case, I hope people continue to be aware of this issue and the very real stumbling block it puts in some people’s path.