Podcasts about Accessibility

Quick question. What's the voice you hear describing what's happening on screen during a movie or a TV show for blind and low vision viewers? That's audio description. And somebody has to record it for every show, every movie, every piece of streaming content, every educational video on every major platform. Every single one. That is an enormous amount of work. And most voice actors have no idea how to get it. What Audio Description Actually Is AD is narration inserted into the natural pauses in a piece of video content, like dialogue, music, and sound effects, that describes what's happening visually. Character movements, facial expressions, scene changes, text on screen, important visual information that a viewer would otherwise miss if they can't see the picture. The narration is written in the present tense. It's delivered neutrally. The AD narrator describes. They don't editorialize. They are giving information logically but not characterizing it. And it has to fit precisely within the gaps in the existing audio, which means pacing is really important. The scripts are timed to the millisecond. The narrator has to hit very specific durations, sometimes very short ones, while still conveying the information clearly and in a warm, accessible way. It's a skill. It is a very highly sought after skill. It's in demand across every streaming platform. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Disney, Amazon, Apple, HBO. As well as broadcast, educational content, corporate video, and more. Accessibility compliance requirements mean this market is not shrinking. It is growing. Why Aren't More Voice Actors Pursuing It Part of it is visibility. AD narration doesn't usually get a credit in the traditional sense. It's not the kind of booking you post about on social media. The narrator is heard, not seen, and the whole point is that the narration blends seamlessly into the viewing experience. Part of it is that the scripts look really intimidating the first time you see them. They're formatted differently from any standard voiceover script. There are time codes and pacing notes and flagged lines with very tight windows to hit. It feels very technical in a way that commercial or corporate work doesn't. And part of it is there isn't a clear how do I get in path that gets talked about the way commercial or gaming or e-learning does. But here's the thing. The opacity is an opportunity. The barrier isn't talent. It's knowledge. Voice actors who understand how AD works, who have trained for the specific demands of the format, and who have appropriate samples in their portfolio are rare. And the buyers in this space know that. The Actual Craft Audio description narration isn't just a neutral read. It has a specific warmth and accessibility to it. You're a guide. You're not a reporter. You're helping someone experience a piece of content, and that requires a quality of presence and care that is specific but also learnable. The pacing demands are unique. AD scripts use notations like brisk or very brisk. The gap between two lines of dialogue might be four seconds and you have to convey meaningful visual information in that space clearly without rushing in a way that loses the listener. You need to deliver every line as if it counts while also being flexible about what gets used. It's a different muscle than commercial or video game or narration work. But it's absolutely buildable. And the voice actors who invest in training for it are walking into a niche with very little competition and pretty steady work. How to Position Yourself for AD Work First, get familiar with the format. Watch content with audio description turned on. Netflix, Amazon, YouTube all have accessibility settings. Turn it on for a show you're already watching and listen to the pacing, listen to the tone, notice how the narration sits in the audio environment. This is your market research and it costs you nothing. Second, build a sample. You cannot pitch AD work with a standard narration demo. You need a sample that demonstrates you understand the format, ideally built from fictional content. The sample should show tight pacing, appropriate tone, and ideally a mix of slower and brisk paced lines. Third, identify the buyers. AD is produced by post-production companies and accessibility service providers, not usually directly by studios or streaming platforms. Researching and building a contact list, just like you would for any other vertical, is important to do. And then frame it in your marketing. If you have an AD sample, say it. Put it on your website. Mention it in outreach. Most voice actor websites don't have AD sections. Having one immediately signals that you're someone who has done the work to understand the work. Why This Niche Matters Beyond the Bookings It's not a glamorous vertical. But it is so meaningful. Audio description exists because people deserve to experience art and storytelling and information fully, just as anyone else. The voice actor doing AD work is genuinely contributing to accessibility, to children and adults alike, and that work has human stakes to it. The commercial reality is strong, consistent, and growing. There aren't enough trained narrators to fill the demand. And the personal reality is strong because it's interesting work that requires real craft and you get paid for that craft. The door is open. Most people just haven't knocked on it yet. Want to Keep the Conversation Going? If you're interested in learning more about this, reach out. Mandy offers performance and business coaching and would love to help you get this part of your business going. Reach out at mandy@actingbusinessbootcamp.com.

The deputy mayor of Tirana, Albania says she realized one day that her city had been planned with one user in mind - an adult male who needed to get to the office as quickly as possible. She says everything about Tirana's streets, public spaces and transport systems were designed to make his life easy. Anuela Ristani is one of the women in local government that we get to meet in Women Changing Cities, a new book by Canadian authors and urban mobility advocates Melissa and Chris Bruntlett. We spoke with Melissa Bruntlett in November.

Let us know what you think!Security Halt's Med Group - https://zcform.com/QA5QsClick the link for a FREE consultation with My Med Team to see how we can help. In Episode 439 of the Security Halt! Podcast, Kris Barriteau and Shannon Darsow discuss how Revolutionary Telehealth is transforming access to mental health and medical care for veterans, first responders, and their families. From breaking down barriers to treatment to providing discreet, on-demand support, this conversation explores how technology is helping close critical gaps in healthcare.Whether you're struggling with mental health challenges, looking for support for a loved one, or searching for better healthcare solutions, this episode highlights innovative tools and services designed to improve outcomes and save lives.Sponsored by: Transcend Use my referral link to book a consultation for Peptide Therapy http://transcendcompany.com/DenyCaballero Pure Liberty Labs Use Code: SECURITY_HALT_10 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purelibertylabs/ Website: https://purelibertylabs.com/ PRECISION WELLNESS GROUP  Use code: Security Halt Podcast 25 Website: https://www.precisionwellnessgroup.com/ SPECIAL FORCES FOUNDATION Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/specialforcesfoundation_/ Website: https://specialforcesfoundation.org/ Request Help: https://specialforcesfoundation.org/get-support/Chapters00:00 Introduction to Revolutionary Telehealth03:55 The Genesis of Revolutionary Telehealth08:02 Addressing Mental Health Barriers11:50 Identifying Gaps in Veteran Care16:01 The Importance of Lived Experience20:00 Privacy and Accessibility in Care23:56 The Importance of Whole Person Care25:00 Empowering Loved Ones in Mental Health28:31 Addressing Hormone Health and Mental Well-being30:24 Integrating Comprehensive Health Solutions32:42 Tools for Self-Empowerment in Mental Health36:40 Ensuring Consistency in Care40:44 Future Developments in Telehealth Services43:44 Preventing Crisis Through Proactive Care46:05 The Call to Action for Community Support  Security Halt Mediahttps://www.securityhaltmedia.com/Instagram: @securityhaltX: @SecurityHaltTik Tok: @security.halt.podLinkedIn: Deny CaballeroSupport the showProduced by Security Halt Media

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Cassandra Lester.

In this episode of the AppleVis Extra podcast, Dave Nason is joined by Thomas Domville and Tyler Stephen for an in-depth discussion of Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote. The team examines Apple's new presentation format, the company's focus on refinement, trust and safety, and artificial intelligence, and what these changes mean for blind and low-vision users.The conversation begins with overall impressions of the keynote, which the hosts describe as a departure from previous WWDC events. Rather than organizing announcements by operating system, Apple focused on three major themes: refinement, trust and safety, and AI. The hosts discuss why this approach reflects Apple's increasing platform convergence and why this year's event felt more like a “Snow Leopard” release focused on improvements and stability rather than a long list of new features.A significant portion of the discussion centers on Apple's expanded family safety and parental control features. The hosts explore improvements to Screen Time, website access controls, contact approval requests, and age-verification technologies. They also discuss how Apple's new Declarative Age Range API could potentially reduce accessibility barriers while helping companies comply with growing age-restriction requirements worldwide.The podcast then shifts to Apple Intelligence and the newly announced Siri AI experience. Thomas, Tyler, and Dave discuss Apple's renewed effort to deliver the AI-powered Siri capabilities first previewed several years ago. Topics include contextual awareness, world knowledge, app actions, improved dictation, more expressive voices, and Apple's continued rollout strategy. The hosts also discuss concerns about device compatibility, regional availability, and the growing fragmentation between supported and unsupported devices.A major accessibility highlight is Apple Intelligence image description. The hosts explain how blind users can now quickly describe images anywhere in the operating system without relying on third-party services such as Be My AI or PiccyBot. They discuss the new image description rotor actions, follow-up questioning, screen-level descriptions through the Dynamic Island, and the potential future benefits of AI-powered contextual understanding for unlabeled interface elements.Other Apple Intelligence features covered include Visual Intelligence, AI-powered web monitoring, custom Safari extension generation, natural language Shortcut creation, password management automation, and AI-assisted productivity improvements.The discussion also covers operating system compatibility changes across Apple's platforms. The hosts review iOS 27 device support, the end of Intel Mac support in macOS 27 Golden Gate, Rosetta's remaining lifespan, Apple Silicon requirements, and changes to Apple Watch compatibility.Additional accessibility-related improvements discussed include pronunciation dictionary import and export, enhanced VoiceOver verbosity controls, Braille Screen Input improvements, predictive text support for Braille users, and settings related to VoiceOver cursor visibility during screen recordings.The team also reviews Apple's claims regarding system performance improvements, including faster app launches, improved AirDrop transfers, better networking transitions, Spotlight indexing enhancements, CPU scheduling improvements, and the overall goal of making Apple devices feel more responsive…

Send us Fan MailWelcome to The BTA Podcast.  In these podcasts we will endeavour to share our thoughts, concerns, optimism and build those all-important human connections with our Partners, Members and Guests.Episode Overview:In this episode of The BTA Pulse, Clive and Andrew recap a busy fortnight for the Business Travel Association, starting with our Aviation Conference, which brought together 80 delegates from across airlines and the TMC community. Key outcomes include a new action group tackling ADMs - long overdue conversations around the cost and inefficiency affecting both airlines and travel managers. Content parity also surfaced as a priority, with a working group now forming to drive best practice.The pair also highlight the BTA's newly launched accessibility guide for travel consultants, which has generated remarkable industry feedback, alongside updates from the People & Talent Conference, where conversations around future skills and HR's role took centre stage.Andrew shares his experience giving evidence at Westminster on the proposed UK visitor levy, while both hosts vent frustration at the ongoing EES entry/exit scheme challenges at European borders.The Business Travel Show is up next — come and see us at stand J71.You can subscribe to this podcast by searching 'BusinessTravel360' on your favorite podcast player or visiting BusinessTravel360.comThis podcast was created by The BTA and edited & distributed by BusinessTravel360.  For more information about The BTA visit TheBTA.org.ukSupport the show

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Cassandra Lester.

Accessibility in herbalism is not something extra or something nice-if-possible, it's a critical part of our work. The prices of the remedies we recommend can sometimes be a determining factor in whether our clients take them, or take them long enough to get results. In many cases we can identify less expensive herbs, or formulae of herbs, which can do the job of more costly ones. In order to make an effective substitution, we first need to clarify the qualities, actions, affinities, and other aspects of the herb for which we seek alternatives. Only then can we identify a good substitute.This episode includes thoughts and examples of potential substitutes for solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum), kava (Piper methysticum), Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng), dong quai (Angelica sinensis), teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), arnica (Arnica montana), chaga (Inonotus obliquus), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), and schisandra (Schisandra chinensis).This is material we dig into deeply in our Accessible Herbalism course. That course is full of strategies and skills which enable herbalists to offer top-quality care to people who have constraints on their finances, time, energy, or community of support. It helps you understand the truth behind some of hte most common money-saving suggestions about herbalism and nutrition, so you can offer realistic suggestions which actually help people who need it most.Like everything we offer, it's a self-paced online video course. It comes with lifetime access to current & future course material, the twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

How do you double the size of a major sporting venue, rebuild its technology foundation, and still deliver a seamless experience for hundreds of thousands of fans? Recording from Cisco Live, I spoke with Robert Nichols, Principal Technical Architect for the Cincinnati Open, about the enormous undertaking behind one of the most respected tournaments in professional tennis. As an ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 event, the Cincinnati Open recently completed a $260 million expansion that increased the campus from 20 to 40 acres, all while working against a deadline that could not be moved. Our conversation explores what happens behind the scenes when nearly 300,000 visitors arrive expecting every aspect of the event to work flawlessly. From ticket scanning and connectivity to food service, hospitality, broadcasting, security, and crowd management, every part of the operation depends on infrastructure that most fans never think about. Robert explains how the team approached modernization without losing the qualities that have made the tournament special for generations. Accessibility, proximity to the players, and a welcoming atmosphere remain central to the Cincinnati Open experience, even as the venue continues to grow. We also discuss occupancy analytics, connected cameras, wireless networking across 40 acres, and how data helps organizers make better operational decisions throughout the tournament. Along the way, Robert shares insights into the scale of planning required to support one of the largest events in professional tennis. Looking ahead, we examine how AI and automation could influence the future of live events, helping organizers improve operations while keeping the focus firmly on the fan experience. Whether you're interested in sports, technology, operations, or large-scale event management, this episode offers a rare look at what it takes to deliver an event watched by millions worldwide. What part of a live sporting event do you think requires the most coordination behind the scenes?

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Cassandra Lester.

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! • Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance • Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility • Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support • Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted • Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching • Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery • New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals • Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies • Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features • Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool • System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls • Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing • Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

Hello! This is Episode 408. This is Way #8 of the 44 Ways to Create Your Sustainable Home series. We are in Section Two: Sustainable Design Strategies. The ways I include in this section are about the strategic design decisions that have consequences well beyond the immediate project, and Way #8 is a strong example of that. Way #8 is Future Proofing Your Design with Accessibility. [For all resources mentioned in this podcast and a free, downloadable PDF transcript, head to www.undercoverarchitect.com/408] I want to start by saying that the word ‘accessibility’ comes with a lot of connotations for some people, and it can immediately bring to mind images of hospital-grade handrails, institutional flooring, and design that feels clinical rather than inclusions you’ll happily consider for your future home. However, that is not what accessible design means, and it is not what this episode is about. What it is about is designing a home that works well for people, at every age and stage of life, without requiring expensive modification when circumstances change. And the design features that achieve that are, in most cases, simply good design that support the longevity, durability and ease of use of your home, whether you’re building new or renovating. In this episode, I take you through what accessible design actually means in a residential context, the case for including it from the brief stage, the specific features worth considering in your project, and how to approach it with your design team. As always, if you'd like to access a full transcript of this episode and links to any resources I mention, head to www.undercoverarchitect.com/408. Now, let's dive in! RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST: For links, images and resources mentioned in this podcast, head to >>> www.undercoverarchitect.com/408 Accessing my free '44 Ways' E-Book will simplify sustainability and help you create a healthy, low tox and sustainable home. You can download your free copy here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my signature online program >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/ Just a reminder: All content on this podcast is provided by Undercover Architect for reference purposes and as general guidance. It does not take into account specific circumstances and should not be relied on in that way. You should seek independent verification or advice before relying on this content in any circumstances, including but not limited to circumstances where loss or damage may result. The views and opinions of any guests on the podcast are solely their own. They may not reflect the views of Undercover Architect. Undercover Architect endeavours to publish content that is accurate at the time it is published, but does not accept responsibility for content that may or has become inaccurate over time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! • Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance • Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility • Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support • Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted • Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching • Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery • New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals • Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies • Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features • Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool • System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls • Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing • Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

SummaryRobert Bolden shares personal insights on faith, surrender, and the beauty of God's creation, emphasizing the importance of community and continuous spiritual growth.Key TopicsThe meaning of meekness and inheritance of the earthPersonal journey of faith and surrender to JesusThe beauty of God's creation and natural worldThe importance of community and meeting togetherThe significance of continuous spiritual growth and avoiding deliberate sinTakeawaysSurrender is a continuous process that deepens faith.Nature is a reflection of God's glory and should be appreciated.Community and encouragement are vital for spiritual growth.Deliberate turning away from faith can lead to spiritual danger.Sharing personal stories strengthens faith and community.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Podcast Background02:00 Reflection on Matthew 5:5 and Surrender04:07 The Beauty of God's Creation and Living in Gratitude05:34 The Accessibility of God's Grace and Personal Transformation06:53 Encouragement to Stay Connected and Meet in Community09:51 The Warning Against Deliberate Sin and Turning Away from Faith11:13 The Significance of a Personal 'Come Out of the Desert' Moment12:41 Closing Remarks and Invitation to CommunityReady to become part of the community? https://lifetransformed.podia.com/message us and we will give you free access.Merchhttps://www.bonfire.com/store/lifetransformed/Schedule a serve call ⁠https://www.picktime.com/LifeTransformed⁠Instagram ⁠https://www.instagram.com/bbolden18?igsh=cnlvdjQ5eGJwZTM%3D&utm_source=qr⁠https://www.instagram.com/bbolden18?igsh=cnlvdjQ5eGJwZTM%3D&utm_source=qrYouTube⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6sszulCUrjodEyThd-rBw⁠Podcasts Join me live from Odd's Cafe here in Asheville…  message me for the exact time.  ⁠https://www.oddscafe.com/⁠Email: robertbolden@thisworldfreedom.com

Apple is handing parents unprecedented control with new child safety and parental approval features. Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent break down what's changed, how it works, and more iOS goodness during WWDC26 week! Apple's WWDC keynote reveals iOS 27 and platform-wide focus on AI, privacy, and performance Liquid Glass transparency and appearance now user-adjustable for accessibility Toolbars and UI restored for improved navigation and vision support Performance boosts: faster photos, AirDrop, and Spotlight search highlighted Intelligent networking promises smarter Wi-Fi and cellular switching Maps overhaul: more vivid detail with AI and satellite imagery New child safety features: granular app, contact, and website approvals Siri gets personal context, deeper app integration, and smart replies Advanced developer APIs and app intents previewed for on-device AI features Generative photo editing arrives: extend, clean up, and a new Reframe tool System-wide suggestions and information surfacing in Mail, Messages, and calls Quality-of-life updates: independent alarm/ringer/music volumes, swipable now playing Shortcuts Corner: Natural language shortcut creation and changes to automation workflows Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard Contact iOS Today at iOSToday@twit.tv. Download or subscribe to iOS Today at https://twit.tv/shows/ios-today Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: shopify.com/ios

"Just try harder" is pretty bad advice.This week we're joined by Kelli Dunaway and Kat Sketch for a conversation about disability, chronic illness, neurodivergence, community, and adapting magical practices to fit real life.From food allergies to mobility aids to invisible disabilities and toxic positivity - We really get in there.Kat SketchYoutube : youtube.com/channel/UC306rvZL68AXSgOT3Q3SOZgIG : @katsketchPodcast : @treasuredrawerpodcastKelli DunawayIG : @kelli.dunawaykellidunaway.comlegalwitchcraft.comwitchbitchamateurhour.comWant to help support the Podcast? Consider becoming a Patron!patreon.com/wbahpodcastAdvertise with us!Just shoot an email to wbahpodcast@gmail.comSnag yourself some WBAH Merch!Meet New Witches!Your Average Witch Podcastyouraveragewitchpodcast.comIt's A Whole Thing Podcastwww.wholethingpodcast.comPlay The Sims With Charlyetwitch.tv/charlye_withawhySupport the showGet Ya Witch Shit!Crepuscularconjuration.comCharm by Charlye MichelleAncestor Oil and Fire Scrying Sessionscharmbycharlye.comOur Video EditorEldrich Kitchenm.youtube.com/channel/UC_CwBrVMhqezVz_fog716OwContact Us (Come Eat With Us)Instagram @WitchBitchAmateurHourFacebook @WitchAmateurHourwbahpodcast@gmail.comHandwritten letters are actual magic!601 Kingston RdSte 300 #1011Benton, LA 71006We are not doctors, lawyers, or professionals. We're amateurs. Nothing we say should be taken as advice, instruction, or seriously. Any actions taken based on our content can and will lead to chaos, injury, existential crises, your pets no longer loving you, and possibly death. We make no promises and assume no liability.

In this episode, Lauren and guest host Paul, Lulu's Sr. Marketing Manager, examine an often overlooked element of indie publishing: making your book accessible to all potential readers.Accessibility isn't just a performative buzzword; it's a smart strategy to help you reach new readers, connect with existing fans, increase your discoverability, and future-proof your content.Listen, watch, or read along with the episode transcript (accessibility!) to learn more about:

Welcome to Ep 163: Low Tech, No Tech Accessibility Considerations with Sarah Silverman. Sarah Silverman, PhD is an independent faculty developer and instructor of Disability Studies. As an autistic educator, she has a personal stake in Neurodiversity as well as extensive college teaching and faculty development experience. Her interests include accessible and feminist pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the history of the neurodiversity movement. Her book Classroom Mindscapes: An Introduction to Neurodiversity for Educators is forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in September. In this conversation, Sarah and I discuss options for faculty members who are considering low tech, no tech, or more analog classroom activities or educational environments. We talk about access friction and decisions that might need to be considered in order to meet the needs of current students with competing access and technology needs. Sarah has been recently working on this topic and will have an upcoming workshop on this on July 21st. If you are listening to this podcast before or after that date in 2026, you'll be able to find the sign-up or the results of that session in this episode's resource section just before the transcript on ThinkUDL.org. You'll also be able to find the other resources we mention throughout the conversation there.

Explore WWDC highlights, Apple Intelligence, and Mac accessibility with Steven Scott, Shaun Preece, and guest David Nason from Ireland. Learn how Apple's new parental controls, Mac VoiceOver challenges, and EU regulations affect blind and low-vision users. In this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun dive into the latest announcements from WWDC, including the debut of Apple Intelligence, new parental controls, and updates to macOS. Guest David Nason, formerly of Sky TV Accessibility and now at Ireland's communications regulator, shares his insider perspective on accessibility in large tech companies and the impact of the European Accessibility Act. The conversation moves from Apple's AI promises to practical tools for blind users, including image description, safer parental controls, and the ongoing challenges of Mac accessibility with VoiceOver. David discusses the realities of using Microsoft Office on macOS, the transition from magnification to screen readers, and why workplace choice often leans toward Windows. ----Follow on:YouTube: https://www.doubletaponair.com/youtubeX (formerly Twitter): https://www.doubletaponair.com/xInstagram: https://www.doubletaponair.com/instagramTikTok: https://www.doubletaponair.com/tiktokThreads: https://www.doubletaponair.com/threadsFacebook: https://www.doubletaponair.com/facebookLinkedIn: https://www.doubletaponair.com/linkedinSubscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://www.doubletaponair.com/appleSpotify: https://www.doubletaponair.com/spotifyRSS: https://www.doubletaponair.com/podcastiHeadRadio: https://www.doubletaponair.com/iheartAbout Double TapHosted by the insightful duo, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece, Double Tap is a treasure trove of information for anyone who's blind or partially sighted and has a passion for tech. Steven and Shaun not only demystify tech, but they also regularly feature interviews and welcome guests from the community, fostering an interactive and engaging environment. Tune in every day of the week, and you'll discover how technology can seamlessly integrate into your life, enhancing daily tasks and experiences, even if your sight is limited."Double Tap" is a registered trademark of Double Tap Productions Inc. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Accessibility at work is easy to talk about and hard to deliver, especially when your “office” includes fulfillment centers, delivery stations, corporate teams, and cutting-edge tech roles spread across the globe. We sit down with Megan Smith, Global Accommodations and People Accessibility Lead within Amazonian Experiences and Technology, to unpack what it really takes to run accommodations and workplace accessibility programs at serious scale and with real speed. Megan shares her own path into disability inclusion as a legally blind leader, and why self-advocacy plus operational rigor is a powerful combination.We walk through the full accommodations flywheel: intake, evaluation, decisioning with managers and sites, and making sure the accommodation is implemented. Megan explains why much of the volume comes from temporary injuries that need fast, consistent handling, how pregnancy-related accommodations require dedicated expertise, and why complex disabilities benefit from high-touch support that adapts to different job environments. We also explore how people accessibility focuses on preventing barriers in the first place by setting standards, offering tooling, and influencing what the company builds and buys for employees.Then we look forward. AI is already blurring the line between assistive technology and personalization, with big implications for screen readers, captions, and the idea of a “one console” work experience. Megan breaks down what must remain true today (solid accessibility fundamentals and WCAG principles) and what might change tomorrow, including trust, privacy, and how we filter signal from AI-generated noise. If you care about disability inclusion, HR accommodations, accessible technology, or the future of AI accessibility, this conversation gives you practical mental models and sharp questions to take back to your team. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.Send us Fan MailSupport the showFollow axschat on social media.Bluesky:Antonio https://bsky.app/profile/akwyz.comDebra https://bsky.app/profile/debraruh.bsky.socialNeil https://bsky.app/profile/neilmilliken.bsky.socialaxschat https://bsky.app/profile/axschat.bsky.socialLinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniovieirasantos/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/axschat/https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilmilliken/Vimeohttps://vimeo.com/akwyzhttps://twitter.com/axschathttps://twitter.com/AkwyZhttps://twitter.com/neilmillikenhttps://twitter.com/debraruh

EWOT for Stroke Recovery: The Affordable Alternative to Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Brad Pitzele did not set out to become an oxygen therapy equipment maker. He set out to survive. After years of battling significant health challenges, conventional medicine had given him answers that kept failing him. He tried around 200 treatments. Some helped. Many did not. Then he found EWOT Exercise With Oxygen Therapy, and something finally shifted. Brad’s journey is not the same as a stroke. But what he discovered about oxygen, inflammation, and cellular energy maps directly onto one of the most stubborn obstacles stroke survivors face: the feeling that the brain has gone offline, that the body is running on empty, and that the path back is either impossibly expensive or simply does not exist. In Episode 407 of the Recovery After Stroke podcast, Brad shares what EWOT is, why it works, and why he now makes affordable EWOT systems through his company, One Thousand Roads, specifically so survivors do not have to remortgage their homes to access oxygen-driven recovery. What Is EWOT? EWOT stands for Exercise With Oxygen Therapy. The concept is straightforward: you breathe high-concentration oxygen through a mask while exercising even lightly, and that combination pushes oxygen into parts of the body that normal breathing cannot reliably reach. Most people assume oxygen therapy means a hyperbaric chamber: a pressurized tube, a clinic, a course of treatments costing tens of thousands of dollars. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is effective. Brad describes it as “a heroic treatment.” But it is also inaccessible for most survivors, financially and logistically. EWOT operates on a related principle without the chamber. The key mechanism is not about oxygenating red blood cells; they are already carrying close to their maximum load under normal breathing. The target is the blood plasma. Plasma does not carry oxygen efficiently under resting conditions, but during exercise, even light exercise, blood pressure and circulation increase enough to force dissolved oxygen into the plasma. That plasma can then reach the micro-capillaries, the tiny vessels that feed tissues deep in the body, including areas of the brain that become inflamed and oxygen-starved after a stroke. The Post-Stroke Energy Problem One of the most commonly reported and least-explained symptoms after stroke is fatigue that does not go away, no matter how much a survivor rests. Most survivors are told that is just part of it. Brad’s framework centres on mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria are the energy-producing structures inside cells. After stroke, the cells in and around the affected area are often not dead; they are in a kind of low-power state. Brad describes it as a “brownout”: the lights are on, but dimly. The mitochondria are not producing energy at full capacity, and one significant reason for that is insufficient oxygen supply to the tissue. “The cells that are offline after a stroke are not all dead. Some of them are just starving. Oxygen is part of what feeds them back.” — Brad Pitzele, Episode 407 When EWOT increases plasma oxygen during exercise, it can reach those inflamed, under-oxygenated micro-capillaries that larger vessels cannot access. The result, for some survivors, is a gradual improvement in energy, cognition, and physical capacity, not because the therapy is miraculous, but because it addresses a specific physiological deficit that conventional post-stroke care often does not target. EWOT vs. Hyperbaric: What’s the Real Difference? The honest answer is that EWOT and hyperbaric oxygen therapy are not equivalent. HBOT delivers oxygen under pressure, which drives it into tissue more forcefully. For certain conditions, particularly in acute or severe cases, hyperbaric oxygen has a stronger evidence base.  But for many stroke survivors in the subacute or chronic phase of recovery, access is the defining variable, not theoretical ceiling. A home-based hyperbaric unit costs $50,000 to $75,000. A clinical course can run to $60,000 or more. EWOT systems are available for under $2,000.  The question Brad puts to survivors is not “which is better in a lab?” It is: “Which one can you actually do, consistently, at home, over the months and years that brain recovery requires?” Consistency matters more than peak intensity in long-term neurological recovery.  Starting EWOT With Deficits EWOT does not require running on a treadmill. The exercise component can be a stationary bike, a recumbent bike, or simple seated leg movements with one limb strapped in. The goal is to raise circulation enough to push oxygen into the plasma, not to hit a cardiovascular fitness target. For survivors exploring this option, Brad’s team has built a specific resource at onethousandroads.com/stroke-recovery with a listener discount of $100 to $500, depending on the package. There is also a broader introduction to EWOT at onethousandroads.com/pages/exercise-with-oxygen-therapy. Recovery Is Possible — And It Does Not Have to Be Expensive If this episode resonated with you or if you want to explore more conversations about recovery options that do not require a second mortgage, Bill’s book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if the Recovery After Stroke podcast has been useful to you, you can support it financially at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Every contribution helps keep the show going and these conversations accessible to survivors around the world. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. EWOT for Stroke Recovery: The Affordable Alternative to Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Why pay $60,000 for hyperbaric oxygen? EWOT brings oxygen therapy into your living room — and could help the brain cells that are only offline. One Thousands Roads Exercise With Oxygen Therapy (EWOT) YouTube Channel Highlights: 00:00 Introduction and Background 05:37 Challenges in Stroke Recovery and Treatment Options 13:45 Understanding Oxygen Therapy and Its Mechanism 15:51 Oxygen Toxicity Explained 19:24 The Importance of Oxygenating Blood Plasma 24:53 Oxygen and Mitochondrial Function 31:16 Adapting Exercise for Stroke Survivors 38:27 Cost and Accessibility of Oxygen Therapy Devices Transcript: Introduction – EWOT for Stroke Recovery Brad Pitzele (00:00) like many of your listeners, when you have a medical issue that isn’t treated by traditional medicine and you’re desperate to get your life back, you’ll try just about anything. You, the lens it goes through is like, Well, how bad can this hurt me? BIll Gasiamis (00:15) Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m your host, Bill Gassiamas. Today’s guest is Brad Pitzele, founder of 1000 Roads, who overcame significant health challenges of his own and along the way discovered the science behind exercise with oxygen therapy. In this conversation, we get into how increasing oxygen saturation in the blood, specifically in the blood plasma, can help reach the inflamed microcapillaries. That are blocking oxygen delivery to cells in the recovering brain. We talk about mitochondrial dysfunction, post-stroke fatigue, and why Ewatt is worth understanding as an accessible alternative to hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Before we get into it, if you’ve found value in this podcast and want to support it financially, you can do that at patreon.com/slash recovery after stroke. And if you haven’t yet read my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, it is available at recovery after stroke dot com slash book. Here’s my conversation with Brad. BIll Gasiamis (01:19) Brad Pitsley, welcome to the podcast. Brad Pitzele (01:22) Thank you so much. BIll Gasiamis (01:24) Thanks for reaching out and ⁓ connecting with me to educate me on another thing that I can bring to stroke survivors that could potentially help them in the rehabilitation side of their brain. The the thumbnail that people found on YouTube is probably gonna have E W O T on it somewhere. E what. And it sounds something like something out of that ⁓ space war out of out of what is it? Brad Pitzele (01:53) Star Wars. Star Wars. BIll Gasiamis (01:54) Star Wars. Like the Ewok, right? And it doesn’t really mean anything to me. But before we descri tell people what Ewok is, ⁓ tell me a little bit about your background, the work that you do and how it is you came to be on the podcast today is for s for for the specific discussion that we’re gonna have. Brad Pitzele (01:58) Yep. Sure. ⁓ yeah, so I ⁓ I I’m an e recovering engineer. I like to joke. I spent my first decade of my life engineering. later on in life, I left engineering and went into different pursuits and I became chronically ill, had a variety of medical issues, ⁓ cancer, autoimmunity, and eventually Lyme disease. And I was in really bad shape. And a doctor recommended I look into either hyperbaric oxygen or this exercise with oxygen therapy, EWAT, that almost no one had heard of, and I’d never heard of it. ⁓ I I I had tried like everything to get better at this point. I was many years in special diets, ⁓ all sorts of supplements and ⁓ all sorts of modalities and things. And nothing really worked. There was nothing in a matter of fact, some of the medications I took actually gave me cancer. So it kind of forced me on this road to try something different. ⁓ and eventually I found my way back to health through exercise with oxygen when so many things weren’t working. ⁓ and actually later paired that with ⁓ red light therapy. ⁓ and along the way I started because I’m an engineer and I’m inquisitive, I like It was Lyme disease is kind of a do-it-yourself disease. ⁓ so I started digging in and pouring into research, not just on Lyme disease, but autoimmunity, ⁓ chronic illness, ⁓ trying to figure out what the heck was going on with me. And so ⁓ what I found about exercise oxygen therapy along the way was really fascinating to me. and about a year into using it, I went back to that same doctor and he was kind of shocked. At my turnaround, and he was like, What did you use? Did you do oxygen? And I said, I did. And he was like, Who’d you buy it from? I want to tell my patients about it. And I said, I didn’t buy it, Doc. I actually ended up making my own. And he was kind of surprised by that for obvious reasons. And then he said, Well, gosh, would you consider making it for my patient? And so, my patients, and so that’s how we got into this business back in two thousand eighteen. We launched one thousand roads to kinda make exercise with oxygen therapy accessible to people who are dealing with chronic health conditions. BIll Gasiamis (04:39) Okay. And it stems from science, right? There’s scientific data that backs up this exercise with oxygen therapy. Before you go into that a little bit, we don’t have to go deep into it, but we can just ⁓ chat about it. ⁓ when I talk to stroke survivors, they get stuck always with what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? They want the The blue pill, take that one, everything gets fixed. I mean, stroke is not like that, right? And it’s and it’s stroke is also a you’re on your own kind of thing. Because once you get out of the acute phase, once you get sent home, the ⁓ follow up and the medical fraternity doesn’t have a system to kind of say to you, we can’t help you. Speak to that guy. ⁓ that guy might not be able to help you, but but there’s a guy over there. Brad Pitzele (05:09) Yeah. Challenges in Stroke Recovery and Treatment Options BIll Gasiamis (05:33) Like there’s none of that. And stroke survivors need podcasts. They need ⁓ people selling all sorts of crazy stuff that they will almost try almost all the time. They’ll try everything. And then they’ll pick and finally stumble into one that helps and gets them a result. But before we talk about all of that, what I want to do is also go back to what you said about ⁓ a year later, you went to your doctor, he was stunned at the result. We can’t put that down just to eat what? We can’t put that down just to exercise with oxygen therapy. Give me the brief steps on the other things that you also attended to because people miss that. Brad Pitzele (06:15) Yes. Yeah. I well, here’s what I’ll tell you. I started I started to get arthritis in my hands in like 2010 or eleven. and then I started taking traditional drugs for it. And one of the side effects of the drugs is higher risk of cancer and specifically melanoma, which I developed in two thousand thirteen, I wanna say, maybe two thousand fourteen. And that kicked me off the traditional medical path. ⁓ to your point, you don’t you don’t in the stroke recovery, there’s not a traditional path. There it was a traditional path, but it was clear that it was a you know it was a choice between cancer and autoimmunity, and neither one seemed great to me. ⁓ from there I tried so many things, Bill. I did s I actually made a list recently and looked at it because I had it like just off the top of my head, I came up with 200 different things I did try. We’re talking special diets. Eating all sorts of weird, strange things, all sorts of supplements, antibiotics, because it’s Lyme disease, herbal protocols, ⁓ ozone treatments, sa various different types of saunas, ozone sauna, infrared sauna, ⁓ heat steam saunas, ⁓ colonics, coffee enemas, ⁓ weird stuff, you know, you’d never think you’d do. I mean BIll Gasiamis (07:39) You are committed Brad Pitzele (07:42) ‘Cause like many of your listeners, when you have a medical issue that isn’t treated by traditional medicine and you’re desperate to get your life back, you will you’ll try just about anything. You the the lens it goes through is like, Well, how bad can this hurt me? Like like ’cause I know where I’m going right now. For me at least it was a I was just like this gradual step down. It was like I knew like I I couldn’t do this. I had a young family. so, you know, that doctor, I remember him saying, like, look, Brad, we’re trying all these things, we’re gonna get you on thyroid medications and get that right, and we’re gonna do this. ⁓ there on that list of 200, there were about eight things that gave me any kind of benefit that I could identify. ⁓ But I remember he’s like, Brad, we’re gonna take out the big dog. We’re gonna do this ozone treatment. And it’s a special kind where we remove the blood from your body, we inject ozone, put it through UV light, and put it back into your blood. And this helps everyone. Like if nothing else works, this helps, but it’s really expensive. So we’re saving it, kind of. So he he did it. He’s like, do a course of three of them. And he’s like, You might feel bad after it the next day because it kills a bunch of stuff and might you might feel toxic. Or you might feel better. We’re not sure. And give it a few days. And like I did all three of them, I never noticed a difference. And it was ⁓ the most depressing, scary part was like going through that. So when he said go do oxygen, I was like, Okay, like I’ve done everything else. I’m just gonna check the box so the doctor knows that’s not gonna work, so we can go try to find something else. ⁓ And I didn’t believe it was gonna work. I I you know, I didn’t jump on the the bandwagon gung-ho. I was, you know, kind of kicking and screaming. And that was part of the reason I built my own, is because at the time they were so expensive and the they were five to twenty-five thousand dollars. And I was like, I just can’t spend, you know, ten thousand dollars on an experiment. I just can’t do that. ⁓ And he also suggested maybe hyperbaric and that was like fifty or seventy-five thousand dollars. And I was like, geez, if I knew this was the the blue pill, as you said it, if I knew this was the blue pill, I’d go mortgage the house and I’d go do it because like then I could work full and I could do all the things, I could be present for the family, but ⁓ I couldn’t. BIll Gasiamis (10:05) And and and you know what? And it’s not, and and the reason it’s not for a lot of people is because you need to have penumbras the brain from a stroke survivor perspective that are recoverable and that you can bring back to life that are offline, not dead by ⁓ cell death because of the stroke. And there’s no diagnostic process in the majority of the people I’ve spoken to, you can’t diagnose somebody and then work out whether they’re a candidate, and that really Brad Pitzele (10:20) Yeah. Right. BIll Gasiamis (10:33) Pisses me off to somebody gonna have to spend 50 grand to find out if they’re gonna get a result, right? The s the guys that who I’ve interviewed about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ⁓ Viv clinics, ⁓ those guys will do a thorough diagnostic beforehand to determine whether somebody is a candidate. And whatever that costs, even if it’s five grand, I don’t know what it does cost, but even if it’s five grand, at least you can go, you’re not a candidate, don’t spend any more money. Brad Pitzele (10:38) Yeah. Right. higher yes, you have a higher level of certainty before you spend the money. BIll Gasiamis (11:04) Yeah. And if you do do it, you’re doing it for the other ⁓ non-brain related benefits that you’re gonna get from hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And that’s totally up to you. But it’s not the thing to supposedly fix the arm or the leg that doesn’t work, or to ⁓ repair the damaged cells in your brain. So that part really frustrates me. And if I’m gonna spend that much money, then there’s the opportunity cost as well. It’s like Brad Pitzele (11:33) Yes. BIll Gasiamis (11:34) Now I can’t spend that somewhere else. Brad Pitzele (11:36) Exactly. That was me too. It was like you you knew you had and I was like, man, if I spend this kind of money on it and it doesn’t work, like nothing’s worked for the last, I don’t know, almost ten years at this point. Like how many of these shots do I have in the cannon, right? Like you you know, now I’m I’m depleted and I’m still sick. And that’s even i and you know this, when you’ve got a chronic health condition, sometimes the psych psychology of it all is just as hard as the condition. And If you’re like, wow, now I don’t have money. I feel trapped. There’s nothing I can try. Then hope starts to dwindle. And I say like hope is is like the most potent weapon in recovering from a chronic health condition. It’s a double-edged sword because like you’re s afraid to get hope up because you’ve been let down. But it’s also the thing you need. You ha like when when you start losing hope, and I and I’ve been at that point, it just gets incredibly dark. ⁓ and incredibly scary. so I I think that was part of it. I just wouldn’t allow it. It was the financial part. I you’re right. You only have so many shots out of the bow. But it was also like if it doesn’t work and I am depleted financially you know, I don’t like that that brings me to a a level of hopelessness I I’m not sure I can confront. BIll Gasiamis (12:53) Yeah. And then in order to get back up, you’re getting back up, you’re financially depleted, you’re energetically depleted, your health is depleted. And it’s like, my God, that is a that is like the lowest place that you can find yourself and to get back up is a lot harder. And yet people have still done that, but I know the task is harder. I’ve been in a similar sort of situation. Brad Pitzele (13:12) Yeah. We all love we all love reading that inspirational story. No one wants to live it if they can avoid it, I’ll tell you. Understanding Oxygen Therapy and Its Mechanism BIll Gasiamis (13:23) Avoid it. Yeah, a hundred percent. ⁓ so so you’ve tried all this stuff, you’re unwell, and then somebody says to you, try oxygen. Now, what I imagine when I hear oxygen is get a can from the local gas supplier, ⁓ pop pot in a tube, put it on the back of your chair, wheelchair. You know, I’ve seen a lot of older guys who have got it, and then they’ve got oxygen attached to their face and they’re breathing in oxygen. What specifically did your doctor tell you to get and if you didn’t get what he suggested, like w what did it look like for you? Brad Pitzele (14:00) Yeah, so the challenge with bottled oxygen is number one, it’s almost impossible to get. number two is when you exercise, you can take in a massive amount of oxygen, and that’s part of what makes the the therapy really cool. So y you and I sitting here, maybe we’re taking in three liters of oxygen a minute, okay? ⁓ three liters of air a minute, maybe something like that. ⁓ When you’re exercising, you can easily take in 50 or 60 liters. So it’s a massive multiplier. So you need something that’s going to give you a large amount of oxygen. Now, there’s two ways you can get oxygen in your home. One is that bottle you mentioned, and then you’re always refilling it, and you can imagine lugging one of those things around. ⁓ the other way is there’s a device called an oxygen concentrator, and all you do is you plug it into the wall. And it turns the it purifies the oxygen in the room. So, you know, at sea level, the oxygen in the room has 21% oxygen and it can purify it to 93%. Now, the challenge with these devices is they put out either five or ten liters of oxygen in a minute. So not enough to exercise with. If you were to try to exercise with it, you would also be sucking in this air at 21% and diluting it. ⁓ and so what you do is you take this device and you fill a large reservoir, it’s about a thousand liters, ⁓ and you fill it up. using this device and then you hook up a hose with a mask on it and then you breathe through the mask while you do a fifteen minute exercise session. BIll Gasiamis (15:41) Okay. A reservoir, ⁓ water tank. Oxygen Toxicity Explained Brad Pitzele (15:45) It well it it’s like it looks like a big pillow. So it’s like six you know, two meters by two meters, sort of ⁓ big pillow, six feet by six feet for us still on Imperial. And you fill it up so a thousand liters and it’s you know it’s it’s thin film and so it’s not a a rigid body of something, and then yeah, it’s a bag. BIll Gasiamis (16:06) It’s a bag. Like a bagpipe, a massive bagpipe. Brad Pitzele (16:10) There you go. BIll Gasiamis (16:12) Okay. Okay. W I’m sure there’s an image of that, right? We’ll put it on the screen. People can see it while we’re talking about it, trying to work out what it is. Okay. So this thing is something that you accessed and you used specifically for yourself, how many years ago? Brad Pitzele (16:16) Yeah. Yeah. I’ve s I’ve been using it for a decade straight now. BIll Gasiamis (16:33) Okay. This stuff’s been around for about a decade. This Brad Pitzele (16:37) It’s well, the the research on it goes back to the nineteen sixties and seventies. This it’s really fascinating. actually some of the early research goes back to the turn of the ⁓ twentieth century, the nineteen hundreds. So in the early nineteen hundreds, a gentleman named Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize for proving that he could turn any cancer or any regular cell into a cancerous cell by depriving it of oxygen. ⁓ and so there’s this really well-established linkage between oxygen and cancer. Even today, a ton of research on that. So in the 1960s and 70s, there was a a German physicist and prolific inventor named Manfred von Arden. Now, and he started to want to do research on Otto’s work, and he he actually started doing research on exercising with oxygen as an anti-cancer protocol. And some of the research he found was really fascinating. what without getting overly technical, basically it our circulatory system, obviously, this is really relevant to stroke, ⁓ people deal in strokes, is as you get down into the the end runs of your circulatory system, there’s capillaries and they’re like thinner than a human hair. And this is where your nutrients and your oxygen are actually exchanged with the cell. And what he found is as we age naturally this inflammation builds up on the lining of our capillaries. And it actually causes the capillaries to swell shut so that now none of your red blood cells can get by. Now, I mean, this is how exquisite our body is designed. ⁓ our capillaries are actually thinner than a red blood cell. So under the most healthy of conditions. A red blood cell actually needs to fold up like a taco to get into our capillaries and deliver that oxygen in the last mile of our circulatory system. So any swelling in that capillary can cause a blockage. And now all the cells downstream are not getting oxygen and in a sufficient quantity. And so they kind of go into what they what he kind of referred to as like a brownout, right? Like it’s a low energy state. They’re doing anaerobic respiration to get some energy. Maybe some of the smaller red blood cells might squeak by here and there and give a little bit, but they’re not getting the full oxygen they need. And what he found is by doing this procedure, just a few times he had very elderly people with very inflamed ⁓ capillaries. He was able to re-establish normal blood flow. And the reason is is oxygen is incredibly anti-inflammatory. ⁓ and a lot of research on that we can go into a little bit later. The Importance of Oxygenating Blood Plasma So, number one, it causes this anti-inflammatory reaction inside these inflamed capillaries to reopen them. But it also does something really amazing that he discovered is when you’re doing this procedure, ⁓ it causes the oxygen to not just attach to our red blood cells like it always does, but it also saturates our blood plasma, which is this clearish liquid that our red blood cells ride on. And Our blood plasma is a thousand times thinner than a red blood cell. So if you imagine these blockages, red blood cells are not getting through, but obviously the blood plasma can get through as long as it’s like as thin as water. So as long as there’s any opening there, and it can immediately deliver oxygen downstream, both to cause an anti-inflammatory impact in the capillaries, but also to all those cells that are starving. And so you can obviously, as we’re talking through this, you can kind of see how this fits folks who are dealing with various different strokes ⁓ and how that can help them as well. BIll Gasiamis (20:32) Yeah. Okay. I d before we spoke I did a little bit of research and found ⁓ as well that there’s some there’s a lot of relevant data with regards to oxygen and ⁓ increasing the oxygenation in the blood. you so tell me a little bit about oxygen. I I don’t understand exactly what that is. I’ve heard of people becoming ill. Because of too much oxygen, ⁓ ill because of not enough oxygen. So what is what what is becoming ill of too much oxygen and why is ninety nine percent saturation not that? Brad Pitzele (21:18) Yeah, yeah. ⁓ good question. So oxygen toxicity can occur if you get too much oxygen under certain circumstances. So if you’re in a hyperbaric chamber too long, it can cause oxygen toxicity. And basically that’s when oxygen gets trapped in your bloodstream and it can’t get out. and You can actually get it without hyperbaric. So hyperbaric is oxygen under pressure. You can get it at normal barracks. So if you were just sitting on the couch breathing oxygen, you could eventually get oxygen toxicity. Now, it would take over twenty-four hours. So if you were breathing just pure oxygen, no exercise, sitting on your couch for 24 plus hours, it starts to get into the risky zone. When you’re doing exercise with oxygen, that’s actually one of the cool things about it that because of the synergies of exercise and oxygen, it’s impossible to get oxygen toxicity for two reasons. one is that reservoir is only a thousand liters. it’s not a high enough dose that you could get a oxygen toxicity. It is a massive dose, it’s about the same amount of oxygen you take in in a day, and you can take it in in 15 minutes, but it’s not more than. And the second reason, even if we could make our reservoir 10x, 100x, and you could exercise nonstop, you still couldn’t get oxygen toxicity because when you’re exercising, your body produces a massive amount of carbon dioxide gas. And that goes into our bloodstream and it increases pressure in our circulatory system. And that actually forces the oxygen out of the circulatory system and into the cells. So it works as a protectant as well from oxygen toxicity. So that’s oxygen toxicity. It’s a real risk. ⁓ Most of the time it’s a very controllable risk. You know, if you’re doing hyperbaric, they’re gonna keep you in there for so long so that you’re not gonna be at risk generally. ⁓ if you’re assigned to do oxygen while you’re stationary at home, they have protocols to make sure you’re not doing it, you know, twenty-eight hours nonstop sort of thing. ⁓ or they have you wear a cannula where where you’re also taking in air and it’s diluting it. ⁓ and in exercised oxygen therapy, it’s not really possible because of the massive amount of carbon dioxide. ⁓ now, not enough oxygen. So if you if you want to measure your oxygen in your blood, the way they normally do it is a device called the pulse oximeter. You can get one for 20 bucks off Amazon. What it does is it looks at how much how many of your red blood cells are saturated with oxygen. And what you’re gonna find in most folks. Is it’s close to a hundred percent. It’s ninety-eight percent, it’s ninety-six percent, ninety-seven percent. ⁓ there’s not a lot of room in our blood for more oxygen. So that’s why it’s important that ewak can actually oxygenate our blood plasma. The same with hyperbaric does the exact same thing, it oxygenates our blood plasma. So BIll Gasiamis (24:26) Okay. I think before you go on, that’s the key ingredient. It’s oxygenating the plasma as well. Where where previously you’ve got let’s say ninety seven, ninety eight percent saturation of your red blood cells. What we’re doing is adding that little bit of extra oxygen into the space where the plasma is. That’s kind of the key difference. Brad Pitzele (24:36) Yes. And there’s two reasons why it’s important. so normally, just for comparison, you and I sitting here, maybe 2% of all the oxygen in our blood is in our plasma, so it’s not very much. ⁓ but under these conditions of IWAT and hyperbaric, we can saturate that blood plasma. And it’s important for two reasons. One, obviously, it increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, but that’s the more minor one. The more major one is that the blood plasma can get into let’s just say the nooks and crannies, smaller spaces in our body where inflammation is blocking off access of red blood cells to downstream cells. And so it can deliver a dose of oxygen where it normally is not able to get. BIll Gasiamis (25:40) You you’ve spent a lot of time on this topic by the sound of things. ⁓ and that’s really awesome. So before we talk about how to actually use a device, how to get a device, how to how to behave while you’re using a device, I wanna understand like how Oxygen and Mitochondrial Function Brad Pitzele (25:52) Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (26:02) How you notice the difference in yourself? Because a lot of people ask me what I did in my own stroke recovery. And Brad’s experience is going to be different from the stroke survivor’s experience. My experience was ⁓ I’ve got nothing from the doctors other than let’s monitor your bleed, let’s give you brain surgery. I mean, that’s not nothing. That’s amazing. Like I’m very Brad Pitzele (26:05) Yeah. Yes. BIll Gasiamis (26:31) Grateful for all of that. That removed the the blood vessel that was leaking that was going to potentially kill me. ⁓ so the immediate risk was gone. And then what what I mean I I got nothing is the specialists did their specialty and then I got nothing because they don’t do nutrition, they don’t do exercise, they don’t do meditation, they do brain surgery. And it’s really important for stroke survivors to understand that when you go to a doctor, a neurologist, whoever. Brad Pitzele (26:55) Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (27:00) They do a specific thing, and once they’ve done it, they can’t do anything else. And you need to get over the fact that you ⁓ might feel disappointment at the at that I don’t know where to go next, and they don’t know where to send you. Okay, they’re not trained and they cannot legally send you elsewhere. That’s why you’re kind of on your own. So I did meditation, I did nutrition, I did all this kind of stuff and Brad Pitzele (27:16) Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (27:27) Somebody who’s interviewed you is Dave Asprey. I would I’ve been following Dave Asprey and a whole bunch of other guys ⁓ probably since around 2012, 2013. And what I learned was how do I reduce the inflammation in my brain? And I had that one area of inquiry, the one area of inquiry that I could personally impact positively by taking out inflammatory foods from my diet. And before that it was, you know, ⁓ processed white bread, it was alcohol, it was cigarettes, ⁓ it was all the stuff that you get in a packet that doesn’t really help to nourish the body, right? So I went back to basics. We’ll call it just for the simplicity of the explanation, we’ll call it protein, ⁓ vegetables and basic carbohydrates like rice or potato. And then what I found was that inflammation decreased, and that was a game changer in how I experienced my brain. And it was a game changer in how quickly I improved neurologically. But just so that people know, it wasn’t the be all end all, it didn’t remove the damaged cells that still are in my head that mean I experienced my the left side of my body in a completely different way than my right side. I’ve got numbness, proprioception issues. I’ve got ⁓ tingling, I’ve got burning, I’ve got ⁓ spasticity, you know, the muscles are tight. So all that stuff is still there. But I have a better experience of the rest of my body and brain because of the things that I took out. But what I didn’t have was the link between exercise, which I do, light exercise, because I’m a stroke survivor. I can’t. use the left side of my body like I used to. so I would do exercise ⁓ like riding an electric bike because it’s easier to pedal, like walking and like doing very light weights at the gym. ⁓ but I didn’t have that oxygen part of the the therapy. And that’s kind of why I interviewed the guys about hyperbaric to understand how oxygen supports how mimicking i a hypoxic brain in the chamber supports ⁓ so how how does like what’s the next part like how does that support the brain to heal let’s give stroke survivors an understanding so that they can kind of grasp that I know we spoke about how oxygen gets into the ⁓ into the red blood cell we spoke about how it gets into the plasma but like Brad Pitzele (30:15) Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (30:20) Why is that the next step? Brad Pitzele (30:21) What’s it too? Yeah. It’s a good question. I think you’re right. I you know, we don’t I will say we don’t try to go out and pitch like exercise with oxygen therapy is a panacea or it’s everything for everyone. Even the name of our company, ⁓ one thousand roads, is about paying homage to everyone’s own healing journey and recognizing everyone’s unique journey. So I’ll say that, but So I’ll say that, but what I found about oxygen was in IWA in particular. What was fascinating to me was for me when I was dealing with Lyme disease, which similar to folks who are dealing with the stroke, there’s a variety of different symptoms and s from different causes. And I was trying to treat all these things with different protocols, different supplements that and I found that when I started digging into oxygen, I was shocked at how many of them came back to it. So when you have A stroke, often there’s a lot of ⁓ emerging research about mitochondrial dysfunction. And this is interestingly, mitochondrial dysfunction. Now ten years ago when I was researching it, no one heard of it or cared about it. And it’s really burst onto the scene because you’re gonna find it ⁓ At the heart of so many chronic health conditions, right? ⁓ you’re gonna it’s actually they’re looking at it in cancers, ⁓ chronic illnesses of all sorts, Alzheimer’s, all sorts of cognitive and ⁓ autoimmune conditions, etc., etc. So ⁓ you have this disrupted mitochondria, right? So there was a period of time when your cells were not getting enough energy, whether it was a hemorrhagic stroke and Blood wasn’t being delivered to those cells, so no nutrients, no oxygen, or an ischemic stroke where they were just cut off ⁓ because of a clot or whatnot. And so they were not getting nutrients. In each of these cases, what happens immediately when the cell runs out of oxygen, like I was talking about that brownout, it goes from aerobic respiration to anaerobic respiration. And anaerobic respiration, ⁓ it’s It only can produce 5% of the energy as aerobic. So the cell is in a low energy state, which is the first problem, which means it doesn’t have energy to repair, it doesn’t have energy to take out the trash, detoxify. so it’s kind of stuck. But also ⁓ it creates a lot of metabolic waste. So it creates lactic acid, it creates free radicals, all these things produce more inflammation, like you were talking about. So Now we’ve got these mitochondria, which are dysfunctional. They don’t have the energy to repair. They don’t have the energy to take out all these dead cells or ⁓ you know, all these other byproducts of the immune system and the natural kind of response to this damage, which then leaves more of it hanging around to produce more damage, and they’re producing more damage themselves. So it’s kind of like this swirl, and it’s ⁓ you know, it’s a downward swirl, if you will. ⁓ so When you can re-oxygenate the mitochondria, the first thing you’re doing is you’re giving them the energy to do whatever it is they need to do. ⁓ and that can be the immediate like feeling sharper, like, ⁓ I feel like I can get my thoughts together quicker. ⁓ it can be, ⁓ I feel like I’m more in control of my emotions. And I I don’t feel like sometimes I have a disproportionate emotional response to something. It can be I I don’t have that brain fog. ⁓ you know, that sort of thing. Or I literally have energy. So our brain actually consumes like 20% of all the oxygen in our body. And it’s only like two percent of the mass. So it’s like punching 10x its weight, right? So when your body starts running low on oxygen, it starts conserving. And the one of the things it tells you to do is like cool it, like stop using your muscles. You’re tired. You need to just sit there and veg out. BIll Gasiamis (34:06) Mm-hmm. Brad Pitzele (34:27) while our mitochondria try to catch up. And so that’s often that chronic fatigue that folks with a variety of health conditions, including stroke, feel, which is their bodies like, stop using energy, we don’t have enough. We need to redeploy it for something else more pressing. And so When you can reestablish normal oxygenation, it improves energy. ⁓ it improves sleep, it improves memory. and the the cells have energy to start repairing and detoxifying. ⁓ and then obviously I always think it’s cool because we’re pairing it with oc with exercise. And there’s so much research on the benefits of exercise. You mentioned it was so important, Bill, in in your healing journey. And you know, we know how important exercise is for a stroke survivor. Well, now we’re pairing it with oxygen and we’re using that exercise to catapult more of that oxygen around the body through the circulatory system while your blood vessels are dilated and opening up. So if you’re still dealing with blockages in your microcirculation, which most stroke survivors are. You’re opening them as wide as they they naturally can at that moment, and that’s when we’re feeding more oxygen to them. So it works it kind of hand in hand in that respect. BIll Gasiamis (35:48) All right. Now one glitch. Stroke survivors often are struggling to get into the physical recovery, right? Because the body goes offline, one of the legs doesn’t work, one of the arms doesn’t work. It’s a real challenge, right? So how how can we benefit from that even though we are at just after the acute phase where there is not a lot of capability for Brad Pitzele (36:00) Yes. It’s perfect. Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (36:17) physicality and I I say that so that the stroke survivors listening know that what I’m leading to is that early on it’s probably harder to do ⁓ physical therapy, exercise, et cetera. But again, with time and hope, all of those things can improve. Right. So I I wanna put that out there for stroke survivors, but also like it’s a can it’s a it’s a constraint. Brad Pitzele (36:48) Yeah. And you know, because a lot of our customers are dealing with chronic illness, this is a question that’s not uncommon is like, yeah, but I can’t I’m not out here to run a mile, Brad. I’m like eighty years old and I’m sick or whatever it is. The really ⁓ the really cool thing about ⁓ Ewatt is that it will meet you where you are at. So there is something all of us can do. The goal is to increase your heart rate and your circulation. Cost and Accessibility of Oxygen Therapy Devices and breathe the oxygen. So there’s a few ways you can do it. you know, it doesn’t have to be banging it out on a treadmill trying to get your seven minute mile. ⁓ you don’t need to do that. We have folks, you know, depending on where they are, you can start with slow walking on a treadmill. You can start with calisthenics. You can start with stretching. ⁓ gentle aerobics in your living room. You can start by, you know, lifting weights. You could be sitting and lifting weights with the the hand that’s not. We have folks, and this is probably not so much for ⁓ stroke survivors, but maybe jumping on a ⁓ a rebounder, like a little trampoline if you’ve got the balance one with the handle. ⁓ we have people using under-the-desk pedal bikes, the ones you can get for $49 on Amazon while you’re sitting. BIll Gasiamis (38:03) Beautiful. Brad Pitzele (38:04) while you’re sitting in a chair. And then for the folks who can’t do any of that, we have we even have them doing what I call passive Ewatt, which is they will breathe the oxygen while they get in like a an infrared ⁓ sauna blanket. So infrared sauna will increase your heart rate. And so you will get some benefit out of it. And what normally happens, the the really cool thing about exercising with oxygen is The first thing folks notice, the very first benefit most folks notice when they start doing is the exercise is easier. So I always describe this like if you were ⁓ jogging on a treadmill at, I don’t know, pick a number, you know, four miles an hour and you put the mask on, you wouldn’t feel like you were getting the same exercise at four miles an hour. You you crank it up to four and a half, and then later you crank it up more. And Your endurance actually improves much more quickly than if you were just doing exercise alone. ⁓ and there’s a ton of actually research on you know Olympic athletes using it for performance enhancement, which is not what we’re using for in this, but it’s kind of a nice little side effect. So we have folks who come to us who who are out of condition. We’re not talking about the physical disabilities, but out of condition, we’re like, I couldn’t do. And they’re shocked at what they’re doing and they come back and tell us in three months, look what I’m doing, sort of thing. ⁓ But it will meet you where you’re at. So if you want to do passive Ewatt, you can do that for a while as you’re working and as you start to feel better. Then maybe you’re using the under desk pedal bike. And as you’re getting your balance back and feeling better, maybe it’s a a real stationary bike later or walking on a treadmill and so on and so forth. ⁓ the goal isn’t to bust hump and like try to, you know, get a new record. As a matter of fact, I find that for most folks that sets you back. You wanna kind of you wanna do within an envelope that you’re comfortable with because If we work out too hard, also we set ourselves back because in most chronic health conditions and in stroke, additionally, we talked about this fatigue that’s due to an energy deficit. So if you go out there and overwork, you’re just putting your body in more of a deficit and potentially putting it in more of an inflammatory environment. And we’re trying to do this at a level that’s in you know anti-inflammatory and helping you recover. BIll Gasiamis (40:30) I love that. I love your whole explanation. So in my what I was hoping was you were gonna say that I could just sit there and almost do nothing ⁓ as a stroke survivor, where I’m completely in in just, you know, like week three of the acute after the acute phase, and fatigue is a massive issue and energy is a massive issue, and I’m barely able to stay awake, ⁓ and all of that stuff. And then ⁓ you could do just I hope you I was hoping you were gonna say, But you said the equivalent of ⁓ chair yoga, you know, where all I had to do was just move an arm or move a leg and do something just to get me physically going and then it would benefit. That’s what I love about it. The under-the-leg pedal bike, ⁓ under-the-desk pedal bike is one of the best things because you can strap in your leg with the deficits if you have a leg that has deficits, and you can do all the or the majority of the pedaling with the other leg, which is strapped in. Brad Pitzele (41:07) Mm. BIll Gasiamis (41:29) And you don’t you’re not gonna fall over ’cause you sit in in a chair. ⁓ probably you’re doing it inside your house so the the temperature, the weather is always perfect and ⁓ and you don’t have to door for long, right? You only have to door for a few minutes to start with. Brad Pitzele (41:45) And you’re pulling that other leg around and it’s starting to fire inside here and rebuild those connections. And and as you know, exercise increases ⁓ brain drive neurotrophic factor, which is a growth factor in our brain for BIll Gasiamis (41:51) Mm. Brad Pitzele (42:00) neuroplasticity. So you’re getting you’re getting all of these benefits. So you to your point, for someone who’s if it’s my right leg’s not working and I’m strapped in and my left leg’s doing it, my right leg is firing and it’s firing those neurons at the exact time you have that B D N F as it’s called. So BIll Gasiamis (42:17) BDNF’s amazing. And I also interviewed ⁓ recently a gentleman who ⁓ had spoken about ⁓ Jack Clifford on episode 402 who spoke about kind of ⁓ a protocol that enables you to regenerate blood vessels around the area that’s injured ⁓ to increase the oxygenation and the blood flow ⁓ to potentially those areas where ⁓ brain is offline, not dead. ⁓ so all of these things, ⁓ the previous episode that I recorded with Jack, your episode right now, like all are things that you can do that support brain health, brain recovery, ⁓ overcoming all the some of the challenges that stroke causes. And what I love about this specifically is that you can do it from your house. and you don’t have to go anywhere, but there is a cost. So let’s talk about the cost a little bit because I I want to mention it because of the massive difference to hyperbaric, which can cost up to sixty grand if you go on the right protocol. And ⁓ that’s unattainable for most people, let alone a stroke survivor who just lost their ability to earn ⁓ and may not have sixty grand to splash. Brad Pitzele (43:48) Yeah. BIll Gasiamis (43:48) ⁓ so what is the cost of getting a machine, setting it up and putting it in your house? Brad Pitzele (43:54) Yeah. So we sell two different machines. ⁓ we have one machine that’s eighteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars and the other one that’s twenty-four ninety-nine. ⁓ that’s everything you need to get going other than the exercise equipment. and the machines last a long, long time. I think I You know, I think we actually we’ve been in business since 2018 and we had our first customer come back and tell us they wore out their machine like this year. So I have to stop saying we’ve never had one wore wear out yet. So we’ve had one. ⁓ so it it’s one of I think that’s one of the things that’s great about it is it’s something you can do in your house. It’s something that doesn’t take a lot of time. When I was dealing with my chronic health issue, I was joke around about the ceremonies of counting pills and doing this modality and doing that. And they all in stroke survivors, I think, recognize the same thing. It starts to crowd out your life. And then eventually you kind of throw your hands up. You’re like, I it might be helping, but I just don’t have four hours a day for all this stuff. Like I just I need to go on and and live my life too. So it’s something that ⁓ it’s 15 minutes. You do it three to five times a week in your home. ⁓ it’s a one time expense and then it’s you know, it’s something you’ll have for many, many years. BIll Gasiamis (45:12) I love it. Where are you located? Brad Pitzele (45:15) We’re in a Dallas, Texas area. BIll Gasiamis (45:17) Okay. And are these things easy to get and distribute throughout the United States and other places in the world? I don’t know I’ve never heard of it before. So are there other people around who who sell a product that’s similar or can you access them easily? Brad Pitzele (45:35) Well, we do ship worldwide. ⁓ we ship with US power, so people get a power converter we’ve sold to the UK, to Australia, to all over Europe, Asia, ⁓ South America, ⁓ and of course across North America as well. So ⁓ they’re readily accessible. Kind of our mission was You know, when the doctor asked me if I’d make him first patients, I I I I thought about what you were saying about how like spending sixty grand to find out if something’s gonna work. And I felt like I was taking advantage a lot when I was very ill. So we wanted to make something that was accessible to people who are chronically ill. They might not have the ability to earn money. They’re on a fixed in like I have a I guess a deep personal experience and empathy there sort of thing. So ⁓ that’s yeah. So we ship worldwide. BIll Gasiamis (46:27) Yeah. If somebody wanted to reach out to you just to get more information, to have a chat with you, to look at your website, where would they go? Brad Pitzele (46:35) They would go to 1000roads.com slash stroke recovery. We do. And you can find it at the bottom of that webpage, but it’s 1000 Roads HQ. BIll Gasiamis (46:42) And you have a YouTube channel. Okay. What kind of ⁓ things can people find on the YouTube channel? Brad Pitzele (46:56) you can find everything about protocols, benefits, ⁓ how to use it. ⁓ we hit have some customer testimonials and parts of that. ⁓ just talking about the science of it, people’s experience with it, et cetera, et cetera, different use reasons people use it. BIll Gasiamis (47:17) I think it’s very important to bring information like this to stroke survivors so that they can access things in their own home that’s going to make their life better. I wrote a book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, for the explicit reason to give people like a path forward, a journey forward as to how to ⁓ s how to kind of obtain the silver lining in stroke recovery. And when I wrote it ⁓ in 2018, when I started writing it, something like that, 2018, 2019, I was lacking a lot of the extra pieces that I could put into ⁓ the mindset chapter, for example, or the exercise chapter, or, you know, the nutrition chapter. And In the last five or six years, I’ve been picking up those pieces to sort of attach to those chapters because they’re really relevant. And with the exercise chapter, I think this protocol was the one thing that was missing because I made the point of how important exercise was. I didn’t make the point of how you can exercise and get more bang for your buck during that exercise by Increasing the amount of oxygen that you were getting into your ⁓ bloodstream. How would I have known that if I hadn’t come across the science, which I hadn’t? Plus, there’s only so much you can put in each chapter, but this is the perfect addition. Like, and I love it. So I can go on and on about how much I think this is amazing. Brad, I really ⁓ want to thank you for reaching out and joining me on the podcast. Thanks for the work that you do. I’m glad that you’ve been able to get your health back and now you’re helping other people. Brad Pitzele (49:06) Thank you so much, Bill. I appreciate you having me on. BIll Gasiamis (49:08) Well, that’s it for another episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Might be worth listening to it again. The science here is worth sitting with, oxygenating the blood plasma, reopening inflamed microcapillaries, giving mitochondria what they need to shift out of that low energy state. And the fact that it can be done at home at a fraction of the cost of hyperbaric oxygen therapy makes it worth knowing about. If you want to learn more, or explore the equipment, head to 1000Roads.com Stroke Recovery. Brad has arranged a discount for listeners of this show of between one and 500 dollars, depending on the package you choose. This episode pairs well with the episode 402 with Jack Clifford, which covers a protocol for regenerating blood vessels around the injured area of the brain. The two conversations complement each other. Worth going back to if you haven’t heard it yet. Now, if this episode was useful, please share it with someone who could benefit. And my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became, the Best Thing That Happened, is available at recoveryafterstroke dot com slash book. And if you’d like to support the show financially, I would love it if you could. You can go and do that via patreon.com/slash recovery after stroke. I’m Bill Garciamas. Thanks for listening. See you on the next episode. The post Brad Pitzele – How Exercise With Oxygen Therapy Brings Hyperbaric-Style Benefits Home appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

I have been looking forward to this conversation for a while, and it did not disappoint.Michael Roderick is a return guest, who was on the show back in 2021 (episode 118), in my very first year. We lost touch for a while, and then something funny happened. His name kept coming up in rooms he was not in. A guest from New York turned out to be a friend of his. That friend introduced me to two people right here in Vancouver, and both of them knew Michael too. Before long, I had no choice but to reach out. Which, as Michael himself would say, is exactly how referability is supposed to work.Michael went from high school English teacher to Broadway producer in under two years, not because he had the right connections, but because he understood something most people miss. It is not about access. It is about interest. Today he runs Small Pond Enterprises, helping coaches, consultants, and subject matter experts build brands that are referable, messaging that is memorable, and ideas that are unforgettable.In this episode, we get into two things that I think are going to stay with you. The first is his AIM framework for referability, three principles that determine whether people talk about you when you are not in the room. The second is his brand-new Triple Threat framework, borrowed straight from the theater world, which helps experts understand how their natural thinking talents should shape the way they market themselves, build relationships, and get paid for their brains.And we close with something that felt timely and true, why this moment, with all its noise and uncertainty and AI overload, is actually the greatest opportunity for people who know how to have a real conversation.Key TakeawaysReferability comes down to three things: AIM. Accessibility, Influence, and Memory. If people cannot easily understand what you do, feel motivated to share it, and remember it well enough to talk about it later, you will stay invisible no matter how good you are.Stop leading with your solution. Most experts spend all their time talking about what they have solved. Michael makes the case that the real work is in articulating the problem so clearly that the person across the table says, that is exactly what I am going through. Trust follows from there.Know your thinking talent order. Whether you are a Scientist, Celebrity, or Magician, the order matters as much as the talent itself. Leaning into the wrong talent, because someone told you that is what marketing requires, is one of the most common reasons experts stay stuck.Magicians show, they do not tell. If innovation is your top talent, the best thing you can do is demonstrate your thinking in real time. Michael did exactly that in this conversation, breaking down my own triple threat live on air. That is the magic trick.Human connection has never been more valuable. In a world where people are spending more and more time talking to AI, a real conversation with a real person feels different. The connectors who lean into that right now are the ones who will stand out.I recommend you check out Michael and his work at: smallpondenterprises.comand if you are interested, sign up for his Daily email musings … you won't be disappointed.Or you can reach him directly at: michael@smallpondenterprises.comIn appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by checking this presentation page - you won't regret it.AND … Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky listener!Connect with me:http://JanicePorter.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1https://www.instagram.com/socjanice/Thanks for listening!Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode andthink that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the socialmedia buttons on this page.Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note inthe comment section below!Subscribe to the podcastIf you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you cansubscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.Leave us an Apple Podcast reviewRatings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us andgreatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple, whichexposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute,please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.

Discover Apple's WWDC 2026 highlights with a focus on Siri AI, iOS 27, and hands‑on insights from Steven Scott, Shelly Brisbin, and Michael Babcock. Learn how Apple's new AI, on‑screen awareness, and password automation could transform accessibility and productivity. In this WWDC round‑table, Steven Scott is joined by Shelly Brisbin and Michael Babcock to unpack Apple's 2026 keynote. They explore how Siri AI builds on 2024's promises with personal context, on‑screen awareness, and cross‑device conversation history—while also addressing concerns about real‑world usefulness and accessibility. Key topics include: Siri AI's three pillars: personal context, broad world knowledge, and on‑screen awareness Shortcuts with natural language creation, making automation more approachable Safari improvements, including “Describe an Extension” and Notify Me features Passwords app upgrades, with automatic weak password replacement Accessibility implications, from voice customisation to visual intelligence Reflections on Apple's low‑key keynote, Tim Cook's near‑farewell tone, and the balance between promised and delivered features ----Follow on:YouTube: https://www.doubletaponair.com/youtubeX (formerly Twitter): https://www.doubletaponair.com/xInstagram: https://www.doubletaponair.com/instagramTikTok: https://www.doubletaponair.com/tiktokThreads: https://www.doubletaponair.com/threadsFacebook: https://www.doubletaponair.com/facebookLinkedIn: https://www.doubletaponair.com/linkedinSubscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://www.doubletaponair.com/appleSpotify: https://www.doubletaponair.com/spotifyRSS: https://www.doubletaponair.com/podcastiHeadRadio: https://www.doubletaponair.com/iheartAbout Double TapHosted by the insightful duo, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece, Double Tap is a treasure trove of information for anyone who's blind or partially sighted and has a passion for tech. Steven and Shaun not only demystify tech, but they also regularly feature interviews and welcome guests from the community, fostering an interactive and engaging environment. Tune in every day of the week, and you'll discover how technology can seamlessly integrate into your life, enhancing daily tasks and experiences, even if your sight is limited."Double Tap" is a registered trademark of Double Tap Productions Inc. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Accessibility sometimes comes with a stigma, since it becomes a discussion topic when someone has a disability that prevents them to do something that they would like to, like accessing an admin interface because they're blind.In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Mike Gifford talks about how he put accessibility on the map in the Drupal community, and through that for the internet.Learn more about Mike's journey here: Learn more about:- Joining a global community- Moving faster in your business with OSS- What is accessibility- Types of disabilities- Accessibility focus area in Drupal- How to increase accessibility in your web resources#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

6/7/26 Tom walks through several stories of people encountering Jesus, and we witness his constant presence and accessibility.

Today's Ministry Monday features Annie Donnellon, an NPM certified cantor, as well as Rebecca Schaffer Wells and Joe Simmons, both cantors and leaders in the field. In this Ministry Monday episode, we explore the call to being a cantor in ministry, ways to strengthen ministerial and musical skills, and considerations for Directors of Music to support inclusion for both blind and sighted cantors for music ministers in a program.

Discover how the Agiga Echo Vision smart glasses empower blind and visually impaired users with live AI scene descriptions, transit directions, text reading, and seamless integration with Be My Eyes and Aira. In this episode of Double Tap Weekend, Shaun Preece explores the growing world of smart glasses for visually impaired users, featuring an in-depth demo from listener Roger Cusson. Roger showcases the Agiga Echo Vision glasses, demonstrating their unique hardware features—like haptic battery indicators and audible case alerts—and their powerful AI capabilities. Listeners get a real-world look at scene descriptions, live AI navigation, transit directions, and hands-free text reading. Roger also tests visual interpretation services, calling both Be My Eyes and Aira to validate video clarity and real-time assistance. Shaun reflects on how devices specifically designed for blind users stand apart from mainstream options like Meta Ray-Bans or upcoming Google and Apple smart glasses. Relevant Links Agiga Echo Vision: https://agiga.ai ----Follow on:YouTube: https://www.doubletaponair.com/youtubeX (formerly Twitter): https://www.doubletaponair.com/xInstagram: https://www.doubletaponair.com/instagramTikTok: https://www.doubletaponair.com/tiktokThreads: https://www.doubletaponair.com/threadsFacebook: https://www.doubletaponair.com/facebookLinkedIn: https://www.doubletaponair.com/linkedinSubscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://www.doubletaponair.com/appleSpotify: https://www.doubletaponair.com/spotifyRSS: https://www.doubletaponair.com/podcastiHeadRadio: https://www.doubletaponair.com/iheartAbout Double TapHosted by the insightful duo, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece, Double Tap is a treasure trove of information for anyone who's blind or partially sighted and has a passion for tech. Steven and Shaun not only demystify tech, but they also regularly feature interviews and welcome guests from the community, fostering an interactive and engaging environment. Tune in every day of the week, and you'll discover how technology can seamlessly integrate into your life, enhancing daily tasks and experiences, even if your sight is limited."Double Tap" is a registered trademark of Double Tap Productions Inc. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week Rob, Ryan, and Lis kick things off with failed catchphrases, and Lis' mysterious “voodoo diet” before welcoming guest Shanell Matos, community manager at Right Hear. Shanell explains why Right Hear is an orientation app rather than a navigation app, how Bluetooth beacons and powerful markers give blind and low-vision users rich information about their surroundings without bossy turn-by-turn directions, and how the system is being used in places like stadiums, hospitals, museums, universities, restaurants, and more.  Show Transcript https://atbanter.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/at-banter-podcast-episode-460-shanell-matos.pdf Show Notes Right Hear https://www.right-hear.com/ AT Banter is brought to you by Canadian Assistive Technology, providing sales and training in Assistive Technology and Accessibility with over 30 years of knowledge and experience. Visit them online at www.canasstech.com or call toll-free 1-844-795-8324 or visit their Assistive Technology Showroom at 106 – 828 West 8th Avenue, Vancouver. Need repairs on your device? Chaos Technical Services offers service and support on almost any piece of Assistive Technology, while also providing parts and batteries. Visit them online at www.chaostechnicalservices.com or call 778-847-6840.

Episode 96: Arwen Kathke - Vision Accessibility in Board Games - Top 5 Food-Themed Board Games - Hanging out with loved ones and friendsThe amazing Arwen Kathke joins me to talk about her Cardboard Time podcast and her passion to increase vision accessibility in board games. We get hungry talk about our top 5 food themed games and going down some rabbit holes. Ending with good memories of hanging out with loved ones and friends.00:00:00 Intro00:00:29 Get to know Arwen00:01:49 How did the Cardboard Time Podcast start?00:03:01 Why the name Cardboard Time?00:07:12 Vision Accessibility in Board GamesColorblind Games00:18:01 Top 5 Food-Themed Board GamesSang Kee Peking Duck HouseBGG “Theme: Food Cooking” Tag List00:24:24 Formage & Formaggio: We Love Cheese00:32:13 Point Salad: A Game for EveryonePoint Galaxy00:35:52 Coffee Roaster: A Solo ExperienceIn Front of the Elevators00:40:13 Three Sisters: Harvest Edition: Expanding the Game00:47:41 Chicken Fried Dice: Real-Time Roll and WriteAshwin and Rob on BGG Podcast Ep. 9100:51:35 Wok and Roll: Nostalgia in a Game00:55:00 Diced Veggies: A Unique Chopping Mechanism00:59:14 Sushi Go Party!: A Fun Twist on Drafting GamesHonorable Mentions01:04:39 Pizza Roles - Yummy Deduction Game01:07:44 Sweet Lands - The Charm of Heavy Strategy Games01:13:26 Moments of PositivityBig Gay Dinner - Rose Gauntlet FoundationBGG Spring 2026Buc-ee'sSheetz01:27:45 Where can you find Arwen?The Cardboard Time Podcast on SpotifyCardboard Time WebsiteBluesky: @CardboardTimeInstagram: @Cardboard_TimeYoutube:@CardboardTimeConventions: Origins Game FairOmaha Gaming Con (added after the recording)Pax Unplugged 01:31:51 Outro(Please note that these time stamps might not be accurate due to the use of dynamic ads.)You can flip your game night by picking up DNUP.https://www.dnup.game/en/Web: https://boardgamegeek.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@boardgamegeekTwitter: https://twitter.com/BoardGameGeekEmail: podcast@boardgamegeek.com

Send us Fan MailEpisode Title & Number: Claiming Your Space: Lynn Jensen on Self-Advocacy & Everyday Courage 6-#5Summary of the show: This episode of Bold Blind Beauty on A.I.R. features Lynn Jensen, a seasoned vision rehabilitation therapist and author of The Best Kept Secrets for Travelers with Sight Loss. Today's conversation redefines self-advocacy as an everyday practice of quiet courage for the blind and low-vision community. Moving beyond public speaking and policy, Lynn Jensen discusses challenging low societal expectations, standing tall in your autonomy, and using travel as a masterclass for building confidence. Key topics & timestamps:00:00 - Why Self Advocacy Is Essential for Blind and Low Vision Individuals02:24  - Meet Lynn Jensen: From Nurse to Vision Rehabilitation Specialist 03:25 - Losing Sight Suddenly at 27: Lynn's Personal Journey 05:12 - How Peer Support Builds Confidence After Vision Loss 07:07 - Creating Community Through Vision Rehabilitation and Workshops 09:37 - Learning to Trust Yourself, Others, and Your Mobility Skills 11:52 - Travel, Independence, and the Power of Self Advocacy 13:49 - Hidden Disabilities and the Biggest Barrier to Accessibility 18:03 - Raising Awareness: Why Representation Matters 20:35 - Practical Self Advocacy Strategies You Can Start Using Today24:30 - Communicating Needs and Setting Boundaries 33:25 - Advocacy, Resources, and Community Connections Lynn's Bio:  Lynn Jensen is a registered nurse, a certified vision rehabilitation therapist, and the author of Best Kept Secrets for Travelers With Sight Loss. She lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada, and enjoys traveling and spending time with her family and her new and retired guide dogs, Quest and Misty. Connect with Lynn: Website: blindtraveltips.comEmail: info@blindtraveltips.comConnect with Bold Blind Beauty to learn more about our advocacy:Join our Instagram community @BoldBlindBeautySubscribe to our YouTube channel @BoldBlindBeautyCheck out our website www.boldblindbeauty.comMusic Credit: "Ambient Uplifting Harmonic Happy" By Panda-x-music  https://audiojungle.net/item/ambient-uplifting-harmonic-happy/46309958Thanks for listening!❤️

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed El' Deity Princey.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed El' Deity Princey.

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y6Jck3rU5FI  On this episode of Disability Deep Dive, hosts Jodi and Keith interview Mark Miller, founder and CEO of Inclusion Impact Accessibility and a contributor to the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model, about what it means for state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA and the implications of the DOJ Title II rule with an (now extended) April 24, 2027, deadline for entities serving 50,000+ people. Mark explains WCAG, common barriers across websites, documents, apps, videos, and kiosks; the inefficiency of retrofitting versus building accessibility into design, development, QA, and governance; and why overlays don't deliver "full compliance." The episode also discusses media representation, including CODA, Bridgerton, The Pitt, and a Deep Cut analysis of Todd Browning's 1932 film Freaks, weighing its historical visibility of disabled performers against harmful language, exploitation, and horror framing. Inclusion Impact Accessibility: https://inclusionimpact.co/ Mark Miller: https://inclusionimpact.co/mark-miller/

No matter your role, experience or industry, we all (mostly) waste hours a week doing the same thing: manually creating slides. 

Transcript: rmad.ac/AIAe091This week's guest is Lawrence Carter-Long. Lawrence is Director of Engagement for ReelAbilities International, where he works at the intersection of disability, media, culture, and access. A longtime advocate, curator, commentator, and creator. He has worked with the National Council on Disability, Turner Classic Movies, Sundance, PBS, NPR, the BBC, and other organizations to expand how disability is represented, understood, and experienced. He also originated the Disabled #SayTheWord campaign, which helped reclaim disability as a term of identity, power, and pride.Connect with Lawrence:ReelAbilities InternationalLawrence Carter-Long (@lcarterlong) • Instagram photos and videosLawrence Carter-Long - ReelAbilities Film Festival | LinkedInEmail: lawrence@reelabilities.org.Connect with the Rocky Mountain ADA Center at RockyMountainADA.org or find us on social media. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts!

Join us on the Jeep Talk Show as we sit down with Natasha from Lithia Fireside RV Rental! From delivering campers instead of hitting the trails at major Jeep events to building an incredible Jeep collection, Natasha shares her journey blending the Jeep lifestyle with the RV rental business. In this episode, we dive into: - Her love for Jeeps and off-roading (including her Barbie-Con TJ, pumpkin Gladiator, and Tuscadero Pink 392 Rubicon) - The challenges of balancing business growth with trail time - Why Jeeping and camping go hand-in-hand - Real talk about Florida wheeling, mud, Jeep Beach, and saltwater Jeep maintenance - How she and her husband built their RV rental franchise with Fireside RV Rental - Tips for renting RVs, towing with Jeeps/Gladiators, and what to expect Natasha also shares heartwarming stories of helping families create memories and the realities of running a high-volume rental fleet. **

Most people want to stay in their own homes as they age, but very few think about what it actually takes to make that possible. In this episode of The Matt Feret Show, Matt sits down with Erica Sell, Founder of Harmony Home Medical, to discuss aging in place, home accessibility, fall prevention, caregiving, and the smart modifications that can help older adults maintain their independence longer.Erica shares practical advice on preventing falls, creating dementia-friendly living spaces, planning home renovations with accessibility in mind, and avoiding costly mistakes that many families make when mobility needs suddenly arise. She also explains how caregivers can reduce physical strain, what technologies are changing the future of aging at home, and why small changes made today can save families significant stress, expense, and disruption later. Whether you're planning for yourself, helping aging parents, or navigating caregiving responsibilities, this conversation offers valuable insights into creating a safer, more comfortable future at home.My website with more Medicare resources, books, courses, and more: https://prepareformedicare.comI recommend my wife's Medicare insurance agency, but there's never any obligation or pressure to work with her team. Here's more information if you're interested: https://brickhouseagency.comThe Matt Feret Show is about thriving in midlife, retirement, and beyond. Each week, Matt shares smart conversations on Medicare, Social Security, retirement planning, health, wealth, wellness, caregiving, and life after 50.Explore more episodes and sign up for The Matt Feret Newsletter: TheMattFeretShow.comNeed Medicare help? Book a no-obligation consultation: BrickhouseAgency.comWatch full episodes on YouTube: The Matt Feret ShowSubscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube for more insights on wealth, wisdom, and wellness in retirement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host of the 21st Century Disability podcast, Hollis Peirce joins Moped Outlaws to discuss accessibility, disability culture, friendship, humor, resilience, and what it means to live fully in a world not always designed for everyone.

Most teams can identify friction in their customer experience. The challenge is convincing leadership to invest in fixing it. Digital leaders from Walmart, FanDuel, US Bank, and American Eagle have all faced that challenge. In this encore episode, hosts Chuck Moxley and Nick Paladino revisit key lessons on elevating frictionless experiences to the C-suite and reveal what separates ideas that get funded from those that don't.Vijay Jayaraman from Walmart explains how teams use peak events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to quantify the impact of customer experience issues before they become major business problems. Shawn Sheely from US Bank shares how his team reframed accessibility from a compliance requirement into a billion-dollar market opportunity, helping reduce onboarding costs by 70%.Catherine Gignac from American Eagle offers a powerful perspective on designers as connectors, bringing together the work of dozens of stakeholders into a single customer experience.Scott Smith from FanDuel challenges a common assumption: stop obsessing over competitors. Your customers chose your brand for a reason. Instead of copying what others are doing, focus on understanding why your customers engage with you and what keeps them coming back.You'll also hear practical insights on measuring friction, defining the "spine" of an experience, interpreting customer behavior data, and translating customer pain points into business outcomes that executives care about.Key Actionable Takeaways:Quantify friction using peak seasonal periods to justify investment - A problem affecting 10,000 Walmart users today could impact millions on Black Friday; use known high-traffic events to correlate current issues with future revenue impact and demonstrate why fixing seemingly trivial problems matters nowReframe compliance as market opportunity not checkbox - US Bank saw accessibility as a billion-dollar market rather than legal requirement, reduced onboarding costs 70%, and opened entirely new customer channels by simplifying experiences for assistive technology usersPrioritize customer voice over competitive benchmarking - Your customers chose you because your brand resonates with them specifically; copying competitor journeys misses the point because their customers are fundamentally different people with different needs and preferencesWant more tips and strategies about creating frictionless digital experiences? Subscribe to our newsletter! https://www.thefrictionlessexperience.com/frictionless/ Download the Five Step Site Speed Target Playbook: http://bluetriangle.com/playbookDom Costa's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dominickcosta  Nick Paladino's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/npaladino Chuck Moxley's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chuck-moxley Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(03:18) Quantifying friction(06:20) Vijay peak periods(11:10) Black Friday first impressions(15:15) Scott traffic conversions(20:40) Sean accessibility market(27:00) Compliance reframe(31:25) Team alignment(38:00) Katherine designers as builders(43:40) Voice of customer(45:25) Customer vs competitor focus(53:15) Vijay customer first(57:00) Katherine friction tools(01:01:20) Data interpretation(01:03:31) Conclusion

It's an all new That Real Blind Tech Show super cool Brian demo, as Brian noticed a few things going on on the Innosearch and a long over due accessibility web improvement to amazon on the Mac.   Brian starts off discussing the newly implemented under $25 fees that are appearing on Innosearch. He walks you through a demo of searching for Men's Boxers, adding to the cart, and then the new under $25 handling fee Innosearch has implemented. Next he demos the bizarre behavior on Innosearch after you decide to look for a second product. These demos are done on the Mac using Safari. You may experience different behavior on the PC or in Chrome or other browsers on the Mac.   Brian then goes over to Amazon to demo the very positive and long over due heading and screen reader navigation improvements  in safari on the Mac. We now have keyboard shortcuts on the Mac that actually work in most places. Brian walks you through navigating search results in Amazon which still leave much to be desired, and then he shows you how searching directly for a product in Google might get you to the product page directly faster.   Brian attempts to use the keyboard shortcut built in to Amazon to get a product description, and when it fails to work, he then demos the fantastic new heading structure on amazon.com. He then demos how quick and simple it is to add a product to your cart with the keyboard shortcut.   To contact That Real Blind Tech Show, you can email us at ThatRealBlindTechShow@gmail.com, join our Facebook Group That Real Blind Tech Show, join us on the Twitter @BlindTechShow  

W09 New England Naturals - With Jake DeBow Jake DeBow didn't just grow up around trapping; he grew into it, built a life around it, and somehow turned frozen beaver ponds, late nights, and a sewing machine into a thriving business. In this episode, Wayne sits down in Jake's trapping shed to talk about New England Naturals, the art of fur, and why more people are starting to care about where their food and even their clothing comes from. Spoiler: beaver might be the best red meat you've never tried. Our Sponsors: Thin Green Line Podcast Don Noyes Chevrolet North American Game Warden Museum Hunt Regs WiseEye SecureIt Gun Storage XS Sights “A Cowboy in the Woods” Book Iron Skillet Seasonings Maine Operation Game Thief New Hampshire Operation Game Thief Conservation Officers of Pennsylvania North East Conservation Law Enforcement Chiefs Association International Wildlife Crimestoppers North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Association Here's what we discuss:  Kicking off the return of Warden's Watch Wild: “I've got some wild stuff going on.”  Meeting Jake DeBow, three years in the making to get him on the show  Growing up with a father who was a nuisance wildlife trapper  “It was always raccoons and skunks coming home in cage traps.”  Sports first, trapping later, rediscovering it in college and grad school  Getting into beaver trapping because “beaver meat is delicious.”  Starting a trapline together as a couple, relationship goals outdoors style  “She was never squeamish… just fascinated.”  Using everything from a beaver: meat, fur, skulls, and glands  The “rabbit holes” of natural products and curiosity  The quiet, frozen beauty of winter trapping  “There's something really special about being out there.”  Why trapping is harder to get into than hunting  Appeal for young adults after college looking for purpose and connection  Accessibility of beaver vs deer, “there's a beaver in just about every ditch.”  Feeding 50% of their red meat intake from beaver  “I've never had someone try it and not love it.”  Beaver as the “beef of the river,” rich, mild, versatile  Supplying beaver for a wild game dinner, big reactions from the crowd  Getting 9 to 12 meals plus weeks of dog food from one animal  The origins of New England Naturals and frustration with low fur prices  “We got $12 a beaver… it didn't feel right.”  Early side hustle, Etsy shop, tinctures, moose antler dog chews  Pandemic pivot and turning $2,000 and fiddleheads into a sewing machine  Teaching themselves fur sewing from scratch  Starting with beaver fur koozies and laughing about early attempts  The TikTok turning point, one video and everything sold out  “We couldn't keep up… we were sewing until 2AM!”  Hiring their first employee and outgrowing the basement  Moving into a real workspace and rapid growth over two years  Using social media for education, not just selling  Breaking misconceptions about trapping and outdated stereotypes  “Trappers were quiet for 30 years… that time is gone.”  The importance of public understanding and support  Why people are reconnecting with their food  “There's something special about being responsible for what's on your plate.”  That same mindset applied to clothing and materials  Fur as durable, warm, and biodegradable  Plastic clothing “is going to be your grandkids' problem.”  Product focus on practical, hard-use gear  Core products: muffs, mittens, bomber hats, and hand warmers  “We want fur in people's hands that actually gets used.”  Beaver fur hand warmers - simple, reusable, effective  Cat toys made from real fur: “cats go nuts for them.”  Future ideas: blankets, vests, and more product expansion  Balancing growth, time, and staying true to their mission  Shop New England Naturals  Follow the fun on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram Credits Hosts: Wayne Saunders and John Nores Producer: Jay Ammann Warden's Watch logo & Design: Ashley Hannett Research / Content Coordinator: Stacey DesRoches Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Google Waypoint Stitcher TuneIn Megaphone Find More Here: Website Warden's Watch / TGL Store Facebook Facebook Fan Page Instagram Threads YouTube RSS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://youtu.be/yl1lgt5r3So What becomes possible when we challenge assumptions and lead with inclusion? Debra Kasowski interviews Gina Martin, founder of Diverse Abilities Programs Inc., as she shares her lived experience and vision for creating more accessible, equitable, and empowering environments where people can see beyond limitations and discover new possibilities. In an IDEAL world, what if inclusion was not complicated, expensive, or intimidating, but practical, approachable, and possible everywhere? I am Gina Martin, founder of Diverse Abilities Programs Inc., educator, speaker, author, and creator of aDAPT programs (Disability Awareness Practical Teaching). My work is rooted in lived experience and focused on IDEAL principles (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Language)Living with multiple disabilities, including blindness, ADHD, and epilepsy, I know firsthand that our biggest barriers are often not our disabilities themselves, but the attitudes, assumptions, and built environments around us. In 2016, I attended the Louisiana Center for the Blind, where I trained blindfolded for 9 months in a fully non-visual environment. That experience did not just change how I live, it transformed how I lead, teach, and advocate.Through my programs, workshops, and conversations, I help schools, workplaces, and communities move from uncomfortable to confident by making inclusion practical, human, and achievable. My goal is simple: to change how disabilities are viewed and understood, one conversation at a time. #diversity #abilities #inclusion Stay Connected with Gina Website Diverse Abilities Programs Inc.  http://diverseabilities.ca/ Facebook Diverse Abilities  https://www.facebook.com/DisabilityAwarenessConsultant Linkedin Gina Martin https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-martin-4a1767254?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app Debra Kasowski is the charismatic podcast host of The Millionaire Woman Show, a 3X Best-Selling Author, Speaker, and Certified Executive Coach. She interviews incredible speakers, authors, CEO, Business and Organizational Leaders, and drops solo episodes with tips, strategies, and techniques for your success. GET YOUR GIFT Sign up for our Success Secrets Newsletter and download your FREE 10-page PDF of Reset Your Mindset at www.debrakasowski.com. Book your Complimentary Discovery Session with Debra today! 1. Connect with Debra Kasowski on social media Instagram https://www.instagram.com/debrakasowski YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@UCIg8Qcl0OERGMbT5eOUGkCg Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DebraKasowskiInternational/ 2. SUBSCRIBE to The Millionaire Woman Show podcast on iTunes 3. PURCHASE Debra's books – Amazon, Barnes & Noble,

How is AI transforming accessibility for indie authors — and why should you care even if you consider yourself able-bodied? What happens when the tools designed to help people with disabilities end up making everyone's creative business better? Jeff Adams, accessibility expert and romance author, explores how AI is opening doors that were previously closed. In the intro, Spotify Audiobook Innovations; The Economics of Convention Life [The Indy Author]; Friction in your Author Business [Self-Publishing with ALLi]. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How ending a long-running podcast made space for more writing — and how to know when it's time to let go of a good thing What accessibility really means for indie authors and why your digital content might be excluding part of your audience How AI agents like Claude Cowork are removing physical and cognitive barriers for authors with disabilities, chronic pain, or limited energy The culture of shame around AI use in the writing community and why blanket anti-AI statements can be ableist Practical tools including NotebookLM, ElevenReader, and ChatGPT for marketing copy, metadata management, and multimodal research Exciting futures in personalised reading, real-time translation, and AI browser agents that could change how everyone interacts online You can find Jeff at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jeff also now has a SubStack at contentforeveryone.substack.com Transcript of the interview with Jeff Adams Jo: Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. Welcome back to the show, Jeff. Jeff: Thanks so much, Jo. It's good to be back. Jo: It is. You were last on the show in March 2023, so over three years ago now. Give us a bit of an update on your writing and publishing business and what it looks like at the moment. Jeff: Sure. I think the biggest thing that happened is that my husband Will, who is also a writer, we ended the Big Gay Fiction Podcast at the end of 2024, after 470-something episodes. It was basically time to do that. So we both focused on writing from that point. In 2025 we had some of our biggest successes in getting writing out into the world. I refound my groove—my difficulty in writing went away finally. We talked a little bit about that back in 2023 too. Will started a new pen name and started producing again, and it was really good to be able to move in that direction. Jo: Was this the hockey romance that really hit at the right time? Jeff: You know, I wish I could have capitalised more on Heated Rivalry when it came out, but I did get hockey books out, and I think I did get to ride that wave a little bit there too. Jo: Yes, and if people don't know about that, that was a super popular streaming series. Was that based on a book? Jeff: It was, yes. Rachel Reid was the author of that book and that series that then Jacob Tierney optioned and made into what fairly turned into a global phenomenon at the end of 2025. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Although I particularly liked Red, White and Royal Blue. That was the one I liked. Not so much into hockey. But anyway, I just wanted to ask you about the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. As you say, you did hundreds of episodes over many years. You and I met over podcasting. You've had lots of connections with people. You ended it, and I know you struggled with ending it, but it sounds like it went really well for you. So maybe you could talk a bit about— How do you know when it's time to end something—a good thing rather than something bad? Does that make more space for writing, essentially? Jeff: It absolutely did make more space for writing for both of us, in particular for me because I have a day job. I balance everything on the creative side with the day job. Will and I had been talking about it for over a year. It just was like, it's really time. After nine years, getting to that 470 mark, we thought about trying to get to 10 years and we thought about, if not 10, then getting to 500 and ending on a milestone. As we looked at everything in our creative business, it was like, this is fun, we enjoy it, but we're not getting as much out of it as we might be if we were actually also writing books, which we also really want to do. It became a time thing and what was the best use of the time. We absolutely miss it occasionally. The whole Heated Rivalry thing, I would've loved to have had episodes to talk about that on, but in the long run, it was worth it. Jo: I mean, one of the things with a podcast, particularly around fiction, was that it was a marketing angle for your fiction. This show is a marketing angle mainly for my nonfiction. So what did you replace the podcast with, in terms of book marketing? Jeff: It was really stepped-up email marketing. I'd always had a list. Will started a list, of course, as he started his new pen name. So it was really turning on that, focusing on that, getting some email marketing with a Bargain Booksy and a Fussy Librarian and a BookBub occasionally to do that work. To be honest, even though we covered things in our genre that if you like what we're talking about, you should like our books, there was never as much of a connection there as you'd want there to be. Even from that book marketing angle, these other things that we can do, it's also a better spend of the money to get those types of promos than it was to continue running the show. Jo: Yes, that is interesting. I mean, obviously I think about podcasting a lot since I have this one, and I put Books and Travel on a hiatus and that was meant to help my fiction and definitely didn't help my fiction sales. But I want to bring it back again because I love doing it. Do you have this hankering sometimes? Do you think you'd ever do the podcast again? Because you are also quite into all the technical stuff and all that. Jeff: It's possible. I've toyed with the idea of doing a short accessibility podcast geared towards creatives, tilting to the same audience that Content for Everyone does. Then I come back and look at the time—is my time better served writing new fiction or perhaps starting a Substack, which I also toy with the idea of, for accessibility stuff? So it bounces around in my head to do another show, but I haven't really decided to jump on that yet. Jo: Yes, and I think that waiting is really good. As you say, you quit a big thing and you don't have to rush to fill it again. I love that you guys are writing more books. So I wanted us to talk about that up front because I know people who listen to this show—I encourage people to start podcasts if you want to, but equally it can take a lot of time. So that's fantastic. Now, you mentioned accessibility, and I feel like the word can be quite difficult for people. So let's just start with a definition. What is accessibility? Why do you care and why should we care? Jeff: So accessibility is really about making sure that whatever the thing is, whether it's something out in the physical world or in the online world, that everybody has access to it. Access to the information, access to getting into a building or being able to cross the street appropriately, whatever that is—that the accessibility of the thing is high. So that regardless of who is approaching it, they can interact with whatever the thing is. If we put that into the digital world, it's about making sure that text on a screen can be perceived by anybody, whether they're trying to read it visually or if they're trying to read it through a screen reader or through a braille monitor. Whatever that is, they need to be able to interact with it, get the information they need, do all the functions of whatever it is on the screen. Check out on Amazon, check out at their favourite e-commerce place, be able to get the products in their cart, check out, et cetera. For creatives, it's about the things that we do: the websites that we build for ourselves, the e-commerce platforms that we use, our email marketing, our social media posts. Making all of that as accessible as we can so that we're not perhaps missing a part of our audience or our prospective audience from being able to engage with our work and in turn, hopefully, buy our books and enjoy our books and become a fan. This became important to me because of my day job. I hadn't really considered this—like, I think most people don't—until I started working at UsableNet. It's going to be 15 years I've been at that company come this autumn, and I really started to see the impacts because UsableNet is all about accessibility on the digital front. I really started to learn, being a project manager for them, what all of that meant and how it impacted people who couldn't buy something online, couldn't book a hotel room, couldn't book an airline ticket. It just really became something I got passionate about. I ended up writing the book because I realised that nobody talks to creatives about this. Nobody tells the independent author what they should do to help make their digital stuff accessible so that they don't miss people. I never expected my day job to interact with my creative side so much, but this certainly has over the last few years. Jo: I mean, has it got better? Like we said, you were on here three years ago. We did talk about some of the things around EPUB formats and taking off DRM and what we need to do on our websites—labelling images, for example, and that kind of thing. Do you think accessibility has gotten better? Jeff: I think the awareness of it has improved, both within the creative community and in the broader web ecosphere, that the awareness is better. There's so much knowledge that needs to go into creating something that is accessible. Sometimes there's so much that you have to think about with colours and alt tags on images and all the little bits and pieces, if it doesn't really come to muscle memory, it's easy for it to fall off. There's a survey that's done by WebAIM every year about the top one million homepages out in the universe, and they surveyed those for just the things that an automated scan can detect, which is a small portion of overall accessibility, and the number of errors across that top million actually ticked up this year. Even though there's all these laws around the world—people get sued all the time in the US—the number of errors ticked up for the first time in a few years. So I think the awareness is up, but I think being able to take action on it and make the time to take action on it isn't where it needs to be. Jo: So last time you gave us all those tips. I'll refer people back to that and also to your book Content for Everyone, which has got loads of great stuff in. I wanted to talk to you for this show because I was sitting watching Claude Cowork—now I use Claude Code a lot more—but updating 140 titles on IngramSpark, where me clicking things and there's like 15 clicks per record on IngramSpark updates for pricing, is an absolute nightmare. I was watching the AI do the work and I realised this isn't just saving me time, it's actually saving my wrist and my arm from repetitive strain injury. That's when I thought about this accessibility thing. As you mentioned, for example being physically accessible into a building, say someone's in a wheelchair, they can't necessarily get into a building if there's no ramp. I was thinking that for many years, being an indie author, being a writer online, there's also been these physical barriers because there's a lot of plumbing and clicking for us. So I wondered, starting with an attitude around a shift in who this is opening up to— How is AI starting to help people with these accessibility issues? Jeff: Yes, there's so much opportunity around this. We should note, just to timestamp this, that we're talking on 14th April 2026, because who knows what will change, even in an hour from now. I think Cowork was one of the first things that we saw, and that's only been out since the very top of this year. Being able to do actual agentic tasks. Other things have sort of gotten there, but Cowork really opened it up. You mentioned the repetitive stress that you would've had clicking all of those forms on IngramSpark across 140 books. But there's that type of stress, chronic pain, cognitive drain for somebody who may have some cognitive disability and trying to work through that form. The cognitive energy just might drain out and maybe knock them out for several days after trying to get through that, or the tasks take them multiple days to do. Someone who has lower vision, someone who's trying to work through that form with a screen reader—all of that draws energy, draws focus. Now we've got something where, with plain language, we could say something like: here's all my pricing information, I've logged into IngramSpark, go update these books. Obviously the prompt's going to be a little more than that, but in broad terms, that's what we're going to tell it. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: And being able to have it go through and do the thing. If it gets stuck, have it come back and say, “Hey, I've got trouble with this. Please help me.” That can just free up so much of the drains that people can have—the things that can take them out of doing the part of the work that they need to do for an author business. They can go write the book through whatever process you're going to use to do that, rather than getting caught up in something like having to update all those books on IngramSpark. Jo: You mentioned writing the book there. I have this real sense of being an able-bodied indie author in terms of my computer use and my ability to write a whole book, a 70,000-word thriller that I write regularly. We're all special in some way, but I do have a reasonably normal brain where I can do this work without too much strain. It's hard work, but I can do it. I meet people who are now using AI to help them write, to help them organise their work—maybe someone has dyslexia or ADHD or cognitive issues or pain—there's just so many things that I take for granted that don't affect me. I hear from people who, at this point in time in the community, are almost shamed for using AI to write. So I wanted to bring this up to discuss it under the terms of accessibility. Do you have any thoughts on that? Jeff: I have real difficulty with people who will say anything in the broad range of, “I don't need to use this thing, and therefore you should not either.” Which is adjacent to indie anti-AI speak that there is out there. Certainly we're living right now at probably the highest point that it's ever been, where more and more there's a sentiment towards not using AI for whatever the reason is. I totally respect that people can have concerns about the environment and about energy use and water use, et cetera. Not to mention all the other things that are on the more difficult side of AI. To shame someone who may not be able to put their story out there without the use of that AI, whichever one they're using, or to shame them because they're using AI to run part of their business—updating IngramSpark, doing other things like that—I think it can come down to there being some ableism there. Ther is some privilege behind that too, where they're just like, “I don't need this, and you shouldn't have it either.” I want to give people just a sliver of an idea of what this can mean for someone who is disabled and what AI can unlock for them. There is a person on LinkedIn that I follow whose name is Hannah Desmond. She's an ADHD coach and a former software developer, and very recently she posted this on LinkedIn. This is a paraphrase of what she said, but: having something that can meet you where you are and help you bridge that gap is what I think I have found so helpful about using AI. Here's what I keep coming back to. Without that support, I wasn't more motivated or more capable. I was just stuck. That's the bit that gets lost. We've been taught that struggling is how you know you're doing it properly. So when something reduces the struggle, it can feel wrong—even when it's the thing that actually makes the work possible. Because there's a difference between avoiding thinking and being able to think at all. I think that rounds it up. She's talking about her time as a software developer, but you can apply that to any realm of AI when we're thinking about trying to shame someone for why they may be using it. We may not know that they have a disability because we don't always share that part of ourselves. So I really feel strongly about that and how we are in this culture of shame. Jo: Yes. It drives me up the wall, actually. But I will also say: you don't have to have a disability or accessibility issues in order to use AI in whatever way you personally decide is okay—talking to the listeners now. I think Orna Ross from the Alliance of Independent Authors says it well, which is you should have your own AI policy. So you personally decide where your lines are, how it helps you, what you want to keep for you, and what you want help with. I was also thinking in terms of accessibility around money. Again, for many of us, professional cover design, professional editing, professional human-level translation, these are things that are pretty pricey for many people. So again, this makes it more accessible. One of the reasons we got into the indie way and being indie authors was to try and remove the barriers to entry to people who have been excluded from the environment of publishing. So, yes, it is really hard to talk about this, and yet that's why I wanted to talk about it, because— There's so many variables for each individual and there's no situation that's the same, really, is there? Jeff: No, not at all. The things that I may need to do my work in the most efficient way possible is different from the way that you're going to work, is different than the way my husband's going to work, is different than every other person and the way that they're going to work. Which is why any kind of blanket statement about “I don't need something and therefore you shouldn't need it either” can just be so problematic, because we have no idea what someone else is going through. Either it's a permanent part of their lives or maybe it's something that is happening temporarily with them where they might need to leverage other tools. Jo: Yes. Talking about that temporary, I think I really got the first sense of this when I had COVID the first time, which was really bad. I remember I was so sick, the only thing I could do was listen to an audiobook. I couldn't think, I couldn't read. It was really probably months of not having my brain back. Then the other thing that's happened as I age, as women age, is menopause kicks in and the brain fog is a real thing. I've heard from other people too who've said having Claude or whoever, an AI tool, to help with the brain fog is so important because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to gather my thoughts. Again, as you said— Even if we don't need these things now, it's quite likely we're going to need them at some point, given ageing, given the potential for injury and disease. I mean, we don't escape this alive, do we? Jeff: Yes, that's a great point because unless we're extremely lucky as individuals, we're all likely to have some sort of a disability in our lives at some point. I know for me, as I age and my eyes get more and more tired after being in front of a screen all day for work, and then whatever creative stuff I do in the afternoon on a book—when it comes near bedtime and I do want to read, I probably want to do that with an audiobook, much more audio, especially for any long reading project. That can also be like, if I have a long document or a long article to read, I am likely to give it to ElevenReader, let it load itself up, and then listen to it, because I take the information in better than trying to follow words across a screen. Jo: Yes. Jonathan, my husband, now also listens to a lot of academic papers on ElevenReader. Most of us will know it as where we publish some audiobooks from ElevenLabs, or you can also publish other things there. So it is super useful to think about what we can do with ElevenReader. Another thing that I found really useful recently is NotebookLM. On NotebookLM, there is a free tier. You can put various things in there and then create a custom audio. So this is something I've been doing as part of research. You can put in, say, 10 YouTube videos or some PDFs or your book or whatever, and then you can create a custom audio. Then I'll go for a walk and I'll listen to the custom audio, and then I'll go back and look at the detail of what it was. It gives me the framework of whatever I'm thinking about on a broader level, and then I can come back to the details. So again, it's this multimodal approach that can help us manage our energy, I guess. Jeff: And it's all about the managing of the energy, I think, too. That is a great way to think about the accessibility of it all. You mentioned a great use there for NotebookLM. That could also be putting your book in there and having it help you build a world bible or something like that. Or building marketing materials off of that. There's a lot of things now that NotebookLM can do in terms of helping you create FAQs maybe for a newsletter or for your website, and building video stuff off of the material that it has. So there's a lot of options there, and ever-growing options that can be useful for someone to manage any number of the things that they may need in their creative business. Jo: Yes. In fact, talking about Claude, there are a lot of Claude plugins now, skills and integrations. Shopify just released a Claude plugin and many of us now have Shopify stores. I have a lot of products with a lot of different variations and the metadata. There's so much metadata. And again, I'm just so pleased now that I can work with Cowork and get it to actually update directly into Shopify. In fact, coming back, you mentioned updating alt tags earlier. That's something again that AI could help you update—the back list of your alt tags on a website. I've now got my Cowork doing EPUBs so I could finally update all my EPUBs with back matter and all of this kind of thing. So I feel like perhaps we could go beyond accessibility to talk about amplification. All the things that we didn't do because it was too tiring and we just couldn't be bothered, or it would just be way too much work, that now it's opened up as a possibility because of these tools. Jeff: Absolutely. I mean, you look at a backlist as large as yours and the things that you're now able to do. I didn't know that Claude had a Shopify plugin. So the abilities that we have now to maybe do things in the business that we hadn't before. One of the things I've been working with Claude on is rewriting my website and creating a more proper website for Will. I'm really making sure that it is not only SEO prepared but also GEO prepared, with all the metadata and all the backend code schema that it needs so that LLMs can find me, can understand what I do, can understand the books, branch out to the other areas that it needs to. Doing that through WordPress would've been so much more difficult, even with Claude, that to be able to rewrite the site in a way that is going to let me manage it better so that I will do it on a more consistent basis. Whatever that thing is, we're now able to do these things. That could be updating keywords in Amazon or making sure we're aligned across all of the sales platforms that we might be on and things like that, that Claude can do and do well. Jo: Yes, I think marketing is just the killer app really for people, isn't it? I think most authors do not enjoy marketing. I find Claude better for creative work, for strategic work, for doing work through Cowork or Code, but— ChatGPT with marketing copy is very, very good. So I've actually been using that as we record this. I've got a Kickstarter launching next week, so I've been getting it to do ad copy and social media copy and all that kind of thing. This is stuff when you have to produce—give me 20 taglines, give me 20 hooks, give me another 20 and another 20. I mean, we just cannot do it as humans, right? Jeff: Yes, I have found GPT wildly helpful. I mentioned trying to get Bargain Booksy and Fussy Librarian promos. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And you have to give it the marketing hook, and it can't just be the blurb that's on Amazon—it's got to be something fresh, and they each have slightly different requirements. Having GPT—here's the blurb, give me a dozen different options—and then I may take pieces of all of them and create one of my own. But it reworks that much faster than my brain was ever going to try to find the right thing I want to give to Bargain Booksy. Jo: Yes, you are right. Or it says write this in 300 characters or less. Jeff: Yes. Jo: I do exactly the same. That kind of transformative work can be really good. In fact, there was somebody I know who has been rampantly anti-AI for years and then said, “Would this help me? I have to do a synopsis for an agent, so I've got this 100,000-word book and it needs to be a 10-page synopsis. How would I do that with AI?” So I was encouraging her to take each chapter and ask it to summarise the chapter, and of course read through it and everything. But I mean, doing a synopsis once you've actually written a book—that can be super useful. So I think what we're saying is— There are levels of need in terms of both the author and the audience. Then there are levels of your personal use from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of how far you want to go in every area of the business. And in that way, it's just different for everyone. Jeff: Yes, and I think getting to that mindset shift that we were talking about a little bit—it can be so easy to dip your toes in. That one author came to you and said, “Do you think it could do this?” And I think that's the beginning exploratory area for perhaps anyone. People are going to hear us talk about this and it might inspire them to go try something that we've talked about. But these things, whether it's Claude or GPT or Gemini or whichever one it is, you can come to it and say, “I'm an author, I have X, Y, Z going on in my life”—whether that's a disability, whether that's a time constraint because you have a day job and maybe you have kids and a family that need your attention—”I have these time constraints, I want to do X, Y, and Z in my business. How can you help me with that?” It's going to tell you what it can do to help you with that. I would even say, if you have the ability to have multiples of these, you could ask the same question to GPT and Claude, and they're going to give you similar answers in some instances, but they may also have different ones because of the abilities that the different platforms have around these things as well. That can help you make that mindset shift of, “Well, now I see that it can do that. Could it also do this?” And then ask it if it could do that. Because I know for me, Jo, I've taken so much from you and your journey with Cowork that it's like, “Oh, she did that. I wonder if I could do this.” And all of that piles on top of itself. Then eventually I think your brain starts to think on its own, “Oh, I have to do this task. Can Claude maybe do this for me? Let's go find out.” Jo: Yes, and if it couldn't do it for you yesterday, you never know, it might be able to do it tomorrow. Jeff: Right? Because I haven't tested yet its new ability to actually use your computer. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And I'm curious what that might open up. Because one of the things that I've seen that I wish it would do is be able to take the EPUB that's on my drive and actually put it into a platform I'm trying to upload to. Cowork on its own hasn't been able to cross that barrier, but I wonder if with computer use added to that, if it could. Like, “here's the EPUB, upload that over there,” be able to pick it from the file picker, essentially. Jo: Yes. I think, well, a little tip for everyone: I wouldn't give access to your entire file system to the AI. Jeff: That's a good point too. Jo: Yes. I have a Claude folder in my drive and it only has access there. So if you put files in that drive, it might be able to do that. But I know what you mean. I have been using it to help me publish things in German on KDP. Now I can use the browser, so you can actually do that. In terms of uploading the actual file, I know what you mean. These things will change. As we record this, again middle of April, we are almost about to get the next models being Mythos, which might be Claude 4.7 Opus, or also ChatGPT has a new model coming, and these models are getting very powerful. With every shift they can do more things. So as you say, the very first thing to do is ask it, “I want to do this—what are my options?” And some of them, for example, doing an AI-narrated audiobook, ChatGPT and Claude don't do that. You want ElevenLabs or one of the other services for that, but they can tell you what your options are. So that's one thing, but I wondered if you have any thoughts on the gaps that you are seeing. You mentioned one there around file uploads, but— What do you hope might come and some of the things that might be exciting if they arrive? Because you never know, they might be here already. Jeff: There's certainly some movement in some areas. One of the things I'll share is, in March I was at the 2026 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference—CSUN is California State University, Northridge—and they've run this conference for some 40 years now. One of the sessions I went to was from Tara Maisel—I hope I'm pronouncing her last name right. She's a senior project manager in books accessibility at Amazon, and she was doing a session specifically on readability. She had all kinds of statistics and information about what goes into making something readable. One of the things she talked about with AI was the future of personalised reading. If you think about the Kindle app, for example, there's a lot of settings you can make there—font size, colours, brightness, text spacing. There's a lot of tools in there. She was pointing out that potentially readers don't even know what they actually need for the optimised visual reading experience. She sees a world where AI can perhaps do an analysis of your reading behaviour and then help you find the optimal settings. Maybe even multiple optimal settings for, say, if you were reading in a room that had daylight versus at bedtime, and the ways you might shift it. I was almost thinking of this like when you're at the optometrist and they're like, “Which lens is better—this one or that one?” Jo: Oh, sometimes that is very hard. Jeff: Yes. It's that AI could step you through that a little bit to help you find that optimal reading experience in that moment. And then it might even notice, potentially, if you're changing something in the way that you're moving through a page, that it might flag to say, “Hey, do we need to adjust something?” Some other areas that I think are really exciting, for everyone and perhaps particularly for people who are disabled and needing the support of some assistive technology, is what we're seeing in the browsers. OpenAI's Operator has been out for quite a while now, since sometime I think autumn of last year. Perplexity Comet has been around even longer. Then we've got browser extensions from Gemini and Claude that are available, that can let you just type natural language. You know, “Please go find for me jeans in this size that are on sale on this website. Find me the best price for blue jeans on this site and this size,” and it'll just go do it. Which can certainly speed things up for people in the disabled community to find things quickly, to spend time navigating less, and maybe ending up with the AI coming back and saying, “I found these five things. Which one would you like me to buy for you?” Or, “I found this one thing that you do need and it's waiting for you in your shopping cart.” The ability for that on the horizon is an amazing jump from an accessibility point of view. But really it's one of those things that accessibility will then help everyone because we can all just shop that way, if we choose to. These are early days for these browsers and these extensions. The other side of it comes back to basic web accessibility too, because I've seen these types of activities not work so well on a site that may not actually be accessible on its own. A great example is something I ran into with Claude Cowork about a month ago. I was testing to see if it could help me navigate and get things uploaded together for a site where I wanted to upload books, knowing again that it's not going to upload the actual file, but it could fill in the metadata from my master database of metadata stuff. There were areas on the site that it actually couldn't hit the button, because the site itself was also not functional to a screen reader. So there are gaps there. It's early days, but I really see that as an interesting future that'll really help people with disabilities—but again, help everybody too, just manage time better. Jo: I know exactly what you mean there. I've done some collaborative work with Claude Code when it's like, “I can't click the button,” and I'm like, well, I'll click the button—you fill in everything else. Jeff: Exactly. Jo: It's actually quite a funny situation. But goodness, coming back to IngramSpark again—these things need APIs. We need better functions. It's funny because I think a lot of traditional publishers have these APIs or backend upload things that you can do. I'm like, well, we need to get to that with these systems. But I think things will change. Another thing that I think has also shifted is the use of voice. Voice for dictation—it used to be with dictation that you would have to say “comma,” “open quote,” “new line,” and all of that. And you'd also have to make sense. Whereas now I feel like you can just dictate a whole load of things to these AIs and then say, “Tidy that up,” and they will do a lot more than the old situation. So I think voice will also help. Also automatic translation. I don't know if you know this about X, and if you're on X anymore, but just this week they've made it multi-language. So I can read tweets by people who've posted in another language in English. I can read something from Korean or read something that someone French has posted and it gets translated. It has made a huge difference to the content I'm seeing, which is fascinating because I don't think we've ever had this kind of automatic “everything is translated into your language” situation. It's really got me thinking about how [automatic translation] might work for eBooks or other things if the rights are there. I don't know. Have you seen stuff like that? Jeff: There's so much available now with voice and the ability to not have to speak all the other stuff that went with it—comma, full stop, next line. It was a little mind-bending sometimes, trying to think about quote marks and all that stuff. And now it's so good. Different platforms do it to different degrees of ability. Even being able to speak your prompts into the very platforms themselves without having to type all of it. Chronic pain comes to mind, any kind of mobility thing—all the typing would be a drain or maybe even impossible. So the voice ability is so powerful there and unlocks more things. At the same time, those translation abilities—I believe AirPods now have the ability, if you've got the right stuff on your phone, that you could be talking to somebody, they may speak back to you in a language you don't speak, but your AirPods will give it to you in your language. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: Google has, I believe, a live captioning app that you can use. I think there's even a split screen—I don't know if that's available now or something in their future—where you could put the phone on the table and tell it who's looking at what side of the screen, and it'll put the language that I need on my side and the language the other person needs on the other. So there continues to be such a shift in how we're being able to translate stuff that really opens up communication and can open up our books to so many more people. I'm very interested to see—I haven't pulled the trigger on this yet—but how Amazon's auto-translation rolls out and how that's received in terms of the accessibility around our books and being able to put it in someone's hands who doesn't speak—I think it's only English to other languages right now—but who doesn't speak the language it was written in but wants to read that book. We could never, as indies, or really even big five publishers, wouldn't have the money to create custom translations everywhere. But if the AI can help do that and spread those books around so that everybody could have the story they want to read, I think that's such a win for the reading audience. Jo: Yes, I think it's so exciting to think what might be coming, and that's what I want to stay on the side of on the AI discussion. There's enough negativity out there and you can get that information somewhere else, but for me I want us to stay on the positive side of how this helps both the author and the reader. And hopefully the community, to create more and read more and enjoy being human more. Right? Because I find that I do get out more and listen to stuff, or I'm out walking instead of at my desk, and I mean, that's what it's about. I'm pretty excited about the future. How about you? Jeff: I am. I think there are, quite honestly, some scary things that could be out there in the future. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about what Mythos is capable of. But on the other side of it, there are all these advances. I also look back at Google and AlphaFold and what DeepMind was able to do there for science. There's more of that stuff out there, and individually for each of us, spending a little bit of time—and I do have to say, I think you need to spend time on a paid plan because the free stuff doesn't give you the idea of what these platforms are actually capable of. So if you only drop in, even briefly, to experiment on one of the $20-a-month plans and give it your situation, ask it what it can do for you, I think you'll see where, on a personal level, AI will help you unlock some things. It can help you move some things to the next level in your business that for whatever reason you haven't been able to do. You don't have to use it for everything. You may decide that it's still not for you for whatever reason, and that's fine. But I think there's so much to explore here and to let your curiosity run for a little bit to see what's possible and what you might unlock with it. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jeff: So pretty much everything lives at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jeff. That was great. Jeff: I loved it, Jo. Thanks for having me..The post Accessibility And AI: How New Tools Are Opening Doors For Indie Authors With Jeff Adams first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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