Podcasts about free blind abilities app

In the age of digital technology, companies are increasingly turning to self-service touch screen kiosks. Partnering with screen reading manufacturers such as TPGI and the Jaws screen reader, Storm Interfaces designs tactile keypads that are accessible for everyone. Join Blind Abilities podcast host Simon Bonenfant, live from the 2024 NFB National Convention in Orlando Florida, as he speaks with Nicky Shaw about solutions for accessible kiosks. Listen as Nicky gives a quick tip that anyone can use to find out if a company's kiosk is accessible. Interested in advocating for accessible kiosks in your daily life? You can refer businesses to contact Storm Interfaces by visiting their Website. If you'd like to contact Nicky directly, send her an email at nickys@storm-keypads.com   We hope you have enjoyed this interview. If you would like to learn more and contact us, you can follow us on Twitter @Blind Abilities On the web at www.blindabilities.com Send us an email at info@blindabilities.com Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store and Google Play Store Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093. We would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page and Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group. To contact Simon directly, send him an email at sbonenfant2@gmail.com

In this 28th    episode of Wellness Wednesday, Beth Gustin, LPC, Robin Ennis, LCSW, CPC, dive into self-care. Taking care of yourself and recognizing some habits that maybe you may not realize is self-care. Join Beth and Robin and get a look at how they define self-care.   Check out all the Wellness Wednesday episodes.   Show Hosts:             Robin Ennis on the web at www.robinennislcsw.com             Beth Gustin, LPC, NCC, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, CAGCS, PLGS             Www.transitioningthroughchange.com   You can message Beth and Robin by calling 612-367-6093 or by email. They are looking forward to hearing from you! Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired   

In this 23rd  episode of Wellness Wednesday, Beth Gustin, LPC, Robin Ennis, LCSW, CPC, and Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities,  address the intersection of gratitude and grieving during the holiday season.   Check out all the Wellness Wednesday episodes.   Show Hosts:             Robin Ennis on the web at www.robinennislcsw.com             Beth Gustin, LPC, NCC, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, CAGCS, PLGS             Www.transitioningthroughchange.com   You can message Beth and Robin by calling 612-367-6093 or by email. They are looking forward to hearing from you! Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired   

In our spotlight across the Nation during blindness equality achievement month, we once again head over to Pennsylvania and the Keystone Chapter.   Since 2020, the Philadelphia based Keystone Chapter of the NFB of PA has been hosting Believe You Can, a virtual talent show held every year in October. in conjunction with blindness equality achievement month, the show aims to educate the sighted public on the capabilities of the blind and visually impaired, while enjoying some wonderful entertainment in the process.  Blind Abilities podcast host Simon Bonenfant sat down with fellow committee members David Goldstein, Lisa Bryant, and Harriet Go to discuss everything you need to know about this year's event.  Interested in hearing from a past performer? Believe You Can 2022 winner Julia LaGrand stopped by to share her performance experience and discuss her accomplished career as a classical violinist as well.  Listen as they unpack changes to this year's format, some of the performances you'll hear, and even the opportunity for you to win merch!  Ticket prices are $10 for an individual ticket, $25 for a watch-party ticket, and $100 to be recognized in the golden circle.  Learn more about the show and purchase tickets Here If you would like to learn more about the Keystone Chapter and the Pennsylvania affiliate, consider subscribing to the White Canes Connect podcast, the official podcast of the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania. hosted and produced by BYC committee chair David Goldstein, iCantCU Podcast. Find the show on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, IHeart Radio, And YouTube. We hope you have enjoyed this interview. If you would like to learn more and contact us, you can follow us on Twitter @Blind Abilities  On the web at www.blindabilities.com Send us an email at info@blindabilities.com  Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store and Google Play Store Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093. We would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page and Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group.

Blind Abilities podcast host Simon Bonenfant opened the door to the virtual studio, and picked up the microphone to chat with Molly Brockman, art curator at Beyond Vision Art. Beyond Vision Art is an organization dedicated to providing art that engages the 5 senses, taste, touch, smell, hearing, and vision. Molly tells her inspiring story of how her frustration with the inadequacies of her local art museum empowered her to create art that everyone could enjoy! To contact Beyond Vision Art, including where you can find more information about there upcoming art shows, visit their Website or like their Facebook Page You can send Molly an email at molly@beyondvisionart.com We hope you have enjoyed this interview. If you would like to learn more and contact us, you can follow us on Twitter @Blind Abilities On the web at www.blindabilities.com Send us an email at info@blindabilities.com Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store and Google Play Store Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093. We would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page and Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group. To contact Simon directly, send him an email at mailto:sbonenfant2@gmail.com    

Carrie Morales is a YouTube Creative with video content covering all things accessible tech, iPhones, androids, book readers and nearly everything else out there. You will also find topics covering living with blindness and the accessibility field as well. Carrie joins Jeff in the Blind Abilities Studio to cover topics on how and why Carrie started her YouTube Channel, "Carri On Accessibility". Listen in as Carrie gives advice on learning accessible tools and Braille and how accessibility testing is doing to help the community. You can subscribe to the Carrie On Accessibility' YouTube Channel and follow Carrie on all of her socials at Carrie On Accessibility and @CarrieOnA11Y on Twitter. You can also check out the C&C Insights Podcasts on blind Abilities. Thanks for listening! Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired   

Scott Eggen, Randall Crosby and Linda Allison return to the Blind Abilities Studio to talk about the who, what, where and why of the Sagebrush Conference. This annual event happens in Las Vegas and brings in attendees and associates from across the states. Learn about the first time experience, the attractions, highlights and the take-aways from Scott, Randall and Linda. Whether you attend in person or virtually, there is something for everyone. Join the crew in this informational episode and find out more about the Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America on the web at Randolph-Sheppard.org.   Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired   

Scott Eggen, Randall Crosby and Linda Allison come together once again in the Blind Abilities Studio and this time talking about a day in the life of an owner/operator/vendor in the Business Enterprise Program. What is a typical day like for Scott as he operates his businesses in prisons and colleges? What is Randall's day like operating a Rest Area in the heavy tourist area of Florida? And, how about Linda and her commute, inventory access and now changing her location? Listen in as they talk about their business and how they enjoy the fruits of their labor. You can find out more about the Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America on the web at www.Randolph-Sheppard.org and stay up to date with all the happenings and events on the Randolph-Sheppard Facebook page. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired 

Shane DeSantis, Transition Coordinator at State Services for the Blind, hosts the College101 Webinar with 3 unique college students giving their unique perspective on how they are succeeding and succeeded in their college journey. learn from their experiences and suggestions as they respond to questions submitted from high school students, college students and teachers. Are you interested in attending college to gain education and training needed to meet your employment goals? Do you have questions about what the transition to college will look like and what skills are needed to be successful in higher academics? In this College101 Webinar you may find the answers you are looking for. Full Transcript If you have any questions, please contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or 651-358-5205.   Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Pre-ETS Program and Transition Services Coordinator Shane DeSantis by email or 651-358-5205.   Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email and give us a call at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you! Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired 

Podcast Summary: Mark Miller has been teaching Blind and Visually Impaired students to play piano for nearly 20 years. Distance learning is nothing new to Mark Miller and his students as he began teaching through just audio phone calls using his ears. Now with Skype and Video calls, Mark has brought his teaching abilities around the world. Through chord patterns and  minimum movement Mark's students learn songs and music theory.  You can find out more about Mark's piano lessons and contact him through his web site at: https://blindpianolessons.com Give him a call or text 847) 401-1721. Start learning or enhance the skills you already have through Mark's piano lessons today from the convenience of your own home and a time that works for you. Contact Mark today and bring music into your life. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Pre-ETS Program and Transition Services Manager Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

The 3 Mac-a-teers, Ok, Jeff and those two PC users, talk Mac, Mac, Mini and a Pod from last weeks Apple Unleashed event. They then trip the light fantastic on tech tidbits and news from around the Blindness Sphere. Serina, Jesse and Jeff bring their workplace experiences, their passions and assistive technology know-how to the table and dig down into some really interesting perspectives. Join the Tech Abilities crew in the Blind Abilities studio and be sure to give us some feedback, suggestions and opinions by calling 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you. Below is a timeline and this episode of Tech Abilities is sorted out into chapters for your listening pleasure. The Power bar Surge Protector mentioned is the Furman M-8X2 Power Conditioner. Topics and Timeline: Introduction. 00:00 Let's get the show started.! 00:41 The Apple Unleashed Event. 02:38 New Air Pod 3's. 03:00 Home Pod Mini gets Many Colors. 07:39 Apple Music new Voice Only plan for $4.99. 09:59 M1 Pro 14 and 16 inch models $1999 and $2499 starting. 13:24 Windows and the PC Platform vs Apple for students and more Mac news. 14:25 Apple 13 Pro Max Battery Life and the Address/Tab Bar in Safari. 24:47 Siri usage and over usage, is it a problem? How about Smart devices for spelling? 29:05 Braille and spell checking. 32:20 Practical Labeling. 37:44 Power Surge Bar. 43:33 Audio Description News. 44:40 Accessible Gaming, SwordyQuest Update, OLed Switch and new Gaming Computer. 53:21 M1 Max Super Duper? Or Boring M2? Or how about M-deuce? 61:35 Headed Out and Contact information. 62:42 Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-9063 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

In the first part of our Musicians Spotlight Series, we bring you John Kay from Steppenwolf Fame which brought us such great hits as Born to be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride, The Pusher and 50 years of John Kay music and his work with NGOs helping Elephants survive as they, too, were Born to be Wild. John Kay: from Rock Star to Elephants, We Were All Born To Be Wild #Steppenwolf to #MaueKayFoundation Show Summary (Full Text Transcript Below) John Kay reveals his journey from escaping the Iron Curtain, getting on with limited vision, his passion for music and his love and commitment for wildlife and especially elephants. Ironically, I first learned about John Kay being legally blind from Dan Gausman, a librarian at State Services for the Blind of Minnesota. A client requested to have the Communications Center record an audio copy of John Kay's 1994 autobiography, Magic Carpet Ride. This is a service provided to people who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have difficulty in reading the printed word. Dan mentioned that John was legally blind. This I did not know. John Kay explains his vision and how it led him from behind the Iron Curtain to the freedoms of West Berlin, his adventures as a youth and his days at Sight Saving school in Toronto. Canada. Most importantly, John talks about feeding the fire, feeding his passion for music and for the protection of wildlife. John Kay is transforming from Rock Star to Wildlife Advocate as his touring days with John Kay and Steppenwolf come to a well-deserved rest after 50 years since the release of the first Steppenwolf album. John is ready to make this transition as he has been devoting his time and proceeds from his touring over the last 10 years towards John and his wife Jutta's Maue Kay Foundation, and NGOs, Non-Governmental Organization, similar to a Non-profit organization, that focus on the protection of wildlife. Image of Elephants provided by MKF Join Jeff Thompson and Pete Lane as they sit down with John Kay and learn about John's continuing soundtrack of his life, his experiences and his focus on the years to come. This podcast is over 80 minutes long and we suggest kicking back and enjoy this epic interview with one of the great social and political voices with us today. My son asked me while he drove us home from the John Kay and Steppenwolf concert September 29 in Prior Lake, MN, why don't today's bands make statements about causes anymore? I thought to myself and wondered… is John Kay one of the last? Maue Kay Foundation Logo Here are some links that will let you know more about his music and his foundation. I suggest starting here, Steppenwolf.comwhere you can dive in and find out about everything Steppenwolf, purchase their swag, read articles and more about John Kay. Be sure to get their latest release, a 3 CD set titled, John Kay and Steppenwolf-Steppenwolf at 50. Included in this 3-disk set is an entire CD of John Kay and Steppenwolf live. You will learn and enjoy this collection of hits, and somewhat over-looked songs from 1967 to 2017. That is where you will find all the music used in this podcast, John Kay and Steppenwolf-Steppenwolf at 50. Follow John Kay and Steppenwolf on Facebookand on Last.FM Be sure to check out John Kay's web site. Where you can find links to articles, interviews, his solo music, the elephant sanctuary and the Maue Kay Foundationand learn about the passion and selflessness that John and Jutta and others are doing to protect wildlife around the world. And an Elephant size Thank You to John Kay for taking time to conduct this interview and to Charlie Wolf for all that you do and whom I met at the concert in Prior Lake, Minnesota. Glad I could support the band and I love the T-Shirts. By the way, the concert was Great! Thanks for Listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store Full Transcript John Kay: From Rock Star to Elephants, We Were All Born To Be Wild #Steppenwolf to #MaueKayFoundation John Kay: To become aware of how special they are. I'm a big elephant lover you might say. Jeff Thompson: Blind Abilities welcomes John Kay, wildlife activist. John Kay: My vision got me probably out of Communist East Germany and my vision very definitely kept me out of Vietnam. Jeff Thompson: Who happens to be a rockstar. John Kay: They were all telling her, “You got a legally blind, penniless musician, and that's your future? I think you can do better than that.” Jeff Thompson: John talks about his limited vision, his band, Steppenwolf, one's inner voice, and following your passion. John Kay: There's an old snide remark, what do you call a musician without a girlfriend? You call them homeless. Jeff Thompson: I would like to thank Dan Guzman of the Communication Center at State Services for the Blind of Minnesota, as Dan informed me that a client had requested the autobiography of John Kay to be converted into audio format. Dan also informed me that John Kay was legally blind, and this started the process that led me to the interview of John Kay. John Kay: Hey, we all got stuff to deal with, kid, just get on with it. You learn how to figure out workaround solutions for what you're dealing with. Jeff Thompson: Hello, John Kay. I'm Jeff Thompson, and with me is Pete Lane. Pete Lane: Good morning, John. It's an honor. I'm Pete Lane. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida. Jeff is in … Jeff Thompson: Minnesota, Pete. Pete Lane: Yeah, Minnesota. John Kay: I'm in Santa Barbara. Jeff Thompson: What's the tie to Tennessee then? John Kay: I lived there for 17 years. In '89 my wife and I were a little tired of Los Angeles beehive activity. We said, “If not here, then where?” To spare the other boring details, we wound up just south of Nashville, Tennessee. In our travels with Steppenwolf we had played there several times. We'd met a lot of friendly people. It's a beautiful area. Lots of music, obviously. We were out in the country, and lots of privacy, and had a recording studio and our tour bus. We just relocated what we called Wolf World out there. For the following 17 years that was home. It was a good period during our life to be a little bit away from large cities. Jeff Thompson: Great. Pete Lane: Do you have an elephant reserve, do you not, still in Tennessee? John Kay: I don't, but Tennessee certainly does. While we lived in Tennessee, we became aware of the elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, which was about, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes drive from where we lived, which was near a little town called Franklin, Tennessee. John Kay: Anyway, one thing led to another. Eventually my wife got involved with the board of directors of the sanctuary, and then they're after our daughter, who's all about animals, so from childhood wound up becoming a caregiver to three large African elephants. She was there for several years. It was like the Peace Corps slogan, the toughest job you'll ever love. She did love it, but she's rather slender in build and developed arthritis. The doctors told her she should quit, which she had to do very reluctantly. John Kay: However, the sanctuary of course continues doing very well. It's a wonderful place for often abused, neglected, sick, old circus and zoo elephants to finally live amongst their own kind without any human intrusion. They have 2,700 acres of rolling hills and woods and waterholes for them to swim in. Once you get to know elephants, because our foundation is involved with African elephants-focused NGOs in Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania, and the like, once you get to spend a real amount of time with them out in the wild, in those places where they aren't traumatized by poaching, you become aware of how special they are. I'm a big elephant lover you might say. Pete Lane: I was reading on your website where you posted the awareness of the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee and how they live a lifestyle that they never get to live when they're held in captivity. John Kay: Exactly. It used to be this way, and I don't suppose that has changed, the number one killer of captive elephants was foot rot, because unlike in the wild, where they walk up to 50 miles on relatively soft, sandy soil, in captivity they are often forced to stand on a solid concrete floor, and that's not good for them, so eventually they … One of the rescues, Tina, which came from the Vancouver Zoo, when she arrived, they had to … I was gonna say, one of the sandal makers, I can't think of the name of the brand right now, they actually made a pair of very soft boots for her because she was suffering so badly. Unfortunately, she died a couple of days before those boots arrived. I saw the bottom of her feet, which were just terrible situation. John Kay: They don't belong in captivity unless you can have a relatively good number of elephants together in a large area where they can at least simulate the kind of life they would have in the wild. Pete Lane: 2,700 acres is a large area. Do you know how many animals are on the preserve? John Kay: I think at the moment they have somewhere in the neighborhood of close to a dozen Asian elephants. They fenced off a section of the 2,700 acres for the African elephants, which are much larger, and thank goodness in relatively good health. They're larger and younger and very active, so they keep them away from the Asians, that are older and more docile. I believe right now they have about four Africans, because the Nashville Zoo I think has two of them that are there at the sanctuary now. I don't know whether they will stay there long-term, but that's what's going on there right now. John Kay: It's quite an amazing place, and so much has been learned about how to look after these creatures, and from the standpoint of veterinarian care. The research, both in the wild and in places like the sanctuary, on elephants continues, because there's still much to be learned, even though people like Joyce Poole has been studying their communication skills and language and rumbles and all of that for over 40 years. They're still working on figuring out what goes on that's beyond the grasp of science right now. Jeff Thompson: We'll be sure to put a link in the show notes for that. John, your story is quite interesting. I'm doing some research, and I just came across Feed the Fire. I was wondering, hearing about that elephant sanctuary, your foundation, it seems like you stuck to your passions. John Kay: Yeah. That's quite observant and quite spot-on, because long ago as a child, the first time I became aware of something that is I suppose related to passion or rooted in passion is when I discovered the power of music. That oddly enough was … John Kay: My father had been killed in Russia a month before I was born. When the Russian Army advanced on the area where my mother and I lived, I was just a few months old, she took me, and we got on a train headed west, and wound up eventually in a little town that wound up behind the Iron Curtain, and hence we were living under Communism until I was five. When we escaped, my mother and I, by paying off some people and getting through the border, which was patrolled with soldiers and all of that, anyway, we made it. John Kay: The point is that I was about eight or nine years old, living in West Germany, under democracy and freedom, and my mother took me to hear, of all things, an all-male, a Russian choir, the Don Cossacks. This was in a church with great acoustics. It was just a concert. Some of these ancient, incredibly sad songs that these 15 guys with these amazing voices were singing reduced me to tears, even though I didn't understand a word of Russian. I still don't. In fact, my mother was somewhat concerned. It introduced me to the power of music when it connects with your internal core. John Kay: Oddly enough, less than maybe four years later, I had a similar but very opposite experience when I first heard on American Armed Force Radio Network the likes of Little Richard and Elvis and all the rest of the rock-and-roll pioneers. I just had goosebumps, chicken skin from head to toe. Once again, I didn't understand a word of what they were singing, but the music was so primal, so intense, so full of just joy of living I'd say. That was just something that I had to have more of. John Kay: I became obsessed with trying to find this music wherever I could, and of course at a certain point started to have the delusion that someday I could be on the other side of the ocean and learn how to speak English and get a guitar and do this sort of thing myself. Obviously conventional wisdom and the adults were saying, “Yeah, sure, kid. In the meantime, pay attention in school.” Jeff Thompson: It's quite obvious you didn't lose that glitter in your eye. John Kay: Yeah. That's I think very important. It's one thing that concerns me with regards to young people that are raised with constant sensory stimulation and having a virtual life through their little screens that they're attached to all the time. John Kay: I remember once talking to university students, and I asked them, “Be honest. How many of you fear silence?” A number of hands went up, because a lot of them, from the time they're toddlers, whether it's TV or the background music of the supermarket or wherever, whenever there's silence, it astounds them, and it concerns them. I finally said, “I'm here to tell you that unless you learn to find some quiet spots, you may never hear a voice that's in you that is trying to tell you there's more out there. In other words, if you don't hear that voice, you may live a totally external life all your life, instead of finding something that is … ” John Kay: That is the humbling experience that I've had, running into people who all their lives have not been seeking the spotlight, but have been from early on moved by a passion to work on behalf of something greater than themselves. I'm specifically talking about the various people that in the last 15 years, through our efforts in various parts of the world, we've had the great pleasure and honor even to rub shoulders with. It's a humbling thing to see people who are not about themselves, but on behalf of others. You learn from that sort of thing. John Kay: There are a lot of young people who have that capability also. I'm often wondering whether they aren't so barraged with constant Twittering and social media and whatever else is going on that they never have a quiet moment. That's not necessarily a good thing in my opinion. Jeff Thompson: I was talking to Pete earlier, and I was dissecting your song, but you just answered the question for me, that solitude is no sacrifice. John Kay: That's right. You picked up on that. That song has been used by a number of people who wanted to play something for their daughter or son that were about to leave home and go to university or go far afield to do something on distant shores. That's basically it. “Solitude's no sacrifice, to catch a glimpse of paradise.” Jeff Thompson: That's an awesome song. I really like that song. Pete, you've got some questions I'm sure. I've been jumping in here. Pete Lane: John, I'm just honored to be speaking with you. I'm in my late 60s and of course grew up with you and your music and of course Steppenwolf. Until recently I had no idea of how enduring you have been and how diverse you are in your view of the world and society. I just want to compliment you on that for starters. John Kay: Thank you. That's very kind of you and generous. I would hope and think that I will continue to be still in a lifelong learning process of clumsily following the footsteps left by others that have preceded me with their examples of how to nurture their humanity and how to have a purpose in life beyond just mindless consumption and amusing themselves, as the book once said, amusing ourselves to death. It's something that keeps the inner flame burning, and been very, very fortunate in many different ways, currently still healthy, thank goodness. Any day when you remain vertical is a good day. Pete Lane: Absolutely. John Kay: There are so many out there who lead with their example. I have met some of them who have been inspirational. Every so often, some young people come along, say, “Hey, I came across your music, and it has given me some stuff to listen to when I have to get over one of the speed bumps of life, and thank you for that.” It's a generational thing. I'm still focused on the ones ahead of me. There are younger ones that have found something in what we have to offer of a value that went beyond just musical wallpaper, but with no real substance that you can use for your own. John Kay: There's so many out there who have written songs and played music practically all their lives, which has given sustenance to the rest of us, or the listeners, and have had personal little anthems that we go to when we need to have a moment of rejuvenation through music. John Kay: I sometimes talk to people who say, “You're talking about all these other people doing great work, making music that gives great pleasure and joy to people. It's not a bad way to make a living either.” While I agree with that, music will continue to be something that I do on occasion, meaning once in a while I have a desire to write a song or two, irrespective of whether they will ever be recorded and commercially released. I've performed at fundraisers and things like that. Music continues very definitely to be part of my life. John Kay: By the same token, I am very much now focused on bringing the word to a lot of people, who once they know what we are losing, meaning wildlife, we've had this number of times, we're talking to people who are well-educated, quite engaged, very successful in what they do, and when we talked about that an elephant was being killed every 15 minutes for their tusks and that we, at this rate, 15 years from now, may no longer have any living in the wild, and the same holds for the rhinos and numerous other species, they're aghast. They're, “I didn't know that. This is terrible. Who's doing anything about it?” Then further to that, “Who can I trust with my money if I want to help?” John Kay: That's really what our little foundation is about. We have been supporting various entities. I think at this point we're at 16 different NGOs we support annually for about 15 years. We're the ones who are a little bridge between the boots on the ground who are fighting to preserve what remains, and those who are willing to help provide it, there's some assurance that their money will go to the boots on the ground. We're the ones who can vouch for a number of wonderful people at NGOs. Because we have born witness to the work they do, we're going to back to Africa next year to look in on several of the NGOs again. That's my role of both my wife and I. John Kay: In fact, this year's the last year that Steppenwolf will be performing. We have six more engagements to play, the last one October 14, and after that the wolf will go into hibernation, if you want to put it that way. My emphasis is now on … I assume both of you are familiar with TED Talks. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Pete Lane: Yes. John Kay: With that in mind, although the following is not a TED Talk per se, because those talks are limited to 18 minutes in length, mine is more like an hour and 15 minutes, but what it is, it's similar to a TED Talk, in the sense that I'm up on stage giving my story, while behind me on a screen there are many, many still images and short video clips and so on. The whole thing is called Born To Be Wild: From Rock Star To Wildlife Advocate, John Kay of Steppenwolf and His Journey of Transformation. John Kay: It basically starts with my early life and how I got out from behind the Iron Curtain and was enthralled with American rock-and-roll when I grew up as a teenager in West Germany and made it to Canada as an immigrant, got my first guitar, and then got into music more and more, and of course the story of Steppenwolf, and then how gradually over time we, my wife and I, through our travels, went to Cambodia, where we saw the killing fields, and we got involved with building a school there, which was the start of our foundation, and then Africa and so on down the line. John Kay: Basically at the end of this presentation, towards the end, after having shown what we do, where, and who is doing what in Africa and Asia and Borneo and so on, it's basically a pitch of saying, “Now that you know, if you didn't know already, you can use our website as a gateway to other NGOs or you can support what we do directly, but do it for your grandchildren's sake or do it to honor the 2,000, almost, African rangers that have been killed by poachers in the last 12 years, or do it simply because our fellow living beings have very little left to call their home, and they too have a right to exist.” Pete Lane: Unbelievable. Jeff Thompson: That's awesome. I love the way you talk about your passion that you even have today. Pete and I both met because we had a passion for recording. One story that really caught my attention is when you were in Toronto and you received your reel-to-reel, and I don't think you listened to the books as much as you wanted it for recording music. John Kay: You got that right. It was a scam from the get-go. I said, “I don't need talking books. I can read books, even though I gotta read them with my nose.” I said, “I could use it for something else.” I was just simply appalled at what came out of that dinky little speaker that was built into that Wollensak tape recorder, because when I tried my hand at recording my first efforts of playing guitar and singing, I said, “I don't sound like that, do I? This is terrible.” It was sheer ego that kept me going, said, “One way I can get better if I keep at it.” Hope springs eternal. Sometimes you simply have more luck than talent. Pete Lane: John let's talk a little bit more if you don't mind about your eye condition. Talk about that a little bit. Let's start if you don't mind a little bit in your early years and maybe focus in Toronto when you were moved into is it Deer Park, that Deer Park school? John Kay: Yeah, that was the sight-saving classes. It's a strange thing, with respect to my eyes. When I was still a baby, lying in one of these carriages that back in those days were typical, I think the English call them prams or whatever, living in this tiny little town in what was then East Germany, I would cry whenever the sun was in my eyes. John Kay: When I was older, my mother took me to an ophthalmologist, and he said, “He obviously has very, very poor vision and he's very light-sensitive.” The only thing he could think of at the time was that, “His condition might improve if he had a better diet,” because at that time we were on food rations, and because of where we were, we were eating herring morning, noon, and night, boiled, fried, stewed herring, coming out of the ears. I never touched a fish again after that until I was 40-something years old. John Kay: This is the important point about this. My mother took that as a, “Maybe the doctor's right.” It was that that caused her to take the risky chance of getting caught, imprisoned, or shot by, in the middle of the night, together with about half a dozen other people, getting smuggled by a couple of border guides that worked for the railroad and knew how to time the searchlights from the watchtowers and the dog patrols and everything else. John Kay: We got through, and then it turned out that, this was in Hanover, Germany, West Germany, and of course this was after the war, there were still schools in short supply, having been destroyed, and so there were classes 50 children large, two shifts, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. I was not doing well. It was my mother who was working as a seamstress who managed to get me into the Waldorf school, the private school, which was banned under Hitler because it was far too humanitarian, but which looked after me. There I blossomed, and the eyes didn't play as big a role. John Kay: It wasn't until I came to Toronto that I was back in public school. I didn't speak English yet and couldn't read what was on the blackboard. The school officials got in touch with the CNIB, Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and they said, “We have these sight-saving classes in a, it's just one large schoolroom segmented into two or three different grades, at a public school called Deer Park School, in the northern part of Toronto.” That's where I went for about two years. John Kay: The primary benefit was that, yes, they had textbooks with extra-large print and all that, but I learned English during those years, not just in school, but because of my obsession with listening to the radio all the time, looking for music that connected, I was always having to try and make out what these speed-rapping DJs were saying, because they were yakking a mile a minute. Between radio and the Deer Park School, I got to the point where I got a handle on things. Of course during that period at that school, I was also given this tape recorder on loan. As I mentioned before, I immediately pressed that into service. Jeff Thompson: That's really impressive, just the journey. John Kay: One thing I should add, by the way, was that nobody really knew what was the matter with me. I went to a Toronto University I think, the medical department, ophthalmology I think it was. There I was treated like a guinea pig. They brought in all these medical students and take a look in my eyes and everything. They said, “Oh, you're totally colorblind. Let's see here.” John Kay: They had one of those books where every page is made out of these little mosaic little pebbles with different colors.” Embedded amongst them, so to speak, would be a combination of these colored tiles that spelled something, a letter or a number or something. At the beginning of the book, the contrast between the primary colors versus whatever the number or the letter was very stark. I said, “Yeah, that, it says six, okay.” As we went from page to page, the differences in terms of contrast became more and more subdued to the point where by page whatever, I don't see anything other than just one page of all these little mosaic tiles and pebbles. They would say, “No, actually there is a light yellow whatever something or other.” John Kay: They figured out later down the line that I was an achromat, achromatopsia, that as an additional bonus with that condition comes extreme light sensitivity. Then finally, I also have a congenital nystagmus, which is the eyes shaking all the time. You do the best you can with what you have. John Kay: Now in '63, and this has a point with respect to my vision, my vision got me probably out of Communist East Germany, and my vision also probably, in fact very definitely, kept me out of the U.S. Army and probably out of Vietnam, because when in '63 at age 19 my mother and stepdad, my mom had remarried, decided to move from Toronto to Buffalo, New York, because my stepdad had something going on business-wise, and I joined them there, the first letter that hit our mailbox was from the draft board. Of course I had to show up. Jeff Thompson: Welcome to the States. John Kay: Of course somebody once said that the military intelligence is an oxymoron. I'm not the judge on that, but I will tell you that I had something that made me scratch my head, namely when I was there and I was to have a complete physical, I tried to tell the man that I was legally blind, and of course he said, “We'll get to that, son.” After a very, very thorough, top to bottom, in and out physical examination, he said, “Now read those letters on that chart on the wall.” I said, “What chart?” He said, “You can't see the chart?” I walked a little closer, said, “I see it now.” “What do you see?” “If I can step a few steps closer … ” “Yeah, you can.” “Okay. I think there's a large capital A at the top, and the rest is guesswork.” He harrumphed about, “You could've said … Never mind.” My designation was 4F. I asked him, “What does that mean really?” He said, “Son, in your case it pretty well stands for women and children first, before you. Nobody's gonna put a rifle in your hands.” John Kay: It was one of those things where during those times, because in short order I went to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, to hear the greats, and I was amongst tens of thousands of young people my age, of course many of them, at least 50% or more, being young men. The draft in the Vietnam War was very much on everybody's mind. I could relate to their concerns about going off to a foreign land. This case, I would imagine my eye condition did me a service. Jeff Thompson: That was probably a baptism into the social issues of the United States coming from Toronto for you. John Kay: That's very true. That is very true. Sometimes you have the aha moment decades after it was already rather obvious. In certain ways, what makes up my musical background in terms of my self-taught things, is to some extent rooted in the early '60s folk music revival, in my visits to not just the 1964 but also the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. '65 of course I saw Dylan go electric. That is that I had already, because of my baptism with rock-and-roll, by the early '60s rock-and-roll had lost a lot of its punch and we had the pretty boy Philadelphia singer syndrome, like Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and the like. There wasn't much on the radio that I could really sink my teeth into. Here comes the folk music revival. John Kay: While living in Buffalo, a folkie says, “If you really want to know the roots of all this stuff, go down to the main library, they have a music department, which has all of the Library of Congress recording that John and Alan Lomax made in the field. You can listen to Appalachian Delta music. You can hear Delta blues, whatever.” I did that. They would let you take a few albums home every week and trade them out for other ones. I went through the entire thing and gave myself a bit of an education. John Kay: Then when I went to the Newport Folk Festival and saw some of those still alive, those recordings I'd heard, I didn't know that McKinley Morganfield, who was recorded in the Delta by the Lomaxes, was actually Muddy Waters. Here he was with his band playing at Newport, and all of those kind of things. John Kay: The blues, which as Muddy once said, “The blues had a baby and they called it rock-and-roll,” so the blues immediately spoke to me, particularly when I came across some of the lyrics of the chain gang songs and other things. There's a powerful song about … The lyrics go, “Why don't you go down ole Hannah.” Hannah was the name they gave to the sun, “And don't you arise no more, and if you rise in the morning, bring judgment day,” because these are guys, they hated her, because the sun came up, they were forced to work in the field, out of the prison, the chain gangs, and they didn't get any rest until the sun went down. I learned that the blues had a lot more to offer than just, “Woke up this morning, my chicken walked across my face,” and all the rest of the stuff they'd write. John Kay: The other thing was great, was that the likes of Dylan and numerous others of the times were following in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and writing new songs about the here and now that was of interest to our own age group, because this was the time when the three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. I remember hearing, let's see, I can't think of his name right now, it'll come to me later, he was just like Dylan, a topical, as we called them, we never called them protest songs, topical songwriter. I remember he sang it, had just written it, about the killing of these three, at a topical song workshop in the afternoon. His name was Ochs, Phil Ochs. Jeff Thompson: Phil Ochs, yeah. Pete Lane: Phil Ochs, of course. John Kay: Suicide some years later. The refrain of the song was, “And here's to the land that you've torn the heart out of. Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of.” Jeff Thompson: That rings through with your Monster song. John Kay: Yeah, because the thing that became obvious to me was that songs can have content which is reflective of what's on people's minds. One of the first things we experienced as Steppenwolf was a baby band, when we went on our first cross-country tour and we were still approachable, so to speak, by long-haired kids in bellbottoms who wanted to say hello after the show, a lot of them said, “Those first two albums of yours we got, you're saying on our behalf some of the things that worry us or that we are concerned with.” John Kay: That's the first time we had positive reinforcement that what we were writing about was not just our own individual personal opinions, but it was reflective of what was on the minds of many of those in our own age group. Of course I had experienced that at Newport. It was a galvanizing experience to be amongst 20,000 young people, and they're listening to somebody like a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan, and others who were writing about what was going on in our country in the world. Like JFK once said, “And that's the role of the artist, to remind us of the potential we have yet to reach,” in terms of being a just society and all the rest. John Kay: When it came time for us to start writing our own songs, we had of course witnessed, in fact I'd played in a couple of the same coffeehouses as a journeyman folk musician solo act in Los Angeles with the likes of David Crosby and then still called Jim, later Roger, McGuinn and the rest, who formed of course The Byrds. Jeff Thompson: The Byrds. John Kay: Their first album was by and large electric versions of Bob Dylan songs. In fact I was at Ciro's nightclub when The Byrds played, when Dylan showed up and played harmonica with them. That was a photograph on the back of their first album. John Kay: The point is that I took from there, why couldn't even rock music have lyrics that go beyond “oowee baby” and the typical? That's why our first album had songs like The Pusher and The Ostrich and Take What You Need, which was really about the environment, and later, things like Don't Step On The Grass Sam and None of Your Doing, which was on the second album, which was about a Vietnam soldier coming home and nobody understands him and he can't deal with what he had witnessed. Then of course eventually came the Monster album. John Kay: The thing with the Monster album, which was very, very successful, popular on the college campuses, were all these demonstrations which were going on against the war in the campuses, and then of course the horrific Kent State shooting. These were things where what we had to say resonated with a lot of young people. John Kay: What I found interesting was that we after so many years were no longer playing that song as part of our show. Then came the Great Recession, 2007-08, and all of a sudden, a couple of things happened. I can't think of his name right now, he's been a stalwart writer for Rolling Stone for several decades, from the early days on, and he had posted a thing, something like, “I went back to listening to Steppenwolf's Monster album and I was astounded how appropriate it is in the here and now.” John Kay: That coincided shortly with getting more and more requests on our website via email primarily, “Please start playing Monster again.” From about 2009 onward, we've been playing it ever since. It's rare that that song does not get a standing ovation in the middle of the show. Of course it's aided and abetted by visuals that accompany our live performance, not every song, but many. In the case of Monster, it is a 10-minute film that illustrates pretty well what the song, line by line, lyrically is about. John Kay: I remember when we did it for the first time in 2009, our sound man, who's been with us now for over 30 years, and he said, “John, I had the most weird experience tonight, because there was this strange situation with Monster. It was like I was watching a movie that had a soundtrack that a live band was playing, and instead of a narrator telling me what the story was, you were simply singing the story. It was just a really intense experience.” It's been like that ever since. John Kay: Sometimes you write something, and it goes out there like a kid leaving home, and you have no idea what it's doing out there, and then all of a sudden it comes back and say, “I'm still here.” Jeff Thompson: The prodigal song. John Kay: It's been like that for the last 10 years. It's a song that seems to very much resonate about what we are dealing with right now. Pete Lane:         It's funny, John, Jeff and I, again, were speaking before you connected with us this afternoon, and I had prepared a question along those lines. As you did earlier in this interview, you've answered it. Let me ask you this question. It's a slight variation on what we just spoke of. For those of you who don't know, Monster is just a dynamite song. It chronicles the country, the United States from its inception to what was then modern-day U.S. back in 1970 I believe, '71, early '70s. John Kay: Correct. Pete Lane: My question is this. If you were to write that song today, would you title it anything different? John Kay: No, because in my opinion the Monster has almost taken human shape now. Donald Trump: The American Dream is dead. Richard Nixon: I'm not a crook. Donald Trump: We will make America great again! Richard Nixon: I'm not a crook. I'm not a crook. I'm not a crook. Pete Lane: Just a dynamite song. Jeff Thompson: There's another long big song. It was big on the album I bought. You had over I think it was 20-minute long, The Pusher. John Kay: Yeah, that thing. There's a story to be told about that, I'll tell you. You're referring to the so-called early Steppenwolf album, a vinyl album obviously, back in those days. One side was that 20-minute version of The Pusher. That whole thing came to be because it was really a performance done by the band The Sparrow, which I had joined. John Kay: When I was in the early '60s, like so many others, with a guitar, hitchhiking around, playing wherever they'd let me, in coffeehouses and the like, when I returned after a year of being in Los Angeles, hanging out at the Troubadour, doing various things, meeting Hoyt Axton, learning The Pusher from him, etc, and wound up in Toronto again, and York Village at that time, section of Toronto had exploded into this area of just coffeehouses and clubs, all sorts of things. While I played at a coffeehouse as a solo act, I bumped into this Canadian band called The Sparrows, with an S, plural at the time. We joined forces. I started to perform The Pusher with an electric band instead of just acoustically. John Kay: The Sparrows eventually left Canada, because in those days most people did, where there was Joni Mitchell and Neil Young or others, and wound up in the States. We played in New York for a while, got a record deal that went nowhere. I kept badgering them that having seen the formation of The Byrds in L.A., that we ought to go to California. That's what we did eventually, and wound up, through various reasons I won't take time to explain, in the Bay area. There we played on the weekends usually the Avalon Ballroom or the Fillmore Ballroom. During the week we would play different clubs. One of them was a permanently beached paddle wheeler ferry boat in Sausalito called The Ark. John Kay: We were now amongst all of these Bay area bands that liked to stretch out and experiment and jam and do different things. We said, “Hey, we can play songs that are longer than four or five minutes.” We started to do different things. One of them was this ad-libbed version of The Pusher, which was preceded by us doing different instrumental experiments. Steve Miller would come by and sit in and play all the different things. One of the things we'll always remember is that regularly the Hells Angels would come, drop acid, lie down on the dance floor, and stay all night listening. John Kay: We also played a club called The Matrix. Unbeknownst to us, the manager of the club had a couple of microphones suspended in the ceiling. When Steppenwolf later were moving forward into the '68 and '69, when we were quite successful with our first couple albums, we were being badgered to go back into the recording studio, because the label was always hungry for a new product. We had a couple record contracts that obligated us to deliver two albums a year, which was in hindsight ridiculous. John Kay: Anyway, the point is that the label said, “This young man, or this guy showed up, and he has these tapes that he recorded, unbeknownst to you, when you guys were still called The Sparrows, from a show you played at The Matrix in San Francisco. We would like to put it out as a collector's item called Early Steppenwolf.” We listened to it. Of course you can imagine that with a couple of microphones suspended from the ceiling, this was, yeah, a collector's item for those who must just for bragging rights have to have one of everything, to be able to say, “I got everything they ever did.” We hated that. We hated it then, but it bought us time. It bought us time in the studio, because when that thing was released, we got busy on writing and eventually recording what became the Monster album. That was a major step forward. Jeff Thompson: Yes, it was. Pete Lane: Fascinating story. Jeff Thompson: John, I want to go back to you told a story about how kids in school would bully you, but you took their names, you remembered, and you would get them back somehow. John Kay: It wasn't so much in school. What would happen is, like just about everywhere in the world, including the States these days, soccer, what they called football, every kid plays it. They play it barefoot in Africa. Whatever. We did too, meaning the kids in the street in West Germany when I was young. There was a vacant lot next to our little apartment building, and that's where we played. John Kay: During the day, with the sun in my eyes, even with my dark glasses, that wasn't so cool, but the moment the sun started going down, during twilight hours, I'm like a nocturnal creature that can make do with very little light. My eyes open up. I don't squint. I can see much better, not further, just more comfortably I can see things. John Kay: I would join the kids playing soccer. When they figured out that I couldn't always see what was going on, there's an 11-meter penalty kick that's part of the rules, and so when it was my turn to make that kick, some wise ass would put a half a brick in front of the ball, so I wouldn't see it. I'd come with just regular street shoes, no special athletic shoes, and take a run at shooting this ball, and of course, wham, would run my toes right into that brick- Jeff Thompson: Ouch. John Kay: … holding my foot and hopping around on one leg, doing a Daffy Duck, “Woo! Woo!” That did not go down well with me. I was fairly big for my size always, tall. They then of course saw that I was gonna come after them. They also knew that if they managed to run a certain distance, I could no longer find them. I had to learn to say, “This is not the time.” Two or three days would go by, and they would have forgotten about it, and whoever the instigator was would be doing something, and then I would go over there and deck them. They would be, “Oh man, what was that for, man? I didn't do … ” “Yes, you did, and I did not forget, but I hope you will remember this,” and they did. Jeff Thompson: I remember seeing your album covers. I collected albums. There was one of you leaning back, and you're very tall, the way the angle was on it. You wore the sunglasses. When I thought of artists, musicians, I go through Roy Orbison and other people that wore the sunglasses on stage and stuff, I never thought of you. When someone brought it to my attention, State Services for the Blind here, some client wants your book recorded, so they'll take volunteers, record chapter by chapter for the person to listen to. They contacted me, said, “Hey, John Kay, he's visually impaired.” I went, “Oh, that explains the sunglasses,” maybe for the lights on stage or something. John Kay: Absolutely the case. I had learned over time, since I wore dark glasses during the day, certainly outdoors, I got in the habit of keeping them on, because I went, “Spotlights and stage lights, they're pretty bright, and sometimes it's difficult for me to see the guitar fret board, where my fingers go and everything, and so I'll just keep the dark glasses on. Besides, some pretty cool people seem to be wearing them, and so that's just part of the persona.” Over time, meaning literally decades, I learned that I could avoid, provided the spotlights were mounted high enough with a downward angle, I could look under them in a sense, look at the audience rather than up into the bleachers. Gradually I was able to dispense with them on stage, although the moment we play outdoors they go right back on. In fact I have one pair that's damn near as dark as welding goggles when things get really super sunny, Africa's sun is very bright, or the snow is very reflective, that sort of thing. John Kay: Of course I remember one time, we were never the darlings of Rolling Stone, and so there was a negative review of one of our albums. The guy said, I'm paraphrasing, “As far as John Kay's jive sunglasses are concerned,” he went on about something else. Actually, one of our managers felt compelled to write them a letter and point out that those glasses have a purpose for being on my face. He's just like everyone else. John Kay: When I was a kid in West Germany when we first got there, I had a key around my neck, because my mother was a seamstress in other people's homes, so making a living until she remarried, and I had to learn how to get around, to get on this streetcar to get to there, because I was at a daycare center run by the Swedish Red Cross and I had to make my way back home and I couldn't read the street signs. You figure things out, there's this kind of a building on that corner, and markers that you imprint into your memory banks. John Kay: You have to remember, this is a time, post World War II, the Soviet Union alone lost 20 million people. In Hanover in 1949 and '50 and '51, there were tons of people, legs and arms missing and crutches and this and that, those who managed to survive the war in some semblance. It was basically a mindset of, “Hey, we all got stuff to deal with, kid. Just get on with it.” You learned how to figure out workaround solutions for what you're dealing with. I'm certainly one of millions who are having to make adjustments. John Kay: I remember we had a dear neighbor in Tennessee was a Vietnam veteran, Marine Corps, and he was in a wheelchair. He had to overcome his anger and started to meditate and do other things. He said to me, “Hey John, it's not the hand that's dealt you, it's how you play the hand that's dealt you.” He married, had a wonderful daughter. He became a cotton farmer and somehow got onto his tractor, and like so many out there, that okay, he's not perfect, but what are you gonna do with what you got? Jeff Thompson: John, regarding your visual impairment these days, do you use technology, computer, smartphone, anything along those lines? If so, do you use any kind of adaptive tools or screen enlargement features, anything like that? John Kay: I'm lucky enough in the sense that most standard issue devices have features that work just fine. I have a fairly large flat-panel monitor on my PC. Of course with the zoom feature and other things, I can make the font, what I'm reading, as well as what I may be writing, email and Word documents or whatever, whatever I want. The iOS, I have a phone, I have a iPad, they have a zoom feature that's just marvelous. I use that when needed. Some things with Siri or Chicano or something, in the PC world you can actually just ask for certain things to be brought to the screen. I'm learning how to do that more and more. It's a great convenience. John Kay: I really don't have any problems. I've flown all over the world to meet my band mates on my own. I've learned to do … That was a big deal for me, because of … One of you mentioned you had been to our foundation's website. There are a number of videos about the things that we support, and we have witnessed and the wildlife that we see and so on. All of that was shot by me, edited by me, and then narrated by me. Now granted my wife, who is a fine photographer and had no colorblindness like I do, I ask her sometimes, “What about this?” “We can tweak that a little, whatever.” Other than a little color assistance, I do all that myself. John Kay: The reason I can do it primarily is because there are several brands of prosumer or even professional camcorders that have up to 20x optical zoom lens, which gives you an incredible reach from where you are to get a closeup of whatever's in the distance, an elephant, whatever it may be. I use it like a pair of binoculars, because I remember one time we were in Africa and our guide was asking my wife, “He's constantly looking through that thing. Is he always shooting?” She says, “No no no. Instead of picking up a pair of binoculars, then finding something he wants to shoot, putting down-” Jeff Thompson: Good for you. John Kay: “… the binoculars, picking up his camera, he just uses that zoom lens of his like a pair of binoculars, and when he sees something, he just pulls the trigger and starts recording.” Jeff Thompson: That's great. That's neat. John Kay: That's my workaround solution for that. Jeff Thompson: John, there's so much information on your website. I was going through it. That's how I found out about the elephants and your foundation. I also was reading your question and answer, which any of the listeners who are out there, go to his website and check it out, the question and answer, because it answers so many questions. One of them was when someone mentions you are a legend, I loved your response to that. You would say it to if you met Chuck Berry or someone else or something. It was just such a humbling thing that you … Then I believe you met your wife in … John Kay: Toronto. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, in Toronto. Usually when you hear about rock stars and these legends, they've gone through wives, divorces. You're still together. John Kay: We are still together. I was a member of the aforementioned Canadian band in Toronto called The Sparrows. We were playing Downtown Toronto at a place. Between sets, our bass player said, “Hey, my girlfriend is here, sitting over there at that table, and she brought her girl friend. Why don't you join us for a drink or something?” I went over there, and I met this young woman by the name Jutta, spelled J-U-T-T-A. She was from Hamburg, Germany, where she had already as a teenager seen the band that later was to name itself the Beatles and numerous American rock-and-roll stars at The Star-Club in Hamburg. We had some things in common. I liked her a lot. I followed her home that night and moved in with her. We've been together ever since. Jeff Thompson: The longest one-night stand. John Kay: Yeah. The thing is that I, like so many others in the rock-and-roll world, being in our early 20s when we caught a wave as Steppenwolf and we were out there on the road, there's a degree of too much ego, testosterone, drugs, and temptations out there. When my wife sometimes, particularly women ask her, “Was it all roses and rainbows? You guys are still together. What's the secret to your marriage's longevity?” She'll look them straight in the eye and say, “The secret is not getting a divorce.” Jeff Thompson: Rocket science. John Kay: We're very much lifelong partners. We have much, much in common in terms of our interests and where we direct our energy and passion and time. The other hand, rather, she has certain intuitive traits that for whatever reason elude me, and I'm more analytical and more logical in some ways. We're a good fit. It's the yin and the yang together. We hope to remain like that until we are no longer vertical. Jeff Thompson: I have a question about this. When you met her, was your eyesight at the time, did you have to explain to her you won't be driving or something like that? John Kay: Yeah, you're right. Just like my thing that I mentioned earlier, when you're a 12-year-old and you're fantasizing about becoming a rock-and-roller on the other side of the ocean and being told, “Sure, kid,” when I moved in with her, she was a very young, desirable, good-looking woman, some of her friends, there's an old snide remark in the industry, which is, “What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? You call them homeless.” John Kay: When I went back to this other girl that I had been living with, to get some of my belongings to bring those over to Jutta's place, when I showed up at this other girl's place, there was another guy sitting there already, playing the guitar. I said, “Hello, who are you?” He says, “My name is Neil Young. I just came in from Winnipeg and I'm joining this band called The Mynah Birds.” I said, “Oh, cool. I just joined this band called The Sparrows.” In other words, all of us folkies were always looking for a kindhearted woman to put a roof over your head. John Kay: When I moved in with Jutta and we had been together for a while, they were all telling her, “You got a legally blind, penniless musician, and that's your future. I think you can do better than that.” Of course the conventional wisdom, they were absolutely right. The chances of all of this working out the way it did, you'd probably get better odds winning the lottery, if you go to Vegas, they would give you better odds for that, but like I said earlier, sometimes you just have more luck than good sense. It all worked out just fine. Jeff Thompson: That's great. How did you keep your focus? How did you, I keep going back to that song, but your eye on the chart, through all that has gone on with the early Steppenwolf to John Kay and Steppenwolf? What kept you focused? John Kay: That's an interesting story, question rather, because I've had to contemplate that before. I've never felt the need to go see a shrink. I seemed to always get over whatever emotional speed bumps there were. I suspect that the same deeply rooted passion for certain things, be it music, be it a sense of justice, being easily enraged by injustice, that I think is also the touchstone of other things where anger is the motivator and the engine. In the case of Steppenwolf, was very successful, we had various albums, some more commercially successful than others. It wasn't all roses and rainbows, but on the whole, it was a segment of my life that was pretty special, obviously. John Kay: Then came time when the obligations to the band, because of being its primary songwriter and lead singer and front man and all that, became such that I wanted time for the private me, which meant my family, our daughter, who was hardly ever seeing me. John Kay: When I pulled the plug on Steppenwolf in the late '70s, after a rejuvenating period in the mid-'70s on a different label, our little family went in our little family van all over the Southwest. We spent a lot of time in Hawaii, on Maui and stuff. That was quite nurturing and very good for me, but I was also, “Okay, I'm gonna do a solo album, this and that.” It was on pause to a certain extent. John Kay: Then the news reached Jerry Edmonton, the original drummer and co-founder of the band, and friend, that a couple of ex-members of the band were out there using the name Steppenwolf. Then all sorts of boring details as to lawsuits and other things involved, but the news that reached us was generally from fans, saying, “We went to see what was called Steppenwolf, and it was horrible. People were throwing stuff at them. They're trashing the name.” John Kay: We tried to put a stop to these activities, using the legal system, lawsuits and so on. Again, it would take too much time to go into the details. Let's just say that the results, I kept saying, “This legal system is limping along like a turtle with a wooden leg. We're not getting anywhere here with these lawsuits.” It was like whack-a-mole. You'd go after them in this state, they'd pop up in another state. John Kay: Finally, out of sheer desperation and anger, I had a number of musicians with whom I had been playing as the John Kay Band, I called Jerry and I said, “Man, I want to go out there as John Kay and Steppenwolf, because I want to resurrect the name and rebuild it. We'll work out something, so you participate financially.” He was already into his photographer and artist mode. That was fine. John Kay: In 1980 I went out there, driven by the outrage and anger of, “You guys are destroying something that you didn't build. I was the one who called everybody up to see if you wanted to what became Steppenwolf, and I'm going to go out there and compete with you guys on the same low-level clubs you guys have played the name down into, see who wins.” John Kay: We from 1980 on went out there 20 weeks at a time, five shows a week, overnight drives 500 miles, playing in the toilet circuit of bars, where some of them, you wouldn't want to enter those clubs without a whip and a chair. It was just horrible. John Kay: The mantra was, “Yeah, three years ago we were headlining in arenas. That's not the point. If there are 300 people here tonight at this club who are not above being here to hear us play, and we're certainly not above us playing for them, so the mission is every night we gotta send people home smiling and telling others, ‘You missed a really good show,' and all you can do is grit your teeth that that will eventually,” because we ran into, we distinctly remember, a club on the outskirts of Minneapolis, St. Paul. During the soundcheck time, relatively young guy came over and looked me straight in the face, said, “You're not John Kay. He wouldn't play a shit hole like this.” That was the level to which the name had been played down into. John Kay: That really got me aggravated. I said, “I'm gonna kick their butt, not by … The lawyers are still fighting over this and that, but in the meantime, we're getting great reviews and we're going town by town, state by state.” By 1984, after relentless touring in the States, also twice in Canada, by that time we had also released a couple new albums, twice in Europe, once in Australia, we in essence put what we called the bogus Steppenwolf bands out of business. John Kay: While we were at it, since we were somewhat damaged goods, we said, “Then we're gonna learn how to mind the store ourselves.” That's when we had our own music publishing company, our own recording studio, our own merchandise corporation, our own tour bus, huge truck with a triple sleeper, 105 cases of gear, and on and on. To give you an idea of how tight a bond was formed, our entire crew, all four members have been with me for over 30 years. Jeff Thompson: Oh wow. Pete Lane: Wow. John Kay: We took the reigns into our own hands and learned. I did not want to become a paralegal or para-accountant or any of those other things. Almost everybody in our 12-member organization, bus drivers, everybody, wore multiple hats, selling merchandise during the show or whatever. They were all quality people, and we learned how to fend for ourselves, and not just survive, but at a certain point, thrive. We knew exactly where the money was coming from and where it went. Nobody was running off with our loot to Ecuador. Jeff Thompson: What suggestions would you have for someone today who is interested in music like you were, driving your passion from Little Richard, Chuck Berry, all those people that inspired you to follow your passion? What suggestions in today's music world would you give to them? John Kay: Unfortunately, I wish I had some kind of a magic formula to impart to them, but obviously every situation is vastly different, is really I think in the end, I know people who are tremendously talented, vastly more talented than I am, who are not necessarily doing well. I've experienced in the early days where someone whose primary talent was to show up at every opportunity to pitch what they had to offer. It's one of those, “Did you go to that audition yesterday, this morning, or whatever?” “I had a really late-night last night. I'll go to the next one.” How many opportunities are gonna come your way? It's one of those. John Kay: The other thing is, do you have the fire in your belly to handle the ego-destroying rejections, because there are probably hundreds, if you were to take a poll of … Well-known singer-songwriter Nora Jones, that first album, which I love, was rejected I think by every label in town twice. There are stories like that all over the place. John Kay: How do you pick yourself up every morning after, “I'm sorry, it's just not radio-friendly,” or, “You don't really fit into our whatever.” You need to have a pretty intense flame of passion about what you are and what you have to offer. You need to be able to handle … John Kay: You may be the one that wins the lottery, where the first attempt reaches the right set of ears and you've got a partner in your career moving forward, but most likely you will be like so many of the baby acts these days, and some who have been around already for 10 years plus, which is you have to learn how to wear a lot of different hats, the social media stuff, the pitching your music on YouTube or whatever, to endlessly tour in clubs, to build a following, four of you sleeping in the van with the gear, whatever. It'll burn you out if you're not made of something that can handle those rigors. John Kay: Meantime, you have the temptations of, “I want to have a private life too,” depending on whether you're a female or male, an artist, “I met somebody I want to share my life with. At some point we want to have children. This band isn't getting me anywhere.” There are all these things that are strikes against your ability to prevail in this, unless you are one of those who's willing to take those beatings out there, in terms of the rejection and being often the response that you get from reviewers or whatever is not always positive, particularly if you're still in the process of really finding and tweaking who you are and what you have to offer. John Kay: If you're a singer doing other people's stuff, that's one thing. If you are a writer and you really have something to say, that may be an advantage in the sense that if it resonates, you may find what we found in the early days, which is, “Wow, you've become our musical spokesperson. When I play that song, it is my inner voice, having been give voice, by your voice.” If you're one of those who's able to put in words what moves you most, and there are lots of others out there that take your music as their personal soundtrack, then it may still be a long slog uphill, but usually that sort of thing spreads readily on social media. John Kay: We have the Wolf Pack. When we played our official 50th anniversary, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the formation of the band, when we played that official concert to commemorate that at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee last August, and the Wolf Pack fan club was notified of that. We had over 300 Wolf Pack fan members coming from all over North America and at least close to 70 or 80 of them coming all the way from Europe. They all know each other. They're all like the Dead Heads. They have a passion that they share with others. John Kay: If you are able as an artist to reach people in that kind of way where what you have to offer becomes more than just sheer entertainment, then I think your chances of making a go of it are pretty good. Some of more or less my contemporaries that are still writing, still out there, still loved, John Prine, John Hiatt, if you are one of those, or you're aspiring to become one of those, I wish you a lot of good fortune. John Kay: Sarah McLachlan song Angel, it has moved millions to tears. One of the verses that basically I'm paraphrasing, about when you're always being told you're not good enough, you're basically having the door slammed in your face all the time, and the self-doubt creeps in and nobody seems to get what it is you have to offer, those kind of things, they're hard on you. John Kay: You wouldn't want to be a writer, artist, player, whatever, singer, if you didn't have some degree of ego that says, “Hey, I've got something to offer, something to say. I'm up here. Do you like what I got?” That's rooted to some extent in your ego. If you have that ego under co

Full Transcript Show Summary: Thomas Reid lost his sight back in 2004 and found podcasts as a way back into learning and getting his message out to the world. Coming from the IT sector, Thomas found technology and screen readers as a way back to the workplace and never looked back. He now host the Reid My Mind Podcast, is a Voice Artist and an advocate and voice for the Blind and African Americans. Thomas brings in his passion for music and creativity in his sound design making his podcasts interesting and exciting. Thomas is more than a podcast host, voice artist and advocate, he is a husband, proud father and someone who has something to say. I know I am listening and I hope you open your mind to his conversations with people who are making lives matter and the world a better place. You can find out more about Thomas Reid on his web site at ReidMyMind.com. And be sure to subscribe to his podcast, Reid My Mind on any pod-catcher of your choice. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Transitioning from High School to College is a major step towards self-determination and independence. Career choices are made and Colleges and Universities are explored to best fit one’s needs. A group of high school students ask a panel of college students questions to help them understand the challenges and gain from the experience the college students share. When leaving the high school and the security of the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and move into the Independent Plan for Employment IPE, the sharing of these college students can go a long way in preparing for their transition to college. The College Transition Panel was created to help share the experiences and to let high school students know that there is a pathway and that they do not have to take this journey alone. One of the key themes stemming from this conversation is that networking with other Blind and Low Vision students is a great resource for support and answers to the questions that will arise during this journey. No one has to reinvent the wheel and building a network and sharing the successes and failures will bring about good foot-holds in the climb towards reaching one’s educational goals. Join this discussion and Q and A regarding transitioning from high school to college from a Blindness perspective and help share their message to your networks as well. A big Thank You goes out to the Teachers of the Visually Impaired and others who made this panel discussion happen, and to all the students who took the time to share and let their voices be heard. Thank You! Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Laura Allen joins Raqi and Jeff in the Blind Abilities Studio to talk about new developments in Google’s accessibility and disability inclusion. Laura Allen is Head of strategy for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion, bringing together the Google network of teams to bring awareness to accessibility and disability inclusion within the entire google corporation. Laura uses a mix of accessibility tools to be independent which gives her a clear perspective on the need for accessibility and how inclusion in the workplace is an everyday experience for everyone. Laura talks about the new developments in accessibility, resources and how the teams at Google are innovating for a more accessible future. From high school to college to the workplace, Laura has been building on  her life experience to bring awareness and to develop strategies for accessibility across Google’s products and building a more inclusive workplace environment at Google. To find out more about Google and Accessibility check out the links to their Accessibility Blog and Support Team below. From the Google Blog: The latest news about our efforts to help everyone access and enjoy the web.  From the Google Help Center: You can use Google Workspace for online collaboration, organization, and productivity. These resources can help you get started with Google Workspace using assistive technology. Google Workspace User Guide to Accessibility Google Support Team on Accessibility You can connect with any of the Google accessibility support teams for Android, Chrome, Workspace, Chrome Book, YouTube and more Google Products. You can also  join an accessibility  community. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Dr. Natalina Martiniello completed her Doctorate in the study of Aging on Braille Literacy from the University of Montreal in December of 2021 and has a vast and robust knowledge of all things diversity, accessibility and related issues facing the Blind and Visually Impaired. Inclusion in the classrooms, inclusion in the curriculum building in Universities and the importance of learning Braille at any age are some of the focuses Natalina brings to the conversation. Dr. Martiniello is the President of Braille Literacy Canada and is a strong believer in braille literacy and shares her views on braille devices, how to approach educating seniors on braille, and the importance of having a physical connection to literacy  int order to know spelling, grammar, punctuation and modern terminology to effectively communicate in today’s professional and virtual world. As the President of Braille Literacy Canada, she instituted a new program called Braille Zoomers, aimed at providing a monthly  virtual peer support workshop to seniors who have learned, or will soon be learning to read braille. You can find out more about the Braille Zoomers program on the Braille Literacy Canada web site. Embedded in Dr. Martiniello’s discussions of these important topics, we also hear some humorous stories and experiences from her which help us understand her message in a captivating and very personal way.  Be sure to listen carefully as she describes an incident with her guide dog while attending a university  event. Please join Jeff Thompson as he delves into these subjects with Dr. Natalina Martiniello in this brief, but informative and fascinating interview. Be sure to follow Dr. Martiniello on Twitter @Paws2See. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Full Transcript Kym DeKeyrel has faced life threatening challenges and has made the necessary changes in her life to take on more and more as she is now all-in on the CrossFit training. Kym is the 4th Fittest Standing Adaptive Athlete in the World. Working out twice a day and balancing her family life and work as a Massage Therapist, Kym strives on being the best she can be.  Listen in as Kym describes how her change in her diet saved her life and gave her back her life and she never looked back.  Kym is a believer that one can achieve their goals and proves it to herself every workout as she pushes herself to do more and be more. Kym wants you to check out a CrossFit Gym in your local area and give it a try.  You can follow Kym on her Facebook page at Kym DeKeyrel. Kym is on Instagram at KymPossiblexoxo. WheelWOD on Facebook CrossFit The CrossFit Open Adaptive Division: What We Know Now. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Our guest on this episode of the Blind Abilities podcast is Dr. Calvin W. Roberts, MD, President and CEO of Lighthouse Guild, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing and preventing vision loss. Dr. Roberts  has a unique blend of academic, clinical, business and hands-on product development experience. He is a Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and  formerly Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Eye Care, at Bausch Health Companies where he coordinated global development and research efforts across their vision care, pharmaceutical and surgical business units. Dr. Roberts shares his ideas towards how he sees the Lighthouse Guild providing help for clients through a variety of services aimed at treating the entire patient, including:  Low Vision Optometrists and Opticians, Vocational Rehabilitation, an Accessible Technology Center, Behavioral Health Counseling, Teen, Young Adult, Adult and Parent Tele-support Programs, and more. Dr. Roberts chats openly and articulately about his experiences and how they translate into developing new and innovative technology and services.  Listen as Dr. Roberts enthusiastically describes and demonstrates NaviLens which is an advanced and enhanced form of QR bar code scanning via the use of color-coded QR codes and a smart phone app. He also discusses his ongoing podcast called: On Tech and Vision with Dr. Cal Roberts, produced by Lighthouse Guild. Some brief excerpts of this podcast can be heard here.  If you live in the New York City area, or even elsewhere since Zoom and other virtual means for meeting have evolved recently, be sure to check out the Lighthouse Guild and the many services they have to offer.    You can find out more about Lighthouse Guild on their web site: www.LighthouseGuild.org Or by calling: 800-284-4422 Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Juan Alcazar is a Film Maker and YouTube Creator and you can find his work on YouTube at JC5Productions. Juan joined Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studio to talk about his journey with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and his passion for making films and videos. Storytelling is something Juan took to at a young age and he continues his passion as he embraces his sight loss and the blindness community he found once he stopped denying his loss of vision. I really enjoyed meeting Juan as I have followed his work over the years and known him through the social media networks and this was our first time really meeting up. Juan has a genuine kind personality of which you will hear as he talks about his collabs, community and passions for storytelling. Be sure to visit his social media links below and enjoy his very descriptive video and film creations. You can check out Juan’s creative works on his YouTube Channel at JC5Productions. Follow Juan on Twitter @JC12209  and stay up to date with all the latest from Juan on his Facebook page at JC5Productions Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Today’s guest on Blind Abilities is Donna Jodhan. Donna is a multi-talented individual, an author, entrepreneur and an advocate for the  blind and visually impaired. Now Donna is  rebranding herself as a sight loss coach, aiming at helping people who are experiencing sight loss to “...become more comfortable in their new type of world…”, to become independent and fully functional.    Adding to her long list of credentials as author, entrepreneur and advocate is Donna’s unique perspective on sight loss, having been born with very little vision, regaining her vision later in life, only to lose it again as a result of a detached retina. As Donna puts it, she is “ ...back on the other side of the fence again.” Donna will be providing coaching to those experiencing sight loss, which is particularly important during the pandemic, as folks need to know that they can deal with it and overcome it. Donna has authored an audio detective series which aired on the Accessible Media Inc. (AMI) network in Canada; she is an entrepreneur, and has been a strong advocate for the blind and visually impaired for many years. Donna also shares her experience on a variety of topics ranging from confidence in blindness skills, to cooking, and advice for prospective authors, encouraging them to, “go out there and try, because you never know what will happen.” Donna herself realized numerous new opportunities as a result of developing her audio mystery series, “ DJ detective and the crime crashers”. Donna became an advocate for the blind when she realized she was not able to navigate and apply for a job on the Canadian jobs web site. She fought a long hard legal battle to affect much needed changes to the web site and finally initiated enactment of legislation in 2019 to codify these changes. but now she is handing off the baton - issuing a challenge, laying down the gauntlet to young people across Canada pronouncing that “it's time for others to step up to the plate... It’s time for the youngsters to move forward, it’s their future.” Donna is also collaborating with an old friend of the Blind Abilities podcast, John Panarese to provide coaching and training. John is the owner of Mac For The Blind, a web site where you can find training, audio tutorials and other valuable resources to help hone your skills on all things Apple. in fact, Donna has earned the Apple certified service provider (ACSP) certification as a result of working with John. Be sure to investigate John’s web site at MacForTheBlind.com   Be sure to set aside a few short minutes to join Jeff Thompson as he engages with Donna Jodhan as she shares her vision of coaching and delves into her process of “rebranding” n 2021.  You can check out her web site, which is currently under redesign at DonnaJodhan.com  in the meantime, you can inquire about sight-loss coaching assistance by calling Donna at 416-491-7711 or sending her an email at:DonnaJodhan@Gmail.com Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Show Summary: The crew is intact and with a latte in-hand and most of the microphones locked down and ready, Serina, Raqi, Angie and Jeff take on a lot of topics starting with a very sad, sad story. Serina tossed her nose up at the Air Pod Max headphones and landed a new iPad Air 4. Meanwhile, Raqi scores a Mac Mini just to spoil her Mantis. Meanwhile, Angie’s travel experience is shared and she is now Home Sweet Home at Las, Las Vegas that is. Jeff rows in counting his strokes and loving the Concept2 Rower. He also got his Air Pod Pro replaced by Apple free of charge!  The Homan Prize is now open for applications at Holman.Lighthouse-SF.org. Be sure to check it out and apply by March 14, Yes, Pie Day! 3.14…. right? Or is everything Apple, Apple Pie that is. Jeff talks up his Husky Workbench/Standup Desk with adjustable height from Home Depot. We hear from the Big R about his Concept2 Rower about to arrive, another listener just got another and a rowing we will go. Have you found or come across some cool mask that you like? Have you got new plans for this new year? Do you use a stand-up desk? Let us know, give us a call at 612-367-9063, we want to hear from you. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Serina, Raqi, Jeff and Angie gather around to talk tech and have a conversation about Blindness, Service flying service animals and giving Guide Dogs Angel wings. Yup, you heard it here first. From the latest gems from Apple to the Mantis from APH, the crew digs in about news, releases and experience not just tech experience, life experience as well. How do you use the word Blind? Do you use Person-First? The topic heats up and guard went down as the team brings it on with the use of the word Blind as the popular Twitch site changed Blind Play Through to First Play Through. Why? Hmm. Good or just the right thing to do, today. Comfort dogs get grounded and service dogs fly! $$$549$$$, no, that is not a mis-print, the New Air Pod Max Headphones are released and sold out till March! Headphones, $549? Yup, The Apple Air Pod Max are being purchase without any trial, try on, listen, just the Apple Brand and vote of confidence is selling the promise of a great listening experience. Now that’s marketing and consumer loyalty at it’s best. Buying sight unseen and audio unheard of. Bet they do sound good.   Here are some notes and links from the show: Air Pod Max AirPods Max feature incredible high-fidelity audio, Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, and spatial audio Apple Fitness Plus Link  will be  available starting Monday Link  and will offer guided workouts using the workout metrics from an  Apple Watch Link . At launch, Fitness Plus will have guided  HIIT Link ,  yoga Link ,  cycling Link , dance,  treadmill Link  walking, treadmill running Link , strength,  core Link  and rowing workouts. There are also mindful  cool-down Link  videos to use after any workout. The service is similar to Peloton Digital and other  fitness streaming services Link  out there, but is built explicitly for Apple devices. 
To that end, Apple’s online store has started listing select exercise gear on its online store for the first time. Apple has kicked off its exercise equipment offering with yoga accessories, including a  Manduka eKOlite Yoga Mat Link  ($77.95), a  Manduka 6 mm Performance Yoga Mat Link  ($119.95), and a  Cork Yoga Block Link  ($19.95).  Twitch removes 'blind playthrough' tag after feedback over ableist language The streaming site's director of community and creator marketing Erin 'Aureylian' Wayne tweeted the news, saying Twitch had removed the 'blind playthrough' tag. The term was often used by streamers to denote they would be playing a game for the first time, unaware of the controls, mechanics, story and premise. But following feedback from viewers, Twitch has changed this to "encourage more inclusive language for our community." "You can still use the 'first playthrough' or opt to use it in combination with 'no spoilers' for the same sentiment," Wayne tweeted. "Just as we used to say 'gay' when something was bad, using disability terms as an alternative word for a negative situation or feeling is common in today's language," he wrote. Future HomePod may only answer Siri queries if you look at it Apple device users may not necessarily have to state "Hey Siri" to invoke the digital assistant, with Apple looking into ways to use gaze detection to automatically trigger verbal control of a device, without needing a vocal prompt. U.S. Department of Transportation Clarifies the Use of Emotional Support Animals on Flights Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Karthik Kannan returned to the Blind Abilities Studio to talk about the Winter Sale on the Envision AI App available in the App Store and the Google Play Store. Now, with a new 14 day trial from Envision, anyone can give the Envision AI app a good go-around. Try out the Instant Text, Document and PDF reading features. Check out the color detection, translate and read from over 50 languages right on your smart phone. With the new features added this year, like column detection and the ability to save your OCR documents in the new Library folder, you can import and export the text with just a few taps. Envision AI has much more to offer and you can find out all about the Envision AI app on the Envision web site at LetsEnvision.com The new Envision Glasses are now available and you can order yours today on the web at www.LetsEnvision.com/glasses Everything you can do in the Envision AI app, you can do on the Envision Glasses and more.  Join Karthik Kannan along with Angie Fisher and Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studio and learn all about the new Envision Glasses, the new features in the Envision AI app and how you can get a chance to win a new pair of the Envision Glasses during the Winter Sale. Be sure to stay up on all the latest from Envision by following Envision on Twitter @LetsEnvision. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

That Blind Tech Show 21: Thinning Down the Crew, Bulking Up on Goodies, Picking Apples on Sept 12th and Brian Enters the Dark Side Welcome back to That Blind Tech Show. This is episode 21 and we got a lot going on here. From D-Day arriving on Twitterific and other 3rdparty Twitter apps but it appears the fall out is nowhere near the horrific dooms day scare put upon the Tweeters out there. Almost reminded some of us of the 2000K hysteria. Brian aims to wear women’s pants in the near future and that is not even his dark side confession he makes on this episode 21 of That Blind Tech Show, (TBTS). Apple Pods vs Sonos 1 speakers, Apple employee gets punched in face over Face ID, the iPhones are coming, the iPhones are coming. Yes! September 12 and the speculation is running wild. You gonna get something? Sure, do it, just do it. A new Mac 13”, Mac Mini, Air Pod case, and is the expected new iPhone X-s a bit to excess or is that name just right? Xs, hmm. Verizon is throttling like wild fire, Brian sneaks into England and Jeff is actually headed there soon. We also now have our own RSS Feed! www.ThatBlindTechShow.Libsyn.com/RSS And you can also search for That Blind Tech Show in your most handy podcatcher of choice. There seems to be a podcast catcher app coming out every week. Same with the IOS 12 betas, and beta 12 seems to hit it right out of the park. Join Allison Hartley, Brian Fischler and Jeff Thompson in this effort to do something productive. Let us know how we are doing and check out the links below to see where we do our reading. J Links from the show: Thai man punches Apple sales woman in the face over Face ID not working Science Proves Women’s pockets are to small for iPhones Everything new with Siri in iOS 12 Apple September Product rumors And you thought throttling your Netflix was bad? Coding Class Would you trust a Facebook Voice Controlled Smart Speaker Elago Wrist Fit Accessory and Leather Snap Pouch  Air Snap Leather Pouch   Contact   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network   You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.  

That Blind Tech Show 21: Thinning Down the Crew, Bulking Up on Goodies, Picking Apples on Sept 12th and Brian Enters the Dark Side   Welcome back to That Blind Tech Show. This is episode 21 and we got a lot going on here. From D-Day arriving on Twitterific and other 3rdparty Twitter apps but it appears the fall out is nowhere near the horrific dooms day scare put upon the Tweeters out there. Almost reminded some of us of the 2000K hysteria. Brian aims to wear women’s pants in the near future and that is not even his dark side confession he makes on this episode 21 of That Blind Tech Show, (TBTS). Apple Pods vs Sonos 1 speakers, Apple employee gets punched in face over Face ID, the iPhones are coming, the iPhones are coming. Yes! September 12 and the speculation is running wild. You gonna get something? Sure, do it, just do it. A new Mac 13”, Mac Mini, Air Pod case, and is the expected new iPhone X-s a bit to excess or is that name just right? Xs, hmm. Verizon is throttling like wild fire, Brian sneaks into England and Jeff is actually headed there soon. We also now have our own RSS Feed! www.ThatBlindTechShow.Libsyn.com/RSS And you can also search for That Blind Tech Show in your most handy podcatcher of choice. There seems to be a podcast catcher app coming out every week. Same with the IOS 12 betas, and beta 12 seems to hit it right out of the park. Join Allison Hartley, Brian Fischler and Jeff Thompson in this effort to do something productive. Let us know how we are doing and check out the links below to see where we do our reading. J   Links from the show: Thai man punches Apple sales woman in the face over Face ID not working Science Proves Women’s pockets are to small for iPhones Everything new with Siri in iOS 12 Apple September Product rumors And you thought throttling your Netflix was bad? Coding Class Would you trust a Facebook Voice Controlled Smart Speaker Elago Wrist Fit Accessory and Leather Snap Pouch  Air Snap Leather Pouch   Contact   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network   You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.  

In episode 15 of That Blind Tech Show Allison Hartley, Brian Fischler and Jeff Thompson announce the release of the Blind Abilities Alexa Skill, the Android version of the Blind Abilities App, GE’s announcement of air conditioners controlled by your home assistant devices, Zoom Pizza’s made by Robots, Amazon and Best Buy Hooking up without the use of the upcoming Facebook Hookup site and how to get a charge out of a rubber case for your iPhone. Believe me, there is more! And I can’t run this sentence on too much longer so give the TBTS episode #15 a listen and be sure to send us feedback, suggestions and hey, just say, “Hi.” Here are the links to the news and products mentioned in this cast: GE’s new line of Smart Air Conditioners Amazon Prime hiking prices to $119. Will you stay Prime Zoom Pizza to expand AI beyond just making pizzas Skynet Facebook taking on Tinder with new Dating option Ford car window would help blind people feel the view Say Hello to the all new Gmail with self destructing emails New iPhone 7 - 8 charging case from Smiphee New USB Wall Charging Unit for $7.00! Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow     That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network.   You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

TBTS will soon have it's own feed and you will be able to follow the show on any of your favorite podcast apps or devices. With that said, Brian brings us a demo of the GE Microwave that takes commands through his Echo Dot. Join the gang on That Blind Tech Show, Brian, Allison and myself, Jeff. Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network   You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.  

ThatBlindTechShow19: From Chrome, Surface Pro, VoiceView, MacBookPro’s New Line-up, and yes, more mention of the Cluckin’ Gobble… Chirp That Blind Tech Show 19 is jammed packed with… well, it’s nearly an hour of…. Well, we are back in the saddle and letting it rip. News from the convention, Twitter’s clamp down on 3rd party apps, Microsoft’s Surface Go is now gettable and Voice view steps in-line with gestures. And lookie lookie at that there Chrome Vox.  Not to forget, Brian talks about himself, again and again and on this episode he will not let his fan boys down. Allison is all moved in and Jeff is headed West for a bit while Brian is busy searching the internet and Amazon for that next tidbit of news or that gadget he feels he needs and can’t live without. Ok, that is a stretch, Brian ain’t that busy, he does it all from the couch. So kick back and join Brian on the couch and find out what’s happening in the world of That Blind Tech Show. With Co-hosts. Brian Fischler, Allison Hartley, and Jeff Thompson. And a big thank you to Serina Gilbert for tolerating Brian and Jeff last episode. We owe you big time! Here are some links to the topics and products mentioned in episode 19 of That Blind Tech Show: Ok, it is now time to panic. Twitterrific removes push notifications and live timeline streaming More than 1 of 10 consumers  want Voice Control in the bathroom Why are blind people being replaced by blind cheetah robots? Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network. You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Allison, Jeff and Bryan bring you another That Blind Tech Show talking about some of the tech news with a blindness perspective. This episode has gadgets, deals, suggestions and a lot of Allison’s cool tools. Learn about the Sonos 1, the GE Laundry box that talks, Content blockers, chargers and we almost cover everything there is to cover but that would put a lot of news people out of business. So, we kept it to about 50 minutes. Be sure to check the links below to learn more about what the heck we were talking about. :) Hey Apple I want my FM radio! You think pop Up Ads are bad, they are even worse for the blind How to teach Siri to properly pronounce a name Jackery Chargers with Both Cables Attached. [Jackery Bolt 10050mAh High Capacity External BatteryPack, Built-in Lightning & Micro USB Cable Portable Power Bank for iPhone (Black) Jackery Bolt 6000 mAh Portable Charger- iPhone Battery Charger with Built-in Lightning Cable [Apple MFi certified] External Battery Pack Compact Power Bank, TWICE as FAST as Original iPhone Charger Thank you for listening. Contact the show by email Follow @BlindTechshowon Twitter   That Blind Tech Show is in part produced by Blind Abilities Network You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

That Blind Tech Show Rolls Again. Bryan brings Allison and Jeff back to the sho to talk about some of the latest Tech news, gidgets and gadgets and the latest from Sonos. We are proud to announce that Twitterrific for the Mac is Back, Downcast just got an update and AOL Messenger is no longer. Jeff gives us an update on the fire that hit Enchanted Hills Camp above Napa, CA and how we can all contribute and support #RebuildEHC. Be sure to check the links below to learn more about what the heck we were talking about. :) Check out the Twitterrific Blog and Subscribe to keep up with the latest from iConFactory Google Bought Apple or Did they! Twitterrfic for Mac is here How to get apps back in iTunes 10 Safari Long Press Shortcut Gestures. Do you remember to ever long press? Read more about Enchanted hills Camp #RebuildEHCand contribute what you can and lend your support. Give by phone: Call Jennifer Sachs at 415-694-7333   See Transcription below.   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   That Blind Tech Show is produced in part by Blind Abilities Network.   You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Transcription: That Blind Tech Show: Twifferrific on the Mac and Downcast is Back andSonos Gets 1 Bigger. (Transcription provided) [Music] Alison: Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the play one, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. [Music] Alison: I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I'm hoping that you know buying some of the workouts for that, I will literally have no excuse not to, not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which..... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know when he get, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Bryan: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough, but yeah. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis. [Laughter] Alison: The face ID, I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. Jeff: I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Big smiles okay, three, two one, welcome back to yet another episode of that blind tech show. I know it's been a very long time since we've been here in fact you've probably heard a lot of us on other great technology podcasts. I know our friend Allison Hartley recorded one of her regular tech doctor podcasts as well as she was on with the great people over at main menu. And you may have heard Jeff Thompson on with AT Banter and I believe he's got another podcast coming out with the good folks over at Mystic Access and you may have heard me on Blind Bargains but we finally got the band back together again and we're here to talk you through some of the holidays and the goings on now, so I'm going to go ahead and say yeah how you doing over there Allison. Alison: I'm doing okay, it's the day three of a four-day weekend so I'm just kind of milking the the time off work for all it's worth, I've been reading good books that I'll talk about later and eating lots of food, lots of pie, so much pie. Bryan: There's never such a thing as too much pie. Alison: No never. Bryan: What about you Jeff, how has your Thanksgiving holiday been? Jeff: Well pie is a continuum. Alison: Yep. Jeff: It's been great here, I've been bacheloring it, the family's been gone, and I'm living it here with the dogs, happy Thanksgiving, it's Thanksgiving everyday now. Bryan: I'm actually down in Florida still recording you see, we're all about bringing you the show. Holidays don't stop us. One thing I was very excited though on the plane ride down here, I was very excited some of you might have heard about therapy pigs getting kicked off planes. [Pig noises] I'm happy to report there was no therapy pig on my plane down here, just get old Nash in me. How about you Allison, have you ever been on a plane with a therapy Pig? Alison: I have never been on the plane with anything more exciting than another guide dog, I have to say. Bryan: What about you Jeff have you ever traveled with any pigs? Jeff: No but it, it would wouldn't be that bad if it was therapy bacon. Alison: Oh yeah. Bryan: That is true, that is true and for those of you not hear about that story it's actually not the first time a therapy pig has gotten kicked off a plane so, go ahead and check that out, it was one of the more humorous stories and, you know, it's great that they stand up for our rights as guide dog service dog users, but seriously, therapy pigs. [Pig noises] Now Allison, I think you're probably the only disappointed one because I'm hearing the Soup Nazi said no soup for you, no home pod for you this year? Alison: Yeah I mean I have really no reason to be disappointed. I have speakers coming out of my ears. [Spring noise and laughter] Alison: Quite literally right now cuz I'm wearing headphones but, I am, I am still interested in getting the home pod when it comes out, home pods I should say, cuz I want to get a stereo pair. I have my Lady A controlled Sonos speakers now, and I'm finding that that is honestly filling a lot of my needs in terms of playing satellite radio and playing any song that I could possibly think of. I do still want to get the home pods because I hear that the sound quality is gonna be even that much better than the Sonos speakers, but I'm not, I'm not tearing my hair out, if these new Sonos hadn't come out I might have been a bit more disappointed, but I'm okay. Jeff: Now you said they're gonna be better sounding than the Sonos? Alison: They are, they're going to have more tweeters and better far-field microphones for understanding you, the only limitation in my opinion it's gonna be Siri, I know this is a controversial subject on an Apple themed podcast but, Siri is terrible. Bryan: You will get no argument out of me, Siri and I, we're not even dating anymore, the relationship is over and.... Unfortunately this is not surprising news, Apple you know when they used to meet their deadlines, we talked about it this summer, it was a little odd that Apple was talking about this, it almost reminds me of you know back 10 years ago when they used to say there's an attack coming, it's not coming today, it's not coming tomorrow, but it's coming, and I kind of feel that's the same thing with (inaudible) Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Apple pod, they're not gonna be out today, they're not gonna be out tomorrow, but they will be out, probably around the same time that the Amazon app comes to the Apple TV. Alison: I would, I would say you're probably right there, and I would say that when they do come out they're gonna be a couple of years behind all of the other smart speakers with better AI. It's really, it's kind of gonna be sad almost. I really I want to see Apple push forward in this arena, but unfortunately you know, I, I've played now with Google assistant, I've had a Lady A in my life, I have been playing even with Bixby on a, on a Samsung phone, and yes you give something up in terms of your data, and in terms of your privacy, but when you're putting security above all, the AI, and the assistance itself becomes very limited in what it can do, and it's really starting to show in Siri when there are so many more worthy competitors. Bryan: Yeah, the Apple really missed the boat on the the home assistant and you know, Tim Cook was wishy-washy on it for several years and now it's just gonna be a speaker, I really have no interest, I mean I'm very happy with my Echo devices, heck, I got a small apartment you know, I've got one in the living room. They're $30.00 now over you know, the weekend... Alison: God Yeah. Bryan: I just don't have, I'm like, well do I really need another one, and I'm like, I've got one in the living room, one in the bedroom, and I don't spend much time in the kitchen so you know it's, there's no point really in getting another one but I, you just can't say no at that price and, how was the Google assistant, did you like it? Alison: I do, I actually I have a Google home speaker that I don't have plugged in at this point but on the Galaxy I mean it's just, you can just ask random questions and instead of saying, let me check the web for that, here's what I found, it actually just gives you the answer to your flipping question. Bryan: Yeah. Alison: It's really amazing and then you can ask like follow-up questions and it jives with what you were talking about and it answers intelligently. I just, you know maybe the home pod speakers will come out and something about Siri will blow us out of the water or something out of the speakers, about the speakers will blow everything else out of the water because they've had a little bit more time, but I'm starting to get a little impatient with Apple's obsession with, I know they want to get it right, and I know they want to have a really polished user experience, but that user experience is starting to suffer because of that need to be so meticulous, and so perfect. Jeff: Well I think they've actually, having it come out next year might be a good plan for their stocks in a way because people are buying the eight, or the ten, those are big items, and you're talking about $349.00 here. It's hard to comBryan when everybody else is you know flooding the market with these $29.00 minis, and dots, and Amazon, what do they have seven different items now in this department? The Look, the Show, the Tap. Alison: Now Google has three, I mean, it's a lot. Bryan: And, I'm hearing about headphones, Bose, I think there is a set of Bose headphones which you know, I couldn't afford those, but that have the Google Home built into them so we're starting to see more and more even headphones with these kind of assistants built into them and, I think Apple, you know, they've just been left behind and, not every company needs a home assistant so, I really don't see what the marketplace unless you are a big music listener, you know, or have capitol to spend, I really don't see the point to it, I guess I don't have a fine ear for music because I think the Echo speaker sounds fantastic and everybody I know that's into music says, "Are you kidding?" Alison: Oh no, oh God, no no no no no. Especially the Dot. The Dot is barely passable for spoken word, but even the big Echo, drives me crazy because it tries to simulate fake stereo, but it doesn't quite get it right on the one speaker so, it's, it drives me nuts. Bryan: What's the opposite of perfect pitch? Because that's what I have. [Laughter] Jeff: Either you have it, or you don't. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Jeff: So with the Sonos, you have two of them, that's the Sonos one you have two of them. Alison: Yep. Jeff: That does perfect stereo? Alison: It does, yeah I have them equal distant from each other on a table, and the stereo separation is amazing, it's really beautiful. Jeff: Oh that's great. Bryan: Are there multiple different kinds of Sonos? I've just heard phenomenal things about Sonos speakers, or is there one product line or are there different kind of product lines for the Sonos speakers. Alison: There are in the non smart, non Lady A connected Sonos products, there are three, well four technically different tiers of Sonos products, and it all depends on the number of tweeters that are in each speaker, and with all of them you can pair to get a stereo pair with the Play Ones, Play Threes, and Play Fives, but they become very expensive, and they have a sound bar, and they have a subwoofer for the television, but you couldn't pair Lady A with a skill now, to make all of your Sonos products somewhat controllable via Lady A, but the Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the Play One, they look exactly the same except they have microphones, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. Bryan: Yeah well everything, everything seems to be getting smarter except Apple News, which you know, I often go through Apple news and my subscriptions when I'm putting this show together and, lately I've been noticing there's about two articles and then everything goes back six weeks, and they just don't seem to be coming out with a lot of content and as Jeff and I were talking about, a lot of ads you'll see an article, title of an article, title of an article, then an advertisement, and then a bunch of text, this is something about Apple and an ad and everything. Jeff have you been using Apple News, and have you noticed how down hill it seems to have gone? Jeff: I've noticed it's changing a little bit at first, the ads you can't even read the ads because that, all it does is give you description of it, and you have to skip over it, so they're not trying to sell to the blind. The thing that I noticed about Apple News is Apple shuts down at about four o'clock on Friday, there's no new news, they just kind of rehash the same stuff until Monday, and it's just like looking for an app update. If I get one on on Saturday/Sunday, someone paid extra to have that pushed out. Bryan: Yeah maybe I should go back to Newsify and actually reading my RSS feed for technology news. I'm not seeing that much content coming through there, I was I was really excited when Apple news came out because I thought it was gonna be great and I enjoyed it at first, I was using it all the time, but now I'm seeing less and less content and a lot of that content, there's nothing worse than when you're reading an article and like a paragraph into the article, all of a sudden advertisement is starts being read to you... Alison: Yep. Bryan: It drives me absolutely bonkers, and Jeff you actually said, and I'm curious because I read a lot of television recaps in Safari, where I'll say, Arrow episode, season six episode three recap, and it will, I'll find an article that will describe the action and a lot of times these articles, a paragraph in it starts reading an ad to me, you just got a pop-up blocker, now do you think those pop-ups might block those in article advertisements, or just really block pop-ups. Jeff: Actually it's not a pop-up blocker, that is native to the Safari app where you can turn that on or off and it blocks pop-ups. Now some colleges, if you're a college student, they use pop-up so you might want to beware that you might be shutting off something and not being able to gain access to so, try it out. What I got was Purify and that's P U R I F Y, it's a content blocker, and when you get that you, you purchase it, and I got it for a dollar ninety nine, I don't know if that was a Black Friday deal or a special over the holidays but, a dollar ninety-nine, it's very popular app according to Nick, my buddy up in Canada, and what it does is it works on your browser. So what you do is you purchase it and then you have to go into your Safari app settings, go down and just below pop-up blocker, you're gonna find content blocker, and then you have to enable it by turning it on. Bryan: Allison, have you ever used any kind of pop-up or ad blockers or anything? Alison: I do also use Purify and I find that that eliminates a lot of the ads on the websites that I use. What I love now also is reader mode for specific websites in iOS11, if you activate reader now, it's an actionable item and you can go to Auto reader and you can tell it that I either want reader to be active on this website all the time or, all the time for everything, so I have some very specific websites for which I just have reader all the time and I never have to worry about any extra crap on the webpage. Bryan: Where is that setting where you could set it specifically for an individual website? Alison: When you actually turn on reader and you've got reader selected, then there's an actions available, it might even be available for you to select it, and one of the actions is automatic reader when you flick down. You double tap that and then it comes up with a message that says do you want to enable reader for all websites or just on this domain and, you could turn it on for just on this website, and so like 9 to 5 Mac for example and a couple of other more the, more of the busy Apple news sites, I have since I do so much Twitter reading on my phone, I've got automatic reader turned on and it's changed everything. Bryan: Yeah that's something I'll have to, you know I I use the reader all the time, but I, and I remember hearing about, that you know, you hear, about so many new settings but I've never played around with it so, that's something I'm really gonna have to make use of, and by the way if you're out there and if you know of any specific ad popup blocker that might work in individual apps, let us know, you could tweet us in at BlindTechShow or shoot us in an email at thatblindtechshow@ gmail.com, let us know about that. This next thing is really interesting because I was down here listening, I have an app where I'm able to get any NFL audio feeds and everything, and the one thing that drives me bonkers because my dad's a little older so sometimes he forgets is I'm watching the Washington Redskins game here on Thanksgiving with him and I'm listening to the Redskins radio, the only problem is streaming audio is a good minute and a half to two minutes behind real time, and he keeps commenting about what's on TV and it's just driving me insane, I'm like Dad, remember it hasn't happened again you know, so, one thing that would be nice is if FM radio actually just worked on your iPhone which supposedly it could according to this article, we'll put in the show notes that it's built into the phone but Apple just will not activate it. Have you guys been following this story? I know it's been in the news a lot lately. Alison: I've heard two things about this, I've heard that Apple for whatever reason has just decided not to activate it but then I've also heard that the newer modems actually don't have the FM radio so it's a moot point. Bryan: Mmm okay, what about you Jeff if you've been following along to this? Jeff: Yeah I have but, you know it's to me it's like, is it, is it, am I dying for it, I don't know, I really don't know. Bryan: I think it'd be nice, just, you know to be in real time. I don't understand why they can't get streaming audio to be at least maybe you know a second or two behind. I mean it's just such a significance difference, I've got it put on do not disturb, otherwise I'll get notifications about a score in a game, you know, before it happened. The fascinating thing is during the, the Yankees playoff run, I went to my local bar with a pair of my head with the headphones with FM radio, and sure enough FM radio would get it like 30 seconds before television would. [Laughter] Alison: So there's no perfect solution. Bryan: No, there's not, I'd be like, I'd yell out "damn it" and people were like "What are you talking about, they've yet to throw the pitch". [Laughter] So yeah, there's there's no perfect solution. Jeff: I like tuneIn radio, I like stuff like that. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: If there's an emergency or something we got those alarms that go off and everything. I don't see myself turning it on, I don't know, it's just, it so interesting, there's so many resources, so many different avenues that I can get information that, just one more to be on the phone and then, where's my antenna. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: You know it's, now that we're Bluetooth everything so, do we have to wrap it in tinfoil? I don't know. Bryan: You just hold it up in the air while you're walking down the street like an umbrella. [Laughter] Am I getting a signal now? Damn it, the signal is better over here. You know it's funny because the one thing my headphones don't get is AM radio. Jeff: I think it's just as important to think about this. Now do we really want that on there because everyone was so excited when like your Amazon device could make phone calls. As soon as you make that phone call you're standing there for about two minutes going I can't walk away. Alison: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: It's not fun. Bryan: No no no, like I've said for a very long time, the worst app on the iPhone is the phone, and it's also my least used app. I wonder if I could take it out of the dock and put it on like page nine. [Laughter] Alison: You could yeah. Bryan: Yeah, you know it's funny yeah I've been down here in Florida like I said for a week and everything, so I've been in a lot of automobiles which in New York City you know I'm not in cars a lot, and I've noticed my phone still thinks I'm driving sometimes. Alison: My phone thinks I'm driving when I'm not even in a car, like I'll be laying in bed and all of a sudden that do not disturb while driving thing will pop up and I'll be like I'm just reading a book, can you go away? [Laughter] Bryan: But do you have a waterbed so maybe you're moving. [Laughter] Jeff: Too much coffee. Alison: Unfortunately no waterbed, but it's crazy I wish, I have it set on activate manually, so it should not be popping up at all, but it's driving me nuts. Bryan: Real quick for a millennial crowd, water beds were beds with water in them in the 1980s. [Laughter] Look them up. Jeff: California has regulations on waterbeds. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Right. Jeff: The other thing is someone told me about the notifications you know that, while you're in a car if you turn it to what is that the Bluetooth setting in your car mode, that that's supposed to trigger it, I don't know sometimes that some things are on, some things are off, I don't know. Bryan: Yeah, and I've got mine set the manual where I'm supposed to be able to turn it on, I have read in a lot of places and I think we may all be running different versions of betas, or some people may be having this problem, others may not and supposedly some people claim it's fixed in a certain beta. I don't even know if I'm running that beta, I think I'm one update behind, you know there's been so many betas out that I can't keep up with them, and a lot of updates coming out too, I notice all the time I seem to have like 80 to 90 updates every few days cuz, I self update, what about you? I know you guys self-medicate, do you self update? Alison: Well I'm constantly working on self improvement, self updating, oh oh you mean apps, yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: The apps, I like to make sure tha,t I like to read those little release notes, and the worst is we update our app fairly regularly, we're not going to tell you what we're doing. Alison: Nope. Jeff: If you get a self-improvement app, would that be self defeating? [Laughter] Bryan: I don't know, you know what, email us and let us know what you think. You know a lot of people are big fans of the Star Wars saga, but have you guys been following the blindfold game saga. Alison: It's been it's been rather epic. Bryan: It has, there's been multiple parts you know. We had, we even had my favorite was Blindfold game Strikes Back you know. Alison: And they did to their credit. Bryan: They did, they struck back hard. I'm a, you know I am a big fan of the games. Blindfold Uno, I've bought plenty of them, I know some people don't like them, I think Marty does a phenomenal job and, God I love the trivia games, and there's nothing like when you've got a, you're sitting in the store you got a few minutes to kill. I've actually set my Blindfold Uno to unlimited scoring so I've got like thirty thousand points in there, it just keeps... [Laughter] Every time the computer gets within ten thousand points of me I think it's cheating you know, but, he really does a great job with a lot of those games. Marty is a businessman and he makes these games you know, out of his love of making games for the community as well as to make money and... Alison: Sure why not. Bryan: I couldn't believe what, when Apple was telling him he needed to roll them into tab less apps in the App Store. It really seemed like Apple didn't know what they were talking about I, you know you could Google Marty's website, I'm not sure the exact site but blindfoldgames.com probably, or just google it, and he's got a blog that'll explain everything that happened if you're not aware of it but, I was really shocked at the stance Apple took against him starting out. Alison: I can summarize briefly if you'd like. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I've been fairly involved in reading about it. So essentially what happened was, and there's a whole detailed timeline on the website. Bryan: Start with episode 1. Alison: In episode one Apple was going through the review process for some iOS11 related updates for Marty's games and they noticed that a lot of the games used the same template. Now Apple technically has a rule that apps cannot be clones of one another, and not looking at the content of the games which are all different decided that these games are too similar and so we're going to have to reject these updates because they have the templates are too similar and you have to make the the gameplay different. Well the whole beauty of the blindfold games is once you know how to play one, you can pretty much figure out you know, several more, so Marty defended himself and said look while these templates are all very similar, the content within them is very different, but Apple didn't want to hear it, they heard, they're like 80 apps is too much. You have to compile them into less. Bryan: A handful, yeah. Alison: Amounts of apps. So Marty's stance, with which I agree, is that then that would make the apps too large to download because they all contain different voice files, and sound effects, so they're already you know pretty sizable downloads anyway, and it would hurt discoverability. For example if all the card games were in one app, somebody might only play one or two, and that might hurt his chances at making more revenue, and the man has got to be able to make some sort of money off it. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I get it. So eventually it came down to a lot of members of the community myself included, advocating with Apple to make them understand that this is a different type of situation than just the average you know, Yahoo up there trying to clone a bunch of flappy bird apps for example. And it worked, they understood, they eventually understood and had a conversation with Marty about, hey we understand that these games are different and now it's it's okay, when the review was passed and Marty at one point he was going to be taking down the games because he just didn't have the resources, either financial, or time wise to do the rewrites that Apple was starting with, so I'm really glad that this ended up, ending happily, and I got into some, some real Twitter spats with a couple of people who really think that, that oh, it's just blind people whining. No, it's, it's people advocating for games, which are truly different in the App Store, and yes blindness does have a little bit to do with it because we have a shortage of accessible games as it is, so don't take our choices away. Bryan: Would you summarize saying basically that Marty basically after the the Clone Wars beat the Empire? Alison: He did. Bryan: Yes. Yes. [Laughter] A Star Wars theme, yeah, no, not to make light of it, it was great that Apple reversed it's course and, Jeff, any comments? Where you following along on the Blindfold saga? Jeff: I was more or less following Allison on Twitter, I'm stalking again Allison. Alison: Oh no. Jeff: But Jonathon Mosan wrote a letter, other people in the community got going on, it was nice to see everybody come together for that you know, like some people were pretty negative, they were saying like "oh yeah, they come together this, but not for jobs" Alison: Some people were jerk faces about it, and I will call them out for that. Jeff: Other people were saying like "Oh Apple, they played the blind card to Apple" it's not that, it's like Allison just explained, it's more like that. It is kind of neat to sit back and watch how different people rise up to certain things and other people take sides, you know the bottom line is the guy is doing something. he has to make money. If he bundles them all up, and you only like one of them, you're not going to buy 8 you know, it makes sense, business sense for him, and I'm glad Apple saw it that way. Bryan: I think he's got a great price plan, because you know, yes, he's got a ton of games you know, nobody buy them all. You could test them out, you know he gives you a free amount of games with each one which I think is fantastic. How many mainstream games out there allow you to test it out before buying it? Alison: It's true. Bryan: So basically what we are saying Marty, "Stay Strong!" Jeff: And may the Force be with you. Bryan: You know something that just came to the app store new and I, I've gotta actually take a look at this, because I haven't exercised since last millennium, The Eyes Free Fit, you know Blind Alive some of you may know it as, I looked up Blind Alive, i couldn't find anything related to exercising. But if you look it up under Eyes Free Fitness, and this just came to the app store last week, and I looked through it, you gotta buy the programs, but it looks like they got a ton of different exercises in there, and I know they've been around for quite a while and on a lot of podcasts. Have either of you guys ever done any of their exercise programs? Alison: A long time ago I bought Cardio Level 1, and it is really great, and really descriptive. I did it a couple of times, I'm really bad with sticking with exercise routines no matter how accessable they are. So, it's really a motivation issue, its not an issue with the workouts themselves, but now I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I am hoping that, you know buying some of the workouts through that, i will literally have no excuse not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Yeah. How about yourself Jeff? You're an outdoor mountain man, have you ever indoor exercised? Jeff: I was actually testing her website with her so I got to get a few of those and she was next to me in the booth at ACB in 2016. It was in Minneapolis, it was really fun, it's really great that she's taken it to this level now that, you can even hook it up to your health app inside your phone too so.... Bryan: Wait a minute, there's a health app in the phone? [Laughter] Jeff: Page 9 Brian, Page 9. Alison: Page 11 yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: It's next to all of my pizza services. [Laughter] Jeff: So I suggest if people want it, it's Eyes Free Fitness, it's well described, that's the whole intent of it. She uses people who are professionally trained to come up with these exercise routines, but then there's also some stretching ones, and all that stuff. So it's pretty versatile, and they got some Yoga stuff in there, and then there's.... Alison: Pilates. Jeff: Yeah, lots of good stuff in there. Bryan: Yeah, yeah, my only complaint about this app and what she does, is she makes the rest of us look lazy. [Laughter] Can I set a New Years resolution in November, where that's my plan is to, exercise and, you know, a lot of people say they want to get in better shape. I would just like to get into a shape so.... [Funny sound effect and laughter] Alison: See it's a good time for me to get back into this because now I'm walking everyday with Gary with our neighborhood in Napa being so walkable that I actually am in a little bit better shape, so I feel like these exercises would be really great, you know especially if on the weekends when we walk less, it would really help me to get in even better shape. I'm still a far cry off from where I want to be and I still eat to much, but that'll never change. [Laughter] Bryan: I don't even eat that much, I just eat all of the wrong things, I've learned if I like it, it's bad for you. Alison: Yeah, that's kinda where I'm at too, I don't find that I eat these ginormous portions, I mean although I do like a healthy portion of food, but yeah, it's not the good things. It's a little light on the leafy green vegetables and such, although I like fruit. Jeff: You know one of the main things about exercise and all this stuff that we're talking about is the mindset and it takes a while to get your mind wrapped around it. I've been using a trainer for, it'll be coming up on a year and I finally got my mind wrapped around it after 10 months. I mean, it really takes something, I used to be in really good shape, I used to do a lot of stuff, I used to run and all sorts of stuff. But I am not being chased anymore so... you know. Bryan: It's may favorite line, "Do you still run?" "Only when chased" [Laughter] Jeff: Yeah, I think people who want to get back into it sometimes it takes a little commitment. You can buy these from $19.00 to $25.00 or something like that, but you have it, you can do it in the privacy of your own home, it's accessible, and it describes all of the stances, all the positions, well described steps, so if that's what it takes to get your mindset involved in it, it might be a good start for you. Alison: Yeah. Yeah can get as of out of breath or sweaty as you want, as quickly as, however quickly it takes and it doesn't matter because it's just you and yeah. Jeff: But make sure you have your phone notifications for driving set right. [Laughter] Bryan: Either that or in my kind of condition make sure you have 911 on speed dial. [Laughter] I got a good work out there, you know we're recording this the day after Black Friday, it's not even Cyber Monday yet but you'll hear this after Cyber Monday, and it was a low tech Black Friday for me because I got some clothes and everything, no technology but I wanted to ask you guys, what about yourself Allison was it a techie Black Friday Cyber Monday for you or no? Alison: No cuz I, I bought what I want throughout the year, I don't, I don't have the the impulse control to wait three months for something to go on sale on Black Friday, I just buy it when I, when I have the money and what I want it / need it. So Black Friday / Cyber Monday are always kind of a bit of a letdown for me cuz I'm like, oh this thing's on sale, oh wait, I already have it, this thing's on sale, wait I already have it. ]Laughter] Bryan: Got it got it got it got it got it need it you know. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: I just went shopping at Allison's place, I just walk to her house. [Laughter] I'll take that, that, that. [Laughter] Ain't got it, ain't got it, ain't got it. Bryan: You know it's not a big tech year for me because I'm not upgrading, I do need to get a new key chain cuz I have one of those key chains with the Lightning charger and for some reason the Lightning charger broke off of the key chain so, one of the things I heard somebody talking about was you know I've got all these kind of what I call lipstick chargers where you have to plug the cord into the charger. I heard they now got a charger out there that has the lightning charger built into it as well as a USB built into it and I think I'm gonna probably get something like that. Alison: Send me that when you find it. Because, send me the link, yeah because that is something, you know, I love my anchor batteries. I have the ones that are like even 20 thousand milliamps witch are a little bit bigger but I just put them in my purse, but yeah you've got to have the little the cables for your Apple watch and for your micro USB devices and your, your lightning cables all together and it's just it's a little bit much, it gets to be a little bit much to carry around. Jeff: Jack really makes a couple of these. One is a six thousand, one is a ten thousand fifty claiming that X needs more power so they made that one. They do have two cords, one is the Lightning port cord and the other is for all the Android stuff, your mini USB plug, and there's a third you can plug a USB into it so you technically you can actually have three by both outputs going at one time. My concern since their dedicated cables on there, are you committed to that if, what if the cable goes bad you know, I, I don't know but it does get a 4.5 out of 5 ratings on Amazon. Myself I like the big ones. Alison: Oh yes send me that one. Jeff: Cuz size does matter. Alison: It does. [Laughter] Bryan: Hey hey, this is a PG podcast. [Laughter] Alison: What, we're talking about, we're talking about batteries. Bryan: Oh. Jeff: I must admit I like big batteries. Bryan: I've heard that about you. Now Allison you've had the iPhone for a while now what are your thoughts? Alison: I basically really like it, it's nice and fast, I like the size, I have it in a leather case because it's glass on both sides and I do not trust myself with glass on both sides and I have dropped it and the leather case has saved me a couple of times. The face ID I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. I find that it's very accurate. I find that even when it doesn't get your face it learns from the experience and it has been consistently doing better but it's not as fast as touch ID, the gestures for bringing up home and app switcher are pretty fluid and elegant I think. Bryan: Are you used to doing those after having the press on the home button for so long or does it take a little training yourself? Alison: I'm used to it now, I've had the thing now for a couple of weeks so I've gotten it back into my, into my muscle memory now that this is just what you have to do because there's no home button and luckily I'm not using any other older devices to confuse me, that's convenient but yeah it's it's never going to be as fast I don't think. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis? [Laughter] Alison: Pretty much almost every minute of every day. Bryan: Are you happy with the purchase, are you happy with the upgrade? Alison: I am because I wanted, I wanted the latest and greatest technology and now I've got it and I realized that sometimes that comes with some caveats so I am happy with it, there are some times though when I have just become resigned to entering in my passcode. For example if I'm laying in bed and I want to unlock my phone, I don't want to have to sit up put the phone all the way in front of my face, get face ID to authenticate me, wake up the husband, wake up the dog, so I just enter in the passcode and it's that's even become a little bit faster. Bryan: My dad was having trouble with his phone recently and I finally found out what the problem was. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: He's running an iPhone 4. [Laughter] Alison: Oh for goodness sakes. Bryan: Yeah, I said.... Jeff: Wait, you, you said it's running. Bryan: Yeah, barely, yeah he can make phone calls that's about it, I said no wonder you're having so many issues with everything else and yeah, he's getting ready to get a new one because my mom did order the iPhone 10 and he's gonna get the hand-me-down. I guess he's gonna move up to a 6 which is all he really needs. Alison: Yeah. Oh that'll be quite an upgrade for him. Bryan: Oh yeah, yeah, so but, my mom's got the 10 coming, she's got the, she ordered it online and has the two to three week wait so, I will not, not get to play around with it while I'm down here and everything but I've been you know listening to you on with Dr. Robert Carter not to be confused with Dr. Richard Kimble. Not that anybody but me. Alison: Not to be confused with John Kimble yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: I thought of Richard Kimble immediately but I'm probably the only one that did that so but you know you guys had a great walkthrough of the iPhone 10 and somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead of everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Jeff: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough no but yeah. Bryan: Allison did I hear you do laundry every now and then? Alison: Every now then, you know I, the house-elves or my husband will not comply and I have to do my own. Bryan: Are you testing out that new GE, was it the GE product that you're testing out? Alison: Yeah so, so I have purchased the GE talking laundry box and actually we were in the market for a new washer and dryer anyway so we got the compatible washer and dryer and I've actually been doing a lot more of my own laundry and enjoying the heck out of it now that we have this talking machine because it's so easy to set all you really have to worry about is the start button and the little knob that controls the settings because the different wash cycles, because it verbalizes everything, you turn the knob, it verbalizes if you're on like cold wash, or towels and sheets, or casual wear, or bulky items, and you press Start and it says starting load on bulky items with an estimated 70 minutes remaining and there's a button on the box that you can press if you need an update of what, of time remaining and the dryer is much the same you just mess with the one knob, you can set your cycle and it just works. Our old washer and dryer we had the little arrows marked, but the one thing would spin, and there was another arrow that you could accidentally move, and Jeremy was really the only person who could set it without getting the other thing to spin, so I'm glad to be able to have some agency over my laundry once again. Bryan: And this works with all GE washer and dryers I believe right? Alison: So on the website it does say that it is, should be compatible with most, it should be compatible with the ones that have the ports in the back, the technician ports, but then it says these are the compatible models and it lists just a couple of different models. Slightly more expensive, that are compatible, I think that you can get this to work with older GE models if it has the port for technicians to hook up, but it's better I think in terms of the software working is optimally as it can if you can buy the the newer ones. Bryan: Yeah full disclaimer if your washer and dryers from 1974 and is GE..... Alison: Probably not going to work. Jeff: I do laundry and the thing on my washer and dryer mostly my washer is, there's that plastic cover that covers things up so you can't really tell the dial, so I took a needlenose pliers, it was excruciating sounds but I got that piece off of there, then I put some little markers on there, so now I just put my finger down there and I just turn it and everyone uses it that way so, yeah I don't recommend anybody to take a needle nose and tear that apart unless you know what you're doing but, yeah that's how I access that. Bryan: Yeah when you're like me and you live in New York it's great because I've got like fluff and fold where they pick it up and deliver it and it's pretty cheap and yeah I'm spoiled like that I think I've mentioned that on the show before. One of the things we did want to mention to the listeners if you do not have knfb reader you're just making your life harder, and it's a phenomenal app, I believe and don't quote me on this but I believe it's on sale at least through Christmas for about 50% off. Normally it's $100.00, I believe now it's $49.95. Go ahead and get that app, you'll make your life a lot easier if you want to read your bills or anything along that. Jeff: I really think if you're a student that that's the app to have. Seeing AI is a good app for a convenience, it's just a quick shuffle through the mail, but if you're gonna do bulk reading or if you want to save it and all sorts of things, you know, that's a workhorse the knfb reader app. Alison: I agree. Bryan: Yeah luckily I think all of us have easy names to pronounce, but I have a friend named Keith Strohak, and every time I tell Siri call Keith Strohak, it says did you mean Keith Sholstrum, did you mean Keith Beyer. It drives me bonkers, I have to go in and manually do it and I will put this link in the show notes. Did you know that you could teach Siri how to save names properly? Jeff: Mm-hmm. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Okay I was the one who didn't. By the way ask Siri to pronounce Charlize Theron because I heard that's another name that she can't pronounce. Alison: Oh boy. Bryan: Yeah so if you're if you're one of those people and your name is Mustafi Mustafasin or something, go ahead and read this link and you know, maybe you could teach Siri how to read your name and everything. Jeff: The trick about it is that it asks you for the first name and then it asked for the second name, well I didn't know it was doing that so I said Laurie Thompson that's my wife, and then I said Laurie Thompson again. I wondered why it asked me twice, so every time she calls, are you sure you want to call Laurie Thompson Laurie Thompson? I left it I thought it was kind of cute. Alison: That is. Bryan: Now Jeff was a great guy and he posted you know happy holidays to everybody on the Blind Abilities Facebook page and I chimed in with my typical bah humbug and he thought that was you know the happiest he's ever heard me, and that's because he didn't hear how mad I was that my old Grubhub app that I've been running for several years because GrubHub has refused update is now officially dead. I finally had to update it and I don't know what I'm gonna do because this happened shortly before I left New York. I kept getting server error, server error, and I could not do anything so I had to update the app, GrubHub prepare for the barrage because I am gonna be hammering you every day now with fixing your heading navigation. I don't know. Alison: Now that your life depends on it yeah. Bryan: Yeah you know. Jeff: It's time to get that Blind Alive app, get that exercise going. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: Screw GrubHub. Bryan: I still gotta order dinner. I still gotta order dinner and everything. Alison: Try Postmates, try Doordash, you said Eat24 doesn't.... Bryan: Doordash I just heard about so yeah that's one I want to check... Alison: Yeah Postmates is also very good. Unfortunately in Napa our only choice really is Eat24, and that only has a couple of options. Bryan: Yeah you know one of the other things I plan to do when I get back from Florida is, because I've been running my old laptop here my Mac air, and it's so nice because it's running Sierra, and things have been running so smooth, as soon as I get home one of my first acts to do, I'm rolling High Sierra back, have you guys, I know Jeff's been playing High Sierra, Allison, are you still using High Sierra..... Alison: I am and for the limited number of things that I do on my Mac it's absolutely fine, I haven't really had any problems. Bryan: Editing text, when you're working with a lot of text and emails or documents and everything, it just befuddles me and everything, you know sometimes you gotta use the option key, and I did report this to Apple, quick nav does you know, when you use quick nav with words, it does not follow the insertion point, we did test it it is getting kicked up to engineers, there is a navigation problem with quick nav in Hi Sierra. Alison: That's unfortunate. Jeff: Yeah I'm using the beta's and you know it keeps on changing so I don't really complain about it I just keep using it and I know, I know it'll get better, so I just putz with it. Bryan: Yeah well Jeff you said you're running the latest beta and it's, you've noticed an improvement so, maybe it won't be the first thing I do when I get back to New York you know, maybe I'll give it one more update. I am not running the beta so I never run the betas on my computer and the word to the wise if you value productivity do not run those betas. Alison: Yeah, or have a partition on your hard drive or a separate hard drive on which to run them. Jeff: Oh my MacBook Pro [Inaudible] I'm not doing the betas on that so I can always go back to that if I need to but, you know I I usually forget that I'm slowly tweaking my muscle memory like you said Allison, and pretty soon I'm just readjusted. Changes happen and I don't know. Alison: Yep. Bryan: Chit chit chit chit oh wait, do we have to play now to use that song? In a more positive segment, I know we've rolled through some some negativity here, we don't want to be negative all the time but you know these are just some things that were pissing Brian off now because, Brian's been known to get pissed off. I always like to hear you know, what you guys watching, what you're reading, you know especially the holiday time of the year, there's a lot of great content out there. Netflix just seems to be piping everything out. Allison what you watching, what you reading? Alison: Well I'm still trying to work my way through Narcos, I have not had as much time for for Netflix recently, but I've been reading this really great book, I'm not sure if it's available on any of the freebies, unbarred or well book sure it's not free but it's practically free. I got off of Audible it's my Brandon Sanderson it's called "The way of Kings" it's part of the Stormlight archive series, it's an epic fantasy series, long long books, the first book I think is 45 hours long and I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, and it is absolutely amazing it's quite frankly taken over a lot of my life this holiday weekend. [Laughter] But it's amazing. Bryan: Well we're thankful that you were able to fit time in for the podcast. [Laughter] Alison: I did, I did have to interrupt my reading to.... [Laughter] Bryan: That 45 hours, that might take me 4 and 1/2 years to get through. Alison: Well I read at speed, I'm not gonna lie, I cranked it up to 3x and I can understand it just fine, so I'll get through it pretty quickly, but there's then two other main books, and then a little novella in the middle to read so. Bryan: That's a, that's a big.... Alison: It's gonna be ten books so... Bryan: Wow, wow, what about yourself Jeff, you been reading anything, watching anything? I know you've had some time alone there or are you just thinking in the dark? Jeff: I really got nothing, I guess I am thinking in the dark, family's been gone and I've been catching up on a bunch of other things that I hadn't been able to get back t,o and yeah, I got to get back to it so sorry you don't have anything to contribute. Bryan: That's okay Jeff. Jeff: Oh sorry. Bryan: I just finished down here with my parents you know I, they they were very nice and they watched, because their sighted with described video, the second season of Stranger Things, and the first season if you have not seen it as phenomenal I said to myself I don't know how they're gonna do a second season. It was really good so, it was very enjoyable, if you have not checked out Stranger Things on Netflix, you're definitely gonna want to check that out. I know we're gonna watch another series on Netflix that just came out I'm blanking on the name, the guy that was in Dumb and Dumber, not Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels is in it, it's a Western that just came out on Netflix. I'm hearing great things about it of course I'm, like I said, God, Godlessness, or Godless or something, it's a Great Western, and I've heard from other people it's very good and everything and, yeah I've still got the same four books. You know it's so funny I'm one of those people that loads up all the audio digital content to all the devices for the travel and then I end up listening to podcasts that I have on my phone. [Laughter] During the travels so, like I said this is a That Blind Tech Show, we're gonna wrap it up here. We are at Blind Tech Show on Twitter. thatblindtechshow @gmail.com if you want to email us in let us know what you think, let us know what you like. You can download our feed through the Blind Abilities podcast speed of your podcast player of choice, victor reader stream or download the Blind Abilities app. Allison what do you have coming up the next few weeks leading into what's that holiday Christmas? Alison: Just a quiet Christmas at home, gonna take maybe a couple of days off and just probably still be reading the Stormlight archive honestly, although I, although I may do a reread of Harry Potter, I lead such an exciting life. [Laughter] Bryan: Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that. What about yourself Jeff, family coming back or have they given up on you? Jeff: My folks for 17 years they've been going down the Texas but they stayed up this year for the holiday so I got to go to spend time with them Thanksgiving. We were all up there and so they're here so we're gonna have Christmas there and my daughter and grandkids will be coming up mid-December, we try and offset it each year and so yeah, a lot of lot of family holidays and I want to, I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Yeah I'm not a big holiday person so Thanksgiving I guess is our big holiday and, we just wrapped that up down here and Thanksgiving, I'll be heading back to New York in the next few days and you know, it's funny I'm sitting here in shorts and it's 80 degree weather so it doesn't feel like November, and then I'll go back to the 30 degree weather and, yeah amazingly Nash is not even shedding that much here in Florida, you would think he would get rid of that winter coat, but he is panting like it's August. This is That Blind Tech Show, maybe we'll have one more before the year hopefully, you know, all of our schedules have been so crazy we haven't been on a regular schedule, we plan to hopefully eventually get on it, but for now we are out. When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between limited expectations and the reality of blind abilities. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store Blind Abilities, or send us an email at info @blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.

That Blind Tech Show 18: My TV’s On Fire! GPS, GPS, GPS 3 Times Fast, Lazarillo App, Pete’s Amazon Fire Cube Demo and BETA, BETA, BETA.   That Blind Tech Show sneaks right up to the start of conventions and on Episode 18 Serina Gilbert struts her microphone magic and puts the boys in their place. Join Brian Fischler, Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson as they roll out some pretty good news, opinions and possibly a little humor to bring a little sunshine into your day. From the Amazon TV, the Amazon Fire Cube, in which the totally awesome Pete Lane demonstrates, to some neat little gadgets Brian is collecting, sharing and keeping the economy moving by purchasing anything under $35. Oops, he may of blew that budget. J Jeff gives a little peek at the LazarilloApp that rivals the BlindSquare App but does it really? Download this free app and find out yourself. Lazarillo on the App Store. Serina, Co-Host of the Job Insights podcast on Blind Abilities does a sensational job and if she could just laugh a little bit more… Believe me, her laugh is infectious! Join the That Blind Tech Show crew and kick back for a good listen and be sure to check out some of the links from the show below:   Did you hear the one about the all you can eat Chinese Restaurant that went out of business?   Don’t Take your iPhone to World Cup. Is there anywhere you won’t take your iPhone?   Do you plan to run the iOS 12 public beta on your devices   Talk Smart Wearable Bluetooth Button Reizen Talking Wand   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   that Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network.   You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Aira Workshop on Employment, Education, and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation. Seeing AI Developer Joins the AI Team at Aira! Full Transcript Below Blind Abilities continues its coverage of the NFB 2018 National Convention from Orlando Florida with this presentation of the Aira workshop on the subject of education, students and employment. Aira team members, Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane present a detailed discussion of how the Aira service can be used by students, both in school and transitioning into the workplace, by Explorers seeking employment, and while actually on the job as a reasonable accommodation. Get an in-depth peek at how Aira Agents are trained and how they find their passion for describing tasks and experiences for Aira Explorers. Hear a live demonstration of a real call to an Aira Agent using the new Horizon glasses and get updates on what has been going on with Aira since the convention ended in July. This NFB 2018 blind Abilities podcast is brought to you by Aira. You can check them out and subscribe to the Aira service on the web, at: www.Aira.IO special thanks to Patrick Lane for his awesome original guitar music. Thanks for Listening! You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Full Transcript: Pete Lane: Hi folks, this is Pete Lane welcome back to Blind Abilities. As you know Blind Abilities was in Orlando at the NFB 2018 National Convention. Our own Jeff Thompson attended an Aira workshop on the topic of education, students, and employment. In this workshop, we hear about how Aira can fit the needs of students as they attend college and transition into the workforce. We hear about how Aira can be free for those explorers who are looking for jobs, and we hear about how the Aira service can be a reasonable accommodation and can perform so many tasks for workers on the job. Aira staff members Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane present this workshop courtesy of Aira. Before we join Michael and Patrick just a quick announcement. We have a new addition to the Aira team, Anirudh Koul, founder of Seeing AI and former senior data scientist with Microsoft has joined the Aira team as the head of artificial intelligence and research. We welcome him to the Aira staff. Without further adieu let's join Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane from the Aira workshop on education, students, and employment from the NFB 2018 National Convention in Orlando, Fl. Michael Hingson: I'd like to welcome you all to our seminar today. This is the first of three that Aira will be conducting. This particular one is gonna be on education, employment, students, people in the workplace, employers and employees and our intent is to set the stage for what Aira offers and can bring to you in terms of how it can benefit you in any of those categories. So our intent is to really give you a good idea of what Aira is, what it isn't and how you can use it. I am Mike Hingson, I am the director of Aira explorer special projects and we have a live agent on the stage, why don't you introduce yourself.   Patrick Lane: Hey everybody my names Patrick Lane, I am currently an agent analyst here with Aira. I've been an agent with Aira for coming up on two years now. So, I've gotten to see Aira used in all of the specific cases that Mike just mentioned many, many different times in different ways. Michael Hingson: One of my favorite Aira stories is that in Patrick's early days, I happened to call him about 7:00 in the morning California time because I needed to put a laundry cart together that we had gotten in the email. And as the Chinese are learning from Ikea, the instructions were all pictorial there were no text pieces to the instructions at all. So I called, got Patrick and we put it together in a half hour. And that's as good as it gets because that really is what Aira is about. Michael Hingson: Aira if you look at Aira in the general terms of what it is, Aira is an information source. Aira is a way that you can get any visual information that you otherwise would not have access to. When I talk to a lot of people about Aira, they think about the fact that oh well I really have good travel skills so I don't need it or I've always got sighted people with me so I don't have that problem. Let's deal with that in terms of a job. I'm on the job, I'm using JAWS and suddenly the computer quits working. Now, where do I go to get my sighted assistance? I'm in the office, I've got to go interrupt somebody else to get them to come and look at the screen, tell me what the error screen is or of course the infamous blue screen of death. In any case, I have to go find someone. Michael Hingson: Why should I have to do that today? Because there is a way to do that on my own, namely using Aira. I can use Aira to contact an agent, the agent can look at the screen, see an error code and if I can't easily move my cursor to where it needs to go, it's possible that I can even enter into a tandem or two-way session using TeamViewer or some other technology with the agent. That might be a little harder with JAWS not talking but for a lot of different things that I do where there is an inaccessible webpage or something that isn't talking the way it should, I can interact with an agent and get their assistance both in terms of actually having a session, a two-way communication session or at least getting information described. Michael Hingson: If I am an employee and I want to go to lunch, lets say I am in sales and I want to take people somewhere for lunch for sales, I can more quickly use an Aira agent to research possible restaurants if I don't really know all the options or when I get to the restaurant or going to the restaurant using an agents help to do all of that. Aira gives me the opportunity to get anything that I need that I don't otherwise have access to because it's visual. It is that simple, it is that general and I urge people to look at Aira in that way. Michael Hingson: Don't limit yourself to looking at it as a travel device, don't look at it as something that's gonna diminish your skills, don't look at it as something that is anything other than what it is, an information source. And all of us no matter how good our cane skills are, no matter how good our dog skills are, can benefit by having access to Aira because Aira is the way that I can get more information to better tell my dog where I want to go or interact with traveling with my cane. Michael Hingson: Let's talk about students and Aira. As a student, Aira offers an incredible amount of opportunities for you to be able to more independently do things than you otherwise would be able to. The most common thing that we as blind people have to do as students is to read material that otherwise is inaccessible to us. If the average reader is paid, lets say $15 an hour, we an unlimited plan for Aira that's $330 that exists today. Things are gonna change but let's just use what we have today. $330 is equivalent to 22 hours of reading time at $15 an hour. Michael Hingson: I'm submitting that Aira is cheaper than hiring readers. Any office for students with disabilities will save a heck of a lot of money if they independently allow students to use Aira and they pay for the Aira service. Aira will allow me to read when I want to read, where I want to read, and essentially how I want to read. There are incredible examples of different ways that students have used Aira in libraries, have used Aira in the classroom to access the material that a professor is writing on a board or is displaying on a power point presentation. An Aira agent can be describing that to a student who uses Aira plugged into earphones so that they can hear what's going on while the instructor is doing what they do. Never in any way interfering with the class and more important not demanding any change in the methodology that the professor uses to do what they have to do. So, I don't need the professor to do something different for me when I'm using Aira. It frees me up to perhaps better take notes. It opens up an incredible world. Michael Hingson: Of course, I can use Aira to travel around a campus, learn where things are and go off campus and do all the things that I might otherwise do that any other student would do. So, Aira gives you that flexibility that we have never had as students and Aira makes it available in a way that is affordable by any definition to any department of rehabilitation or any office for students with disabilities on a college campus. Both of whom ought to be providing Aira in one way or another because it will make me a better student in theory, if I study and it will also then make me a more employable person. Because as I graduate from school, I'm gonna be going out and I'm gonna be looking for a job. Michael Hingson: While I'm at school, I talked about the fact that we do have departments of rehabilitation starting to look at Aira and some who have signed Aira up and are paying for those services. Some offices for students with disabilities are doing it. But Aira also has another program and this is the second year in a row that it has existed, it's called back to school. Aira will be sponsoring some 500 students for a full year of Aira use. You can apply by going to aira.io/backtoschool, where you can sign up for Aira and once chosen then you'll get Aira with a 400 minute a month plan, I believe is the plan that we're using. Julenna is that right? Are you here?   Julenna: Yes, that's correct. Michael Hingson: By the way, Julenna in the back right is the person who's in charge of back to school so, if you're a student and you want Aira, I would be really nice to Julenna just say it. But Aira with back to school means that you will have without any expense from the college or the department of rehabilitation access to Aira. You can apply for that today. And I urge any students in the room to do that. Michael Hingson: Aira uses smart glasses, glasses that contain a camera that transmits images directly to an agent. Agents are hired by Aira, they are paid by Aira. They're hired because they have demonstrated an aptitude to be able to describe and then after they are hired, they go through a significant training period. And once they are trained they go out and start acting as agents in describing things for people who happen to be blind. Aira does not tell you what to do. Aira will not, for example, tell you cross the street. Aira agents may tell you they don't see cars coming if you ask. Aira agents may tell you that the light has turned green, Aira agents will describe an intersection so that you can cross it with full knowledge of what the intersection looks like but Aira's not gonna tell you to cross the street, that's your job because you have the cane or dog skills that you need in order to make the right decisions and cross the street. Aira will give you the information that you need. Likewise, on the job, Aira will do the same thing.   Patrick Lane: The agents are not here to teach, and we're not here to tell you a situation is safe. We're here to provide you instant, equal access to information. So, we'll provide you all the information that you need to be more comfortable and know more about your surroundings to paint that rich picture of your environment so you are aware of everything that's around you. The agents are able to have a conversation with you, they can tailor the amount of information and deliver it in a way that you prefer. So we make things as easy to understand as possible. We'll deliver information about as Mike was mentioning intersections, we'll tell you the name of the intersection, the size, and shape of the intersection, whether or not there's traffic signals, stop signs, pedestrian signals, crosswalks present. We give you all the information that you need but we're never here to replace your o & m stills, we're never here to replace your cane or your dog and we're never here to tell you that you are safe or unsafe.   Patrick Lane: We just provide you all the information that you need, even if it's simply completing a task that you've completed a million times in the past. We might be able to provide a different sense of independence while doing that task or a different type of enjoyment. Not only can it be used for navigation but we are here to provide all of the information that you need about pretty much any task that you might have in mind. We can help you with online tasks, we can help you planning trips, making online purchases, helping with different types of inaccessible websites. For instance, if you're a student and you do online courses and Blackboard's not cooperating, we read you about the information that you need for your schoolwork for any upcoming assignments, any kind of printouts that are passed out through classes.   Patrick Lane: So, just consider us as basically an OnStar for those are blind or low vision. We're not here just to point a camera at something and tell you what you're describing. We are a full service. Our agents are very highly trained and they're very dedicated and extremely patient. We are amazing problem solvers, we're great at troubleshooting. The agents will find the information that you need at all costs. It's situations like that. I've looked up YouTube videos and gone through the entire process. Basically what an agent can do is up to you. Our explorers are called explorers because they are creative in the way that they use our service. They go out there and they test our service to the limits and show us what we're capable of and let us know where we make changes and at this point from my first day till now, it's completely different. Our company is growing exponentially, our technology is amazingly consistent and our agents are there to work as a team with you to complete any task it is that you want to do. Be creative whatever you think of that's what Aira is here for. Michael Hingson: So you go off, and you graduate and then you go looking for a job. The first thing you should be aware of if you happen to be an Aira explorer is that we have an Aira access network for jobs. A job access network. Whatever you want to call it to stick it in your memory. If you are doing anything relating to getting a job at all, whether it's writing a resume, writing a cover letter, making sure everything is formatted, getting dressed to go to a job interview, ladies putting on makeup, anything at all related to getting a job, that time is automatically free to you. Michael Hingson: So for any Aira explorer doing anything relating to getting a job is free. We are saying at Aira, we want to take that unemployment rate from 70% unemployment rate among blind people down to 7%, which would be cool. And Aira is trying to help to make that happen by making it possible for you as an explorer to have access to the tools at no additional charge to get that job. What does it mean though as far as getting a job and where does Aira fit into that? Michael Hingson: The way Aira fits in is really pretty simple. Aira by any definition of the Americans with Disabilities Act is a reasonable accommodation. It is something that should be usable and used by you on the job. I can take almost any job that you can imagine and find a way Aira can help. Because again remember what Aira is, an information source. It provides you with what information you need. How many here in the room have a job?   Patrick Lane: A few hands back there. [crosstalk ] Michael Hingson: Raising your hands' guys isn't gonna work, I'm not using an Aira agent right now.   Patrick Lane: How many are looking for- Michael Hingson: How many are looking for a job?   Patrick Lane: Handful. Michael Hingson: So, for the fun of you for some of you who are looking for a job, tell me some tasks that you might need to perform on the job?   Speaker 9: Doing my resume. Michael Hingson: Let's say you have a job what are some of the tasks that you might need to perform? We'll come back to the resume and that as well. But you're on the job. What are some tasks that you might need to perform on the job?   Speaker 4: [inaudible] Michael Hingson: Typing and what was the other one?   Speaker 4: Filing. Michael Hingson: Filing. What else?   Speaker 5:[inaudible] Michael Hingson: Okay.   Speaker 6: A handwritten note. Michael Hingson: Handwritten notes.   Speaker 7: Finding information. Michael Hingson: I'm sorry. Speaker 7: Finding information. Michael Hingson: Someone up here said something.   Speaker 8: I was saying looking at presentations. Michael Hingson: Looking at presentations.   Patrick Lane: Powerpoint slides, I've described a handful of those in my day. Michael Hingson: Let me suggest a couple others. Making copies on a copier, anybody try to do that lately? Copiers are touchscreen.   Patrick Lane: Oh yeah. Michael Hingson: The one that I love to pick on at Aira, going and getting something from the coffee machine because it's also touchscreen. However, every single thing that you guys have said are all things that you could use Aira to do. You don't have to ask someone else. So let's talk about the coffee machine. I love hot chocolate so I go up to the machine, I call an Aira agent and I do this at Aira. And it's absolutely a great example, I wouldn't have it any other way. I call the agent and I say, need help getting hot chocolate. Now, I'm sure that we could probably mark the machine in some way but the problem is finding the markings you're gonna touch the touchscreen so it doesn't work very well. But, the Aira agent can look at the screen and tell me, move your finger a half an inch to the left, you're right over the button, push it or whatever and I'll find the start button or actually you have a choice of making it with milk or water and I like it with milk. Michael Hingson: So, we need to find the milk button. Move your finger down to the bottom of the screen, over to your right a half an inch, you're over it, push and it's a little longer than just doing it with buttons but it's accessible because Aira agents can help do it. And I don't need to wait until someone else might be available, I don't need to wait until I'm dying of thirst, I can just have an Aira agent do it and give me the information so I can get exactly what I want. And in fact, learn more about that coffee machine than I ever would've learned any other way. Something that sighted people take for granted, the tens of thousands of different ways you can, permutations that you can get out of that coffee machine. Michael Hingson: But, with an Aira agent, I can learn those same things and I wouldn't know that any other way. Copy machines the same way. Most of what you do on copiers these days are touch screen but I can become as good a copy expert as anyone else if I have access to it. And I do because I can use Aira. Filing, obviously, Aira agents being able to read information so that I can put things in the right folder and even creating the tabs to go in folders or whatever. All of those things are commonplace everyday tasks that you should be able to do as well as anyone else. But, you can't if the equipment isn't accessible unless you use Aira. It's all about access to information. Michael Hingson: Somebody mentioned resumes and I want to talk about that a little bit more. There are countless examples and Patrick help out, people want their resume to look good. The Aira agent can help, so let's take a typical example. You're writing a resume, you've got all the facts and you can put them down, now you want to make it look good. So you can call an Aira agent who can describe and help you or what I would do being lazy and being industrious and trying to get it done as efficiently as possible. I would use one of the programs that I mentioned earlier. Michael Hingson: TeamViewer for example which is a way that you can have an agent connect directly to your computer and you can work with the agent and let the agent do the formatting. Because they see what your screen shows. And so the agent can actually format the resume for you or with you because you're still gonna have to tell them what you want it to look like but the agent will be able to format that resume and by the time you're done, you'll have a resume that you would be proud to provide to any employer for them to look at.   Patrick Lane: With the TeamViewer, it's not only us being able to see your computer screen but we also have remote control of that computer screen. The agents can do a lot of stuff with TeamViewer. Let's just say you've never actually seen a resume, you don't know what the actual format looks like, how it's set up, its never been described. Agents can input all the information that you've given them into a pre-made template for a resume. Can work on all the different fonts and colors and apply that to a specific type of job that you might be searching for. So really make that resume look unique and noticeable so it stands out when it is viewed by the employer. They can make sure that all of the spelling and the grammar and the punctuation are correct because nobody wants to submit a resume with spelling errors or bad grammar, anything like that. So the agents can apply all that information. They can update old resumes and then reformat them to show the changes. Even your LinkedIn account we can go in there and update that with prior jobs statuses and all of that information. Patrick Lane: So, with the TeamViewer being able to have that remote access to your computer screen it means that you don't have to potentially hold a phone there or lean in really close with the glasses, it makes the whole type of experience more enjoyable for a possible tedious task. So, I have personally assisted in setting up all of what I just mentioned. I've helped somebody build their resume from the ground up and they have successfully used that. I've helped update LinkedIn profiles to reflect what's written on a resume. I've helped people apply for jobs and send that resume automatically though CareerBuilder or Monster, whatever it might be. So, we have assisted hopefully a large amount of people in finding that employment that I know that they're looking for. Not only will you hopefully, potentially find that employment but while using the service for that reason, you're not gonna use any of those really valuable Aira minutes. So, when seeking out a job the agents mark the call as such so you're not gonna use any of your Aira minutes while performing that specific task. Michael Hingson: So if it takes you five hours to build a resume or 10 hours to build a resume that's not a problem. If you need help creating other documentation for job search it's not a problem. It's all part of the job access that Aira has made available for any Aira explorer to use. So that's available to you today. Michael Hingson: Aira just announced a partnership with VFO where if you're doing anything using JAWS or any other equipment manufactured by VFO and you run into any access issues, or you run into any problems with using Aira and VFO products, those minutes that you spend where VFO can't do it without you bringing an agent or someone else in to assist are all free. So, I for example, when I had an issue trying to deal with some Slack messages last week, I contacted an Aira agent, we established a communication sessions through TeamViewer, and we accomplished what I needed to do with Slack. But because I couldn't easily do it with JAWS that meant it was in part a JAWS issue, so those minutes happen to be as they ended up, free because it's part of the VFO access program available from Aira. Now the operative part that we've talked about with all this is that you have to be an Aira explorer. Michael Hingson: On the job you've got a lot of ways to do it in theory, and I realize that this is only in theory because different places operate in different ways and so on. But, typically speaking if you want to get a job even if it costs you money upfront to be an Aira explorer to subscribe to the service, to start that process, Aira can better help you in dealing with getting that job not only from the job access process that we talked about earlier but when you go into an employer's office and are going through an interview, and they ask you, how are you gonna do one thing or another? You can say, I'll show you. Now, technically, I suppose, one could say, why are you asking me how to do things when you don't ask sighted people how to do things? Michael Hingson: And I suppose if you wanted to be a stickler under the law say, that's true. But for me, I want the job and if I have the opportunity to educate an employer and help them understand that I'm gonna be more employable because I'm gonna be using Aira then I will educate the employer any day of the week. And more important I would then say, Aira is a service that costs money and as you provide various different kinds of technologies and methodologies and devices for all of your employees to do their job, this is one that I need to do my job. And under the law that is appropriate to do. More important than that, it's encouraged and most people at least have some sort of a clue that's a valuable thing to do. Aira is a reasonable accommodation. Michael Hingson: And, it's not very expensive compared to lots of other things that an employer might provide an employee and it makes you much more efficient. And if I were really gonna make the case I would say, hey employer you know the unemployment rate among employable blind people is anywhere between 65 and 70%. I gotta tell you right now, it is really hard for me to get a job because people don't think I can do the job although I can. People don't look at what I can do, they think well you're blind cause you can't and so as a result, you can't. Although I've just shown you how Aira helps me do the job better. If you hire me I guarantee you I'm sticking it out here because it is so hard to get a job. If you're gonna have faith in me, I'm gonna have faith in you. The fact is we will be more loyal on the job if we're given the opportunity and Aira can help make that case and sell it for you. And I think that's an important aspect of dealing with looking for a job. Michael Hingson: Is it HIPAA certified? Today, it is not. HIPAA does have standards although we are compliant with the California certification and security standards which actually is even worse than HIPAA but it's a very expensive process to get HIPAA certified. There is a lady in Canada who works at a community college and she deals with a lot of the medical cases and other privacy issues that go around student paperwork on the campus. What they did is they included in the paperwork that you signed to go to that college a statement that basically says that, some of your material may be read by a person who happens to be blind and they will be using reader services including remote reading services, Aira, to read your material. By signing this paper you consent for that to be able to be done. Michael Hingson: Now as soon as you make that consent statement and as soon as they sign it then HIPPA is not even relevant anymore for that person. And they're doing that as a blanket thing for every student that goes to the college. So, the issue is that we know that there are a lot of different kinds of processes, HIPAA is a good one and we are working toward that process. But there are also a lot of situations where our agents are extremely well trusted. There is a lawyer that I know in the United States who works for an organization and there is constant need to read and prepare documents for trial. And there is a lot of stuff in going through and dealing with things for trial, that's pretty confidential stuff. Michael Hingson: It's confidential from the law firms standpoint because they don't want the other side to necessarily know things until they're ready to give it to them. But it's also true the documents that are being used in discovery and acquired in discovery can be very confidential. Agents are really trusted because we know what happens in an Aira connection stays in an Aira connection. It doesn't go further. Many of us use Aira to look at our personal financial documents because it makes it available. Michael Hingson: My wife is sighted but if I don't have to use her to look at stuff I won't because she has her own things to do. And as willing as she is to describe things, to give me data and to help me accomplish tasks like that. Two things, no offense to my wife, but Aira describes better because they do it all the time and they're use to it. By the way, she'll acknowledge that because she's heard some of the agents. But two, I don't have to take her away from other things which gets back to what we said about on the job work right. So, the fact is that it makes for a much better situation all the way around. And Aira can be only positive in a job environment, much less in what we've talked about with students and so on. So, there is a, I think that the job didn't actually happen but for other reasons. Michael Hingson: There's a person who almost two years ago went to a career fair in Los Angeles and one of the companies there was See's Candy and they were hiring people to process orders so she turned in her resume and they said we'd love to hire you but problem is not all of our orders are electronic some come in paper. And she well let me show you and pulled out Aira. And that eliminated the problem. They said, gee solved that for us, great. Sure working in a store think of all the various things that you need to do whether it be, finding material on a shelf, reading a cash register that doesn't talk or excuse me point of sale device that doesn't talk. Whether it be doing other kinds of things. Whether it's filing or whatever. Blind vendors can use Aira and can be more efficient because they can stock their own shelves. They can read all the information that's not accessible to them. Again, I get back to what I said, you're only limited by your own imagination with what you can do with Aira. Michael Hingson: Aira doesn't use volunteers and our general response time is extremely quick, the time to get an answer is usually 10 seconds. Are you a user of Be My Eyes? Speaker 10: Yes, I'm an uses of Be My Eyes. Michael Hingson: So, Be My Eyes is a way that you can call someone and get simple tasks done. The problem is you don't know who you're gonna get in terms of their abilities. You don't know how long it's gonna take you and you can't do something like walk through an airport like you can with Aira. All of those things you can do with Aira. Speaker 11: I read somewhere that Aira can be activated via Siri. Michael Hingson: You can. You can say, make an Aira call or call Aira. You can use Siri to do it. Actually, I think you've got to call Ara because Siri don't talk good. Patrick Lane: There's two different voice commands depending on what device you're gonna be using. You can say Ara video call or Ara audio call and depending on which one you use it will call from either your glasses or your phone and connect to an agent very quickly as Mike said, 10 seconds or less depending on whether or not we have the largest conference going on in the country. Michael Hingson: But you do need to say Ara cause that's what Siri knows. Siri's gotta learn some language skills. What you will get is someone who is highly trained. You will get someone who knows how to describe, we've actually hired a number of new agents over the past months so, you're gonna get some newbies. I worked with one agent yesterday, I was blown away when I learned that at the end of the call, I was one of the first calls and this was her first day on the job. She did great. Aira's available for Android or for iPhones. Anybody with a smartphone can use it. That's the answer that we've been using. That changes too. Michael Hingson: Aira has developed its own glasses, it's the next generation of what Aira will become and that system consists of glasses with a high-resolution camera with a very wide field of view compared to the way it use to be. They actually connect directly to what we call an Aira controller or Aira controller phone. It's an Android phone locked only to Aira stuff. It also because of that it powers the glasses and there's a lot more power available. But, by using that system you don't even need your smartphone so you'll use the Aira system without even using the smartphone. Without even using your smartphone so that Aira will make it possible for you to keep your phone free for making your own phone calls while you're working with an agent. Michael Hingson: Or for example, if you're paging or needing to page or call Lyft or Uber you can ask an Aira agent to do that if you're an Aira explorer. And you link your Lyft and Uber accounts to Aira but along the way, there's a very good likelihood that the Lyft driver or Uber driver will call you and say, how am I gonna know you or where exactly are you? In the past, that's been a problem because you're using your smartphone and you have to disconnect from the Aira agent and then get back on. Now you don't because you're using the Aira controller as the way that you're communicating with Aira so your smartphone is still available. That is the horizon system. Michael Hingson: I am now connecting my Aira-   Automated Voice: Unlocked. Michael Hingson: Horizon glasses.   Automated Voice: Glass connected. Initializing Aira. Michael Hingson: Can everyone hear that?   Automated Voice: Hello Mikel Hingson.   Patrick Lane: Mikel Hingson.   Automated Voice: Aira ready for service. Michael Hingson: Yeah, it says Mikel. Could everyone hear that?   Patrick Lane: Yep. Michael Hingson: So I'm using the horizon glasses.   Automated Voice: Battery 73% that's attached connected to Arave four G LT. Hello Mikel Hingson, Aira ready for service. Michael Hingson: I want feedback to support we want Mikel to be pronounced correctly. All right, here listen to this.   Automated Voice: Calling Aira agent. Connecting to agent, connecting to agent. Michael Hingson: See how long it takes.   Automated Voice: Connecting to agent, connecting to agent Peter. Michael Hingson: Bingo.   Peter: Thank you for calling Aira, this is Peter how may I help you? Michael Hingson: Hey Peter, how's every little thing?   Peter: Going well, how are you? Michael Hingson: Doing well. So we are in a room and might you be able to tell us anything about where we are in terms of where this room is or anything like that?   Peter: I do see you're at Rosen Shingle Creek so I'm assuming your at the NFB Conference. Michael Hingson: And you see that's part of what Peter and all agents get is not only what they can see but they get GPS information and other data that can add value to them in terms of your Aira experience. And you are right we are at the NFB Convention, we are at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel and we are in Pensacola, H3 if you wanted to pull that up so you can really see where we are. Can you maybe describe a little bit of the room for us?   Peter: Sure. So you're in a relatively large room with really high ceilings, I want to say they're about 30 feet high at least. The room you're in, so it looks like you're seated on the stage, there are several rows across from you, they're all facing forward and there is a walkway down the center aisle between those rows as well. Michael Hingson: Peter, really serious question. Does anybody look like they're asleep? Those people in the back row, you know what I'm saying, Peter?   Peter: I see people waving. Michael Hingson: I just want to make sure because those people in the back rows they usually hide back there because they think they can fall asleep but with Aira they can't do that. One of my favorite stories is about a father who wanted to make sure his daughter was doing her homework, he called an Aira agent and walked in, and just said, how are things, what are you doing? She said, I'm doing my homework and the agent said, no she's playing computer games on her phone. Anyway, does anyone want to ask, while we've got Peter and Patrick, so Patrick's over here Peter?   Patrick Lane: Hey Peter.   Peter: Hey Patrick.   Patrick Lane: Good to see you again. Michael Hingson: So, any questions for either of these gentlemen?   Patrick Lane: So, the dashboard that Peter's using, what information does he have access to for him too?- Michael Hingson: So Peter why don't you tell us about your dashboard.   Peter: So on my dashboard, I have information like emergency contact info first of all in their profile, and then I do have access to seeing what kind of assisted devices anyone might be using such as a white cane or guide dog. Different preferences they have, if they prefer left and right or clock face for orientation. Just things so we can tailor the experience to each specific explorer since everyone has their own preferences. We also have access to like Michael said earlier the GPS location on the map and I'll be able to utilize public transit, I am, if the explorer connects the Aira app to their Lyft of Uber accounts, we're also able to request those rides for our explorers and then we'll be able to take a look at the driver's info, the name, the car the driver has and spot where they are on the map. And let the explorer know when the driver has arrived and help them spot the car. Michael Hingson: And more important with the NFB ride share test program, for example, if the car comes and it sees that you are blind and have a guide dog, and just decides to drive away, they'll get nailed.   Peter: We'll watch them like a hawk. Michael Hingson: They'll get in trouble. Other questions for Peter? Peter, can you read medication bottles?   Peter: Yes. Before I became an Aira agent I actually don't think I've ever met or interacted with anyone blind or low vision. So, initial training they start with just explaining what it's like for people who are blind or low vision, getting the what orientation mobility is and what kind of information is important to an explorer versus what I think is important information to me as a sighted person because those things are very different. We learn how to give what's necessary and then also when an explorer wants more detail, we learn what kind of detail to give them and then we start exploring the dashboard that we have with all those things I explained to you and then we do some training.   Peter: And the explorers who also [inaudible] who helps us train and we just do exercises like navigating, intersections with different tools. So, Michael has a guide dog and we'll learn how someone navigates with a guide dog and then we'll have another explorer teach us how someone navigates with a white cane and that helps us just get use to all the different things because it's one describing all the visual information that we want to give to the explorer but there's also the technical side of using the dashboard and all the other ways we communicate with other agents and the rest of the Aira team. Michael Hingson: The question was what can Aira do to help people do mobile deposit, bank deposits and so on.   Peter: I actually, coincidentally done that a couple times in the past couple weeks. We can help you align your phones camera over the check and make sure that it's face up, whichever side the app wants you to do and for certain bank apps, some of them aren't as accessible as others so it will help get you aligned to where the button is to take a picture of the check and send it off. Michael Hingson: So you've had an agent that wasn't able to make that happen. When you encounter a situation where an agent isn't successful it would be extremely helpful for you to provide that feedback because well Patrick why don't you deal with that. Patrick Lane: We love when the explorers use the feedback form at the end for both good and bad calls. That's why we have both good and poor marked on there. When you leave us feedback about why a call was poor, we as analysts can go provide that extra training to make that all of our standards are being met by the agents and that your standards are being met by the agents as well. Michael Hingson: So, if your having a problem getting an agent to be able to help you with a mobile deposit then it's important that we hear about that so that we can go back and review it and talk to the agent and find out what the problem is. And see what their difficulty is. So, if you took 60 minutes that's a real problem, and you should get that time credited back. But you have to let Aira know to do that. There are any number of factors, the camera could be one, I mean, it could be that on a particular day the cell service wasn't as good as it ought to be. Michael Hingson: Aira is absolutely pushing the envelope in terms of the technology with video streaming and so on and any number of factors can make it less than stellar and its not Airas fault or anyone's fault it's just the way it is. We'll talk about in a moment the new horizon glasses which will make a lot of that better. But those aren't the kinds of things that we do end up dealing with and so Aira can help make it better by understanding when you encounter problems. Those are some of the best things is to do is to be able to really talk about the problems that you're having so please give the feedback okay. Michael Hingson: I want to thank you all for coming. I would appreciate it if you would tell friends and colleagues. We've got more sessions coming up later this week. We will be at the booth. If you sign up for Aira by the way, you can then participate in refer a friend. If you refer someone to Aira, and they sign up, then they will get a free month, and you will get a free amount of credit equal to whatever plan they sign up for. So, get your friends to sign up. Scott White here at our national center has been very good at that, and I think mostly paid for a year of Aira because he got his friends to sign up. Pete Lane: I thought I'd pop in here and bring you up to date on a couple of recent developments with the Aira service. Aira is now available twenty-four seven. This means that explorers can dial up an agent from their Aira app anytime night or day. This not only allows U.S. users to dial Aira during the wee hours of the morning but it also allows folks in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand to get an agent at times during the day when the need was very great in the past. Such as in the afternoon, during rush hour or during the prime time evening hours. Pete Lane: Another brand new feature is the Aira messages feature. Messages allows Aira explorers and agents to communicate via text. There's a text box that pops up right on the Aira app and you can type or dictate your message directly to the agent. This is really useful if you're going into a meeting or library or a church for example where you want to be very quiet. You can text your communication to the agent telling them what you want, what tasks you want performed and things like that without having to talk and interrupt what's going on around you. Pete Lane: There are also about a half a dozen pre-set messages for more common situations that you can just tap on and send. Those pre-sets can be edited or completely changed depending on your needs. Another new feature is called Aira live. Aira live allows an explorer to broadcast the audio from their contact with an agent either to a small group of private listeners or to a larger group through a public live event. This allows others who download the app and either create a guest account or who are already Aira explorers to tap into the app, go to the live tab and see what live events are currently in session. Pete Lane: And finally we have a new edition to the Aira team, Anirudh Koul, founder of Seeing AI and former senior data scientist with Microsoft has joined the Aira team as the head of artificial intelligence and research. Big things are in store for Anirudh and we welcome him to the Aira staff. Thanks so much for listening to Blind Abilities. For more podcasts with the blindness perspective you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com we're on Facebook and on Twitter or download our free app from the app store or the Google Play store. That's two words, Blind Abilities. Once again this podcast is brought to you by Aira. Special thanks to Patrick Lane for his wonderful guitar music. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.    

TBTS will soon have it's own feed and you will be able to follow the show on any of your favorite podcast apps or devices. With that said, Brian brings us a demo of the GE Microwave that takes commands through his Echo Dot. Join the gang on That Blind Tech Show, Brian, Allison and myself, Jeff. Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.  

En-VisionAmerica: I.D. Mate, Talking Bar code Reader, and ScriptAbility, A Christine Ha Moment and NReach – BlueTooth Beacon Technology Once again, Pete Lane of the Blind Abilities Team, captures some interviews from the exhibit floor at the 2018 NFB convention. This coverage is sponsored by Aira – The Virtual navigator for the Blind – Instant Access to Information – When You Want It. You can find out more about Aira on the web at www.Aira.io Image of the Aira Logo Your Life, Your Schedule, Right Now. If you want to know more about Aira and the services they provide, check them out on the web and become an Aira Explorer today! www.Aira.io Using augmented reality, Aira connects people who are blind or low vision to a trained professional agent who is dedicated to further enhancing their everyday experience – completely hands-free assistance at the touch of a button. In this cast Pete talks to En-Vision America. En-Vision America is a company providing high-tech products aimed at solving problems for individuals with visual impairment. The company has spearheaded many innovations relating to labeling including voice-enabled products like i.d. mate, the talking bar code reader, and ScriptAbility, which includes Braille, large print and talking prescription labels. Originally founded by Philip C. and David B. Raistrick in 1996, the cornerstone of the company is based on one single premise: to provide those with vision impairment equal access and greater independence through technology. Check out the web site for Christine Ha – The Blind Cook NReach:  NReach offers businesses the opportunity to be a part of the new era of social awareness. This will allow people with a visual disability to explore and discover the world around them. How do we accomplish this? It is a complex question with a simple answer. Our service allows businesses to identify themselves to the millions of visually impaired people in the U.S. who otherwise could not see or read their signs. NReach uses an App and Beacon available on both Android and iOS platforms. Find out more on the web at www.NRea.ch Thanks for listening! You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

The Tap Keyboard: The Wearable Keyboard – Come Tap With Us   Tap™ is a wearable input device that lets your fingers control and communicate with the digital world. As you tap your fingers or move your thumb, characters and commands are sent to any Bluetooth device–your phone, laptop, tablet, Smart TV, desktop computer and more.   Antonio Guimaraes caught up with Sabrina Kemenyfrom Tap Systems Inc. and found out more about the Tap Keyboard, how it works and a nice little discount being offered to our listeners. Could these rings be the keyboard for the future? Seems like wearables are becoming a new trend. Check out this conversation along with a live demonstration by Antonio and Sabrina. If you want to find out more about Tap Keyboard and how to order yours today, go to http://www.tapwithus.com/ And be sure to listen to get your discount before it ends at the end of July, 2018!   Tap™ is a wearable input device that lets your fingers control and communicate with the digital world. As you tap your fingers or move your thumb, characters and commands are sent to any Bluetooth device–your phone, laptop, tablet, Smart TV, desktop computer and more.   Image of the Aira Logo[/caption] Your Life, Your Schedule, Right Now. If you want to know more about Aira and the services they provide, check them out on the web and become an Aira Explorer today! www.Aira.io Using augmented reality, Aira connects people who are blind or low vision to a trained professional agent who is dedicated to further enhancing their everyday experience – completely hands-free assistance at the touch of a button. You can learn more about the National Federation of the Blind on the web at www.NFB.org   Thanks for listening! You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.  

ThatBlindTechShow19: From Chrome, Surface Pro, VoiceView, MacBookPro’s New Line-up, and yes, more mention of the Cluckin’ Gobble… Chirp   That Blind Tech Show 19 is jammed packed with… well, it’s nearly an hour of…. Well, we are back in the saddle and letting it rip. News from the convention, Twitter’s clamp down on 3rd Party apps, Microsoft’s Surface Go is now gettable and Voice view steps in-line with gestures. And lookie lookie at that there Chrome Vox.  Not to forget, Brian talks about himself, again and again and on this episode he will not let his fan boys down.   Allison is all moved in and Jeff is headed West for a bit while Brian is busy searching the internet and Amazon for that next tidbit of news or that gadget he feels he needs and can’t live without. Ok, that is a stretch, Brian ain’t that busy, he does it all from the couch.   So kick back and join Brian on the couch and find out what’s happening in the world of That Blind Tech Show. With Co-hosts. Brian Fischler, Allison Hartley, and Jeff Thompson. And a big thank you to Serina Gilbert for tolerating Brian and Jeff last episode. We owe you big time!   Here are some links to the topics and products mentioned in episode 19 of That Blind Tech Show: Ok, it is now time to panic. Twitterrific removes push notifications and live timeline streaming More than 1 of 10 consumers  want Voice Control in the bathroom Why are blind people being replaced by blind cheetah robots? Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

That Blind Tech Show 18: My TV’s On Fire! GPS, GPS, GPS 3 Times Fast, Lazarillo App, Pete’s Amazon Fire Cube Demo and BETA, BETA, BETA.   That Blind Tech Show sneaks right up to the start of conventions and on Episode 18 Serina Gilbert struts her microphone magic and puts the boys in their place. Join Brian Fischler, Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson as they roll out some pretty good news, opinions and possibly a little humor to bring a little sunshine into your day. From the Amazon TV, the Amazon Fire Cube, in which the totally awesome Pete Lane demonstrates, to some neat little gadgets Brian is collecting, sharing and keeping the economy moving by purchasing anything under $35. Oops, he may of blew that budget. J Jeff gives a little peek at the LazarilloApp that rivals the BlindSquare App but does it really? Download this free app and find out yourself. Lazarillo on the App Store. Serina, Co-Host of the Job Insights podcast on Blind Abilities does a sensational job and if she could just laugh a little bit more… Believe me, her laugh is infectious! Join the That Blind Tech Show crew and kick back for a good listen and be sure to check out some of the links from the show below:   Did you hear the one about the all you can eat Chinese Restaurant that went out of business?   Don’t Take your iPhone to World Cup. Is there anywhere you won’t take your iPhone?   Do you plan to run the iOS 12 public beta on your devices   Talk Smart Wearable Bluetooth Button Reizen Talking Wand   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

NFB 2018 Preview, Blind Abilities Will Be There! We’re Going Back! See You There!   As we were last year at the NFB 2017 National Convention, Blind Abilities will again be there at NFB 2018! In this brief preview, Jeff and Pete chat about their convention experience last year, with their description  of the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel and Conference Center and its various accoutrements, the convention sessions, the vast Exhibit Hall, and some of the things to look out for if you attend this year.  Jeff and Pete discuss restaurants, alternative options for food, and some of the people they ran into last year. This year promises to be even better as they plan to connect with their Canadian Blind Abilities Team Mate, Nick D’Ambrosio who will be traveling to Orlando from Montreal. The BA Team will be conducting interviews with vendors on the Exhibit Hall floor, and looking for folks like you to chat with for their convention podcast series. So, keep an eye and an ear out for Blind Abilities, as they wander around the convention with their recording equipment in hand. follow them on Twitter and find out where they’ll be and what their up to. That’s @BlindAbilitieson twitter.   Blind Abilities coverage of the NFB 2018 National convention will be brought to you by Aira, the Visual Interpreter for the Blind. Check out Aira on the web and subscribetoday!   it’s a good idea to review the 2018 convention agenda before you actually attend. Here’s a link to that agenda: https://nfb.org/convention   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

A Conversation with Aira CEO Suman Kanuganti: Good Things Are On The Horizon   Suman Kanuganti, CEO of the Aira Tech Corporation, joins Pete Lane and Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studios to talk about what new is happening at Aira, the programs, projects and where Aira is headed into the future. Suman also talks about NFB 2018, what to expect and the partnership with Lyft to make every guest explorer’s experience accessibly enhanced. LONG DESCRIPTION Image of the Aira Logo With the new Horizon Glasses beginning to ship to explorers this week, the NFB and ACB conventions will sure be a great opportunity to explore and test drive the new Horizon Smart Glasses and talk to the Aira representatives in person. Where is Aira headed? What will Suman surprise us with this year in his announcements? I think Suman gives us a few clues in this conversation with the Blind Abilities Team. Maybe you can piece it together as Suman talks augmented reality, artificial intelligence, the new additions to the agent’s dashboard, and his projections on the future of Aira as he sees it. You can sign up for a subscription plan that makes sense for you on the Aira web site at www.Aira.io Follow Aira on Twitter @Airaio And stop by the Aira booths at the NFB or ACB conventions. be sure to download the Aira App , IOSor Android, onto your iPhone and take advantage of the Aira Guest program starting when you land in Orlando, catch your Lyft ride and throughout the convention center. Through the partnership between Aira and Lyft, your minutes are Free so downloading the Lyft App, IOS or Android, would make great sense as well.   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Presenting Lyft: An Accessible App, A Partnership With Aira, and An Announcement for NFB 2018 Blind Abilities once again teams-up with Aira to present a review of Lyft, a ride-sharing service who not only has an accessible mobile app for both iOS and android, but who works hard on inclusivity for disabled riders. Join Jeff and Pete as they chat with Tommy Hayes, Lyft Sr. Policy Partnerships Manager, and Marco Salsiccia, Accessibility specialist about the company’s commitment to accessibility, their partnership with Aira, and their upcoming arrangement to provide “Aira Access”, where anyone attending the 2018 NFB National Convention can enjoy free Aira minutes in Orlando, Fl from July 3 – 8, 2018.   Lyft will also be present in the NFB Exhibit Hall in Booth B-12. What exactly is Aira Access? Experience Aira for Free in Orlando Aira Access, a free version of Aira, will be available for the entire convention, so to take advantage by downloading the free Aira app on your smartphone before traveling to Orlando for the NFB National Convention.   Download the free Aira app on iOS or Android, sign in as a guest (if you aren’t already an Explorer), and get ready to explore and experience Orlando with Aira. From the moment you land at Orlando International Airport, you’ll be able to connect with an Aira agent completely free of charge. After collecting your bags, you’ll want to take a Lyft rideshare from the airport to Rosen Shingle Creek or the overflow Rosen Centre Hotel, because Aira will be crediting those minutes as well, made possible in partnership with Lyft. And feel free to connect with Aira agents to explore the hotel and convention booths (including   its meeting rooms; the large session ballroom, the multiple restaurants; and the convention booths in the bustling Convention Exhibit Hall) because they, too, will be free Aira Access locations.   Check out more about Lyft at: www.Lyft.com   Find out more about Aira and subscribe at: www.Aira.IO   Aira will once again be occupying booths B-1 and B-2 in the Exhibit Hall this year. be sure to swing by and say Hi, enjoy a live demonstration of their new Horizon smart glasses and sign up for an Aira plan!   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.

BlindFold Games Headed Back to School! Play Games and Get Your Schooling On! Marty Schultz is the creator and designer of BlindFold Games and has over 80 games available for you to get your gaming on. Marty has recently been conducting a survey to check out the educators and teachers and find out what they would like to see in a combo of games mixed with educational learning. Image of a Red bandanna. The logo for Blindfold Games. Marty has received all positive feedback and is moving forward with the merger of games and education and we brought him into talk about his plans and what may be around the corner for Blindfold Games. Be sure to keep up on the BlindFold Games activity as Marty plans on having another BlindFold Games National Competition. You can follow Marty on Twitter @BlindfoldGames and check out his blog page on the web at www.BlindFoldGames.org Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Fernanda Silva: A Persistent and Driven Individual, Her Amazing Life Story and is This the First Aira Baby? Blind Abilities features Fernanda Silva, born in Brazil, immigrating to the US at an early age, and experiencing successes and set-backs that few of us will ever realize. Despite them all, Fernanda maintains an extremely positive and upbeat attitude towards life. she has overcome much, such as transitioning to blindness, being diagnosed with Thyroid cancer, and other devastating  experiences throughout her short lifetime. Listen to Nanda’s highs and lows, trials and tribulations, and hear her contagious optimism and refreshing sense of humor which has survived them all, as blind Abilities tells her story like no one else can. Hear how Aira has enhanced her life, from routine daily tasks to monumental events in her life. Hear, in her own touching words, how she went through trauma and pain, how she rose up and defeated those set-backs by learning new job skills and creating her own businesses, to how she has now reached a pinnacle in happiness unlike any she has previously experienced. Join Jeff and Pete as they explore this amazing story, as told by their guest, Fernanda silva. The scheduling app discussed in the podcast is entitled: Schedulista, Online Scheduling by Hello World LLC and can be found in the app Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/schedulista-online-scheduling/id579198489?mt=8 Check out Fernanda’s Blind touch Massage Studio, at: www.BlindTouchMassage.com You can find the Silva’s online store, at BabyFeFe.com The song found at the beginning of the podcast is entitled: Filha Linda, and is performed by Teresa Lucero. Fernanda has translated the lyrics as follows: Beautiful daughter, today I’m gong to tell you, The time has come to advise you, the world out there is a bit different, Don’t be afraid, always lean forward, Many challenges will come, I will be with you and you will succeed, you will succeed! when fear or sadness takes over, Smile, all you need to do is remember, The power of love is greater than anything in the world, The power of love is greater than anything in the world! Follow your dreams and don’t think of giving up, don’t limit yourself and you will succeed, This is the biggest lesson of your life, Everything happens when you believe this! Beautiful daughter! Beautiful daughter! Beautiful daughter! Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.

Job Insights #5: Transportation to the Workplace – Traveling vs. Exploring Welcome to Episode 5 of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Episode #5 is all about Transportation, How do you get to work, school or to interviews? With guest, Joe Dinero, a Assistive Technology Instructor from New York City, Serina and Jeff talk about the ways we all get around and how multiple means of transportation is a must in this ever changing world of commuting to and fro. Trains, buses and public transit to navigating new locations, we share our experiences, successes and short falls, no pun intended Joe.  We bring up some apps that help our transportation needs and some that help eliminate transportation all together. That would be shopping with Shipt, a new app that like an Uber or Lift service, they shop your list and deliver the same day! Yes, Uber and Lift are mentioned as well and how the creativeness is allowing more of us to consider using these services more and more. Join the Job Insights team with Joe Dinero in this transporting episode of Job Insights. Check out episode 5 of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

ThatBlindTechShow #17: The Apple Gods Have Spoken, WWDC in the Rear View Mirror WWDC, World Wide Developers Convention, is Apple’s big day to highlight to the world what is cooking for the developers kitchen. Basically, Tim Cook and the crew at the Apple orchard talk about the tools developers will be able to utilize for apps and software on their devices. iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and the Mac are the big stars and this year, the Apple Watch took over part of the big stage. On this WWDC episode we brought on a few team members who usually hang back but if Apple can bring out the crew, will so can we! Serina Gilbert, Byron Lee and Nick Dambrosio share their thoughts and highlights from the big WWDC event. So, join us as we scream with delight, become perplexed and even vexed, an of course, one yawn included, too, as the WWDC news continues to make the Apple herd migrate to their TV’s, Apple Devices to hear what the Apple gods are tossing down from the Heavenly Orchard in the sky. Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Welcome to Job Insights Extra, part of the Job Insights Podcast with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson, a podcast focused on the world of employment, career pathways and gainful and meaningful employment. The Job Insights Extra podcasts are success stories, interviews and demos that enhance the experience of reaching that career you want. On Job Insights Extra #5 we talk to Dan Sippl, President of the Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America (RSVA)at their annual Sage Brush Convention in Las Vegas. The RSVA is an organization of Blind venders part of the Business Enterprise Program and under the Randolph-Sheppard Act which allows for business opportunities for people who are blind. Each year RSVA gathers and brings in speakers and business representatives  to help educate and share ideas programs and inovative strategies to enhance the opportunities and possibilities in the highly competitive market of food services and vending operations. If you are interested in becoming your own boss and want to run your own business, be sure to contact Dan sippl and the RSVA and they will surely provide you with the information to get you started on a lifetime career. You can inquire about the BEP in your state by contacting your State Services for the Blind, your Vocational Rehab and ask to speak to your state’s director of the BEP. Here are some links to get you started: RSVA on the web www.randolph-sheppard.org http://www.randolph-sheppard.org Here is a podcast all about the BEP: The Business Enterprise program: Business Ownership Opportunities and a Promising Career Thank you for listening! Follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIP Do you have any suggestions or feedback? Send the Job Insights Team an email Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities Network. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Blind Abilities moves north of the US border and chats with Geoff Eden. Geoff has been a long time advocate in the Canadian blindness community, with his work for CNIB as a Manager, his procurement of early assistive technology and other adaptive equipment for CNIB clients. Geoff worked for the City of Toronto as an Accessibility Consultant, working with city planners and carving his notch in the city’s accessibility strategy. Listen as Geoff shares his story of working with the architects as they designed and built the original Air Canada Center, home of the Maple Leafs and Raptors, and his specific efforts to mold accessibility into the initial design plans. Geoff sits on multiple provincial and local planning committees, and has devoted many years of his life to Canada’s Radio reading Service and the creation of the nation’s Accessible Media Network, AMI.   Pete and Jeff first met Geoff on the Out-Of-Sight.Net online community, a wonderful platform for engaging with other BVI folks in a variety of activities. check them out at:   www.Out-Of-Sight.Net   Geoff is also a talented musician, and you’ll hear excerpts from his guitar and vocal work with several audio clips from ‘back in the day’!   Join Jeff Thompson and Pete Lane as they chat with this multi-talented and articulate advocate for the Canadian disability community, as they present Geoff Eden in the way that only the Blind Abilities Team can offer!   You can reach out to Geoff via email:   Eden.Geoff@Gmail.com   find Geoff on Skype: Geoff.Eden   You can find out more about AMI,  the Accessible Media Network at:   http://www.ami.ca/   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center – Champions for Children with Disabilities:  A Visit with pACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center Director Julie Hertzog Julie helped start the Bullying Prevention Center back in 2006 and is a recognized National Leader in Bullying Prevention. She has been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Time for Kids, PEOPLE, Family Circle and The Huffington Post. Julie sits down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the first of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. Be sure to check out our upcoming Pacer Center podcast featuring the Simon Technology Center and how innovations and opportunities are being created every day and every way. From the web: PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER’s work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation. You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.Pacer.org And PACER’s national Bullying Prevention Center at www.Pacer.org/Bullying You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000 You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at  www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.   Full Transcript [Music] Child 1: Bullying is hurting too many people in this world. Child 2: Sometimes I cry when I'm being bullied. Child 3: Bullying makes me feel sad, when I am bullied I try to walk away. Child 4: Sometimes they punch you in the eye, it's so bad that you could cry. Child 5: I got bullied at school. Child 6: Children leave me out of games. I don't like it at all. [Music] Jeff: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota presents "PACER Center Champions for Children with Disabilities". This episode focuses on bullying and with us today we have Julie Hertzog, director of PACERs National Bullying Prevention Center. Julie helped start the bullying prevention center back in 2006, and is a recognized national leader in bullying prevention. You can find out more about PACER Center and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.PACER.org, we hope you enjoy. [Music] Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. We are at the PACER Center located in Bloomington, Minnesota. We're talking to the director of PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, Julie Hertzog. Julie, can you fill us in on what Pacer Center is all about and what you do as Director the National Bullying Prevention Center? Julie: Sure, thank you Jeff. Yes, we are in Bloomington Minnesota at Pacer Center and PACER is actually an acronym, P A C E R, and its Parents Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights ,though that's probably outdated. We've been around since the late 70's and we, our organization began when students with disabilities were given the federal right to be included in the classroom and so that law today is called the IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and so we are a parent advocacy organization and what we do is help parents understand what their rights are when their child has a disability in an educational setting. People will oftentimes say, well where does your connection to bullying come in then as a disability organization? In response to that, as an organization we're here in Minnesota, so we do take a lot of calls from parents in Minnesota, and starting in, well it was around early 2000, we noticed that our staff noticed that we were taking more and more calls about kids who were involved in bullying situations and really both kids who were being bullied as well as kids who were doing the bullying, and a lot of those stories just kind of broke our hearts. We knew that we wanted to, to do something we knew we wanted to take action. And at the time bullying in early 2000, it really wasn't something that people were talking about and so PACER pioneered a lot of the education that happened around early 2000, and in 2006 we actually formed a program under the PACER umbrella called PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center. And the connection to our mission with disability is that students with disabilities are bullied two to three times more than their non-disabled peers, and at the time when we formed the National Bullying Prevention Center we knew that, we wanted to always make sure that we emphasize students with disabilities, but to really make a difference, we realized that we, we also wanted to focus on any kids who are vulnerable to bullying and whether that was a student with a disability, are being bullied based on their disability, on their race, their religion, their weight, their gender, we wanted to be inclusive. But we also didn't want to focus just on the kids who are being bullied, we wanted to really engage, we knew to make a difference, we wanted to engage the entire community, so we wanted to be speaking to schools, we want to be speaking to teachers, and and parents, and the students themselves because at that time we had adopted the tagline, the end of bullying begins with you, and we knew that we wanted to really have a community conversation about this. That it wasn't about saying that, you know, schools need to fix this, or teachers need to fix this, or the kids need to fix it, it was really about all of us working together. And so that is the background on the National Bullying Prevention Center and how we got started. Jeff: You mentioned something that really struck me as it's more than just one person, it well, it is about one person, what I'm getting at is, it's a community, it's the family, and the communication that happens between all of them that will help solve this. Julie: Yeah for so long we talked about some of those misperceptions that we had about bullying or some of those stereotypes that we had about bullying and if you think back to early 2000, I remember when I first started working on this and again I've been on this project since its origin and there was so many statements such as boys will be boys, yeah, meaning that it was justified because they were boys, that it was okay for them to fight, that's just the way it was. Of course, we've all heard that universal one, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. We know that that is not true, that bullying is not only about physical, it's about emotional, and you know through the years we've had kids say some really poignant things like, words are like weapons, or words will break your heart, and we know that that emotional bullying has just as much effect on students and probably lives inside them much longer even than the physical bullying has. There's also other stereotypes and misperceptions out there that have rationalized bullying for so long such as, you know, just fight back, or you know, kids have also been blamed for why the behaviors happening to them and parents or adults have said to kids, well if you didn't act that way, bullying wouldn't happen to you. And so those are all things that in early 2000, just those stereotypes allowed bullying behavior to perpetuate because we were silent, so when a child was reaching out to us and we were saying things back to them like, well what did you do to make that happen? Really what we were doing is shutting down the conversation and any options that they had to make it stop. Or even when kids would tell an adult that someone else was being bullied, you know our response was, don't be a tattletale. And so again if we're so long what has happened is our society allowed the behavior to perpetuate not, not intentionally but, there was also that statement of, bullying is just a natural part of growing up, I mean those, those were all rationalizations for the behavior for so long. But I will say around you know in that early kind of mid-2000's that people really started recognizing the incredibly negative impact that bullying had, not only short term, but also long term. And there was a couple things that happened at that time in that, the results of the advent of social media at that time. I can remember saying that in 2006 that the Internet is the new bathroom wall, meaning that bullying used to be limited to the school or you know, possibly the neighborhood and kids could go home and escape that, well maybe except for that occasional phone call that they would get or something, but they were really able to, you know, go back home and remove themselves from it. But with social media it became their, you know with the evolution of technology also became the evolution to bully, and so kids were vulnerable to bullying 24 hours a day, and I think that that was one of the reasons that bullying really was put on kind of that national dialogue and also there was a recognition that kids because of things like self-harm, things like depression, anxiety, we began to recognize that there was medical things happening with our kids that were the result of being bullied, and also their you know, the suicide ideation, and suicide attempts, became part of the dialogue as well. So those two things really kind of started to put bullying much more in the public radar and also, they turned a lot of those stereotypes around and we recognize that bullying was a very serious issue for our kids. Jeff: You mentioned in the beginning that educating parents and giving them tools to deal with some of the stuff that comes with, I mean mostly parents in my situation that I know, they didn't choose to become a parent of a child with disabilities, and where do they go for that so, that's what PACER was basically built on. Julie: Absolutely and Jeff I'll just share too that I am the parent of a young man who was born with Down syndrome, who was also nonverbal, he has a feeding tube, a pacemaker, some really significant medical issues and so, it was David who, he was three when I started here at PACER, and he's now 21, and it was thinking about those vulnerabilities of kids that really inspired our, my work here, and also the work of others, in that so much of bullying happens because someone is not able to defend themselves against it, and so it was about how do we educate parents to raise kids who are self-advocates? How do we educate parents to be advocates for their own children? You know and I think back, and again I'll just reference back to 2000, so often when kids would tell their parents that they were being bullied, I think the first response from parents from majority of parents was, oh just ignore it, it'll go away, and you know, and that came from a really good place, and I think parents hoped that by ignoring it, it would stop, but we know from history that just ignoring it does not make a go away, in fact it usually gets worse, and and I remember kids, there was some kids who jokingly when we were talking to them for the focus groups and everything else and they said, well what if I would tell my parents to just ignore their annoying boss? Would that be a solution to the situation? And I remember there was another kid he said, What if I told my parents just to ignore their bills? Would their bills just go away? And so, you know we'd say that, and we realized that, how ineffective that response was, but that was the only thing we had at that time, and we know now that there's so many more solutions. And since 2000 now, every state across the nation has a law about bullying, and bullying prevention in schools, and legislators focused on the school environment when creating those laws. So, we now know that parents and kids have rights and within every state about what can happen if they're being bullied and those weren't in place before, and we also teach parents just how they could be supportive of their child. So instead of being that dismissive, just ignore it, we help them understand how important it is to talk through it and let them know that they're not alone, that we're getting, that you're gonna as a parent, you're gonna be there to help them learn how to advocate their way through it, and I would say to Jeff, that you know, I think for my own son even, self-advocacy skills were so important for him and being a child who's nonverbal, one of the things that we taught him how to do is, if, if you're not feeling comfortable, first thing we want you to do is find a teacher, and we had that written into his IEP, and even from there we continued developing more strategic options for him. Jeff: So, when I was on the website for the National Bullying Prevention Center, I noticed there's some videos and it just wasn't a collection of videos, they were broken down into young children, teens, and you know it even led to what you're talking about educating adults. Can you tell us a little bit about those videos? They really impacted me because it brought me back to the realization that, I may have been part of, not may have, I was part of bullying a little bit and I was bullied, and it just it doesn't go away really, because it all came back to me pretty vivid, pretty, it was all there. Child 7: It makes me cry after school. Child 8: We are different in many different ways, size, shape, and color. Child 9: I have been bullied so I know how it feels to everyone going through a hard time out in the world. Several child voices: Tall, short, skinny, or round, tall, short, skinny, or round, you have a voice, so make a sound. never meant to be the same. Child 10: You have to care because there are other people in the world besides you that have feelings. Child 11: Bullying can prevent good in the world and make the bad go in the world. Child 12: It's not nice to bully, it's better to be a friend. Julie: Yeah absolutely, and you bring up such a good point to Jeff in that, one of the decisions we made very early on was to recognize that any student within the same day can play multiple roles in what we call a bullying situation, and that you may be that young person, you're on a bus riding to school and someone might be throwing, you know, wads of paper at the back of your head over and over and everybody's laughing. So you're that person that's targeted by bullying on the bus and so you can imagine how that feels, that vulnerability, you're on the bus and you get to school and there's all sorts of emotions you're feeling, you're, you know you might be feeling anger, you might be feeling fear, you might be feeling sad, and then you get off that bus and you walk into school and you see a kid by a locker and for whatever reason you just decide to push that kid because you know that you can, and you you push that kid, you've now taken on that role of the kid who's doing the bullying. The next hour you might be witnessing a similar situation you know, in your own classroom, and so to just be labeling kids as a bully, or as a victim, or as you know, somebody who sees it, it wasn't strategic for us. We realized that this is the root of all bullying, it's a social issue. It's a very social issue and by us allowing the behavior to continue to happen without anybody saying anything about it is why it was perpetuated for so long, and I think it's about, we say bullying is about behavior, and so our kids, they're about behaviors, they're not about labels, and what we really want to do is be educating them, and Jeff you mentioned those videos and I think that, again in today's culture, and our evolution, the way we absorb information, we thought it was so important to be offering everybody a variety, so everything from being able to read information, to listen to information, to have access to videos, and you know, and we do a lot of interactive stuff as well. The video series we wanted to touch a parent audience because we want to be giving them a little bit different information than what we would give our kids. So, we actually do have three different websites. We have the National Bullying Prevention Center which we consider our portal page, and that's really for our adult audience, and then we also have two age-appropriate websites. One is called Teens Against Bullying and that is for middle and high school students, and the second is called Kids Against Bullying, which is for elementary school students, so we present to information that that's age-appropriate on those sites through a variety of dissemination, so everything from reading, to interaction on the website, to videos. Jeff: Yeah that was really interesting because I think the ones for kids had animated drawings, it actually described what was going to be on there and said drawings that the kids did, and then their voices, so it really brings it home, and when you witness, or you hear that kids voice, and the tones in their voice, it really like, you can feel it and you mentioned something about everyone's kind of a participant in it. Either your bullying, your target, or you're a bystander. Julie: Yeah and you know, bullying doesn't affect just that kid who's being bullied because when we think about, we like to talk about bullying on a continuum, so if you take a hundred students and you'd line them up, there's gonna be ten students who are frequently targeted by bullying, there's gonna be ten students who maybe are doing the bullying, but that leaves these eighty kids in-between who probably you know might experience bullying a little bit, or might participate in groups, but they're also that 80 percent that sees it happening and you know Jeff I'll tell you universally from talking to kids for, for the past almost twenty years, that group doesn't like it, they don't like what they see, but what they've never had in the past is that they didn't feel empowered to do something about it. You know it goes back to maybe one of those kids in that group was the one that went and told a teacher when they saw a bully and when they were met with, don't be a tattletale, you know what does that do, it shuts them down, they're not going to go back again and say something about it, and so again, it's about making that cultural shift to really engage that 80% to be what we call advocates. It goes back to our PACER model of advocacy, and we say it's advocacy for self, and advocacy for others, and so really giving that that group the dialogue and the tools about, what do you say if you see a bullying situation? And I think that 80% is so important for our kids with disabilities to because the majority of bullying is happening outside the adult's world, and so it's happening in places like a bus where there's not adults, you know, the one person who's on a bus is the bus driver, and what are they doing, they're facing the other way of where all these kids are sitting behind them. And so bullying also happens online, in places where adults aren't, you know that's why so many social media sites that adults are using, kids aren't, because they want to be in a world of their own choosing, and interacting with each other. And so if you think about it, it becomes extremely important for this peer group, this, these bystanders to be empowered to do and say something about bullying, and especially for those who aren't able to stop it on their own. And there's also a really powerful statistic that almost 60% of bullying situations will stop when a peer intervenes and that peer invention becomes so much more powerful than anything in an adult could ever do because just as kids who bully have a lot of power, the peers can take that power away in that situation by saying, you know, we don't accept this, this is not what our school is about, we're better than this, and we've found that that it's extremely effective. [Music] Jeff: It's cool to be kind. [Laughter] Julie: Yeah you know you want to say something, it's cool to be kind sounds really cool to us as adults, but we like to frame it a little bit different for kids and, and especially you know, I think our elementary school students, things like that still resonate with them, you can go with that, some of those really very simple messages. Life gets a lot more complicated for our middle and high school students and how that empathy is, how do you tap into that natural empathy that kids have, because most people don't want to see another person be hurt, but they don't want to put themselves in that situation where they themselves might next become the target, or they get in trouble for sometimes intervening, and so you, you want to really make the payoff, you want to make the trade-off worth their investment of intervening and taking that risk. Jeff: Yeah that group mentality, those eighty students, is it cool to be part of the cool group, that the group is doing this, or is it cool, and I think because of PACER and you know the states passing the laws about bullying that the youth now is starting to realize that it's okay, and cool, those to step out step in, and be part of the conversation part of the solution to bullying. Julie: Absolutely, and Jeff again, my son David, I remember when he was going into middle school and again, you know everybody has their individual vulnerabilities and for him, it was not being able to tell us if he was in a bullying situation he just he wouldn't have that ability to do that and we wouldn't know, and so one of the things that we wrote into his IEP at that time was about training kids to be his advocates. So, at that time, we selected four young people who I knew were already allies of David and these weren't popular kids, they weren't the student council kids, they were they were kids I just knew who had empathy and who cared. We gave them the training to look out for David because we knew that they would know about bullying long before any of the adults would and those students were amazing, and they had such incredible, just their own self-worth and their self-confidence was brought up so much by learning those advocacy skills for David that they shared it with friends and they told people how much you know, this meant to them being part of you know, being delegated with this responsibility, and so that model quickly expanded within my son's school, that advocacy model and they became known as peer advocates. And so, what we did is we continued to train students about what to do if they saw somebody in a bullying situation, how they could intervene, what kind of support they could provide for David, and we also provided an adult mentor that they could go to. So that they could you know, share if there was something that was beyond what they could handle. And that model was incredibly effective, and it became known as the peer advocacy model, and it's still in place at that school today and I know we also have information about it on PACER's website. Yeah there's a great video on there, there's the toolkit, there's statistical data, and there's also a way that you can start it within your own school as well. Jeff: And that's what that toolkits about right? Julie: We have several toolkits on the website, but there's a peer advocacy toolkit on the website that really explains that model in more detail. Jeff: In my world of disability with the blindness and vision loss and difficulty in reading the printed word, self-advocacy is an important skill to develop because typically the parents are what becomes a personís advocate to make, ensure that they're receiving services, or they seek, come to PACER's to learn how to be their advocate in a sense, but then there's a point where the parent will assign chores, or wean them into responsibilities and self-advocacy because they're going to transition from high school to college to the workplace and having that skill set is very important. I was glad to see in the bullying that you guys mentioned self-advocacy. Julie: Yeah, I would say with self-advocacy in bullying, the one important nuance there, is that, we want to make sure that we're not putting full responsibility upon the student to stop it themselves because if they could have stopped it themselves they would have already done that. But what we do say is that self-advocacy is very important and that'll help you get your power back in this situation because I think so much about being bullied, you start to feel powerless, you start to feel like you don't have any options, so in doing that self-advocacy piece is really powerful, and in the world of disability too, it's important to note a couple things, that you have either your IEP, or your 504 that you can be writing those goals and objectives right into, and we've seen parents and teachers get incredibly creative with that. So everything from identifying an adult that a young person can go to if they need help in a bullying situation, and, and that advice, because that isn't always readily available in the school, and so writing that right into your plan is very important, or you know, we've seen other situations where students can leave class five minutes early just because if a hallway is really busy and they're getting bumped around you know, quote-unquote by accident, when we really know it's not by accident that it's on purpose, you know maybe for a short period of time they want to leave class early just to make sure that, that it's not happening, but ultimately we want that behavior to stop in the hallway and for it not to be happening so that they can be included with their peers. But the other important piece is that there's not a federal law about bullying, so every state has a law, but at the federal level there's a law on harassment. So, the distinction between that is that if the bullying is based on an individual's disability, or their race, or their religion, or their gender, or their national origin, then it reaches a threshold of harassment, and at that time the Department of Education as well as the office for civil rights are looking at those scenarios too, so there are some protections in place when the bullying is based on an individual's disability. Child 13: I push myself and yet it is never enough. Child 14: It's never enough. Child 13: And it's hard to ask for what I need. Child 15: I wish others could see that I may not be tough on the football field. Child 16: Or deal with social events very well, but I am a dependable friend. Child 17: It is hard to be understood. Jeff: You mentioned harassment and bullying and you thinking about all the definitions as they're defined in whether a dictionary, you know Webster would say, but it seems like they all blur together, it's a little blurry like conflict harassment, bullying, can you talk just a little bit about that? Julie: Sure I'll give a quick 101 on a definition of bullying, and again Jeff, you know like you say it's, it's somewhat nebulous, and so I'll go back to, if you're listening to this, this recording in the state of Minnesota, Minnesota's definition of bullying in the schools might be much different than how California legislation defines it, or legislation in Pennsylvania, but there are some common hallmarks that I'm gonna mention as far as what defines bullying. So, the first would be that there has to be the intent to hurt, harm, or humiliate, and that can be either emotionally or physically. So, everything from a push, a shove, to name-calling/gossip, so there's that intentionality to hurt, harm, humiliate. The second is is that, the act is typically repeated, instead of you know, but often you know, if it's of significance it can be a one-time act, and I'll use the illustration of say for example if somebody's on social media and they say something really inflammatory and it reaches the an audience of a thousand people immediately, to me that may be a single act, but because it's reaching a thousand people it would definitely hit that threshold of bullying. The third is there's this power imbalance, and again this is, this is I, you know, the imbalance of power up, with that in quotations because it sounds very lofty, but what it is is when a person has either more physical or social power, so everything from you know, so a larger person being much more intimidating to someone else, to a person of smaller stature, but it can also be social power you know, so often we hear it's the quote-unquote the cool kids who are bullying, and so they have much more social cachet then the person that they're bullying. But that imbalance of power can also be about groups, because so often with bullying there's a group mentality and you know, against one person, and it's awfully hard to have power in that situation as an individual versus a group. And the fourth one is that the person is not able to defend themselves, because we see a lot of times people act inappropriately, but it's when, when that person is, feels vulnerable, and they're not able to stop what is happening to them without the help of someone else. The distinction between bullying conflict and harassment then, so with harassment, it has all those hallmarks of bullying, but it's also, and again we're looking at the legal definitions based on legislation, and so the distinction with harassment is that it has all the hallmarks of bullying, but it's also based on an individual's disability, gender, race, religion, national origin, and so the legal, that's the legal definition. And at the interesting nuance to is just to understand what the difference is between conflict and bullying because I think that's very important with our kids, is that we want to let them know, that to have a disagreement, to have an argument, that's a natural part of just life, and it's going to happen through through life, and the distinction of when conflict crosses over into that threshold of bullying is when one person feels unsafe, they no longer feel safe in that disagreement, and also that most conflict will stop when the person realizes how much they're hurting the other person, and so those are really those those distinctions. Jeff: Yeah, I remember there's something saying, guided by empathy that someone does then, retreat or realize they're doing, they're harming someone, they actually realize it, and some people just don't. Julie: Yeah and they'll usually though, they'll be an apology or just an acknowledgement of, hey I guess you know, we've, we've crossed a line here that's not comfortable for someone, for the other person. Jeff: I think the, one of the biggest things you know I, I knew I was coming here to talk about bullying and so I you know, looked at the website and I talked to a couple people about it, and I reflected some things in my past, and I just am grateful that the children today in schools and stuff have the opportunity to be part of the conversation that you and PACER are doing, the bullying prevention, are doing, that there is a conversation that people can join in on. Julie: Yeah one of the I think important parts about our websites is that we wanted to make it not only educational, but we also want it to be aspirational and inspirational and you do that through the sharing of stories, and so if you do go on our website, one of our primary hub and navigation just lists stories, and that's true in all three of our web sites, whether it's for our kids, teens, or adults because we need to understand that impact that bullying has, and I think it's so, it's so easy to say, oh you know it's horrible what happened to somebody, but when you read their their personal story, and you understand the impact that it had for that person, literally about them maybe not wanting to get up and go to school because they couldn't face another day, it's important to know that, and it's those stories and the sharing of stories that really changes lives. And so we wanted to have a way that people could interact and so story sharing is one of those, we also have a nice feature called I care because dot dot dot, where individuals can go on there and fill out why this topic matters to them, and again those are very poignant, and very telling, and also just that kind of that aspirational piece is that, we want the opportunity for anyone to get involved and we realized that we're a small staff so PACER overall has a staff of almost seventy people but on our bullying prevention project there's only three of us, so there's three of us within PACER and we obviously have an infrastructure that supports us, but one of the things that we knew is that the only way we could make change with such a small staff was to really have people who wanted to get invested within every community and that's really what we found is whether it's kids, whether it's parents, or teachers, or even community members, we want to give them tools so that they could be part of the conversation. I think an important evolution you know, what you've heard me talk about what bullying was like in 2000 and where we are now in 2018 is that when we started in 2000 we really needed to be educating people about why do you need to care about this topic of bullying, and then you know, and the reasons were is because it had such a negative impact on her kids, everything from them not wanting to go to school, to also having these physical symptoms of depression and anxiety. You know I think the majority of our society now understands that, that bullying is is not acceptable, but now we need to beware. What are we going to do about it and what behaviors do we want to replace it with and so our conversation has continued to evolve to, we are together against bullying but we're also United for attributes such as kindness, because again you can't go wrong with kindness, and the world just needs a lot more of it. But we also started talking about the concepts of inclusion and acceptance, and we chose those two very purposefully. Inclusion because so often our students with disabilities are not included, you know traditionally they're not included in a classroom setting, they're not included in peer groups, they're not included in friendships, and so to be having active conversations about that we felt was really important. And the other values of kindness, inclusion, and acceptance, and I think so often bullying is about people's differences and in thinking about it, so often what somebody is bullied about is really what makes them unique and valuable to society and I'll just use my own that I, I'm five-eleven now, and I think I was five-eleven back in sixth grade and though I was teased about height and, but really that's what I value, and I think in blind or visually impaired community, and again Jeff, you can probably speak to this, but it's probably your uniqueness that you value about yourself. And so one of the things that we want to do is to say that acceptance is about who somebody is and things that they cannot change, but it's also probably what really they value most about themselves as well, and even my son with Down syndrome, I think what people value about him is his disability because of what he brings to a community, because of his uniqueness, and how he approaches life because of this disability. Jeff: I'm so glad to be part of this conversation because I'm just reflecting back and you talked about acceptance, like when I first lost my eyesight there was a period of time there where I was like, hmm, I didn't know what I didn't know, and I was like kind of lost, so vulnerability at that point until I was able to accept my blindness, my visual impairment, then I could deflect comments or just things like that so, Julie what suggestions would you have for someone who may be experiencing bullying? Julie: Sure, and I'm gonna look at this through the lens of we really focus on students in K through 12, and the first thing I always want to tell anyone who's in that age range and/or their parents is to know that, especially if you are experiencing bullying, that you're not alone, and and I say that Jeff because, one of the things we so commonly hear from individuals is that they feel like they're the only ones that are going through this experience. And you're not alone, in that people are here for you, and if you are being bullied, absolutely as a young person reach out to somebody and let them know, because you have the right to do that, you have the right to be safe at school, you have the right to feel safe online, and so in talking to a parent it's not a show of weakness, it's a show of strength, and I think it takes incredible courage if you are being bullied to just show up to school every day, and so use that courage and translate it into action by talking to an adult and then figure out what you want to do to, to advocate to make it better, and part of advocacy is telling somebody and letting them help you through a plan, and you know whatever that plan may be, make it unique to you, that fits your needs. And for adults, if you find out that your child is being bullied number one listen to them, and let them talk through it because it's a very emotional thing, and you as a parent are going to be experiencing a lot of emotion if you find out that your child is being bullied. Everything from why didn't I know about this before to why didn't they tell me before, but the most important thing you can do is be supportive and the 2nd thing is to go in and find out what your rights are, you know be calling us, or be emailing us, or going online and in finding out what your rights are because your child does have the right to be safe at school, I think that's, that's just of primary importance in of advocate. Jeff: I don't know this one will make the podcast, but as you're talking there I was thinking, do kids who bully ever come forward and wonder why they're doing it? Julie: Yeah absolutely and it's a great question and, and again, I can only speak [inaudible] from the kids that we that we have communicated with, but we've heard where kids go on our website and we actually have a checklist on there especially for our young kids and it's called, do you bully? And they go on there and they read through those behaviors and they, they read through it, and they say, wow I'm doing that, and they don't realize the impact that they've had on another person through their actions, and so we need to be teaching our kids about what appropriate behaviors are, and if you as a parent find out that your kid is, is showing those bullying behaviors, absolutely be having that conversation with them and saying how can we redirect what you're doing? And teaching them how to have empathy for others, such an important piece, and, and I don't think most kids would identify themselves as quote/unquote a bully, and so that's where it's particularly important for adults to be acknowledging those behaviors and saying what can we do to redirect them? Jeff: Once again thank you so much for all this information, there's just a wealth of information that I was able to tap into, I'm going on to the website and talking to you, and you know even this podcast people are gonna be listening, and it's just, sometimes you feel like you're in a vacuum in life, you're isolated from it like, what do I know about bullying in a sense that do I have the answers, but with the conversation going on, and the website and stuff people can get connected to each other and share, especially their parents because they're the ones if they know about it, they're the ones that can do stuff too, and it's just great resource. Can you tell people how they can get to your website? Julie: Absolutely, you go to PACER, again P A C E R, is that acronym that I talked about way back at the beginning and it's PACER.org, and that'll get you to PACER's primary website, and then to reach the National Bullying Prevention Center you would put in PACER.org slash bullying. Jeff: Well that's easy enough, well Julie thank you so much for carrying on this conversation that we all need, and I don't think just because I'm in the blindness community, and bullying doesn't have boundaries, so opening it up to so much, most of our podcasts deal with blindness and stuff but we can't hide from bullying because it it does exist, so thank you very much. Julie: Thank you Jeff and thank you listeners! Child 18: Sometimes we are just told to deal with it. Child 19: Sometimes I don't think I'm any different from other teenagers. Child 20: We kind of all struggle to be understood. Child 21: But yeah, I struggle. Child 22: Emotionally and intellectually, it's sad when people are insulted and made fun of because they have something they're born with and cannot help but have. Child 23: If only others could see, I have so much to offer. Child 24: I would like to encourage kids of my generation... Child 25: Well, really everyone.... Child 26: To be more kind each other.... Child 27: To be more kind to each other...... Child 28: To be more kind to each other. Child 29: Think about how good it feels when someone comes to help you when you least expect it. Child 30: We are all trying to fit in. Child 31: We are all trying to fit in. Child 32: We are all trying to figure life out. Child 33: We are all trying to figure life out. [Music] Jeff: Be sure to check out PACER's Center Champions for Children with Disabilities and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.pacer.org, and check out State Services for the Blind in Minnesota at www.mn.gov/deed/ssb. Live, learn, work, and play. And a big thank you goes out to Chee Chau and Steven Letnes for their beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter at lcheechau, and Stephen Letnes at stephenletnes.com. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store, and on Google Play, that's two words, Blind Abilities. You can also enable the Blind Abilities Skill on your Amazon device, just say enable Blind Abilities. And from Pacer Center, State Services for the Blind, and Blind Abilities, Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye! [Music]

ThatBlindTechShow #16: Cool Tech, FlickType Launch in Sight, A Memory Stick Goes Wireless, WWDC Anybody? Episode 16 is really Sweet 16 as Allison and Jeff show their love while Brian remains an 80’s guy deep inside. But that’s as far as we want to go with that. General Electric’s Alexa controlled Air Conditioner gets a demo, as well as the new FaceBook Notifications Settings. We hear from across the pond and from the developers of FlickType and the upcoming release of the 3rd party keyboard is announced. How much fun can you have with a wireless memory stick? We tried, boy, did we. Remember to Back up your devices, computers and make it lazy proof without failure. WWDC is knocking and we crack the door open just a bit and expose our thought bubbles without risk to our integrity. Hmmm, protect that, eh? Coffee and Beer brewing machine, New ovens getting some smarts and Comcast spills the beans, again. And, how to save money on your modem. Don’t lease… Buy! This was to be a quick episode and you probably know how some of the best plans go astray? Well, our planned plan panned out without planning and we still hope you plan to listen as Allison, Brian and myself, Jeff roll out episode 16 with that chagrin smile we wear so well. We hope you get us into your listening playlist, into your pod catcher of choice and in your Amazon device with our Alexa Skill, Blind Abilities. So don’t be afraid to send us your feedback at ThatBlindTechShow@gmail.com and follow our vibe on Twitter @BlindTechShow. That Blind Tech Show is part of the Blind Abilities Network so be sure to check us out on Twitter @BlindAbilities and on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Here are the links from the show: Amazon $7000 for toilet paper Amazon Portable Battery for Alexa Smart Microwaves Coffee and Beer Brewing Machine Sandisk Wireless Stick Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Job Insights Extra: Adjustment to Blindness - Meet Rob Hobson: College Prep and Success All in One. Transcript Provided Job Insights Extra brings you Rob Hobson, Cordinator for Professional Development and College prep at Blindness Learning In New Dimensions, Inc. Best known as Blind, Inc. located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rob tells his story how he overcame the challenges that nearly defeated him when entering his Masters program. He made a decision to improve his Blindness skills and this led him on the journey he continues today. From nearly bailing out to exceeding his own expectations by finishing his Masters degree ahead of time and landing a job in the career he wanted. Rob talks about his job details when he started as an Orientation and Mobility instructor to his duties today as Cordinator of Professional Development and the College Prep program. Join Rob Hobson and Jeff Thompson on this brief look into Rob’s Adjustment to Blindness and how he is helping others adjust to their Blindness today. You can find out more about Blind,Inc and Adjustment to Blindness on the web at www.BlindInc.org You can also contact Rob and Blind, Inc. via email You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And to find Services in your state check out the American Foundation for the Blind web site and enter your State’s name in the, “Find Local Services” section. Thank you for listening! You can follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIP Send the Job Insights Team and email and give us some feedback and suggest some topics you would like to see us cover. Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities Network. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.   Job Insights Extra: Adjustment to Blindness - Meet Rob Hobson: College Prep and Success All in One. Transcript Provided [Music] Rob: When I started that semester, I soon realized that the skills I used in college from my undergrad weren't gonna work in grad school. Jeff: That's the voice of Rob Hobson, Coordinator of Professional Development and College Prep at Blindness Learning in New Dimensions. Rob: Set up an interview and came up here in early December of 2008 and I was offered a position and I accepted. Jeff: Rob talks about the challenges that he faced when transitioning from college to his master's degree program, and how adjustment to blindness training gave him the skills and confidence to succeed. Rob: We use structure discovery which utilizes the environment as a teaching tool and if you only just know one specific route, that can be really debilitating because that's all you know. Jeff: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network with host Serina Gilbert and myself Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at JobInsights@blindabilities.com, and join us on the job insight support group on Facebook, on Twitter at Job Insights VIP. Rob: Get that adjustment to blindness training because it is vital for you to be able to compete out there with your sighted peers. Keep an open mind because there is a lot of life after blindness. [Music] Jeff: I went down to South Minneapolis to the historic Pillsbury mansion, the home of Blind Incorporated and that's where we met up with Rob Hobson, we hope you enjoy! [Music] Welcome to Blind Abilities I'm Jeff Thompson and today we're down at Blind Incorporated in Minneapolis we're talking to Rob Hobson and he's the Coordinator for Professional Development and College Prep. How are you doing Rob? Rob: I'm doing well on yourself Jeff? Jeff: Doing good thanks, Rob thanks for taking the time to coming on the Blind Abilities and sharing a little bit about your journey through blindness and your job that you have. Rob: Oh thank you I'm happy to be here. Jeff: Well Rob, can you tell a little bit about what your job is like here? Rob: Well working here at Blind Incorporated, it's a lot of fun, we have a great team and we work together as a team to provide adjustment to blindness training to college-age students, to adults, to seniors, and we have transition programming, and we even have a buddy program which covers 9 to 13 year olds. Jeff: You cover the whole gauntlet? Rob: Yeah we do, it's, it's great, it's, it's a lot of fun. [Bass guitar sound effect] Jeff: Now you did not start out as a Program Coordinator? Rob: Well when I started at Blind Incorporated, I started in 2009, but I should go further back, actually, it's actually a little journey. In 2006 I started grad school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale to get a master's degree in public administration, on paper that sounds great, when I started that semester I soon realized that the skills I used in college from my undergrad weren't gonna work in grad school. The bar was a lot higher, note takers were hard to get, because I utilized their services through disability services through the campus and I realized that my skills weren't up to par because I just couldn't keep up. Every time I thought I did great, I was still further behind. What really hit it for me was when I took this budgeting class and I thought I got all the points possible, and in that class it was zero to five, five was like the max of points you can get, so I thought hey, I might have gotten a four or five, and I got my grade and it was a 1.5, and the words that really changed my view was, well I felt bad, so I just gave you a 1.5. And that really hurt, it really set, threw me back a loop, you know, it's like wow, I've never had that happen to me before. I called some friends who are in the NFB and I talked to them about, you know, maybe it's time for me to get some adjustment to blindness training. I knew it would be a process because getting Illinois, because that's where I lived at the time, to pay for it was a process. I've heard horror stories that sometimes it could take two years but I was pretty confident that it wouldn't take that long. So in August of 2006 I met with a counselor, I convinced her to start the process and I had an O&M evaluation. I wrote a letter stating why I needed this training and what it was going to do for me, so I had an O&M evaluation, through the letter I was able to convince them to provide me the opportunity to go to the Louisiana Center for the blind in Ruston Louisiana. I started my program at the end of March of 2007, and that's when I started my journey in blindness training. Now to be fair, my goal was to get through the program, go back to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and complete my Master's in Public Administration Degree. Well while I was in the program, it was suggested to me that I should consider the Louisiana Tech O&M program and I considered it for about 1/2 a second and I thought no that's not me. As they say it, it put the seed there and throughout the summer of 2007 I realized that hey, you know I might actually like this. I started the process in the fall to go into Louisiana Tech, in the end of November I started my first classes as a Louisiana Tech student in grad school. Jeff: Now Rob, could it be that winter was coming and.... Rob: I'm not gonna lie, that was true, I thought that was a good benefit but really I was excited to start this program because I knew that, you know at the end of this program I would be able to get a job, and believe it or not, throughout that year it took me a year, end of November of 2007, and by November 19th of 2008 I walked away with a college degree, a graduate degree, from Louisiana Tech. It was a rough year, they say that a master's degree generally is a year and a half to two years, I did it in a year, it was probably the hardest year of my whole life at that time. Jeff: Congratulations! Rob: Thank you. I soon talked to Sean Mayo who was the Executive Director of Blind Incorporated, set up an interview and came up here in early December of 2008 and I was offered the position and I accepted. In January of 2009 I started as a Blind Incorporated employee, and to be fair, I only planned to be here year after about a month of working here because it was so cold, but I soon liked it, teaching cane travel was a lot of fun, it took me a while to get into my zone, you know because when you come to a new city you have to learn how to navigate the streets and learn the grid, the outline, you know all of the names of the roads, and I knew I had the skills to teach, it was a matter of learning the environment so I could teach and understand how to relate that information to my students. Jeff: So did you do a lot of exploring in your off time and just try and navigate the city and learn it? Rob: I did, I spent a lot of time learning south Minneapolis, I spent some time with Zach Ellingson who was the full-time cane travel instructor at the time, and we talked a lot, he really helped me gain the information necessary to teach. I spent some time observing him just to see how he taught because you know, when you're still a new teacher, you still like to get other teaching styles and I knew Zach was really successful at what he was doing and it was a good resource to work with. I spent a lot of time on weekends going out to other places in the city but at the time I really focused on south Minneapolis because I knew majority of my instruction was gonna be during that time. I later throughout the years, I gained knowledge in Northeast Minneapolis, Southeast Minneapolis, St. Paul, I know some of St. Paul, I don't know a lot of it but I know enough to to be able to teach it. Jeff: Now learning the areas that you did, it's pretty much transferable skills the way you teach here right? Rob: It is, the skills are transferable but you know it's like anything else, when you want to teach someone you have to still know what you're teaching, does that make sense? Because we also teach how to navigate the area via some of the names, so I needed to know those names so I can you know pass that information along, learn bus routes, I learned a lot of the bus routes, but yes, the skills I learned in Ruston Louisiana were transferable once I figured out the grid system and for an example, Hennepin Avenue is your divider between north and south Minneapolis, and the river, the Mississippi River divides southeast Minneapolis and northeast Minneapolis from north and south Minneapolis, and anything more than that you get a little complicated because it depends on where you are further south in the city, you actually have the river divider between St. Paul and Minneapolis. [Bass Guitar Sound Effect] Jeff: There's always been a debate about people sometimes teaching route travel compared to teaching skills that will allow you to explore other areas and use the same set of skills. Rob: That is true, in our format we use structure discovery which utilizes the environment as a teaching tool. We do start off with students in the beginning giving them simple route assignments so that they learn to gain that confidence and gain those problem-solving skills so that they're able to change those routes, make a diversion if need be, I mean because, well if you've walked in Minneapolis in the summer, you know that, maybe every, about every few blocks there's construction, or they tear up a sidewalk to put in a new one, or whatnot, you have to be able to problem solve in that and if you only just know one specific route, that can be really debilitating because that's all you know, and how are you gonna be able to get through that situation. Jeff: Yep I graduated from Blind Incorporated and I remember the whole thing, the only thing Zack always got upset was, I grew up here so, when he was trying to fool me or something, I'd hear a church bell. Rob: Oh, and that gave it away didn't it? Jeff: I could identify the church, so he would be more creative next time you know, just knowing that I had a few cues that other people didn't have so it was always interesting. Now in your new position, what do you do for Blind Incorporated? Rob: Currently I set up all of our activities, I coordinate from beginning to end. For an example last year we went camping for the first time in I don't know how many years, at least since I've been here we've never gone camping up to that point, and we actually went camping, we stayed in tents and that was a long process to put that together because there's a lot of details involved. It's not like we all just got in a van and drove up to Duluth area and pick the camping site and just went camping. There's a lot of details involved when you take 30 people, 30 of your closest friends and students up to, up to go camping. So there's logistics because you have to work on you know the amount of food, how many tents, how many people per tents, just a lot of logistics. I coordinate all of the logistics to make sure everything falls in line, all of our activities from camping to just going rock climbing at vertical endeavors. Starting last year we started putting together professional development for the staff and students, some of the highlights, we had Kevin O'Connor come in, who is a renowned professional speaker who came in and talked to our staff and students on basically just professional development, working with each other, and what does it mean to be professional, and covered all of those components. We also had somebody come in and do a multicultural training, we had somebody come in and talk about cognitive disabilities, we've done some first aid CPR, so we've done a lot of different programming, but we've done it before but not to this caliber, so we really have a professional development piece about every three months or so for the staff and we started incorporating the students in that as well because it's important I think for our students to be able to have that information, they can put it on their resume, and I think it makes them even more employable. [Music] Jeff: You also had a program called Blind and Socially Savvy, can you tell us a little bit about what that is? Rob: So Blind and Socially Savvy really covers the soft skills, starting in conversation with somebody, proper way to introduce somebody, etiquette, so they have an etiquette meal where they actually sit down, a full meal and they learn how to conduct themselves in a professional environment because I'm sure you know Jeff that there are always interviews, sometimes those interviews are sitting down with a meal with your future employer, so it's a great opportunity to be able to conduct yourself professionally, it makes it even more likely for you to get that job. Also it's good to be professional and to have that proper etiquette because you're going to be amongst peers, whether they're your fellow co-workers, or friends, family, maybe you volunteer in an organization, it's great to have that etiquette because it puts you even higher up on the bar of success. Jeff: I attended something very similar to that and I remember they said, your bread is not a mop and turn your phone off, and pay all your attention to the person, it's not about the food mostly, it's about the interview so to say, or the person that you're attending with. Rob: That is correct. Jeff: And then they went through, start from the, just like on the Titanic, start with the outside silver and wake work your way in, so there's a lot of information there that people are kind of expected to know, but if you haven't had the opportunity to learn it, Blind and Socially Savvy that you guys provide here, is awesome! Rob: Yeah and we didn't do it ourselves, we did it along with State Services for the Blind, we worked well with them and Sheila Koenig who's the coordinator for transition for SSB, she worked really well with Dan Wenzel the executive director here, and Michelle Get, who coordinates our transition programs. Jeff: And you do have a lot of programs here and opportunities that you mentioned early and it's really neat to see all the stuff that's happening from the summer to prep to like I said you cover the whole gauntlet here. Rob: Yep we also are starting a new program, it's our College Programming or I like to call it College Prep and what it is is students come in maybe they don't want to do a full six to nine month program but they want to come in and get some of those non-visual adjustment to blindness skills. So they'll come in for a summer, get that training, and if they're new to going to college we actually have a college class component that would start in the fall where they could take a class and still continue to get some adjustment to blindness skills, we would work with them on navigating a campus, and specifically that campus, and we would also work with them on study skills, note-taking skills, all of the the skills necessary to be successful in college. I know when I first started college I was absolutely terrified and I think even now with, with the technology being the way it is, back then you know if you had a computer you were lucky, but nowadays there's phones, there's Braille displays, there's lots of different technology out there that we would be able to work with students on so that they are fully competent and capable to be successful in college so that they can be employable in the future. Jeff: And being able to use that equipment on day one! Rob: Exactly, I mean that's, I think that's a really good point Jeff, you don't want to start, get your technology September first when you start at the class in late August and then have to learn how to use it while taking classes at the same time. We like to work with students early so that they have those skills when they start the college class, that they are able to know how to use their technology, take the best notes possible so that they can be self-sufficient. [Music] Jeff: Rob Hobson thank you very much for what Blind Incorporated does here in Minneapolis and across the nation because other students come from other states and you guys give them an opportunity to succeed, give them skills and the confidence to do so. What advice would you give to someone who has recently become blind visually impaired or has trouble reading the printed word, and what advice would you give them as they start that journey? Rob: I would say keep an open mind, blindness is probably the one of the most terrifying disabilities out there, and really it's because of the unknown, it's a sighted world out there, people perceive through what they see, but keep an open mind because there is a lot of life after blindness. I lost my vision I, I wasn't fully sighted but when I did have some vision I lost it pretty quickly due to a retinal detachment and, and that's a long journey itself, but I know what it's like, it's tough, but what I can tell you is working with State Services for the Blind, figure out your options, whether it's Blind Incorporated, VLR, or Duluth Lighthouse, get that adjustment to blindness training because it is vital for you to be able to compete out there with your sighted peers and really that adjustment to blindness training is what's going to put you on that same platform for success. Learn those skills, know how to cook, clean, learn to read Braille, technology, cane travel, because you got to be able to get there on your own. You can always use Uber and Lyft but I can tell you that stuff's expensive, I know I look at my bank account every month, not that I use it every day but I use it just for quick things, it's expensive, so you're not going to be able to do that all the time, so you've got to pick up those, you know learn those non-visual skills that you can travel independently. Remember that blindness is not a tragedy. I like to say blindness is what you make of it, you can look at it as a tragedy, or you can look at it as, you know what, this is a new challenge, and I'm here to overcome it. Jeff: So Rob, if someone want to get a hold of you or Blind Incorporated, do you have any contact information? Rob: Sure do, you can call our main number 612-872-0100, and ask for Jennifer Wenzels, she handles our intake. You can also ask for me, I'm happy to talk to you if you have any questions, my extension is 220, and Jennifer's extension is 251. We also if you like email, you can send an email to info@blindinc.org. Jeff: info@blindinc.org, well Rob thank you once again for taking the time, sharing your story, sharing your experience with the listeners and, really appreciate it. Rob: Oh you're welcome Jeff, it was a pleasure. [Music] Jeff: Yes it was a real pleasure talking to Rob Hobson, and if you want a contact Blind Incorporated, send them an email at info@blindinc.org, on the web at blindinc.org, and to find out more about State Services for the Blind check us out on the web at www.mn.gov/deed/ssb, and to find services in your state check out American Foundation for the Blind's website at AFB.org. And Thank You Chee Chau for the beautiful music and you can follow Chee Chau on Twitter at lcheechau. Once again, thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time bye-bye [Music] [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, We can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff: For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.  

FCB 2018: A Tour Around The Convention’s Exhibitors and More! Again this year, blind Abilities was present at the Florida Council for the Blind Annual Convention, FCB 2018. Join Pete Lane as he grabs some interviews with vendors and participants at the convention. The vendors include: * Emerald Coast Vision Aids, located in Pensacola, Florida. Mike Hage speaks about his products: a variety of low vision and blindness devices and equipment available through numerous well-known national vendors, You can check out their web site at: emeraldcoastvisionaids.com Or give Mike a call at: 850-473-8081 * Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB), located in St. Augustine, Florida. Justin Keller chats about the various programs and courses offered to both Florida residents and nonresidents in this respected state school in beautiful old-city St. Augustine, Florida. www.fsdb.k12.fl.us/ * Cheryl Spencer joins the team with an interview with Barry Scheuer of Guidelights and Gadgets, who provides unique, hard to find merchandise for the blind. Listen to examples of the products that Barry brings to as many as twelve blindness conventions each year. Check out his web site: www.guidelightsandgadgets.us * Paul Odem’s Opals and Gems, owned and run by Paul and Patty Odem, offers fine gems, mostly opals, along with unusual pieces purchased from Estate sales and the like. They attend various blindness conventions and you can give them a call to chat about what inventory they have: 407-497-9938 * Join Pete as he chats again this year with Doug towns, with Votec Corp, makers of voting and voter-registration technology. Doug was in Jacksonville last year touting a survey for blind and visually impaired voters, the results of which have facilitated the development of the current voter technology that Doug brought to the convention. Listen to a sample of the speech output and capabilities of this technology, check out Votec and indicate where you live and would like to see it adopted in your polling place, on their web site: www.votecd4a.com Pete spent some time with the local Jacksonville, Florida chapter of the ACB who hosted the state convention. They provided a nice lunch and plenty of hospitality! Listen as Pete chats with several members and as they give a loud “Hello” to blind Abilities! Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.