Tag Archives: Apps

NIB 2024: First General Session, and Good Eatin’!

Posted on by John
The FDR statue. He’s sitting in a wheelchair. There were braille plaques nearby, too.

So, this is what happens when I am left to pack.

Tuesday October 15 dawned cold and blustery, as we knew it would. My wife had stacked sweaters on my couch that were to accompany my dress outfits so that I could stay at least minimally warm, but of course I didn’t notice they were there. This meant all I had was my sturdy jacket, which doesn’t always make the best dressing piece, comfortable as it is. So we needed to make a store run.

but first, we had to get ready. The bathroom in our room, and I presume throughout the hotel, was designed oddly. The showers had no curtains, only a half pane of glass that seemed to allow water to wet the floor more easily, and the head was of the rainwater variety, coming down from straight above. The bed was decent enough, but well let’s just say we have exacting standards about pillows that are rarely met in hotels.

These things were ok though and certainly did not cause a high degree of displeasure. Once dressed, we made our way down to the teeming ballroom for a light breakfast of yogurt with granola and peaches among other things (pretty good) and an empanada with egg and sausage. Then we made a quick trip back to the room to grab everything we needed before shoving off for Target.

I used the Lyft app to get around during this trip, and I was amazed by how accurate the locations were. For instance, it could tell me that we were standing inside of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, of course, but it also pinpointed exactly which storefront we were in while waiting for our return ride. That kind of exactness would help blind folks more easily navigate, I would think.

In the store, we joked that we were exploring by doing something we could just as easily have done while in North Carolina. But that’s the truth, perhaps sadly: almost all of the world is now a big chain. Local stuff does exist, but it’s becoming increasingly harder to find.

We quickly found two nice, relatively inexpensive and versatile sweaters, then made our way to a Barnes and Noble to await said return ride. What I hadn’t known, because I wasn’t looking as it happened, was that Lyft had switched my car because a closer driver was available. This caused some confusion as a ride that looked nothing like expected pulled to a stop in front of us, but the driver called me on the phone to clarify and my wife could hear my voice coming through the window. So we felt ok about hopping in.

Back at the hotel, we opted for another meal at Cinnabar. This time, I chose a cheeseburger. It was ok, but didn’t come with any sauce or have a whole lot going on in the way of toppings. I had some mayo added, and thus managed to consume a fair amount of it with fries that were different from those we had on Monday. Then we briefly ran to the room for some R&R and to grab whatever we needed before the main event, the general session.

The ballroom was again teeming, with nearly every chair occupied. We’d located spots kind of far back from the speakers, so I could hear decently but maybe not well. This would definitely be a theme throughout my experience, unfortunately, due to my own issues and not anything conference-related. The session itself was interesting: the usual pageantry that accompanies such events. I listened with some interest as they talked about some of NIB’s achievements, especially as relates to helping those of us who are blind experience greater upward mobility. These metrics have definitely improved, and I am, I hope, an example of that.

What I most enjoyed though was the hearty reactions that went into celebrating employees of the year. It boosts morale among the workers, making us feel like what we’re doing matters. And it certainly matters in creating more jobs for blind folks in a way that is or can be transferable to the mainstream as attitudes towards disability improve. The session was supposed to be done by 4, but it actually lasted closer to 4:30 as a long discussion continued on areas that were slightly above my head.

Then the elevator madness ensued. This was another theme, especially as not all of the hotel’s elevators were working the entire time. They slowly brought more and more of them online, but until then massive lines and surges dominated. When we did wrangle a spot, we still had to wait as stops were made at nearly every floor.

After another brief respite in our room, we headed back down to the lobby around 5:30 to have dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. First though, we had to work out how we’d get there. The two of us LCI employees who had won Employee of the Year, our guests, and the higher-ups who had come to the conference as well were to be treated to a delicious meal at this pricey restaurant. The Arlington, Va. location was only about a half mile away, but given that it was already darkening and cold out, we summoned two Ubers and made the short ride over.

Into another elevator and up to the 11th floor of some sort of office building where the restaurant was housed. My wife said it gave a great view of planes landing and taking off from Regan. Though we ate in a private room, it was so buzzing with activity that I could, again, barely hear anything. Yup, same as always. But the food was good though. I had stuffed chicken, with cheese and a sauce of some sort. It was definitely filling. I also consumed a glass of wine along with some water, because why not? I mostly just took it all in and reflected on the significance of even being part of such an occurrrence.

And that was all for Tuesday. More in our next entry.

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.

And My Mom Got Scared: My Thoughts on the Peacock Show “Bel-Air”

Posted on by John

As soon as I came across this show, I knew I had to check it out. If you recall from the HBO Max post I did a couple years ago (a couple years already? Wow!) you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And while I don’t usually care for reboots in general, I figured this one might be interesting.
Before I get to my thoughts about the series though, I first want to comment on streaming apps and accessibility from a blindness perspective. This has improved markedly in those two years, and I know we have many tireless folks working in the background to thank for that. Now, unlike then, I can interact with most of the apps’ interfaces and get them to work, instead of or in addition to using the Apple TV app to launch shows. And thankfully, most shows are also including audio description, which for the uninitiated is a track that explains to those of us who are blind the visual aspects that we would normally miss. I saw that Bel-Air had this, so I opted to pony up for the lower tier Peacock subscription that requires watching ads. There are only a couple ads per set, and they are a lot shorter than one sees on regular TV anyway.
So that noted, I shall speak a little about the show itself. Immediately, one is struck by the vastly different tone that “Bel-Air” takes compared to the TV show from which it draws inspiration. This is in no way comedic, as we see right from the start when Will Smith’s original Fresh Prince rap is played out and he “got in one (not so) little fight” on the basketball court. This fight ended in gunshots, and found Will behind bars. After his uncle springs him with a little help from his friends, Will is taken from Philadelphia to Los Angeles where he encounters Jazz. Jazz is a driver, and he gives Will a lift to the Banks residence in a car that bears some resemblance to that referred to in Will’s song as well.
The characters have similarities and big differences from those we saw in the original series. Will, ironically played by an actor with the actual last name Banks, sounds a lot the same but perhaps a bit flatter in emotional and vocal affect. Hilary and Jazz are both still kind of strange, but in less silly ways than they had been. They do end up drifting together as the show goes on in a more realistic way.
Ashley is only minimally seen throughout much of this season, but she does provide a rare platform from which to look at how LGBTQ issues play out in the Black community. This idea is spoken of little anywhere, and it certainly is rarely examined in a television program.
And Carleton? Well at first we are given the impression that he is just a complete jerk. But slowly his anxiety and illicit drug use reveal themselves, and the character’s actions become more understandable. If you think about it, you could certainly see some vestiges of that in the original show’s Carleton character. Finally, the way that Lisa and Will come together is also more realistic. She’s a long-time family friend who had dated Carleton, but their relationship was already starting to fall apart before Will drifted into the picture.
This series presents more like a long movie than the episodic Fresh Prince, and I think one has to watch the shows in order to follow entirely what is going on. But I thoroughly enjoyed the drama, feeling like it really started to find its way by season’s end with a show that was, when seen against the previous series, a combination of the famous show where Will encounters his father (Season 5) and the show that ended Season 1. It was a powerful episode, and it leaves us ready and willing to watch the Season 2 that I hope is coming.

On Creating My New Podcast, and Joining Clubhouse

Posted on by John

While I am loving the technological changes we are experiencing of late, they also make me feel like we are speeding ever more inevitably to a “Ready Player One” world. In this book by Ernest Cline, society basically lives behind computer screens and does all of its transacting from bedrooms and other places at home, because a disaster has struck. With the pandemic possibly having no discernible end, it is not hard for one to imagine this kind of world taking hold for real, but even so I guess I’m embracing the possibilities it might create. It’s especially promising, hopefully not taken to extremes but existing in whatever form it does, for persons with disabilities.

I’ll talk more about the part that really makes one feel we are headed in that direction towards the end, but first I have created a podcast! Well sort of. At this point, only the trailer exists. But the idea, as you can hear in said trailer, is that I will interview different authors who have written works concerning disability in whatever way it is portrayed. I certainly want more than just blind and even deaf people to be represented, since I believe that we can actually be a more powerful block of “people with disabilities” if we work together. I think book portrayals are an important element of our ability to fit into society, because people make strong associations with the characters they read about and what they expect to see when encountering someone who seems to fit that description. I’ve not tried to land interviews yet, but I have composed an initial list of eight authors with whom I would love to speak. The tricky part will be coming up with a proposal that succinctly communicates the goal of this podcast and hopefully makes them want to do it.

Creating the podcast has been something of a challenge as well. I dithered on which platform to use, but when I went to re-evaluate Anchor I discovered that it has come a long way from what it was even a couple of years ago. I guess this is because they were acquired? I’m not aware of the exact relationship) by Spotify. They walk you through the whole process of setting it up, and even seem to provide the auto-transcript which I can then go in and edit, a much faster process than trying to write one up myself. So I’m going to continue developing the show, and I’ll let you know when it officially launches.

And speaking of things launching, I suppose, I’ve finally been invited to Clubhouse. By now, I suspect you’ve heard of this invite-only app that I’ve been told is, unfortunately, only available on iOS. I certainly hope they can change that soon. Anyhow, I was invited by two different friends within a couple of hours, so I signed up and started exploring. So far it looks neat, and I learned a lot by attending a presentation specifically about using Clubhouse with a screen-reader (I suppose the only screen-reader is VoiceOver at this point). I did find one book club of interest, and I think they’ll notify me if the club has another meeting some time soon. That’s one thing I’ve noticed, you can end up getting a lot of notifications about various rooms you might be interested in entering. I’ll have to go and look at settings to see if I can adjust what I want to hear about.

So those are some of the exciting happenings in my corner of the world. I’ll have my annual Job Days post coming soon, in which I will look at how things are shaping up at my employer and with my side hustle of book reviewing. In the meantime, I hope you are keeping well and staying safe.

To The Max: On HBO’s New App and Accessibility Challenges

Posted on by John

Yay, Fresh Prince is finally available through streaming. This was my thought as soon as they rolled out HBO Max this past Wednesday, as I’d heard that this one of already so many streaming services would be the one to cary that show. So I knew I would immediately try to get it and see what, if anything, they have in the way of accessibility.

The short answer, at least at the time of this article’s writing as I know and hope that things can change quickly, is not a whole lot. The challenges began as soon as I downloaded and launched the HBO Max app. Fortunately you can connect the app to Apple TV and find shows that way, but in order to do that you must first subscribe.

At first, I swiped around on the screen and it just kept repeating the immediately viewable icon, until I had the bright idea of touching the screen in different places, a method called Explore by Touch. I eventually encountered a button labeled Subscribe Now and tapped it. I was able to enter my username, email and password, but when I tried to press “done” it wouldn’t take. I later deduced that this was because I had not checked the box accepting their terms, as I could not even find said box except on the HBO Max website. So I was forced to use that to sign up, after which I discovered that the web site worked little on the Mac and I could not actually sign in once the account had been created. So back to the phone, I guess somehow shutting and restarting the app made a usable sign-in button appear that I could press and enter my account info, and finally I was ready to go!

A subscription costs $14.95 a month, but it could be worth it as they have several good movies, documentaries, and series. In addition to the Fresh Prince, which I intend to watch in its entirety over the next few months because of the nostalgia (ah, simpler times, well not really but they always seem so when looking back right?) They have the series From the Earth to the Moon, which chronicles America’s Space race with the Soviets. I also saw The Big Bang Theory, which I didn’t watch when it initially came out but might catch now.

However, if the app does not make accessibility improvements in the coming months, honestly it boggles my mind that they would release it without these in the first place these days, then I probably will no longer fork over my dough. I am glad they have closed captioning for individuals who are deaf. I had hoped that, at least with HBO programming, they would include audio description for those of us who cannot see, but as far as I can tell this is not available. Also, because of the way one must interact with the screen, the app is completely inaccessible with a refreshable Braille display. If one could not connect it to Apple TV, then I would definitely have to hold out for some kind of improvements. Please take a look at your competitors, Amazon, Netflix and the like, and follow some of what they’ve done. After all there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. But we blind folks and others with disabilities want to be able to come along for the ride.