Parallel

Parallel is back from summer break, and glad to be! We gather to review Apple's latest hardware announcements: do we like them, do we want them, are they accessible? Behold, the iPhones 14, Apple Watch Ultra (and otherwise), and AirPods Pro, 2nd gen.

We take a look at new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple platforms.

Creating products intended to serve the needs of people with disabilities requires all the hard work of any software project, along with special challenges for small, bootstrapped startups. We'll talk with a cofounder whose company builds mobile apps for people with vision loss and hearing impairments.

Whether we're motivated by a creative passion, the need for extra income or something else, taking on work outside the 9-to-5 comes naturally to a lot of people I know. So we're talking about what it means to juggle several "jobs."

Mily Mumford researches the impact of space travel on the mental health of astronauts, and how mixed reality could eventually be used to help them cope. That's a lot, but they're also a theater creator and filmmaker. We talk through the multitudes, including a conversation about ableism in the way we choose astronauts.

People with disabilities experience appallingly high rates of unemployment. But convincing an employer to interview disabled candidates is just the beginning. We talk about how people with all kinds of disabilities can get, keep and thrive in jobs.

Audio description gives people who are blind or visually impaired the information they need to fully enjoy TV, movies and even live events. We're focused mainly on TV, and how which streaming service you use and which platform you use it on, has a lot to do with whether you can get described content. My guest wrote the book on the current audio description landscape.

I, your humble host, sit for an interview about my career, my decision nine years ago to finally write about accessibility, and the book I wrote about Apple's iOS. We also talk about some accessibility problems in iOS 15.

Enjoying a theme park attraction or playing on a playground isn't always an option of you're a wheelchair user or if you're a kid in a hospital. But virtual reality offers all sorts of ways to make experiences accessible. I'll talk about that with someone who's done it.

Talking about gaming accessibility for a variety of users. We cover hardware, how gaming studios address accessibility, and what it's like to advocate for and write about it, too.

Lawrence Miller identifies as a cyborg. He, like a lot of us, has many identities. We talk about some of them, about art and about how augmenting one's body with technology is both a functional and a performative experience.

Christin Hemphill works with companies to build inclusive experiences for customers and employees. That's a fancy way of saying that your bank, your onboarding materials and your VR game should all be accessible to you.

Rain Michaels wears many hats. She is the UX designer behind Google's Action Blocks and the new enhanced Select-to-Speak features on Chrome OS. As if that weren't enough, she is also one of the maintainers for accessibility on the community-developed Drupal content management system, and she is a co-chair of W3C's Cognitive Accessibility task force. On today's show, we talk about all of it, and how Rain thinks about making sites and tools accessible to people with a variety of cognitive challenges.

Excitement about the ways virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality could change our sensory experience of the world is palpable in some communities. But for people with accessibility needs, the very centrality of sensory experience can seem like a barrier. Designers and developers are working to change the perception and the reality of how disabled people interact with XR – extended reality. My guest, Reginé Gilbert, is teaching her student how to think inclusively when they build or envision XR experiences.

Indigenous people often face an array of barriers to economic opportunity. Poverty, oppression and simple lack of access to the Internet service are among them. We'll talk about expanding opportunity through education, career preparation and extension of broadband to indigenous communities in Canada. What you'll hear applies to any population whose physical separation diminishes opportunity.

Three Apple news junkies give the company's fall product announcement event a few days to settle. We weigh in on all the new hardware announcements and what we imagine could come next.

Ten years ago, a pair of accessibility advocates decided to bring attention to the need for better accessibility in digital realms. They created Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or #GAAD. The annual event now attracts participation from Fortune 500 companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. But according to cofounder Joe Devon, #GAAD is still about developers doing the work to build things everyone can use.

Mobile and desktop accessibility are similar, but different, just as mobile browsers can show the same pages desktop ones can, but with different interfaces and quirks. On this episode, we're talking about how to use mobile tools to test the accessibility of Web sites in iOS. My guest is the author of the [#a11ytools](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a11ytools-web-accessibility/id1356241530) testing suite.

Beyond the checkboxes and status reports that tally the numbers of women, people of color, and (on rare occasions) people with disabilities an organization has hired, are the lived experiences of individuals who seek to thrive in a variety of STEM careers. We discuss these topics and lots more with an educator, an engineer and an advocate for meaningful, sustainable DEI in the workplace.

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has a bird's-eye view of exploding stars, black holes and other distant astronomical phenomenon. Part of interpreting the massive amounts of data the telescope collects is creating data visualizations. But how can someone who is blind or visually impaired share in the beauty and the science of the images Chandra data scientists create? You're about to find out.

Tech-assisted navigation means more than using your phone or other GPS-equipped device to find your way outside. Improving indoor navigation has long been a project for people with blindness and low vision, but its importance is growing for venues and tech companies, too.

What's new in Android 12, and in accessibility for Google platforms? I'm visiting with my favorite Google-focused writers for a one-month-past-I/O update from Google world.

Apple laid a bevy of updates on the waiting throng during its 2021 WWDC Keynote event. From iOS to macOS, privacy to Siri, the announcements touched most aspects of the company's operating systems. How much can we talk about in an hour? Let's find out!

We take a look at several preview announcements Apple made in late May. Unusually for the company, and for accessibility updates, the focus was on features we'll see later in the year. They include: assistive touch for Apple Watch, eye tracking on iPadOS, vastly improved hearing aid support, enhancements to VoiceOver image recognition and the proverbial MORE.

Apple AirTags have been in the wild for a few weeks now, and my guests have them. We talk about how and whether the little object-finders are useful, what using them is like, and how they work for blind users.

In its second-larges acquisition ever, Microsoft is buying Nuance Communications. Variously identified as a cloud AI company and a purveyor of speech-to-text tools like Dragon, Nuance is a leader in voices for screen readers. So. What does it all mean?

Traditionally, making web sites accessible to all began with coding pages to follow established standards from the W3C. Developers can also go further to support screen reader users, people with low vision, cognitive disabilities, ADHD and more. Now, AI has been applied to this task in the form of server-side software called accessibility overlays. But while these overlays promise turnkey protection from lawsuits, many people with disabilities say they do not deliver accessibility, and sometimes compromise it.

A platform that first entered many people's consciousness as the social network for teens and younger has become a place many creators and viewers find joy, and respite from some of the more toxic aspects of social media. We're talking TikTok.

Clubhouse is the buzzy, audio-only social network with lots of venture funding and problematic privacy policies. Some call it "talk radio," – not a compliment – some say it could replace podcasts, and some are just trying to have an accessible experience. This episode was recorded inside Clubhouse with a few guests you've heard before on Parallel, and some you haven't. We'll talk about privacy, exclusivity, the tech bro vibe, how the service has benefited community in the accessibility community, and how that community has begun to come together to address some of the app's own accessibility problems. Because I recorded (with knowledge and permission from all speakers) in the app, the audio is good, but not great. Better to say that it varies. This is an edited version of a two-hour conversation – not including the after-party. I'm going to call it the first Parallel live show.

Seeing AI, an app for iOS that provides AI-driven information to users with blindness and visual impairments, debuted to rapturous reviews in 2017. Born during a hacking competition at Microsoft, Seeing AI has been features on the main stage at Build, and is now maintained by a dedicated team within the company. The latest version takes advantage of the LIDAR sensor in iPhones 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, and in the 2020 iPad Pro. Today we're talking to the leader of the Seeing AI team.

What's it like to cover the biggest tech trade show of the year when it's virtual? We talk with Daily Tech News Show's Tom Merritt about how he did it, what he saw, and what he hopes for the next time CES rolls around. How big were the TVs, how many phones folded and was the accessibility buzz any louder than usual?

Audio description – the process of explaining aspects of the visual world for the benefit of people with blindness or visual impairments, is usually a one-directional process, where the describer explains and the listener consumes. But a pair of podcasters wanted to make the process more dynamic, giving the AD consumer a way to ask questions about what the describer sees. I'm talking with the hosts of Talk Description to Me.

What does it mean to have a productivity system? For many, Getting Things Done provides structure and a method. Your host is a stranger in this land of systems, having used her own methods and digital tools to manage time and projects, but never taken up a system. On this episode, two guests explain how a systematic approach has improved their lives and work

From the technology impacts of COVID-19 to the ways Apple succeeded and didn't, here's Parallel's sendoff of 2020.

In the second installment of my review of the new iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, I take some new accessibility features for a spin, including people detection, screen recognition, image description and text recognition.

How do Apple's iPhone 12 and 12 Pro stack up from an accessibility perspective? In part 1 of my review, I tackle some hardware basics. Do their size, weight, grippability, displays and camera features make them compelling options for people with disabilities? This generation of phones also extend the accessibility features of iOS, using machine-learning and, in the 12 Pro, the LIDAR scanner. [Transcript](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/relayparallel/par_038.docx)

In this solo show, I talk about how I've set up and problem-solved for daily video calls and video podcasts. It's a lot! I've included helpful personal experiences and tips that apply whether you're using Zoom, Google Meet, Skype or Teams. It's about looking good on video if video is hard for you to see.

We talk about the many ways to implement home automation with or without a plan. Today's guests agree on a favorite platform, and they're here to tell you why.

In what has become at least an annual tradition, I talk Android with two people who know it well, from both the mainstream and accessibility perspective. What's new in Android 11 and what accessibility features have joined the ranks, even before Google's phones got the new OS?

The filmed version of "Hamilton" as presented on Disney+ has an audio description track. Some who have used it find the track lacking. Someone decided to do something about it. Find out how it happened, how it was done, and how one AD user reacted.

What's coming for accessibility on Apple's platforms later this year? My guests are Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, an engineer on the Apple accessibility team. We talk VoiceOver/Screen Recognition, accessibility improvements for XCode, Magnifier updates, new Braille features for iOS, Big Sur's impact on low-vision accessibility, Headphone Accommodation and Back Tap.

There are accessible video games, but it's not a given. The long-awaited The Last of Us 2 has taken lots of knocks from reviewers, but it's probably the most accessible game ever.