Podcasts about Braille

In this AppleVis Extra episode, David Nason and Thomas Domville (AnonyMouse) interview Sarah Herrlinger, senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple. They explore Apple's ongoing dedication to accessibility, spotlighting exciting new features designed to better support users with disabilities. The conversation covers several highlights, including Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Braille Access Mode, Magnifier for Mac, and the role of AI in accessibility enhancements.Key Highlights:Accessibility Nutrition LabelA new initiative that provides standardized accessibility info for apps.Developers will showcase features like VoiceOver and captions.Designed to increase awareness and help users easily find accessibility details.Braille Access ModeAvailable on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro.Enables quick note-taking, calculations, and BRF file access with Braille displays.Supports live captioning for DeafBlind users to improve communication.Magnifier for MacTurns your iPhone into a magnifier for Mac users.Uses a secondary camera to enlarge physical objects.Includes zoom, color filters, brightness controls, and OCR with text-to-speech via Accessibility Reader.AI and AccessibilityAI remains a vital tool in accessibility advancements.Enhances image recognition and descriptive capabilities.Continues to be integrated to improve experiences for visually impaired users.User Engagement and FeedbackHighlights the value of user feedback in shaping accessibility features.Encourages users to send suggestions to accessibility@apple.com.Share Accessibility SettingsA new feature lets users temporarily transfer their accessibility settings to another device.Makes it easier for family members to help with troubleshooting and tech support.Listeners are invited to share their thoughts on these features and suggest any other accessibility needs they'd like Apple to consider.TranscriptDisclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers' names, voices, or content.Dave: Hello there, and welcome to another episode of the AppleVis Extra. My name is David Mason, and I am delighted to be joined once again by Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse, of course. And this is an exciting episode that we, I want to say, annually, semi-annually do, and that is an interview with Apple's Global Head of Accessibility, Sarah Herrlinger. So, looking forward to this one, Thomas.Thomas: Right. I mean, you're right. That is a mouthful. What is your, I had to look that up. Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. I'm like, wow. I wonder if that actually fits on her business card in one line. There's no way. They only respond so small.…

Paul Martz is an award-winning science fiction author, technology blogger, and former punk rock drummer. At age six, he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen, which lead him to a collection of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories and a lifelong insatiable appetite for mind-bending science fiction. His short stories can be found at Amazing Stories, Uncharted Magazine, Creepy Podcast, and many others.  Paul is totally blind, but losing his eyesight hasn't slowed him down. He co-edited last year's RMFW anthology, Without Brakes, Fingers Crossed. And he competes in Rubik's Cube speedsolving competitions. His new non-fiction book, Solve It! The Only Speedsolving Guide for Blind Cubers, has just been released.  Paul lives in Erie, Colorado, where he sips lattes while the snow sublimates. Intro Music by Moby Gratis: https://mobygratis.com/ Outro Music by Dan-o-Songs: https://danosongs.com/   Host Mark Stevens www.writermarkstevens.com   Watch these interviews on YouTube (and subscribe)! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBP81nfbKnDRjs-Nar9LNe20138AiPyP8&si=yl_seG5S4soyk216  

In this episode, Ron Miller from Freedom Scientific's training team highlights key updates in the May 2025 releases of JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion. Learn about the new Home and Professional subscription plans, major MathCAT enhancements for speech and Braille math accessibility, UEB math support, and improved navigation options. Ron also demonstrates how to use the new AI-based UI Labeler, enhanced split Braille features, and Live Text View in ZoomText and Fusion. Whether you're a student, professional, or accessibility enthusiast, this episode guides you through the most impactful new features and how to try them out.

In this episode of the Four Bad Eyes Podcast, hosts Dan and Anthony explore their unique perspectives as blind skateboarders and athletes. They discuss the challenges and humor in their daily lives, including parenting experiences, customer service encounters, and their recent adventures in New York City. The conversation also touches on the importance of community engagement and content creation in the digital age, all while maintaining a light-hearted and humorous tone. In this episode, the hosts delve into various themes including the challenges of short form content, the evolution of Braille technology, and the daily navigation of life as a blind person. They reflect on aging, health, and the importance of patience and perspective in life. The conversation also touches on communication challenges, the balance of life, and summer adventures with pets, all while maintaining a light-hearted and humorous tone.00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts 04:38 Visual Descriptions and Their Impact08:37 Shooting Your Shot: Reaching Out to Influencers16:37 YouTube Event Experience17:31 Arrival and First Impressions19:56 Customer Service Struggles22:25 Event Experience and Accessibility27:34 Food and Family Fun30:11 Content Creation Conversations34:26 Braille Technology and Writing37:38 Summer Vibes and Michigan Love39:18 The Viral Jingle Phenomenon40:45 Navigating the YouTube Algorithm42:24 Social Media Management Challenges43:21 The Need for Change and Growth45:31 Reflections on Aging and Health48:16 Finding Humor in Everyday Frustrations50:01 The Passage of Time and Family52:41 Summer Adventures and Dog Tales55:22 Community Connections and Trust

In this heartfelt episode of the Blackout podcast, host Israel sits down with Keonte Beals, artist, author, entrepreneur, and CEO/founder of KBeals Entertainment. The conversation explores Keonte's surprising journey from music to children's book publishing, revealing that he actually started writing children's stories before ever creating music.Keonte shares the deeply personal inspiration behind his "I Am" book series, which includes titles like "I Am Perfectly Me," "I Am a King," "I Am Worthy," and "I Am a Queen." He explains how these books speak to his own inner child while helping today's youth develop self-worth and confidence. Listeners learn about Keonte's unique creative process—drawing characters first and letting the pictures tell the story—and how he's expanded his reach through translations into French, Arabic, and Braille.The discussion delves into Keonte's school tour program called "The I Am Experience," where he combines readings, music, and interactive activities to create meaningful connections with children. He also opens up about the childhood emotional and psychological challenges that shaped him and how his work aims to provide kids with the support and affirmation he wished he'd had growing up.Throughout the episode, Keonte reveals his entrepreneurial mindset, his approach to building a business team, setting boundaries, and finding authentic success by following his intuition rather than industry norms. The conversation showcases how Keonte's multifaceted talents have come full circle, connecting his childhood creativity with his adult passion for inspiring self-worth in the next generation.Check him out @keontebeals

The recent documentary Braille and Me featured personal stories from around the world of highly successful blind people in different fields who continue to celebrate how this very simple invention has transformed lives. Listeners share their views and we talk to presenter Emma Tracey.Plus, a follow-up grumble about interviewees being cut short in news shows hits our listener inbox.Presenter Rajan Datar Producer Howard Shannon A Whistledown production for the BBC World Service

From time to time I am contacted by someone who says they have an interesting and thought provoking guest who would be perfect for Unstoppable Mindset. Such was the case when I was contacted about our guest this time, Dre Baldwin. Dre and I had an initial conversation and I invited him to appear as a guest. I must say that he more than exceeded my expectations. And now he is back for a second time with us with more stories and insights.   You may recall from my first episode with him that Dre grew up in Philadelphia. He wanted to do something with sports and tried out various options until he discovered Basketball in high school. While he wasn't considered overly exceptional and only played one year in high school he realized that Basketball was the sport for him.   Dre went to Penn State and played all four of his college years. Again, while he played consistently and reasonably well, he was not noticed and after college he was not signed to a professional team. He worked at a couple of jobs for a time and then decided to try to get noticed for basketball by going to a camp where he could be seen by scouts and where he could prove he had the talent to make basketball a profession. As he will tell us, eventually he did get a contract to play professionally. Other things happened along the way as you will hear. Dre discovered Youtube and the internet and began posting basketball tips which became popular.   In this episode we continue to discuss with Dre the lessons he wishes to convey as well as his life philosophy. Dre discuss more about the value and need for personal initiative. He tells us the value of having a personal initiative mindset and how that can lead to high performance.   I asked Dre about how playing basketball prepared him for his work in business. His answer will surprise you. It did me. As he points out, his business preparation came earlier and in different ways than playing basketball.   I also asked Dre why he left playing professional basketball. Again, his answer is fascinating. I will leave that for Dre to tell you.   I hope you enjoy my talk with Dre as much as I. Dre Baldwin provided many lessons we all can use. Who knows? Dre, you and I may talk again. Stay tuned.       About the Guest:   As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 35 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine.    Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000+ subscribers, his content being consumed over 103 million times.    Dre's daily Work On Your Game MasterClass has amassed over 2,900 episodes and more than 7.3 million downloads.    In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany.    Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with High Performance, Consistency and Results.    A Philadelphia native, Dre lives in Miami.   Ways to connect Dre:   http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin http://YouTube.com/Dreupt https://www.facebook.com/WorkOnYourGameUniversity http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay http://X.com/DreAllDay http://TikTok.com/WorkOnYourGame   Kindly use this link for our Free book, The Third Day

Get Ready to go back in time, as our podcast president give you a demonstration on the old keynote gold software from the Braille note days and now on NVDA!it is back on operating systems if you use NVDA, so listen to this for demonstration and see for yourself!Mind you, this is all running on a virtual machine so it's gonna be cool to discover.

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun break down Apple's newly announced accessibility updates ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. From accessibility “nutrition labels” on the App Store to a full-featured Braille note-taker built into iOS 19, the team highlights major leaps forward for blind and low-vision users.They also explore the all-new magnifier app for Mac, updates to Apple Vision Pro's accessibility capabilities including camera zoom and AI object recognition, and a vastly improved personal voice cloning tool.Later in the show, guests John Dyer and Carrie Morales join to discuss the evolving accessibility landscape on Android, including TalkBack's integration with Gemini AI, and whether AI-driven features could make Android more appealing to blind users. The panel debates if Apple users might jump ship as smartphone prices climb — or whether ecosystem loyalty still reigns supreme.Chapters00:00 Introduction01:49 New Accessibility Features Coming To Apple Devices06:05 The Magnifier App for Mac10:10 Braille Access and Live Captioning14:54 Apple Vision Pro Accessibility Features18:13 Samsung's New Galaxy S25 Edge Smartphone20:54 Switching to Android: Insights from ExpertsRelevant LinksApple Accessibility Preview: https://apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/apple-previews-accessibility-features-coming-this-yearSamsung Galaxy S25 Edge: https://news.samsung.com/uk/meet-the-samsung-galaxy-s25-edge-an-engineering-marvel-of-new-slim-hardware-innovationCarrie On Accessibility: https://carrieonaccessibility.comBlind Android Users Podcast: https://blindandroidusers.comAccessible Android Articles: https://accessibleandroid.com Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap Website---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/linkedin Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://www.doubletaponair.com/appleSpotify: https://www.doubletaponair.com/spotifyRSS: https://www.doubletaponair.com/podcastiHeadRadio: https://www.doubletaponair.com/iheart About 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.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is a federal agency that funds programs in libraries nationwide. In March, President Trump signed an executive order to slash the agency's funding. And California's Braille and Talking Book Library, which serves the state's blind and print-disabled community, could be hit by these cuts. Reporter: Jasmine Ascencio, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Over the weekend, Catholic churchgoers attended the first Sunday mass since the election of the first pope with Creole ancestry. Reporter: Billy Cruz, KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Dave Nason demonstrates how to create and use text replacements, short snippets of text which are substituted with frequently used words, sentences, or emojis when typed, on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. This may be useful if you, for example, need to frequently give people directions to your home. Rather than manually type out the directions, you could configure a text replacement so that several sentences could be inserted simply by typing a few characters of your choosing. You may also wish to use it to speed up typing longer words, or even to type emojis that you use regularly.On iOS and iPadOS, text replacements can be created and managed in Settings > General > Keyboard > Text replacement. Here, you can double-tap an item to edit it, or delete it using the "Delete" rotor action. To create a text replacement, double-tap the Add button in the upper right corner, type or paste the word, sentence, or emoji you want inserted in the "Phrase" field, type the text snippet in the "Shortcut" field, and double-tap Save.On macOS, text replacements can be created and managed in System Settings > Keyboard > Text replacements. Navigate the table using the up and down arrow keys, Tab to individual cells to edit them, or delete them using the Remove button. To create a replacement, click the Add button, type the text snippet in the "Replace" field, type the text you want to be inserted in the "With" field, and click Add.Assuming your devices are signed into the same Apple Account, text replacements are synced between them, allowing you to, for example, create text replacements on your Mac, and use them on your iPhone or iPad.TranscriptDisclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers' names, voices, or content.Dave: Hello there, David Nason here. I hope you are doing well. Today I wanted to give you a quick demo of how to use text replacements or typing shortcuts on both iOS and macOS. Text replacements are a really handy feature for speeding up your typing, helping you type out regular words or phrases or even you know, full on sentences that you want to type more quickly.Dave: You can type as little as two characters as your shortcut and then you hit space or punctuation like a full stop or a comma and it will expand out into the word or phrase that you have set. So it's really handy. There's probably three key ways which I use it. One would be for kind of longer sentences that I need to type semi-regularly. So, for example, directions to my house.Dave: If a friend is coming over or a taxi driver or a delivery person, that kind of thing. Rather than having to type out those directions each time I'm in that situation, I have a shortcut set up. So I type D-I-R-1. and I hit space and it will turn into those directions. I have one that's Dior2 as well, which is a more detailed version of those directions.Dave: I also use it then, number two, for kind of regular words and phrases that I might use when I'm texting people or emailing. I borrow some of these from contracted Braille, others I have made up myself. So things like YD for yesterday, TM for tomorrow, TAFN…

In this feedback-packed episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun open the inbox to highlight powerful listener stories and opinions that spark some of their most honest and passionate reactions yet. From questions about pursuing a cybersecurity career as a blind person to whether “blind” or “visually impaired” should be the default term — the discussion gets real, raw, and at times hilariously offbeat.Steven shares his own personal journey of proving doubters wrong in the media world, sparking an empowering message about determination in the face of discrimination. There's also strong commentary on digital accessibility, the blurred lines of language policing, and the impact of AI smart glasses from Meta and Google. Plus, listeners chime in on VoiceOver vs TalkBack, the future of Braille, disability benefits, and even a shocking tale about prosthetic eyes during a PIP assessment. It's an unfiltered, energizing episode that reminds us why your voices matter.

The dotty medium of Braille has just turned 200 years old. Famously invented by French boy, Louis Braille, it spread worldwide and became the way blind people were finally able to read. Access All's presenter Emma Tracey explains what she does with it and why she loves it whilst meeting interesting people who have used the medium in very interesting ways…including, Stevie Wonder. Presenter: Emma Tracey Producer: Adele Armstrong First broadcast on the BBC World Service April 2025.

2519 From Braille Music to the Big Screen (May 7, 2025) Show Notes Rod Clemmons, who has been blind since birth, shares his journey from being a classically trained pianist to an R&B performer, producer and composer. Hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey talk with Rod about his experiences as a visually impaired musician, his passion … Continue reading 2519 From Braille Music to the Big Screen (May 7, 2025) →

Rob, Ryan and Steve welcome Karen McKay and Ioana Gandrabur from the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) to the show this week to discuss some of the services CELA provides that includes a huge collection of accessible books—from embossed braille to audiobooks—to people with print disabilities across Canada. They also discuss how CELA is evolving their services and navigating a shift from traditional CDs to digital platforms, the critical role of stable internet access, why boosting technology literacy is more important than ever, and CELA's creative outreach strategies to connect communities with accessible reading. Show Transcript https://atbanter.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/at-banter-podcast-episode-423-karen-mckay-ioana.pdf Show Notes CELA https://celalibrary.ca/ 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.

On today's episode of Double Tap, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece tackle big questions around digital access, legacy tech support, and the future of computing for blind and low vision users.The episode opens with breaking news: WhatsApp has officially dropped support for iPhones that can't run iOS 15.1. This has serious implications for blind users and community organizations that rely on donated older iPhones to connect people through messaging. Steven and Shaun explore the broader digital divide and why it's becoming harder for people with vision loss to stay connected in an increasingly online world.Later, the duo shares a game-changing accessibility tip from friend of the show Sean Randall, who uses a standard label printer combined with Seeing AI's short text feature to make food and plug labeling more inclusive. It's a low-cost alternative to expensive Braille or NFC labeling systems and sparks a wider conversation about simple tech hacks that have big impact.In the second half, Greg Hayes returns to discuss Windows on ARM. Steven shares his experience running ARM-based Windows in a virtual machine and the compatibility issues he faced with scanner drivers and legacy hardware. Greg explains the benefits and trade-offs of the ARM platform—including battery life, speed, and application support—and how the industry is transitioning from Intel to more efficient ARM architectures. Is now the time to go all-in on ARM? The panel explores the risks, rewards, and practical advice for blind users navigating this shift. Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

Meet people whose lives were upended by fire - and transformed by resilience. From the recent Los Angeles fires, we hear from Casey Colvin, who searched for days to find his beloved dog, Oreo, and 10-year-old Grayson Roberts, who lost his home, his Braille materials, and his drum kits - but not his spirit. We also talk to RoseMarie Wallace, who reflects on how losing everything made her stronger, and Leslie Wharton, who shares what 13 years of rebuilding and reflection have taught her after losing her Colorado home to a wildfire. Resources: American Red Cross: Recovering After a Fire Suggested episodes: We, The Dog Aftershocks: Life after getting struck by lightning The story of the first African-American face transplant GUESTS: RoseMarie Wallace: a Massachusetts woman who had a major house fire in 2014. She is also a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging at Tabor Academy, and a storyteller who honors identity, motherhood, and the quiet power of resilience Casey Colvin: a Pacific Palisades resident whose dogs, Oreo and Teeka Teeka, went missing after the fires in January 2025. He was ultimately reunited with both, and the emotional moment of Casey finding Oreo after a five-day search captured global attention Grayson and Terica Roberts: a mother and son from Altadena who lost their home in the fires in January 2025. Grayson is a 10 year-old drummer who has been blind since birth Leslie Wharton: author of Phoenix Rising: Stories of Remarkable Women Walking Through Fire, and a forthcoming memoir, Home Fires Burning. Leslie lost her home during the High Park Fire in Colorado in 2012, and is now based in Washington State Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oaks gets into a whole bunch of new tunes. Playlist: Hunger Back by Mouthpi3ce Vengeance by Tae Lamar ft. Griffin, Procyse & DJ Kair One Don't Quit Your Day Job by Jered Sanders & FUTURISTIC Christlife by E.Man ft. iNTELLECT & Kepz 41 by Young C Food Desert by Aasha Marie Ghost by Braille & 1995 GET SAVED 2 by 7Scripture ft. HK, RenzoMck & Jeremiah 1:5 God On My Side by Y Shadey & Still Shadey Fallout by The Profit BITTER WORDS by Mr Diabolical ft. The Profit Top Up (SZN 4.EP.8) by Aligned Vision & Si Knightly Time by 678NATH & Aligned Vision Grind All Day by Phillip Anthony & iNTELLECT TIME FLIES by DJ Mykael V & 1995 ft. 350, Tragic Hero, Taelor Gray & Beleaf Believe by J.Solo ft. Jay Cabassa Vote on the playlist at www.definitionradio.com/show/948 Leave your requests/shout-outs on our socials www.facebook.com/DefinitionRadio www.instagram.com/DefinitionHH www.twitter.com/DefinitionHH www.krosswerdz.com

20250501 I Love Braille Originally Broadcasted May 1, 2025, on ACB Media 5   This week we heard from Patrick Jensen, owner of Braille Music and More. Patrick has multiple certifications in different braille codes, so whatever your transcribing needs, he can fill them. It's your chance to ask questions about what happens with custom transcription. Join us!   Sponsored by: East Bay Center for the Blind Access Archives Email Vileen Shah     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

ACB Braille Forum May 2025.

20250424 I Love Braille Originally Broadcasted April 24, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Continuing the bicentennial celebration of the invention of braille code, we had a Braille Trivia game on Louis Braille Part 2 derived from C. Michael Mellor's book: Louis Braille: A Touch of Genius.   Sponsored by: East Bay Center for the Blind Access Archives Email Vileen Shah   Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

First up, Steven shares his frustrating but relatable journey setting up a flatbed scanner via a virtual machine on his Mac Studio to read medical documents privately. The hosts reflect on the pros and cons of returning to older, more reliable tech versus the convenience of modern scanning apps—and the risks to privacy they may pose.Then it's onto major tech headlines: Apple and Meta face significant EU fines under the Digital Markets Act. The duo explores what these penalties mean for users, developer freedom, and privacy, while questioning whether they truly change the playing field.Finally, the spotlight turns to HumanWare's Stellar Trek. A brand-new update introduces book library access, pedestrian traffic light detection, and text export features, making this powerful navigation tool even more valuable for blind users. Plus, Steven is getting hands-on with the device soon—with support this time!The show wraps up with listener feedback on EasyReader login issues, the RNIB reading service interface, and the personal benefits of learning Braille. As always, the community voices shine with insight and humor.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant Links:HumanWare Stellar TrekDigital Markets Act – European CommissionRNIB Reading ServicesEasyReader App by DolphinDescriptive Video WorksCBS Audio Description InformationChapter Markers:00:00 Introduction02:56 Exploring Meta Ray-Ban Glasses and Scanning Technology06:11 Virtual Machines and Tech Setup Challenges08:59 Navigating Medical Documents and Scanning Solutions15:00 Big Tech Fines: Apple and Meta's Legal Troubles17:47 Humanware's Stellar Trek: New Features and Innovations32:28 Listener Feedback: Challenges and Solutions35:43 Accessibility in Digital Services: A Critical Review51:37 The Importance of Braille: Personal Experiences and Insights Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun return to the inbox to read listener feedback and share deeply personal experiences—starting with Steven's recent hospital stay. From insensitive medical staff to outdated assumptions about blind people, Steven unpacks the emotional highs and lows of navigating healthcare while visually impaired.The pair also dig into big tech topics, including listener reviews of Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 versus Pixel Watch, the pros and cons of angle gestures in Android, and the realities of using a Windows laptop with an ARM processor. Plus, there's an honest look at the Echo Vision smart glasses, the Glidance mobility aid, and whether blind users should still invest time in learning braille.You'll hear passionate listener opinions—from frustration over UEB to support for Fairlight (Ferret-ight?) audio editing on iPad. There's even a touching shout-out from an eight-year-old fan who thinks Sean deserves top billing!Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction02:51 Navigating Medical Environments06:13 Attitudes Towards Blindness09:06 Parenting and Blindness11:55 Listener Interactions and Accessibility Tech25:06 Windows ARM Experience37:20 Navigating Accessibility Tools43:08 The Braille Debate: Relevance and Education52:05 Exploring Kindle and Fire Tablet Accessibility Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

In today's Double Tap, Steven and Shaun dive into the rollout chaos of Meta's Look and Tell AI feature in smart glasses—and why UK users are still stuck in limbo. Steven shares how he finally got access, while Shaun continues to battle the “not available in your region” message. Could VPNs be the culprit?Also in this episode, Steven opens up about a health scare triggered by his Apple Watch's heart rate alerts, which landed him in hospital. He shares his experience and offers a reminder about the life-saving value of wearable tech.Plus, the hosts react to RNIB's response to backlash over discontinuing free personal braille transcription services. They explore what the charity's pivot really means for blind users and question the broader role of sight loss organizations in today's accessibility landscape.Listener messages flood in, with first-hand reports from Glide demo days in the UK and US. Callum, James, and Stuart all weigh in on how Glide's tech compares to traditional white canes and guide dogs—and why public perception may still be a barrier to adoption.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.YouTube Description:Meta's Look and Tell AI is rolling out—unless you're in the UK. Steven shares how he finally accessed it, while Shaun is still left waiting. Plus, Steven reveals a health scare caught by his Apple Watch. Also: RNIB responds to Braille service backlash, and listener feedback on Glide mobility tech rolls in from across the globe.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction02:54 The Struggles with Meta AI Availability05:47 Exploring the Features of Meta AI08:55 Personal Health Update12:08 RNIB's Changes to Personal Transcription Services14:58 Debate on Accessibility and Organizational Responsibilities39:07 iOS Access Book Insights41:05 Glide Device Experiences52:50 Public Perception of New Mobility Aids Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

This stylized post-apocalyptic thriller is a unique example of a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster with overtly Christian themes, even if it stops just short of a true Christian message. Directed by the Hughes Brothers (MENACE II SOCIETY, DEAD PRESIDENTS, FROM HELL) and starring beloved leading man Denzel Washington, THE BOOK OF ELI depicts the Bible as a source of tremendous power in a fallen world. Eli (Denzel Washington) is a survivor of a nuclear holocaust, wandering westward on a mysterious mission with few possessions except for a large book that he treasures. When Eli crosses paths with local warlord Carnegie (Gary Oldman), Carnegie suspects that Eli's book may be the Bible, which Carnegie himself has been seeking because he believes reading it will give him the power to control large groups of people. Carnegie is perhaps a metaphor for hypocritical conmen religious leaders who use Christianity as a way to acquire power and money, whereas Eli could represent Christ or even just a true honest believer who has made it his mission to spread faith into the world. This metaphor becomes even more clear when Eli's quest is revealed to be delivery of the Bible to an enclave of secret archivists who will reprint and preserve it forever. The authenticity of Eli's faith becomes even more clear when Carnegie does steal the Bible, only to be upset to find it is written in Braille, revealing Eli to have been blind the whole time. Despite being mortally wounded by Carnegie, Eli makes it to the archivists in time to speak the entire Bible to them as an oral tradition, ensuring its preservation. In the final scene of the movie, we see the archivists putting the newly reprinted Bible on a shelf alongside the Torah and the Quran. This ending, which is obviously inspired by the novel FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury, shows that THE BOOK OF ELI is not a truly Christian genre film — few faith-based films would equate the Bible and the Quran. To view THE BOOK OF ELI through the lens of faith-based film criticism is to see it as a religious cop out; hinting that the Bible is the source of spiritual truth but ultimately dismissing it as “just another book on a shelf.” View our full episode list and subscribe to any of our public feeds: http://boysbiblestudy.com Unlock 2+ bonus episodes per month: http://patreon.com/boysbiblestudy Subscribe to our Twitch for livestreams: http://twitch.tv/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy

Built around a game of Braille Scrabble, Emma Tracey presents a celebration of Braille, 200 years after it was invented. Emma, who's been blind since birth, talks to others who love the six tiny dots: Geerat Vermeij, one of the world's leading experts in molluscs; Yetnebersh Nigussie, an Ethiopian lawyer, who describes her blindness as ‘a lottery I won at the age of 5'; Sheri Wells-Jensen, a linguistics professor who's been a linguistic consultant on Star Trek and is on the US advisory board for messaging extra-terrestrial intelligence; Japanese concert pianist, Nobuyuki Tsujii, who learnt to play using Braille music; and Emma's friend and Scrabble partner, Ellie. And there's a chance encounter with the most famous Braille user of them all, Stevie Wonder. But can Braille survive with the ever-increasing supply of tech that allows blind people to listen to, rather than feel, information? Presenter: Emma Tracey Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound design: Steve Brooke Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

20250417 I Love Braille Originally Broadcasted April 17, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Theresa Petrey was our polestar for the month of April sharing her experience with learning and using braille.   Sponsored by: East Bay Center for the Blind Access Archives Email Vileen Shah     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

La Guardia Nacional desplegó un operativo de vigilancia en Acapulco La Secretaría de Infraestructura y Comunicaciones desplegó 70 brigadas de auxilio vial  La ex primera dama peruana Nadine Heredia, ya se encuentra asilada en BrasilMás información en nuestro podca

20250412 Doing Braille Digitally Originally Broadcasted April 12, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Participants joined us this week as we learned all about the helpTech Activator braille display. We had the privilege of having Pearl with us to talk about this display, about which not much is known.   Email the facilitator     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

20250410 I Love Braille Originally Broadcasted April 10, 2025, on ACB Media 5   There was an interactive discussion, in which participants asked and answered braille-related questions and learned from each other.   Sponsored by: East Bay Center for the Blind Access Archives Email the Facilitator   Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

In today's episode, Steven and Shaun return to the inbox with powerful listener feedback and real-world experiences in accessible tech. Steven shares a frustrating, yet ultimately successful, journey resetting his Samsung Galaxy S25—highlighting a key accessibility workaround and applauding Samsung's inclusive support. We also dive into updates on the Hable Easy device, examining new gestures, firmware updates, and how the balance between simplicity and functionality is evolving for blind users. Listener Daisy shares an emotional and deeply personal story about her Braille journey, acceptance of vision loss, and the mental health challenges that come with it. Steven and Shaun reflect on their own experiences with Braille, education, and why conversations like these matter. Plus, we unpack the latest on Glide, the autonomous mobility aid, RealSAM's AI-powered Pocket Plus, and technical issues with Apple Podcasts. This episode blends tech support, accessibility innovation, and deeply human storytelling.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction and Coffee Jitters02:23 Samsung Support Experience08:40 HABLE Easy Device Discussion15:10 Listener Feedback and Podcast Issues21:42 Glide Device Updates and Experiences28:17 Navigating Social Interactions as a Blind Individual30:29 Experiences of Public Perception and Anxiety33:39 The Importance of Understanding and Acceptance36:57 The Journey of Learning Braille40:47 Mental Health and Blindness43:30 The Value of Braille and Accessibility46:52 Technology and Its Role in Accessibility Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

Google launches its Gemini Vision tool on smartphones, bringing impressive new possibilities for accessibility, while in stark contrast, the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) announces deep cuts to its personal transcription service — with braille users taking the biggest hit.In this episode, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece are joined by disability rights advocate and blind writer Connor Scott-Gardner, who explains why these cuts matter, what's at risk, and how the blind community is responding. Connor discusses the importance of braille transcription for musicians, students, and everyday users, highlighting the personal and social impact of the service loss. He also outlines his petition to reverse the RNIB's decision, while sharing powerful insights into accessibility, community consultation, and respect.The hosts also share their candid thoughts on Google Gemini's new AI-powered vision features, why resetting a phone isn't as easy as it seems, and the larger discussion around inclusion vs. isolation when accessible services disappear.This is an episode that underscores why advocacy matters and what happens when communication fails.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant LinksPetition to save the Braille service: https://saveourbraille.wordpress.comRNIB Official Site: https://www.rnib.org.ukLearn more about Google Gemini: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/ Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

In Episode 130 of White Canes Connect, hosts Stacie Leap and David Goldstein spotlight the fifth annual Piano Bar virtual fundraiser—Five Years at the Bar. This musical event brings together blind performers from across the U.S. to raise funds for the Pennsylvania Parents of Blind Children and Blind Parents divisions. Guests Eddie Salcido (California) and John Dowling (Minnesota) share their excitement about returning to the virtual stage, where they'll perform original songs and their favorites. The lineup includes four performers—Angelina (PA), Carl Smith (UT), John, and Eddie—each bringing a mix of vocals, piano, guitar, saxophone, and more. The event format features a round-robin style performance and an intermission for audience interaction, making it feel like a true musical lounge. It's not just about the music—it's about community. The episode also highlights another upcoming fundraiser: The Blind Families Cookbook, a collaborative project offering recipes in Braille, large print, digital, and audio formats. Both initiatives support blind families through advocacy, programming, and connection. Listeners can join Piano Bar on April 12 at 7 PM ET for just $10 at nfbofpa.org/pianobar. Music, laughter, and impact—all from your own living room. Show notes at https://www.whitecanesconnect.com/130     Links Mentioned Have you checked out Federation Focusyet? https://www.youtube.com/@nfbofpa/  Read and subscribe to the Braille Monitor: https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/braille-monitor  The Braille Monitor is on NFB-NEWSLINE® Want NFB-NEWSLINE®? Live in PA? Use the form at https://nfbofpa.org/nfb-newsline/  An Easy Way to Help the NFB of PA Support the NFB of PA with every purchase at White Cane Coffee Company by going to https://www.whitecanecoffee.com/ref/nfbp. When you use that link to purchase from White Cane Coffee, the NFB of PA earns a 10% commission! Share the link with your family and friends! Listen to Erin and Bob Willman from White Cane Coffee on episode 072 of White Canes Connect. Donate to the NFB of PA Like what you hear on White Canes Connect? Support us and donate to the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania, visit https://www.NFBofPA.org/give/. We Want to Hear Your Story Reach out with questions and comments, or share ideas! We want to hear from you. Call us at (267) 338-4495 or at whitecanesconnect@gmail.com. Follow White Canes Connect Find out why White Canes Connect is currently ranked at #13 of the 100 Best Visually Impaired Podcast. Find the show on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-canes-connect/id1592248709  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YDQSJqpoteGb1UMPwRSuI  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pablindpodcast 

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece dive into a packed show full of accessible tech updates, sharp opinions, and laugh-out-loud moments.They open with breaking news about the Nintendo Switch 2 gaining accessibility features—big news for gamers with disabilities. But what does it actually mean in practice? Can blind users now enjoy games fully? Accessibility advocate and YouTuber Steve Saylor joins the conversation later to explain exactly what this update involves and what gamers can realistically expect.From there, the hosts explore the future of AI-powered robots and whether they'd trust a machine to give them a haircut. This light-hearted but thought-provoking chat leads to a deeper conversation about the rise of robotics, AI's current limitations, and tech giants like Apple and Tesla's vision of the future.Listeners also get a tour of Microsoft Copilot's latest features, how accessible it's become on Windows, and why its voice conversations are surprising even seasoned users. Steven shares frustrations about the inconsistent accessibility across apps like NOA (News Over Audio) and praises services like Dolphin EasyReader and RNIB Newsagent.In tech nostalgia, they react to Skype shutting down and reminisce about ICQ and old messaging days. Plus, they review the Meta AI rollout in WhatsApp and discuss the value of smarter AI tools for searching messages and content across platforms like Mastodon.From product shoutouts to accessibility wins and rants about tech UI, it's an energetic, funny, and insightful episode you won't want to miss.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant Links:Steve Saylor on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/stevesaylorNOA (News Over Audio): https://www.noanews.com/Dolphin EasyReader: https://yourdolphin.com/easyreaderRNIB Newsagent: https://www.rnib.org.uk/newsagentMona App for Mastodon: https://mona.app/Revo 2 Braille device (from Help Tech): https://www.helptech.de/en/Tape It App: https://www.tape.it/Double Tap Website: https://www.doubletaponair.comChapter Markers:00:00 – Introduction03:35 – Would you trust AI to cut your hair?13:00 – Exploring the NOA app for audio news17:08 – Goodbye Skype: Why no one's sad27:18 – OneDrive web accessibility on Mac examined28:00 - Steve Saylor on Nintendo Switch 2 Accessibility Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

On this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun break down the latest rumors surrounding Meta's upcoming Hypernova smart glasses. With prices rumored to start at over $1,000, they debate the practicality of AR displays in smart glasses and how accessible (or not) they might be for blind users. The discussion digs into Meta's broader wearable strategy, comparing it to past attempts like Google Glass and current AI-driven tools such as Be My Eyes and Aira.Listener emails pour in, ranging from app organization tips to feedback on Braille displays and screen reader tech. Rebecca raises concerns over the constant delays in assistive tech product launches like the Optima and Orbit Player, while Steven defends the need for accessible glucose monitoring—especially when the NHS doesn't always recognize accessibility as a necessity.Steven also dives deep into document accessibility tools, sharing his experiences using Scribe and DocuScan Plus from Numa Solutions for converting inaccessible PDFs into readable and audio-friendly formats. The episode highlights the growing utility of these tools and why OCR still matters even in the age of AI.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant LinksMeta Ray-Ban Glasses – Official site for Meta's smart glasses lineupScribe by Numa Solutions – Convert inaccessible files to audio or textDocuScan Plus – OCR scanning and document conversion toolBe My Eyes – Free visual assistance through live volunteersAira – Visual interpreting services for blind usersSensee – Creators of the accessible Braille calendarOrbit Research – Braille displays and assistive devicesMantis Q40 by Humanware – Braille display with QWERTY keyboardRemote Incident Manager – Remote desktop tool for blind users Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

20250403 I Love Braille Originally Broadcasted April 3, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Poet Susan Glass joined us to discuss the significance of using braille in writing poetry and other literary works. She also shared some of her own poems.   Sponsored by: East Bay Center for the Blind Access Archives Email Vileen Shah     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

In this episode of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun dive into the latest iOS 18.4 update and put Apple's much-hyped Visual Intelligence feature to the test—and let's just say, it didn't go quite as expected. They discuss real-world accessibility challenges with this new tool, especially when compared to apps like Be My Eyes. Plus, they explore the new ambient playlists in Apple Music and debate their actual usefulness.The conversation soon shifts into a broader Apple critique: from Siri's unreliability to ongoing accessibility issues in iCloud for Windows, and the frustrating UI in Apple's Voice Memos app. Listener Brian introduces the accessible Tape It app, prompting a larger discussion about mobile vs. desktop recording and editing for blind users. Meanwhile, Steven shares his workflow for using VoiceOver with Final Cut and reveals how he's mastering drag-and-drop with a screen reader.We also hear thoughtful feedback from listeners about Braille literacy, the challenges of light sensitivity, and the emotional impact of losing sight—especially when thinking about past visual experiences like video games or driving. The episode wraps with an email segment touching on the confusing new AI categorization in Apple Mail and audio clarity issues in podcasting.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction and Tech Rush02:53 iOS 18.4 Features and Visual Intelligence06:09 Apple Music's Ambient Playlists08:59 iCloud for Windows Accessibility Issues12:14 VoiceOver Command Customization15:12 Mouse Control with VoiceOver17:57 Exploring Drag and Drop Functionality20:50 Light Sensitivity and Personal Experiences23:47 Conclusion and Future Topics28:59 Nostalgia and Gaming Experience32:18 The Importance of Open Conversations33:48 Listener Feedback and Community Engagement35:44 Accessibility in Audio Recording Apps39:03 Desktop vs Mobile for Audio Editing42:20 Clarity in Communication for Accessibility52:44 Braille Literacy and Employment PerspectivesGet in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Relevant LinksTape It App – Audio recorder with dual-mic support and accessible trimmingAppleVis iOS 18.4 Review – Deep dive into the update and accessibility featuresEcho Vision Glasses by Agiga – AI-powered smart glasses for blind usersFerrite Recording Studio – Mobile audio editor for iOSMarsEdit – Mac-based WordPress editorNon-24 Awareness – Learn more about circadian rhythm disorders affecting blind individuals Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

This Blind Abilities episode features peer ambassadors Amy and Maddy, who share how Minnesota's State Services for the Blind (SSB) has supported their educational and vocational journeys. From summer camps to career exploration and technology training, SSB has played a vital role in helping them develop independence, self-advocacy, and professional readiness. Transition Coordinator Shane DeSantis explains how SSB collaborates with students, schools, and families starting at age 14, providing individualized services like job shadowing, orientation and mobility training, and Braille instruction. The episode highlights real-world experiences, resources, and the long-term impact of SSB on the lives of blind and visually impaired students.   To learn more about the services available through State Services for the Blind and how they can support your independence, contact Shane DeSantis at Shane.DeSantis@state.mn.us or call 651-385-5205.   Full Transcript  

In this powerful and candid episode, Steven and Shaun sit down with Angela Bonfanti, the President and CEO of CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind), to explore how one of Canada's most influential blindness organizations is transforming its approach to employment, technology, and inclusion.Angela shares her deep personal connection to CNIB—from a childhood shaped by her father's vision loss, to her 13-year journey within the organization. She offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how CNIB's groundbreaking “Come to Work” program is tackling Canada's staggering 28% employment rate for people with vision loss, and explains how real change starts with listening to the community.You'll also hear:Why tech like Meta's Ray-Ban glasses are both exciting and frustratingCNIB's vision for SmartLife Centres as training—not just retail—hubsWhy Braille is making a comeback and how CNIB is prioritizing literacyThe importance of local, mobile support across Canada's vast geographyA look at the hidden cost of DEI "backlash" and why true inclusion requires more than a checkboxAngela doesn't hold back, and this is a must-listen episode for anyone passionate about accessibility, advocacy, and actionable progress.Relevant LinksCNIB Come to Work ProgramCNIB SmartLifeVision Loss Rehabilitation CanadaBe My EyesMonarch Tactile Display (APH & HumanWare)Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Chapter Markers:00:00 Introduction01.00 Happy Birthday Koko The Guide Dog10:10 Introduction to Angela Bonfanti, CEO of CNIB20:41 Addressing Employment Challenges for the Visually Impaired23:09 The Role of Technology in Employment and Accessibility26:49 Addressing Accessibility Challenges in Technology30:26 Collaboration and Community Engagement33:46 The Future of Assistive Technology36:21 Creating Centers of Excellence for Technology Training40:54 Raising Awareness and Advocacy for Vision Loss44:10 The Importance of Braille in Modern Education Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap WebsiteJoin the conversation and add your voice to the show either by calling in, sending an email or leaving us a voicemail!Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comPhone: 1-877-803-4567

JAWS 30th anniversary celebration is in full swing. So this month on FSCast, we visit with Ted Henter to hear some JAWS stories, as well as to get some helpful tips on starting your own business. We also get the scoop on Vispero's announcements and special events at this year's CSUN Assistive Technology Conference from Ryan Jones, Roxana Fischer and Elizabeth Whitaker. And we hear from Marinela Ortiz about her personal experience with JAWS and Braille.

Episode 899 is wild! And we think it bodes well for the 900s coming up. We start with a crazy thread online about whether one could hypothetically read braille with their clitoris (shoutout to the Vagina Museum), and we learn the insane reason doctors miscounted the number of nerve-endings in them. Susie discusses the latest shocking death penalty execution because the prisoner chose death by firing squad, and we learn the protocol for the process (it's so disturbing!). A teen in India had a parasitic twin removed from his abdomen, and the twin had fully developed genitalia, buttocks, and legs and could feel pain, but couldn't live outside of the other twin's abdomen. Sarah and Susie discover they both have an anatomical anomaly on their body, and let's just say it is on their bums. We learn about a shipwreck that dumped tons of Legos into the ocean and the people who seek the pieces on the world's beaches. We discuss an expensive legal battle happening in the Hamptons over a $25 gift card, and it's just as petty as it sounds. And Susie explains how doctors are using teeth to cure blindness.Listen to more podcasts like this: https://wavepodcastnetwork.comJoin our Candy Club, shop our merch, sign-up for our free newsletter, & more by visiting The Brain Candy Podcast website: https://www.thebraincandypodcast.comConnect with us on social media:BCP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braincandypodcastSusie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susiemeisterSarah's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imsarahriceBCP on X: https://www.x.com/braincandypodSponsors:Visit https://www.carawayhome.com/BRAINCANDY and you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase.Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @lumedeodorant and get 15% off with promo code BRAINCANDY15 at https://lumedeodorant.com #lumepodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

En este nuevo episodio, os presentamos en primicia la nueva tabla Braille lusoespañola que permite escribir en Braille informático con 6 puntos, y para probarla, vemos también la función de escritura en Braille, mediante el teclado del ordenador, existente en NVDA

Concerns over Syria's new government, the troubling case of Mahmoud Khalil, and printing Scripture in braille. Plus, a premature tribute, Cal Thomas on due process rights, and the Thursday morning newsSupport The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate.Additional support comes from Barnabas Aid. The ministry of Barnabas Aid is to send financial support and practical aid to projects that help Christians where they suffer discrimination, oppression or persecution as a consequence of their faith. The projects aim to strengthen Christian individuals, churches, and their communities by providing material and spiritual support in response to needs identified by local Christian leaders on the ground. More at barnabasaid.orgFrom Dordt University. where engineering students are taught to do more than solve problems; they're equipped to help God's creation flourish. Dordt.eduAnd from Pensacola Christian College. Academic excellence, biblical worldview, affordable cost. go.pcci.edu/world

In 1995, Los del Rio infected popular dance culture with their one-hit wonder, “The Macarena”, the U.S. national debt was only $5,000,000,000,000 (five trillion), both eBay and Craigslist were birthed into popular culture, Taco Bell offered The Volcano Burrito and The Double Decker Taco menu items for a limited time (each for less than $1.00, btw), and O.J. Simpson was acquitted thanks (in no small part) to Robert Kardashian, the man who would ultimately become responsible for fueling the success of Gary Holt's incredibly popular line of outerwear.   Meanwhile, in the world of 1995 metal, Kyuss called it quits shortly after releasing “…And The Circus Leaves Town” and DOWN unleashed their debut masterpiece “NOLA” on the EXACT SAME DAY that Dream Theater released their first EP featuring their 23-minute epic title track, “A Change Of Seasons”!   Get ready to find out what a “Coyote Disaster” actually sounds like, be mindful that when it comes to playing music in a live setting, some of us can play “topless” and some of us need a “sports bra”. Hear our thoughts regarding the upcoming “Back To The Beginning” final Black Sabbath concert event, listen carefully for a handful of not so subtle “R.E.M. references”, learn “how to scream at people in Braille”, and brace yourself for the record scratch heard ‘round the world (after embracing your “Patreon privilege”) when you JOIN US to find out “how they all talk” as we travel back in time to THE YEAR IN METAL – 1995.   Visit www.metalnerdery.com/podcast for more on this episode Help Support Metal Nerdery https://www.patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast Leave us a Voicemail to be played on a future episode: 980-666-8182 Metal Nerdery Tees and Hoodies – metalnerdery.com/merch and kindly leave us a review and/or rating on the iTunes/Apple Podcasts - Spotify or your favorite Podcast app Listen on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or wherever you get your Podcasts. Follow us on the Socials: Facebook - Instagram - TikTok Email: metalnerdery@gmail.com Can't be LOUD Enough Playlist on Spotify Metal Nerdery Munchies on YouTube @metalnerderypodcast Show Notes: (00:01): “I've thought about something…”/ “That's not consistent…it's not the same…”/ #JoJoRabbit / “YEAH!!!”/ ***WARNING: #listenerdiscretionisadvised *** / “I never saw him play topless…he could have done a sports bra…”/ ***WELCOME BACK TO THE METAL NERDERY PODCAST COMING AT YOU FROM THE DIGITAL BUNKERPOON!!!*** / “There's something to remember when it comes to nasty, mean things you say to people…”/ #recordscratch / “This has got nothing to do with metal…”/ “Make this a #Patreon…”/ #talkies / “How do you scream at somebody who's deaf?”/ #youjustmouthit / “Dude, they can't hear this, don't worry about it…”/ ***IF YOU WANNA SKIP THE NONSENSE, HEAD TO #THEDOCKET ***    (06:24): ***Head over to patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast to JOIN US over there!!!*** / #patreonshoutout / “Do you not like when I do that, dude?”/ #PatreonPrivilege / “How about a beer, bitches?” / #thisepisodesbeeroftheepisode / #SceptreBrewing #MikroBose / “If it was liquid nitrogen cold…” / ***Check us out on ALL the social media, including #TikTok #Instagram #Facebook #YouTube at #MetalNerderyPodcast and EMAIL US at metalnerdery@gmail.com or GIVE US A CALL AND LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL AT 980-666-8182!!!*** / #whoareyou / #ThePost / “Comin' out of a K-hole…”/ Thoughts regarding the final #BlackSabbath show in July 2025 / #RussellsReflectionsASMR / “That's me in the spotlight…” / “I was literally thinking that as you were saying it…”/ #sayinggoodbye / “The fact that he's still alive is a miracle of modern science…”/ “You've gotta go left before that happens…”/ #DrugWarRetardity / “It's a powdered vegetable…”   (17:14): #TheDocket METAL NERDERY PODCAST PRESENTS:  1995 – YEAR IN METAL / “The 30th anniversary of 1995…”/ #BlackSabbath (Forbidden) / “This is the #remix…”/ RUSTY ANGELS / “Is there something a little doomier on this?” / THE ILLUSION OF POWER / “Now THAT's Sabbath…”/ “Let's do some weird shit…”/ “This is the #killeropener for 1995…”/ #DOWN (NOLA) – TEMPTATION'S WINGS / “If you think about one, how do you not think about the other?” / #Behemoth (SVENTEVITH (Storming Near The Baltic)) – HIDDEN IN A FOG / “Do you hear that acoustic in the background?” / #blackmetal   (26:54): “I've got the perfect one…”/ “Huh?”/ #GripInc (Power of Inner Strength) / HOSTAGE TO HEAVEN / “A little?”/ “That just gets me hard hearing that…”/ #FuManchu (Daredevil) – COYOTE DUSTER (NOT Coyote Disaster!) / “I wanna be high…in the desert…jumpin' dunes…”/ “Poon is like the whole thing, snootch is actually the tunnel…”/ “Oooh, so you're doing the #Uno card…”/ #Reverse / #Deicide (Once Upon The Cross) – ONCE UPON THE CROSS / “The difference between Chris Barnes and Corpsegrinder…”/ #genreASMR   (36:36): #MonsterMagnet (Dopes To Infinity) – NEGASONIC TEENAGE WARHEAD / “I believe the proper term is ‘cock averse'…”/ “That's a LOT of flange back there…”/ “Look at the W.A.S.P. album…”/ “I know where I'm going next…”/ “That was a good impression of you doing an impression of me doing an impression of #BrianJohnson…”/ #Kyuss (…And The Circus Leaves Town) – HURRICANE / “Also, ironically enough, you were here for BOTLH…”/ #FaithNoMore (King For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime) – THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES / “They were weird…it became very artistic…”    (46:54): #Death (Symbolic) – SYMBOLIC / “What do you think your favorite Death album is?”/ “…and we're back!”/ #Carcass (Swansong – 1996) ***NOTE: we're aware this wasn't released in 1995, but it was recorded in 1995, so it's fine…*** / BLACK STAR / “Death ‘n' Roll…”/ “This is my last pick here…”/ “I feel like #grunge is a bit of a strong word…”/ #Anthrax (Stomp 442) – FUELED / “Honorable mentions…”/ “We should play that, it's only 25 minutes…”/ “What did you say!?”/ “We should do an #InsideTheMetal on them…they don't have a lot of albums either…”/ #MrTinkletrain / “I watched a video from when (#Primus) made that video (for Wynonna's Big Brown Beaver)…” / #StillNotBlackEnough / #MagnusOpus vs #MagnumOpus / “I've never heard a woman actually fart…”/ “Top Song from #Billboard in 1995…you're never gonna guess it…”/ #SuperBowlCommercial / THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!!! / #untilthenext #outroreel #Huh?

Our guest this time, Kane Brolin, will quickly and gladly tell you that as a blind person born in Iowa in 1965 he was mightily blessed to be born in that state as it had the best programs for blind people in the nation. Kane was born prematurely and, because of being given too much oxygen he became blind due to a condition known as retinopathy O. Prematurity. In fact I am blind due to the same circumstance. As it turns out, Kane and I share a great many life experiences especially because of the attitudes of our parents who all thought we could do whatever we put our minds to doing. Kane attended public school and then went to Iowa State University. He wanted to be a DJ and had a bit of an opportunity to live his dream. However, jobs were scarce and eventually he decided to go back to school at Northwestern University in Illinois. He formed his own financial and investment company which has been in business since 2002. He is a certified financial planner and has earned the Chartered Special Needs Consultant® designation.   We talk quite a bit about financial matters and he gives some sage advice about what people may realize are good investment ideas. He talks about investing in the stock market and urges investing for the long term. I leave it to him to discuss this in more depth.   Kane is quite committed to “pay it forward” insofar as dealing with blind people is concerned. He is currently the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Penny Forward, Inc., a not-for-profit founded and run by blind people which strives to build a diverse and aspirationally-focused community of blind people who help one another achieve financial fitness, gainful employment, and overall fulfilment in life.   I find Kane quite inspirational and I hope you will do so as well. He has much to offer and he provided many good life lessons not only about financial matters, but also about blindness and blind people.       About the Guest:   Born in 1965, Kane Brolin spent his formative years in the state of Iowa and later went on to earn a Master's degree from the JL Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which is near Chicago.  Since the year 2002, he has owned and operated a financial planning and investment management business based in Mishawaka, Indiana, located not far from The University of Notre Dame.  Over the years, he has become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional and has earned the Chartered Special Needs Consultant® designation.  When doing business with his clients, securities and Advisory Services are offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a Registered Investment Advisor which is a Member of FINRA and SIPC,.   Having been totally blind for all his life, Kane feels indebted to many people who selflessly gave of their time, talent, and resources to help him acquire the education, skills, and confidence that enable him to lead a busy and productive life in service to others.  Many of those who made the biggest impact when Kane was growing up, also happened to be members of the National Federation of the Blind.  So after getting established on his current career path, he increasingly felt the impulse to give back to the organized blind movement which had served his needs from an early age.   Kane co-founded the Michiana Chapter in the National Federation of the Blind in 2012 and subsequently was elected to serve a two-year term as president of the Indiana State Affiliate of the NFB in October, 2022.  He is thankful for the early introduction of Braille, as well as for the consistent drumbeat from parents, peers, and professors which set and reinforced continuously high expectations.     In addition to his work with the NFB, Kane serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Penny Forward, Inc., a not-for-profit founded and run by blind people which strives to build a diverse and aspirationally-focused community of blind people who help one another achieve financial fitness, gainful employment, and overall fulfilment in life.   Kane lives in Mishawaka with Danika, his wife of 27 years, and their four children.  Kane and Danika were active foster parents for 11 years.  The Brolin family have been committed to numerous civic organizations; they and their family are active in their place of worship.  Giving back to the world is a continuously high priority.  They endeavor to teach their children by example, and they impart to them the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “You can all be great, because you can all serve.”   Ways to connect with Rob:   BrolinWealth.com LinkedIn public profile nfb-in.org pennyforward.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi, everyone. I am your host, Michael Hingson, or you can call me Mike. It's okay. And this is unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity in the unexpected. Meet today. We're going to do a little bit of all. We're inclusive because my guest Kane Brolin, or if you're from Sweden, it's Brolin, and it's pronounced Brolin, not Brolin, but Kane bralin, or broline, is in Indiana, and Kane also happens to be blind, and has been blind his entire life. We'll get into that. He is very much involved in investing and dealing with money matters that I'm interested to get a chance to really chat about it's always fun to talk to people about how they're helping people with finances and money and getting insights. And I'm sure that he has some to to offer. So we'll get to that. Kane also happens to be the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana, and so that keeps him busy, so he deals with money, and he's a politician to boot. So what else can you ask for? I pick on Kane by doing that, but nevertheless, Kane, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank   Kane Brolin ** 02:34 you. And there are there are times when the politics and the money issues can be a dream. There are other times it can be an absolute nightmare, either one, either one or both and and the thing that ties those together in common ground is that I walk in in the morning, and sometimes they have no idea what I'm about to walk into. So it does make for an adventure. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:57 the Fed has lowered interest rates. What do you think about that?   Kane Brolin ** 03:01 Well, there is some ramification for what happens in the consumer marketplace. The main thing that I've been hearing today is that even with those lowering of short term interest rates, you're seeing some long term interest rates go down the mortgage rates, especially, and those two are not necessarily always related. You don't always see the long term interest rates that the market determines through supply and demand. They don't always go in sync with the short term baseline rate that the Federal Reserve banking system sets, but in this particular case, they are, and what I've been reading this morning is that that may be at least good news in the short run for consumers, because they'll be paying Lower interest for new mortgages and also perhaps lower credit card rates or credit card payments. Of course, the downside is that if one invests and is lending money instead of borrowing it, that means sometimes lower rates of income that you can get from things like a certificate of deposit or an annuity. So there's always two sides of the same coin, and then it depends on which side you happen to be looking at. At the moment, right now, the market seems to like this convergence of interest rate activities, and the stock market has generally been up today. So by the time people hear this, that won't matter because it's a whole different day, but, but right now, the early returns coming in are pretty good for the the common human being out there trying to just manage their money.   Michael Hingson ** 04:54 Well, that's not really surprising, in a sense, because rates have been high for a while. Yeah, and things have been tough. So it's not surprising that people have made, and I would put it this way, to a degree, the marketing decision to respond favorably to the rates going down, and I know there's been a lot of pressure for the thread to lower its rate, and so they did. And I think that a lot of different entities kind of had to respond in a reasonably positive way, because they kept saying that it's time that the rates go down. So they had to respond. So we'll see how it it all goes. I   Kane Brolin ** 05:33 think, you know, and there's an issue I think that's salient to people with disabilities, blind people, included, if it's less expensive for the consumer to borrow money, it should follow that in the coming weeks, it should be less expensive for businesses to borrow money if they need some, and they may be more inclined to open up more jobs to people or to not shrink the jobs or The hiring that they have done by laying people off so and that's what I was just about. No one is a recession, and so it may mean that there are openings, there's room in the job market for more of us, because the thing I'm most passionate about in this whole game of helping blind people is getting us access to money and getting us access to gainful permanent work.   Michael Hingson ** 06:24 And that's what I was actually going to going to talk about, or not talk about a long time, but, but mention was that the real test will be how it affects the job market and the unemployment rate and so on. And I hope that that that will go down. I know it's been sort of ticking up a little bit, although in reality, of course, for persons with disabilities, the unemployment rate is a whole lot higher than around 4% so it'll be interesting to see how all that goes all the way around. But even just the national unemployment rate, I would hope that if that has been an excuse because the rates have been high, that now we'll see that start to drop, and, you know, so we'll see. But I think it's a it's going to be one of those waiting games to see how the world responds. Of course, we have a whole political thing going on with the election and I'm sure that some people on the political side like the the drop better than people on the other side do, but again, we'll see how it all goes. So it's it makes life fun. Well, tell me a little bit about you, if you would, sort of maybe the early cane growing up and all that sort of stuff. You were born, according to your bio, back in 1965 so I was 15 at the time, so I remember the year. So you've, you've been around a little while, though, however, so tell us a little bit about the early cane.   Kane Brolin ** 07:54 Yeah, I don't remember too many years, or any years, really, prior to about maybe 1971 or 72 with any degree of real clarity. You know, I would say that my early years were a mixed bag, but in the main they were good, of course, being immediately confronted with rLf, or retinopathy of prematurity, as they call it these days, and being blind from the very beginning, most people would probably out there consider it a tragedy. But if I if I knew that it was my fate to be a blind person, which I suppose it is, then I won the lottery as being a blind person, I think. And that might be a controversial statement, but the truth is that there is no place in the United States, and probably no place in the world that would have been better for me to grow up in in the late 1960s and 1970s than in Iowa, because now there was, there was no other blindness in my family. It's not hereditary. My parents had no idea how to deal with it in the very beginning.   Michael Hingson ** 09:12 Were you born prematurely? I was, yeah, which is why I weigh you have that   Kane Brolin ** 09:16 something like two pounds, 10 ounces at birth. So there is a part of me that realizes that I am very fortunate to be alive, and I'm very fortunate that my brain has functioned pretty well for most of my life. You can't always count on that either, you know, and when you get when you get older, my my father was a very bright person, and yet he lived during the last 10 years of his life, he struggled with dementia and some other problems so but I can say that I've had a good run so far, and you know what they what they didn't know. At least my parents and others in my family knew what they didn't know. And I. But when you don't know what you don't know, you flounder and and settle for almost anything, including fear. But when you know what you don't know, then you understand you need to research things. And I happened to be in a state that had been graced by the presence of Dr Kenneth Jernigan, principally. And of course, other people that I had no idea who they were at that time. You know, folks like James gaschell and James on VIG right, and and others. I think Joanne Wilson came out of that mix. I didn't know her either, but I've read about all these people in the past, but, but first and foremost, my parents found out that Dr Jernigan was number one, very brilliant. Number two did not settle for low expectations. And number three had the advantage of being both the head of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, which was a state sanctioned Agency, and the National Federation of the Blind, which is, or, you know, has been for most of the last 84 years, the leading advocacy organization and civil rights organization of the Blind in in the United States. Now, I'm not here to make a political point about that, but in Iowa, they were definitely more well known than anyone was, and because he could pull strings which influence things like educational budgets, and he also had very much a civil rights mindset and an aggressive mindset of going forward and breaking down barriers, this is a rare combo platter of traits and possibilities that I very much benefited from. And when I say that, I mean that from the very beginning, at five or six years old, I had Braille. I didn't have Braille in the beginning, but, but my parents did and and my dad actually knew enough about it to construct a set of blocks with print lettering on one side, Braille on the other side. And so not only did I have a really good teacher in my first couple of years of public school education named Doris Willoughby, some may be familiar with her. I know Doris will rip she has passed on in the past couple years, but she made a great impact in in my life, and a very deep impact in others lives too. But because of her influence and like minded people, I had access to books. I had access to mostly mainstreamed integrated education, where I was in the classroom with other sighted students, except for certain parts of certain days, you know, I had access to a great big wall mounted tactile map that was like a puzzle. And I understand Dr Jernigan designed that one too, where I could actually feel and take apart the states of the Union. And so I could tell where Oklahoma was, where Massachusetts was, where Indiana is. I could tell the shapes of the various states. I thought it was kind of curious that California, where you are from, Michael, is shaped very much like a banana, or at least that's what occurred to me at that time. I had recorded books. I had talking books. And you know, while there are things I did not get out of a mainstream public education that I kind of wish I had gotten out of it, from a social standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, the academics were on point, and I had access to resources, and I kind of just was living in a in a dream world, in a way, because even through my college days, I thought, Well, gee, it's great that we have all this now. Why is there all this blind civil rights stuff going on now? Because this was solved from the beginning of my childhood. Little did I realize that that is not the case in most other parts of the country or the world, but I got what I needed to at least have a shot on goal at success, and I'm very grateful for that, and it's one of the reasons that I have chosen to dedicate a portion of my life, during my prime working years, even to the National Federation of the Blind, because I want to pay this forward and help out some people that may not have had all the advantages that I had, even, even in the bygone days that I was growing up,   Michael Hingson ** 14:23 sure? So tell me, because I went through some of the same experiences you did in terms of being born premature and becoming blind due to rLf, which stands for retro enteral fibroplasia. And if people want to know how to spell that, they can go by thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog, and the triumph of trust at ground zero. And you can learn how to spell it there, because I don't remember how to spell it. We put it in the book, but that's what I remember. But so when you be when it was discovered that you were blind, how did your parents handle that? What did they say? Right? What did the doctors say to them? Because my experience was and, you know, of course, I didn't know it at the time, but my parents told me later that the doctor said, send him off to a home because he could never amount to anything, because no blind child could ever contribute to society. What was, if, from your understanding from your parents, what was what happened to you? If any   Kane Brolin ** 15:21 doctor ever said that to them? They never told me about it. What I what I do know is that there is an eye doctor that was a part of their lives, who I saw a couple of times, probably in my childhood, who was a a female optometrist or maybe an ophthalmologist in the area, and they really had a lot of respect for her. I never felt marginalized or dismissed. Yeah, as a part of my childhood, part of it is that I don't think my parents would have tolerated that, and my   Michael Hingson ** 15:55 parents didn't, either my parents and my parents didn't either they said, No, you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he wants, and we're going we're going to give him that opportunity. And they brought me up that way, which is, of course, part of what led to my psyche being what it is. And I too, believe in paying it forward and doing work to try to educate people about blindness and so on, and supporting and and I've been involved with the National Federation of the Blind since 1972 so it's been a while. Yeah, I would say,   Kane Brolin ** 16:27 I know I remember. I have a very, very fuzzy memory of being four, maybe five years old, and I know that they considered putting me into the Iowa Braille and sight saving School, which was a school for the blind in Iowa no longer exists, by the way, but they did consider it and decided against it. I don't think they wanted me to just go off to boarding school I was five. I know that that does work for some people, and I know that in later years, I've read that in some cases, even Dr Jernigan believed that schools for the blind were better, especially in places where there wasn't a truly sincere effort by public school systems to integrate and set high expectations for blind students. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 17:13 of course, here in California, for example, in the 50s and so on, as the California School for the Blind we had and and earlier, Dr Newell Perry, among others, who was a blind mathematician. Of course, Dr tembrech was was out here, and there were values and reasons why the schools could make a difference. My parents were pushed really hard by my elementary school principal to send me off to that school, and I actually remember hearing shouting matches between them, because parents said ah and and I didn't go to the school. I don't know what it was like by the time we moved out here and we were putting me in kindergarten, first and second grade. So like in 5657 I'm not sure what the school was like, but my parents didn't want me to not have a real home environment. So, you know,   Kane Brolin ** 18:12 yeah, and so, you know, I remember my childhood is, well, it wasn't like everybody else's childhood. One of the the issues happened to be that my the neighborhood that my family lived in, did not have a lot of kids in it that were my age for most of the time I was there, the schools in the early to mid 70s at least that admitted blind students in the town that I grew up in, which was Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there was only one set of schools on the opposite side of town where they were sending blind kids for those resources. Now that later changed and the decision was made. I guess I made the decision to stay out there. So one of the differences was that I was bussed from the southeast side of town to the southwest side of town. So there were kids I got to know through school, but I didn't have any kind of social life with most of them, with a couple different exceptions, through my childhood. So it was a lot of academics, it wasn't a lot of play time, right? That certainly informed how I grew up, and it's made me a little bit struggle to understand and and be a really sensitive, playful, patient type parent, because my my kids and I'll, we'll go there when we get there, but my, my children, I have four, they're all still in home right now, are very normal kind of rambunctious kids that enjoy and struggle with the same things that any other kids do. They are all sighted, but, but my parents were. Was pretty strict. They set high expectations, but some of that was high expectations for behavior as well. So I really wasn't ramming around and causing trouble and getting into mischief and, you know, getting on my bike and riding for miles outside the way kids did in the 70s. So there there were limitations in my childhood, but, but, you know, my parents, too, expected me to utilize and to have the resources that would lead me to be anything I wanted to be. And I honestly think that if I had said, I want to be the President of the United States, they would not have ruled it out. Now, the only thing I've really been president of is several different civic organizations and the Indiana branch of the NFB. You know, that's something not everyone does. I've interviewed a governor before when I was a journalism student. That was fun, and I've met congress people, but they did not set the limitations. You know, sometimes maybe I did, but but they didn't. And so I'm really grateful for that, that as long as I knew what I wanted, they made sure that I had the tools and access to whatever training they knew about that could help me to   Michael Hingson ** 21:18 get there. So you you went through school. And I think our our younger lives were fairly similar, because I also, when I went into fourth grade, and we finally had a resource teacher in the area, I was bused to the other side of town for that. And all of that kind of came together when I started high school, because everyone in Palmdale went to the same high school, so anyone I knew prior to going across town, I got to know again, and still knew as as friends growing up, but we all went to high school together. But you know, I hear exactly what you're saying, and my parents did not impose limitations either, and I'm very blessed for that. But you went through school and then you went to college. Tell me about college.   Kane Brolin ** 22:19 It was a fun experience. Glad that I went through it. I attended Iowa State University for my bachelor's degree. I know that you've never, ever heard this before, but I really dreamed about being a radio personality. And I say that sarcastically. It's what I wanted to be, because I had a cousin that was in the business. But of course, since then, as I've gotten more into blind blindness culture and met many other people that I never knew growing up, I know that that the media and especially radio as a gift, is really fascinating to many of us, and a lot of us have had rotations in different parts of that, especially with the advent of the internet, but this was back during the 70s and 80s, and what I wanted to be at first was a DJ. Used to pretend to be one at home all the time and then, but I also knew where the library was, and I developed a great love of books and information and data. To some degree, I wasn't really a math guy, more of a word guy, but I then developed a deep interest in journalism and investigation and research, and so by the middle to late 80s, what I wanted to be was, let's just call it the next Peter Jennings, if one can remember who that is, right. And I'm sure that there are probably, you know, facsimiles of him today,   Michael Hingson ** 23:50 but it's hard to be a facsimile of Peter Jennings. But yeah, he really is,   Kane Brolin ** 23:55 and that he was great and but you know the disadvantage, the advantage and the disadvantage of going to Iowa State University. I Why did I go there? Because any of my few relatives that had gone to college, including my dad, had had gone there. My dad was very loyal to his alma mater, and he told both myself and my sister, who is a very different person and not blind at all. If it was good enough for me, it's good enough for you, and if you want me to pay for it, here's where you're going to go. Now, Iowa State is mostly an engineering and agricultural school. It's a land grant institution. And I know that land grant institutions are a little controversial in today's climate where there is more of an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion and making up for some past societal wrongs, but these are deeply respected institutions that mainly turned out people that ended up well, doing things like building. Bridges and being mechanical engineers and developing new seed corn hybrids and things of this nature. It did have a telecommunicative arts program, and I was in it, but there were very few of us in it, and I did get a chance to get my hands on the equipment. I was a broadcaster, first on a student radio station at Iowa State called K usr. Then I actually did work for pay, sort of for a number of years for w, O I am and FM, which were flagship stations of what we would now call the the NPR network. You know, these were around since the 20s, and I actually did work for them. I was on air a little bit. I ran the control board a lot, and I worked for those two stations on a part time basis, probably about a three quarter time basis, for several years after leaving college, and it was really a student job, but I had trouble finding any other more meaningful work in the industry. What I gradually came to find out is that I loved radio, but radio really didn't love me, and I wasn't really thinking strategically. At that time, I graduated in 1988 it is that very same year that a little known figure from Kansas City named Rush Limbaugh hit the American airwaves like a ton of bricks. And because of him and some other people like him, all of a sudden, local stations realized that they could drop their news and information programming, stop hiring so many people, and because Mr. Limbaugh was as popular as he was, they could basically run a lot of satellite based programming, have somebody sort of halfway monitor the board and hire somebody else to program computer systems that would put automated commercial breaks on and things like this, and they wouldn't really have to produce local content. We also saw the elimination of the equal time standard and the Fairness Doctrine, which required local stations to put on a variety of viewpoints and air programming every week that was in the public interest, that didn't necessarily have commercial value. And so the things I wanted to do became a lot harder to do, because by the time I was ready to get hired to do them, not a lot of radio stations were hiring people to do it, even in the even in the television world, and so strategically, I was buying into a sinking market, and That wasn't a great place to be at that time. And so with some reluctance, after a lot of fruitless job searching, I chose another path, not necessarily knowing where that path would lead. And so the last time I ever got paid to run a shift for a radio station was in late June of 1993 I've been a guest on a couple of different shows and some podcasts like this one. I greatly enjoy it. I've even thought about doing some internet broadcasting. I don't have the time, really to do that now, but, but, and I miss it, but I have found out there are ways of diverting the skill sets I have to another path.   Michael Hingson ** 28:25 And what path did you choose?   Kane Brolin ** 28:28 Initially, the path I chose was graduate school. I was fortunate enough to have gotten good enough grades that I was able to get approved by a number of different business schools. You know, the first path I really wanted to do is be a Foreign Service Officer for the diplomatic corps. I applied for the US Department of State. And I had some hopes in doing that, because around 1990 a gentleman named Rami Rabbi. You may know him, I do did became the first blind person ever to be a Foreign Service Officer. Now, he had advantages. He had traveled the world. I had traveled to Mexico and Costa Rica, and I spoke Spanish, and I was pretty fluent, but he was a little bit more qualified in different ways that they were looking for. So I wanted some international experience. I applied for the Peace Corps, and I had no real shot at that. What they were looking for was something very different from what I was then. But I did apply to the Foreign Service, and I made it almost all the way down the hiring process. I made the final 3% cut among the class they were looking at in 1990 and 91 I went to Virginia to, I think Alexandria and I sat for the last round of interviews and simulations that they did. Unfortunately, I was in the top 3% and they wanted the top 1% so I had a really fun few days out there at the government's expense. But I also found that I was not going to be hired to be the second blind. Foreign Service officer. I later found out that Mr. Robbie had to actually file a lawsuit and win that lawsuit to get his opportunity. So I know that the system were not exactly bought in to blame people doing this on a regular basis. I know there's others that have gotten there since that, and I've met one of them, but but that that wasn't for me, but they also said what I really needed was more management experience. I'd never done anything in management, so I decided to go to management school or business school as graduate school. I got accepted by a few different places. I chose Northwestern University in Chicago. My sister had gone through that program. I guess that's maybe one of the reasons I selected that one. I could have gone to a couple of others that also had accepted me, and sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I done that. But I did spend two years in Chicago land met some of the most impressive people that I've ever met in my life. Figured out train systems and pace bus systems, and went all over the place and had friends in the city, not just in the school. I made the most of that time, and that's what I did from 1993 to 1995 unfortunately, I found out you can get a an MBA or a master of management, but they still, still weren't hiring a lot of blind people out there. And so while my associates were getting jobs at McKinsey and Company, and Booz Allen Hamilton, as it was known at that time, and they were working for Bank of America, doing all kinds of interesting things and and also brand management companies like disco and Kellogg and all that. I got all of one job offer coming out of one of the top 5b schools in the country, and I took that job offer, which led me to Midland, Michigan, where I knew nobody at that time, but I spent about three and a half years doing various types of business research for the Dow Chemical Company, and that did not last as a career, but I got a chance to make the first real money I had ever earned. At that time through another connection that wasn't related to Dow, I happened to meet the woman that I eventually married and am with now, and have had four kids with, and so that was a whole different kettle of fish. But at the end of 98 I was downsized, along with several others in my department, and we decided at that time that entrepreneurship was probably not a bad way to go, or, you know, something that wasn't just strictly speaking corporate. In 2000 I landed in the South Bend, Indiana area, which is where she is from. I had never lived here before. This is where I am now. And while struggling to find a place here, I realized that I could get hired on as what is called a financial advisor. I had no idea what that was. Well, you know, with a business degree, I could probably be a credible hire as a financial advisor. Little did I know that that involved tele sales. In the very beginning, never thought I was a salesperson either. Since then, I have found out that I have more selling ability than I had ever thought that I might and that that is an honorable profession if you're convincing people to do what is right for themselves. And so I've found that over the years, being what I am enables me to, well, in a way, keep my own hours. We've chosen the small business, sort of independent contracting route, rather than the employee channel, working for a bank or for somebody else's brokerage. I get to be a researcher, I get to be a public speaker now and then, and I get to help people problem solve, which is something I would not have had a chance to do on the radio. And when someone comes up to you, as a few people have and have, said, you know, thank you for making it possible for me to retire and to do what I want to do, and to spend time with grandkids and to live where I want to live. You know, that's a that's definitely a hit. That's a great feeling to have someone say, Thank you for helping me to do and to be what I didn't know I could do or be. So   Michael Hingson ** 34:38 investing isn't what you had originally planned to do with your life. So I can't say that it was necessarily a lifelong goal from the beginning, but you evolved into it, and it seems to be going pretty well for you.   Kane Brolin ** 34:51 Well, yeah, I think it has. It's investing means different things to different. People, to some clients, the goal is, I just don't want to lose money. Please put me in something that earns a little bit, but I don't want the chance for anything I'm in to go down for others. What investing means is, I want to be more aggressive. I want to build what I have. What do you think about this or that opportunity? What stock should I be in? Because I really want to grab onto an opportunity and seize the day and have as much as I can have at the end of the day. And you know, For still others, it means, it means giving. It means building something up so I can pass it along, either to a charity, to the kids, to the grandkids, to to my religious institution of choice, whatever that is. So I find that investing is not just investing, the the at the root, at the heart of investing, the heartbeat of it, is really the people that I serve. And you know, I was told early on, hey, you don't have a practice. All you're doing is practicing, unless you have people to be in front of. And so in my mind, you know, and I'm not that much of a quantitative guy. I'm I'm not the person out there working as an actuary for Symmetra Life Insurance Company figuring out how much money has to go in and how much it must earn to be able to give 50,000 people the payouts they want from an annuity till the end of their projected lifespans. That's that's not where I am. I'm not designing a mutual fund that's more like what a certified financial analyst would be. I am a Certified Financial Planner practitioner, and what a CFP does is takes numbers that you see and translates those into action steps that I can explain in plain English terms to a client I'm in front of that can give that individual person, family or small business the kinds of outcomes that they want. So I'm on the retail end of the food chain, and my job is to try to take the numbers that others are generating and boil that down into something that is digestible to the common man and woman, that allows them to, we hope, live the way they want. So   Michael Hingson ** 37:29 I gather from listening to you though, that you enjoy what you do.   Kane Brolin ** 37:36 I do particularly when it works.   Michael Hingson ** 37:39 Well, there's times.   Kane Brolin ** 37:40 There are times it gets a little tricky. 2001 2002 I know that you had a very personal experience that vaulted you, Michael, into this, into the realm of the famous, or the Almost Famous, on 911 I remember what 911 was like as a very small time retail investment person working out of a field office. I was somebody's employee at that point. I was working for American Express financial advisors, and I remember my life was never in danger in 911 but there were a lot of clients that thought their money and their data were in danger, and then the country that the country itself, might even be in danger. And so I morphed during that week from being a telemarketing person trying to set appointments with people I'd never met to being a person who was trying to dole out comfort and a feeling of security and solace to people I had met who the few that I was managing their accounts at that time, calling them and saying, You know what, your money and your data are safe. I'm here. The company that you have your stuff invested with is based in Minneapolis. It's not based in the Twin Towers, the markets are shut down. There will be volatility, but you're not crashing today, just so   Michael Hingson ** 39:08 the other the other side of it, the other side of that, was that during that week after September 11, there were a lot of people who were working and moving, literally Heaven and Earth, if you will, to bring Wall Street back. And I know I'm working with some of those companies and providing them with the backup equipment, or not so much at the time, backup equipment, but the equipment that would be able to read existing tape backups and put that back on computers. And I know, I think it was Morgan Stanley had found an office space sometime during the week after September 11. Then, as they describe it, it was the building with a floor the size of a foot. Football field, and they scrounged and scavenged and got their providers of equipment, like IBM to provide them with computers, even taking them from IBM employees desks to provide enough equipment to be able to set up what was the equivalent to the trading floor that had been in the world trade center that was destroyed on September 11, and literally from Friday afternoon that would have been the 14th to the 16th in 36 hours. They not only reconstructed physically what the trading floor was but because of what we provided them with, they were able to completely reconstruct what everything looked like on their computers. So when Wall Street reopened on the 17th, everything was like it was when everything shut down on the 11th now, I think there's some blessings to the fact that the towers were struck before Wall Street opened. I don't know how much easier that made it maybe some, but the reality is that data is backed up regularly, so they would have been able to to survive, but the fact that the markets hadn't opened in the US certainly had to help. But by Monday, the 17th, they brought Wall Street back, just as if nothing had happened. It was a monumental feat to be able to do that. That is a story   Kane Brolin ** 41:37 that I would love to read, because I've never heard that story before, and that makes me feel very unintelligent. Michael, you know, I can't even imagine the logistics and the people and just even the imagination that it would take to reconstruct that. I'm sure it was 1000s. I'm sure it was 1000s of people. And I'm sure that probably that's something that somebody had thought about even before the 911 incident happened. I don't think that was invented out of whole cloth on Friday the 14th, but that's a story that would be a very captivating book, and if no one's written it, then, gosh, would that be a fun thing to research and write.   Michael Hingson ** 42:21 Well, you know, the reality is, the SEC required that all data from financial institutions had to be backed up and kept available off site for seven years. So first of all, the data was all around and that's why I think it was an especially great blessing that the markets hadn't opened, because all the backups from the previous night, and probably from all the not only the futures, but the sales from foreign markets, were pretty much all backed up as well. So everything was backed up. That, of course, was the real key, because getting the hardware, yes, that was a logistical nightmare that they were able to address, getting the computers, getting everything where they needed it. Then companies like ours providing them with the wherewithal to be able to pull the data from the tapes and put it back onto the computers. It had to be quite a feat, but it all worked. And when Wall Street opened, it opened as if nothing had happened, even though some of the the offices were now in completely different places across the river. But it all worked, incredible. Yeah, I was, it was, it was pretty amazing. I knew people from the firms. And of course, we helped them by providing them with equipment. But at the same time, hearing about the story later was was really quite amazing, and and they did a wonderful job to bring all that back. So it was pretty, pretty amazing that that all that occurred. So that was pretty cool all the way. And   Kane Brolin ** 44:00 of course, the other struggle was in 2007 2008 I remember when I would be sitting at my desk and I'm not a day trader, I'm, I'm, I'm a long term investor. That's what most of my clients want. I'm not in there, you know, trading, trading daily options. I'm not doing inverse leveraged products that have to be bought in the morning and then sold in the afternoon under most cases. But I remember sitting at my desk in 2008 when the great recession was going on with the financial crisis happened and and when banks and huge investment banks, brokerage institutions were, in some cases, completely failing, that's a whole other story that was chronicled in books like The Big Short as an example, but I remember sitting at my desk and timing it and watching in a five minute period of time. As the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was back in in those days, was, was what maybe 6000 or so as a benchmark. It was going up and down by a margin of error of 800 points in five minutes, it would be 400 up one minute, and then 400 down from that level. In other words, an 800 point swing within a five minute period of time. There was one day I went to take a test, because I have continuing education on a pretty regular basis, had to go to a testing center and take a test that lasted maybe three hours. I got back, and I think the market for at least the Dow Jones had dropped by 800 points during the time that I was in the testing center. And that gives you some stomach acid when that sort of thing happens, because even though it it's, you know, things always bounce back, and they always bounce up and down. Clients call and they say, oh my gosh, what happens if I lose it all? Because people really think that they could lose it all. Now, if you're in a mutual fund with 100 different positions, it's very unlikely, right? All of those positions go to zero. What I found out is that when people's money is concerned, it's emotional. Yeah, it's all rational. They're not looking at the empirical data. They're thinking fight or flight, and they really are concerned with what in the world am I going to do if I go to zero? And   Michael Hingson ** 46:38 it's so hard to get people to understand, if you're going to invest in the market, it has to be a long term approach, because if you don't do that, you can, you can disappoint yourself, but the reality is, over the long term, you're going to be okay. And you know now, today, once again, we're seeing the evidence of that with what the Fed did yesterday, lowering by a half a point, and how that's going to affect everything. But even over the last five or six years, so many people have been worried about inflation and worried about so many things, because some of our politicians have just tried to scare us rather than dealing with reality. But the fact of the matter is that it all will work out if we're patient and and allow things to to work. And what we need to do is to try to make wise decisions to minimize, perhaps our risk. But still, things will work out.   Kane Brolin ** 47:43 Yeah, I remember, I think, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is what always used to get quoted, at least on the radio and the television. It was somewhere in the somewhere in the 11,000 range, before the 2008 debacle. And it fell to, I think, 6400 right was the low that it reached. Now it's over 41,000   Michael Hingson ** 48:11 closed up above 42 yesterday. I'm not   Kane Brolin ** 48:13 sure it very well may have so you know when you when you really think about it, if you just stayed in and it's more complicated than that. One of course people have with the market is that when the market crashes, they also may need to get their money out for different, unrelated reasons. What if I lost my job as a result of the market crashing? Right? What if? What if there is a need that I have to fulfill and that money has to come out for me to make a house payment. You don't know that. And so that's the unfortunate part, is that a lot of the academic missions don't take into account the real human factor of real people that need to use their money. But if you could stand to hang on and leave it in, it would be worth you know, what would that be like six or seven times more than it was in 2008 but that's not what what clients often do. They they often want to sell out of fear when things are down, and then wait too long to buy back in when the elevator has already made its way quite a ways up, right?   Michael Hingson ** 49:25 I remember once, and I don't remember what the cause was, but Rolls Royce dropped to $3 a share. And there were some people saying, this is the time to buy. It is it's not going to go away. And those who did have done pretty well. Bank   Kane Brolin ** 49:44 of America was $3 a share for quite some time. It was, it was technically a penny stock. This is Bank of America, you know, one of the leading financial institutions in the in the country, which, incidentally, has a very interesting. History. It wasn't born in New York, it was born in the south, right? But, yeah, if you only knew what those trough opportunities were and knew exactly when to buy in and and I'm constantly telling people, look my my goal is, is not so much to figure out what to buy but when to buy in. We're trying to buy low and sell high, and just because something did well last year doesn't mean you have to hang on to it. It might mean we want to trim that position a little bit, take some profit and and pick something that doesn't look as attractive or sexy because of last year's lackluster returns, but maybe this year. It will just due to changing conditions. Financial markets run in cycles. And it's not that some things are inherently good or bad. Some things are in favor now. They were not in favor last year, and they might not be in favor, you know, two years from now, but they are now. So that's the hard part. You're not supposed to really time the market. We can't predict all these things, but that's why you encourage people to diversify and to have some things that are not correlated with each other in terms of doing well or badly at the same time. So you can always sometimes be gaining with in with your left hand, while your right hand is is struggling a bit. Hence,   Michael Hingson ** 51:25 the need for people who are certified financial planners, right? So there you go. So you, you got married, what, 27 years ago, and you married someone who was fully sighted, who probably didn't have a whole lot of exposure to blindness and blind people before. How did all that work out? Obviously, it's worked out because you're still married. But what was it like, and was it ever kind of an uncomfortable situation for you guys?   Kane Brolin ** 51:58 I don't think blindness. Surprisingly enough, I don't think it was super uncomfortable for her. Now, she had not encountered lots of blind people before, maybe not even any before. She met me, but I met her, and this is where I had it easy. She didn't have it easy, but I met her through her family. I knew my wife's name is Danica. I knew her brother before I knew her, because he and I had been buddies. We for a little while. We ended up living in the same town up in Michigan, and it was not here in the South Bend area where she is, but I went home and had a chance to be to tag along as he was doing some some family things and some things with his friends so but, but my wife is a very interesting father. She has a very interesting dad who is no longer with us. May he rest in peace? No, no. Hello. Sorry. My nine year old just made a brief appearance, and she's incorrigible.   Michael Hingson ** 53:00 You wouldn't have it any other way. No, there   Kane Brolin ** 53:03 are days when I would, but I don't. So anyway, the I found out some interesting things raising kids as a blind parent too, but you know, her dad did not see really any kind of limitations when the world around him was racist he really wasn't. When the world around him was ableist. He really didn't. And one of the things he encouraged me to do, they had a little acreage Danika parents did. And he actually asked me one time when it was a leaf blowing or leaf storing season, it was in the fall, lots of oak trees, different things there to drive the garden tractor, as there was a Baleful leaves behind that he was taken to an area where they would eventually be burned up or composted or something. And I did that. He had an old garden tractor with a, you know, his gas powered, and it had pedals and steering wheel, and he would literally run around alongside it, didn't go very fast, and tell me kind of when and where to turn. I'm told that I almost crashed into the pit where the basement of the home was one time, but I didn't. So he was one of these people that like saw virtually no limitations. Encouraged his kids and others to do great things. He didn't have a great feel for people. He would have been an anti politician. He had trouble remembering your name, but if you were a decent person and treated him right, it didn't matter if you were black, purple, green, blind, deaf, whatever. He saw it as an interesting challenge to teach me how to do things. He taught me how to kayak. He taught me how to cross country ski. Back in those days before climate change, we actually got quite a bit of snow in the area where I live, even as early as Thanksgiving to. I'm in November. And so the first couple of winters that we lived here, and we would go to a local park, or, you know, even just out in the in the backyard of where his property was, and, and, and ski, Nordic ski, not downhill ski, really, but it was, it was an amazing exercise. It's an amazing feel to be able to do that, and I have no memory, and I had no relatives that that were in touch with the true Scandinavian heritage, that ancestry.com says that I have, but the act of doing a little bit of Nordic skiing with him gave me a real feel for what some people go through. Because traditionally, skiing was a form of transportation in those countries. In the Larry P you skied to work, you skied to somebody else's house. So, you know, I thought that that was fun and interesting. Now, the last few winters, we haven't gotten enough snow to amount to anything like that, but I do have, I still have a pair of skis. So no, that may be something that we do at some point when given the opportunity, or some other place where we have a bit more of a snow base.   Michael Hingson ** 56:10 Well, I'm sure that some people would be curious to to know this being blind and doing the work that you do, you probably do. Well, you do the same things, but you probably do them in different ways, or have different technologies that you use. What's some of the equipment and kind of technologies that you use to perform your job?   Kane Brolin ** 56:32 Well, you know, I wouldn't say that. I'm cutting edge. I'm sure there are people who do differently and better than I do, but I do most of my work in a PC based environment. It's a Windows based environment at the present time, because the broker dealers and the other firms that I work through, you know, I'm independent, in a way, meaning I pay my own bills and operate out of my own space and have my name of Berlin wealth management as a shingle on my door, so to speak. But you never walk alone in this business. And so I chose, ultimately, a company called the Commonwealth financial network to serve as my investment platform and my source of technology, and my source of what is called compliance, which means, you know, they are the police walking alongside what I do to make sure that I've documented the advice I've given to people, to make sure that that advice is suitable and that I'm operating according to the law and in the best interest of my clients, and not Not taking money from them, or, you know, doing phony baloney things to trade into a stock before I recommend that to somebody else. You know, there's a lot of malfeasance that can happen in this type of industry, but all these securities that I sell and all the advice that I given are done so with the blessing of the Commonwealth Financial Network, which is a member of FINRA and SIPC, I just need to point that out here. But they also provide technology, and most of their technology is designed to work in a Windows environment, and so that's typically what I have used. So I use JAWS.   Michael Hingson ** 58:23 And JAWS is a screen reader that verbalizes what comes across the screen for people who don't know it right, or puts   Kane Brolin ** 58:28 it into Braille, or puts it into Braille in the in the in the early days of my doing the business, many of the programs that we had to use to design an insurance policy or to pick investments, or to even monitor investments were standalone programs that were not based on a web architecture that would be recognizable. And so I was very fortunate that there was money available from the vocational rehab system to bring somebody in from Easter Seals Crossroads here in Indiana, to actually write Jaws script workarounds, that is, that could help jaws to know what to pull from the graphics card on the screen or in the system, to be able to help me interact. Because otherwise, I would have opened up a program and to me, it would have just been like a blank screen. I wouldn't be able to see or interact with data on the screen. Now, with more things being web based, it's a little easier to do those things. Not always. There are still some programs that are inaccessible, but most of what I do is through the use of Windows 10 or 11, and and with the use of Jaws, I do have, I devices. I like Apple devices, the smaller ones. I'm actually speaking to you using an iPad right now, a sixth generation iPad I've had for a while. I have an iPhone so I can still, you know, look up stock tickers. I can send 10. Text messages or emails, if I have to using that. But in general, I find that for efficiency sake, that a computer, a full on computer, tends to work best and and then I use that more rapidly and with more facility than anything else, right? I use the Kurzweil 1000 system to scan PDFs, or sometimes printed documents or books, things like that, into a readable form where I'm trying to, trying to just kind of anticipate what other things you may ask about. But you know, I use office 365, just like anybody else might. You know, I I have to use a lot of commonly available programs, because the people monitoring my work, and even the clients that I interact with still need to, even if they have sight, they need to read an email right after I send it. You know, they've my assistant has to be able to proof and manipulate a document in a form that she can read, as well as one that I can listen to or use Braille with. I'm a fluent Braille reader and writer. So there are some gizmos that I use, some braille displays and Braille keyboards and things of that nature. But, you know, most people seem to be under the misconception that a blind guy has to use a special blind computer, which must cost a king's ransom, not true, if anybody's listening to the program that isn't familiar with 2024 era blindness technology, it's mostly the same as anybody else's except with the modifications that are needed to make stuff accessible in a non visual format, and   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:45 the reality is, that's what it's all about. It's not like it's magically expensive. There are some things that are more expensive that do help. But the reality is that we use the same stuff everyone else uses. Just have some things that are a little bit different so that we are able to have the same access that other people do, but at the same time, that's no different than anyone else. Like I point out to people all the time, the electric light bulb is just a reasonable accommodation for light dependent people. Anyway, it's just that there are a whole lot more people who use it, and so we spend a whole lot more time and money making it available that is light on demand to people. But it doesn't change the fact that the issue is still there, that you need that accommodation in order to function. And you know that that, of course, leads to and, well, we won't spend a lot of time on it, but you are are very involved in the National Federation of the Blind, especially the NFB of Indiana, and you continue to pay it forward. And the NFB has been all about helping people to understand that we're not defined by blindness. We're defined by what we are and who we are, and blindness is happens to be a particular characteristic that we share   Kane Brolin ** 1:03:09 well, and there's a lot of other characteristics that we might not share. As an example, somebody, I don't know that he is involved in the NFB as such, but you know blind, if you're involved in American Blind culture and and that you've probably heard of a man named George Wurtzel. He is the brother of the guy that used to be president of the NFB of Michigan affiliate. But I understand that George is very good at things that I am not at all good at. He, you know? He understand that he almost built his own house from the ground up. His skill is not with computers and email and all this electronic communication that they do today, but he's a master woodworker. He's an artisan. You know, I I'm also involved, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, I'm also involved with an organization called Penny forward, which is, you know, it could be the direction that I ultimately head in even more because it dovetails with my career. It's financial, education and fitness by the blind, for the blind, and it was started by a young man named Chris Peterson, who's based in the Twin Cities, who is not an NFB guy. He's actually an ACB guy, but his values are not that much different, and he's been a computer programmer. He's worked for big organizations, and now he started his own and has made a full time business out of financial fitness, educational curricula, podcasting, other things that you can subscribe to and buy into. And he's trying to build a community of the varied blind people that do all kinds of things and come from all sorts of backgrounds. And in one of the later editions of his podcast, he interviewed a man who's originally from Florida, who. Founded a company called Cerro tech that some might be familiar with, Mike Calvo, and Mike came to some of the same conclusions about blindness that you and I have, except that he's much younger. He's from Florida, and he's a Cuban American. He's a Latino whose first language growing up probably was Spanish, and who actually came out of, out of the streets. I mean, he was, he was in gangs, and did all kinds of things that were very different from anything I was ever exposed to as a young person. So I think in a lot of ways, we as blind people face the same types of issues, but we don't. None of us comes at it from the same vantage point. And, you know, we're, we're all dealing with maybe some of the same circumstances, but many, many, we've gotten there in very many different ways. And so I try to also impose on people. We are all different. We're a cross section. We don't all tie our shoes or cook our meals the same way. We don't want to live in the same environment. We don't want to do the same hobbies. And we don't all have better other senses than sighted people do. I don't know how many times you've heard it. I'd be a very rich man if I had $1 for every time someone said, Well, yeah, but you know, being blind, your hearing must be so much better, your sense of smell must be so much more acute. Well, no, the the divine forces in the universe have not just compensated me by making everything else better. What do you do with someone like Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf. There are people with plenty of people with blindness, and also other morbidities or disabilities, or I don't even like disabilities, different different abilities, different strengths and weaknesses. Along with blindness, there are blind people who also happen to be autistic, which could be an advantage to them, in some ways a disadvantage to others. I would like to go beyond the discussion of disability and think of these things, and think of me and others as just simply being differently able, because, you know, what kinds of jobs and roles in life with people that have the characteristic of autism, maybe they are actually better at certain things than a non autistic person would be. Maybe overall, people who live with the characteristic of bl

Guest and HostGuest: Precious Perez, President at RAMPD | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/precious-perez-a0548915b/ | Website: https://preciousperezmusica.com/Host: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com/Show NotesThe intersection of music, technology, and accessibility is shaping how artists create, perform, and share their work. In this episode of Music Evolves, host Sean Martin speaks with singer, songwriter, and educator Precious Perez, a Berklee College of Music graduate with degrees in music education and vocal performance. As a blind Latina artist and disability advocate, Perez shares her journey in music, the role of technology in her creative process, and how she works to increase opportunities for musicians with disabilities.A Life Shaped by MusicPerez's passion for music started early, surrounded by the diverse sounds of her Puerto Rican household. From salsa and reggaeton to R&B and pop, her exposure to various genres helped shape her identity as an artist. She recalls her first songwriting experience in fourth grade, when she transformed a poem into a song with the help of a music teacher. That moment solidified her desire to pursue music professionally, leading her to Berklee, where she refined her skills in both performance and education.As a blind musician, Perez explains how she interacts with music differently from sighted artists. She describes her early experiences learning Braille music and how tactile memory plays a role in understanding composition. While she primarily relies on her ear, her knowledge of Braille notation helps her analyze rhythm and structure in a unique way.Technology as a Tool for InclusionFor Perez, technology has been both a gateway and a challenge. She demonstrates how she uses a BrailleSense note taker, a device that allows her to type lyrics and read them in Braille while composing. She also shares how screen reading software enables her to navigate recording software like Logic Pro and Pro Tools, ensuring she can produce and edit her music independently.Beyond the studio, accessibility in live performance is another key consideration. Whether using in-ear monitors or giving cues to her bandmates through verbal or physical signals, Perez emphasizes that clear communication and collaboration make performances seamless.Advocating for Disability Representation in MusicPerez is also the president of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities), an organization founded by recording artist Lachi and NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner Gaelynn Lea. RAMPD is dedicated to amplifying disability culture, promoting accessibility, and ensuring that disabled artists have equitable opportunities in the music industry. The organization consults with major industry events like the Grammys, NAMM, and Folk Alliance to improve accessibility and representation.She stresses that disability is an often-overlooked part of diversity and that anyone, at any time, could join this community due to illness, injury, or aging. Through RAMPD, Perez and her colleagues are breaking down barriers and proving that disabled musicians are just as competitive and professional as their peers.A New Era of MusicPerez is embracing a new era in her music, blending her Latin roots with her pop and R&B influences. She performs her latest song, Rosé, a Spanish-language track about embracing the present moment with a loved one despite life's difficulties. With plans to record a new project with We Could Be Music in Costa Rica, she is leaning into the Latin music space in a way she has always envisioned.Her story is one of resilience, innovation, and passion. From navigating music education as a blind student to advocating for industry-wide accessibility, Perez is proving that talent and determination—not sight—define an artist's success.Listen to the full episode to hear Precious Perez's insights on technology, performance, and advocacy in music.SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring this show or placing an ad in the podcast?Sponsorship

18-year-old violinist and From the Top alum Julia LaGrand co-hosts this special episode dedicated to celebrating the stories and performances of disabled and neurodivergent musicians. Julia, who is blind, also interviews special guest Itzhak Perlman. We meet a 16-year-old double bassist who began studying music when spina bifida made it difficult to keep up with youth sports leagues, a 14-year-old pianist who uses Braille scores to learn his repertoire, a 26-year-old cellist who believes his musical skills are sharpened by his autism, and a 16-year-old pianist with Escobar Syndrome who shares her journey to millions on social media. They perform works by Grieg, Liszt, and more.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

 Michael Hingson, blind since birth, was born in Chicago to sighted parents who believed in raising their son with a can-do attitude. Treated like all other children in his family, Michael rode a bike did advanced math in his head and learn to read and write – Braille that is! Michael's family relocated to the warm Palmdale area of California when he was five years old. It is here that Hingson had his first adventure with Guide Dogs for the Blind and received his first guide dog. He later went to college receiving a bachelor's and master's degree in Physics along with a secondary teaching credential from the University of California at Irvine. Michael then enjoyed a nearly-30-year career working for high tech companies spending most of his time in management roles. Michael Hingson's life changed dramatically on September 11, 2001 when he and his guide dog, Roselle, escaped from the 78th floor of Tower One in the World Trade Center moments before it collapsed. Soon after, Michael and Roselle were thrust into the international limelight where Michael began to share his unique survival story and 9-11 lessons of trust, courage, heroism, and teamwork. Mike has served as The National Public Affairs Director for one of the largest Nonprofit organizations in the nation: Guide Dogs for the Blind; He has served as the vice president of the National Association of Guide Dog Users; Michael has held a seat on the Fort Worth Lighthouse for the Blind. He is the chair of the board of directors of the Earle Baum Center for the Blind and is the vice chair of the Colorado Center for the Blind; Michael is The National Ambassador for the Braille Literacy Campaign of the National Federation of the Blind. Until October 2019 he worked as the CEO of the Do More Foundation, the non-profit arm of Aira Tech Corp, a manufacturer of assistive technology which makes a revolutionary visual interpreter for blind people. In January 2021 Mike joined accessiBe as its Chief Vision Officer to help advance the company goal of making the entire internet fully inclusive. AccessiBe provides an artificial intelligence-based product that makes web sites accessible to many persons with disabilities. He is the author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller: “Thunder dog –The True Story of a Blind Man, a Guide Dog & the Triumph of Trust” – selling over 2.5 million copies Worldwide. In 2014 Mr. Hingson published his 2 nd book “Running with Roselle”- which Is the first of its kind- A story for our youth shedding light on one of Americas Darkest Days. Mr. Hingson's third book, “Live Like A Guide Dog”, was released on August 20, 2024. This book shows readers how they can learn to control fear and not, as Mike would say, “become blinded by fear in the face of crisis”. Aside from his talents and advocacies, Mr. Hingson has traveled the Globe from Japan to New Zealand, the Netherlands to his hometown, Chicago. Speaking to some of the world's most elite: from former President, George W. Bush to Larry King, to Fortune 500 companies and colleges and Universities Nationwide. After sharing his story of survival on hundreds of TV and Radio programs, Michael is now an Expert hired by many of today's major corporations and organizations. Speaking and consulting on the importance of Teamwork and Trust, Moving from Diversity to Inclusion, as well as offering Adaptive Technology Training – spearheading innovation for ALL! - Thus, bringing organizations to the forefront of the ever-changing competitive modern world. Body Transformation System!https://modere.io/NbOyU2https://calendly.com/rebeccaelizabethwhitman/breakthroughTo learn more about Rebecca…https://www.rebeccaelizabethwhitman.com/#homehttps://everydaywomantv.com/tv_shows/the-balanced-beautiful-and-abundant-show/