Podcasts about reasonable accommodation

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.This episode is part of my initiative to provide access to important court decisions  impacting employees in an easy to understand conversational format using AI.  The speakers in the episode are AI generated and frankly sound great to listen to.  Enjoy!A landmark legal decision has just reshaped our understanding of workplace disability accommodations. On March 25, 2025, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District fundamentally changes how we interpret the Americans with Disabilities Act, establishing that employees may qualify for reasonable accommodations even when they can technically perform their job without them.We break down Angel Tudor's journey—a teacher whose request to leave campus during prep periods to manage her PTSD symptoms was denied, despite having previously received this accommodation. The conflict emerged when a new administration implemented a blanket policy against leaving school grounds, prioritizing standardized operations over individual needs. While Tudor could technically teach without these breaks, she maintained they were crucial for managing her disability and maintaining her wellbeing.The fascinating legal battle hinges on interpretation of the ADA's specific language. The initial district court ruled that since Tudor could perform her essential job functions, she wasn't entitled to accommodation. But the Second Circuit emphatically disagreed, focusing on the critical phrase "with or without reasonable accommodation" in the law. Their interpretation opens new possibilities for workplace equity, recognizing that accommodations may address pain and other disability effects even when basic job performance is possible.This case exposes the tension between employers' desire for standardized policies and their obligation to accommodate individual employees with disabilities. It raises profound questions about moving beyond minimal compliance toward creating genuinely inclusive environments where everyone can contribute their best work. Whether you're an employer, employee, or simply interested in workplace rights, this ruling provides a powerful framework for understanding what true accessibility looks like in practice. If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Advocating for yourself when experiencing harm in the workplace can be hard and confusing, but it can also open the door to something so much better. In this episode, Whitney sits down with Noris Chavarria, a queer, gay, Latino, consultant and coach to discuss Noris's experience with self-advocacy.In this powerful episode, Noris shares his experience feeling subject to harassment based on his sexual orientation and documented new diagnosis of ADHD. Facing an environment fraught with bullying, and where is request for reasonable accommodations were denied, Noris was compelled to take legal action and eventually leave his job.Noris opens up about the emotional toll of dealing with his workplace, the barriers he faced in seeking legal remedies, and the journey towards his newfound mission: empowering others who face similar struggles. He discusses the complexities of navigating employment law, even in California, and the importance of support programs for those feeling marginalized and unheard.Listeners will gain invaluable insights into Noris's path to advocacy and entrepreneurship through his consulting and coaching business, Noris Knows, which serves LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color. Whitney and Noris also explore the broader implications of systemic workplace issues on mental and physical health and the importance of recognizing personal autonomy.This episode is part of our anti-discrimination mini-series and shines a light on the lack of legal protections in workplace bullying cases and the various barriers people experience when attempting to find support and legal protection. Although what Noris experienced may not amount to legal harassment or discrimination (we don't know), his experiences led to workplace trauma that had very real impact on his health, mental health, and his capacity to work in the environment. Part of the trouble is meeting a legal standard of proof required to show harassment or discrimination occurred. For this reason, when possible it can be helpful to speak to advocates and attorneys to learn about how we can best support ourselves, and to get help navigating these systems. Make sure to tune in to episodes 49 and 51 to learn more about how advocates and attorneys can help, and what to do to prepare for this type of experience. Don't miss this episode of the "Impostrix Podcast," available now on the Alive podcast network app.Connect with Noris on IG @queercompass and @SocialArtivista, and at www.norisknows.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @ImpostrixPodcast for the latest updates and join our conversation.Listen ad-free by subscribing to Impostrix Podcast on the ALIVE Podcast App.Thanks Chris @DigitalREM for editing this episode!

**This podcast was recorded March  20, 2023**DRNY Senior Staff Attorney, Jessica Richwalder, Esq. discusses work from home as a reasonable accommodation, how to submit a request to your employer, and the steps needed to file a complaint if your request is denied.*Show Notes*Fact Sheet-"Reasonable Accommodation for Employment": https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yb8qunnu5d3dxs/reasonable-accommodation-employment.pdf?dl=0Support the Show.To view the video of this episode with closed captioning, ASL interpretation, and/or Spanish subtitles, visit our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0L4INYxuDLx8b8oFTpaXbe42NLmZBKDY.(The views, information, or opinions expressed during the "Empire State of Rights" podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Disability Rights New York.)

This week, legal rights and diabetes have come a long way – but as the technology changes, so have some of the challenges. What happens when a school refuses to use CGM technology? I'm talking to two attorneys this week who have actionable advice and the law on their side. The Dept of Justice has already ruled on this in one state, in a decision that has nationwide impact. Bonnie Roswig is an attorney with the small non profit Center for Children's Advocacy which focuses on addressing legal needs of vulnerable children. Jonathan Chappel lives with type 1 and is a private practice lawyer in Connecticut. They recently filed an administrative complaint with DOJ in the Eastern district of VA, with more to come. They've also created a template for families, on their own to download, complete, and file on their own: Here's more information for parents This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Don't miss our Diabetes Summer Camp Webinar this week! Find out more about Moms' Night Out  Please visit our Sponsors & Partners - they help make the show possible! Learn more about Gvoke Glucagon Gvoke HypoPen® (glucagon injection): Glucagon Injection For Very Low Blood Sugar (gvokeglucagon.com) Omnipod - Simplify Life Learn about Dexcom  Edgepark Medical Supplies Check out VIVI Cap to protect your insulin from extreme temperatures Learn more about AG1 from Athletic Greens  Drive research that matters through the T1D Exchange The best way to keep up with Stacey and the show is by signing up for our weekly newsletter: Sign up for our newsletter here Here's where to find us: Facebook (Group) Facebook (Page) Instagram Twitter Check out Stacey's books! Learn more about everything at our home page www.diabetes-connections.com  Reach out with questions or comments: info@diabetes-connections.com

In this podcast, Charles Thompson (co-chair of the firm's Leaves of Absence/Reasonable Accommodation Practice Group) sits down with Stacy Bunck (shareholder, Kansas City) and John Stretton (office managing shareholder, Stamford) to discuss three new reasonable accommodation decisions brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They cover aspects of the litigation regarding remote work and whether applicants are qualified for a position. Charles, Stacy, and John also cover the courts' emphasis on the duties and essential functions of the job in considering whether a requested accommodation is reasonable.

Monday, January 22nd, 2024Today, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race as New Hampshire gets ready to go to the polls; the DC Bar authority has filed charges against Trump 2020 election lawyers; newspapers were stolen in Colorado after reporting a rape allegation; Wayne LaPierre's lawyers contend his brain is shrinking and can't stand trial in New York; the Capitol Police investigated more than 8000 threats against lawmakers last year. Plus Allison and Dana deliver your good news.Promo CodeFor 20% off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners! Go to https://www.helxsleep.com/dailybeans and use code HELIXPARTNER20.Newspapers Stolen After Reporting on Rape Investigation at Police Chief's Homehttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/newspaper-stolen-ouray-colorado.htmlCapitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats against lawmakers last yearhttps://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/capitol-police-investigated-8000-threats-lawmakers-last-year-rcna134590DC bar authorities file disciplinary charges against pro-Trump 2020 election lawyershttps://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/19/dc-trump-2020-election-lawyers-00136667NRA Leader Wayne LaPierre's Brain Is Shrinking: Doctorshttps://www.businessinsider.com/nra-leader-wayne-lapierres-brain-is-shrinking-doctors-2024-1How We Win The House 2024!https://swingleft.org/fundraise/howwewin2024Want some sweet Daily Beans Merchhttps://shop.dailybeanspod.com/products/fani-t-willis-teeSubscribe to Lawyers, Guns, And MoneyAd-free premium feed: https://lawyersgunsandmoney.supercast.comSubscribe for free everywhere else:https://lawyersgunsandmoney.simplecast.com/episodes/1-miami-1985Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://post.news/@/MuellerSheWrote?utm_source=TwitterAG&utm_medium=creator_organic&utm_campaign=muellershewrote&utm_content=FollowMehttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://www.threads.net/@muellershewrotehttps://www.tiktok.com/@muellershewrotehttps://instagram.com/muellershewroteDana Goldberghttps://twitter.com/DGComedyhttps://www.instagram.com/dgcomedyhttps://www.facebook.com/dgcomedyhttps://danagoldberg.comHave some good news; a confession; or a correction?Good News & Confessions - The Daily BeansFrom the Good NewsIowa Legal Aidhttps://www.iowalegalaid.org Have some good news; a confession; or a correction?Good News & Confessions - The Daily BeansHow We Win The House 2024!https://swingleft.org/fundraise/howwewin2024Want some sweet Daily Beans Merchhttps://shop.dailybeanspod.com/products/fani-t-willis-tee Subscribe to Lawyers, Guns, And MoneyAd-free premium feed: https://lawyersgunsandmoney.supercast.com Subscribe for free everywhere else:https://lawyersgunsandmoney.simplecast.com/episodes/1-miami-1985Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodhttps://www.tiktok.com/@muellershewrotehttps://instagram.com/muellershewrote

Guest: Paige Hoster Good, Attorney and Shareholder with McAfee & Taft What constitute as "reasonable accommodations" under the newly proposed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) regulations? What steps are employers required to take when a qualified employee requests accommodation for a “known limitation” due to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition? Our coverage around the PWFA continues, as McAfee & Taft's Paige Hoster Good joins the HR Works Podcast to discuss the EEOC's recently proposed regulations that are currently subject to a 60-day comment period, ending on October 10, 2023.  An expert in employment law, Paige shares what employers and HR teams need to be aware of in the current regulation proposal and breaks down the PWFA's interpretive guidance on employer responsibilities.

DRNY Senior Staff Attorney, Jessica Richwalder, Esq. discusses work from home as a reasonable accommodation, how to submit a request to your employer, and the steps needed to file a complaint if your request is denied.*Show Notes*Fact Sheet-"Reasonable Accommodation for Employment": https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yb8qunnu5d3dxs/reasonable-accommodation-employment.pdf?dl=0Support the showTo view the video of this episode with closed captioning, ASL interpretation, and/or Spanish subtitles, visit our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/DisabilityRightsNewYork.(The views, information, or opinions expressed during the "Empire State of Rights" podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Disability Rights New York.)

Join us as we discuss workplace romance and the effects it can have on your office.HR Seminar: ADA Reasonable Accommodation What is a Reasonable Accommodation under the ADA? Join us for this HR Seminar on February 28, 2023!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Join us as we discuss Rage Applying - a TikTok take on a not-so-new trend.HR Seminar: ADA Reasonable Accommodation What is a Reasonable Accommodation under the ADA? Join us for this HR Seminar on February 28, 2023!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

“Sometimes something tragic can shake us all up and shock our potential to see what we're capable of.” Betsy Cerulo Regardless of what you have gone through professionally or personally, there is always another opportunity to shake off the dust and get back on the path that leads to success. Betsy Cerulo has been guiding people to overcome adversities and believes that, it is the action that we take that leads us to the quality of life that we seek. In 1990, Betsy Cerulo founded AdNet/AccountNet, Inc., a Baltimore based company with a powerful mission of being “Advocates for Workplace Excellence & Equality”. AdNet is a Professional Staffing & Executive Search firm focused on providing exemplary Human Capital Management services to government and corporate clients throughout the United States. AdNet places subject matter experts with Accounting/Finance, Human Resources and Legal expertise. Since 2011, AdNet excels at identifying and managing teams of individuals who provide Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance Services, as well as Reasonable Accommodation assistants who handle administrative tasks for government and corporate employees who are blind or deaf. The company is 8a, LGBTE and WBE certified. Betsy is the Co-Founder and Past President of the Maryland LGBT Chamber of Commerce, which successfully launched in 2017 and was awarded Rising Star Chamber in 2018 by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. In 2021, Betsy and eight community leaders founded the Maryland LGBT Foundation, which is a 501c3/non-profit entity, working in partnership with the Maryland LGBT Chamber. Betsy serves as the Board President. The Foundation generates resources and works to activate, educate and mobilize the LGBTQ+ community to access opportunity and wealth generation. She also serves on the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce certification committee, which verifies that eligible businesses are majority owned by LGBT individuals. This certified LGBT Business Enterprise designation allows businesses to better compete for corporate contracts. Betsy is a member of the Women's President's Organization, which is a global peer advisory group for female CEO's. Betsy is a passionate activist pushing for equity and equal rights for women and all diverse groups. Betsy is the author of Shake It Off Leadership-Achieving Success Through the Eyes of our Labels and a children's book, Miss Crabapple and Her Magical Violin, which tells a story of how the quietest child in a group can light up dreams when we ask questions. She is also a contributing author of two compilations Women Living Consciously and Keys to Conscious Business Growth. In today's episode, Betsy talks about how she helps people bring out the best in them and showcase their potential during interviews. She also talks about her books and the motivation behind writing them. Listen in! Social Media Handles www.betsycerulo.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsycerulo/ https://www.instagram.com/betsy_cerulo/ https://www.facebook.com/bcerulo Books:  Shake It Off Leadership-Achieving Success Through the Eyes of our Labels  Miss Crabapple and Her Magical Violin  A lot of times when we're working with people and with companies to identify talent, we interview people in a way that's helping them bring out the best in them. We're all taking a deeper dive into what work looks like, and discovering that we can do business differently. There are ways that people can ask the probing questions that may not put somebody on the defensive. It takes confidence to ask questions because if you have someone that's afraid, no matter what the venue is, they're still going to be afraid to ask some questions. With the way the workplace is, we have to take some more risks as leaders. It takes years and a lot of work to develop a great company culture. It is important to handle problems as they arise otherwise they will explode. Commercial break There needed to be more books written by women on leadership on the shelves, whatever shelf it is. If this world is going to change, we have to give the up and coming generations the roadmap. The world is setting itself up where the younger generations are actually at the forefront making change. By writing this book, I wanted to share my journey and let people learn from my mistakes. I also wanted to teach people that when they are looking for their coaches or mentors, not everyone's a good fit. From the very beginning of my professional life, I had amazing men and women who guided me to my success. With Covid-19 pandemic, there was an increased level of focus again with being remote and it expanded a lot of possibilities for us. Sometimes something tragic can shake us all up and shock our potential to see what we're capable of. Miss Crab Apples came out of a Saturday night story to my granddaughter when she was six years old. I love to write for children because when you do that you just get to be in that incredible imagination game which is a great place to be. By putting more books like that out there, our grandkids get to have a chance to see what a good conversation is. Shake it off, be good to yourself, pat yourself on the back, and never ever give up. ………………………………………………… Do you want to be a go to expert that news reporters, anchors and media producers turn to? Are you a media professional looking for credible, reliable and timely guests? Shock Your Media Potential is here for you. Shock Your Media Potential is a one of a kind platform that connects vetted experts with news professionals around the globe. As part of the launch of the platform, CEO Michael Sherlock, along with co-host Eddie Luisi, stage manager for Good Morning America, have interviewed 25 media personalities and professionals to ask them the questions you need to know the answers to in order to become more newsworthy, pitch your story better, and get invited back again and again, and much more. Some of their guests are household names, with exceptional on-camera careers. Others are award-winning directors, producers, camera operators, audio engineers, celebrity hair and makeup professionals, and so much more. To learn more about our platform and our conference today, go to https://www.shockyourmediapotential.com

In this episode of KC Connect, Ibec experts Fergus Dwyer and Peter Flood discuss reasonable accommodation and what it means in practice for employers.Featuring contributions from an experienced panel of Ibec employer and industrial relations professionals, KC Connect provides expert advice on some of the most common challenges for employers.  With decades of shared experience our Ibec experts provide real insight and practical advice. 

Understanding the law surrounding support and assistive animals is crucial when being an effective and law abiding landlord.  David Pickron and Mark Zinman, attorney with Zona Law, discuss some of the specifics you must adhere to when it comes to these situations.

Duncan Giles & Larry Lannan talk about the Reasonable Accommodation process for those arguing they cannot come into the office due to health concerns, how employees with health high risks are defined, an important IT issue and much more, in this week's podcast

Understanding the law surrounding support and assistive animals is crucial when being an effective and law abiding landlord.  David Pickron and Mark Zinman, attorney with Zona Law, discuss some of the specifics you must adhere to when it comes to these situations.

Attorney Tim Baldwin discusses the importance of property managers developing their process and procedures for all aspects of the property management business. On this episode, Tim discusses Notices, Request for Reasonable Accommodation, Tenant Maintenance Requests, and Inspections. 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Mississippi Valley Division (MVD) Commanding General Maj. Gen. Diana Holland hosted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Virtual Forum on July 15, 2021. The topic for the forum was ‘In the Valley: The Reasonable Accommodation Process', and panelists included Stacy Sigman, Natural Resource Manager for the Vicksburg District Lake Ouachita Field Office, Willie Day, MVD Equal Employee Opportunity (EEO) Manager, and Rachal Deahl, Rock Island District EEO Manager This particular discussion focused on the panelists' individual roles associated with the RA process. Topics included how to request a RA, a supervisor's responsibility, the Disability Program Manager's role, an actual real example of a RA request that was processed, and RA's related to COVID.

In this podcast, Catherine Downing of Downing Van Dyke PC in Framingham provides a 15-minute overview of the various federal and state laws that govern requests for reasonable accommodation in housing. It’s just one lecture from MCLE’s 5/12/2020 program, Reasonable Accommodations in Housing Demystified. The full program is available as an on demand webcast or an MP3 here. https://www.mcle.org/product/catalog/code/2200248WBA Get 24/7 instant access to hundreds of related eLectures like this one—and more—with a subscription to the MCLE OnlinePass. Learn more at www.mcle.org/onlinepass.

Please Join The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’ online for our 23rd Annual Examining Conflicts In Employment Laws Conference also known as EXCEL being held this year August 4th through August 6th. Register at https://eeotraining.eeoc.gov

Every Wednesday from 10:15 iKwekwezi FM dedicates a slot where it meets and talks to people living with disabled. Insights, advises and wisdom is share to the various communities.

Kevin O’Neill and Brendan Cournane join Chief for the opening segment to discuss ‘reasonable accommodation’ as it pertains to the furloughed and unemployed returning to work. Kevin sticks around for another segment to talk MLB’s 82-game season proposal and much more. Russell Rhoads calls in for hour two talking ETFs, government spending and devalued currency.

During this 7 minute micro-learning Anupa Iyer, U.S. EEOC Workforce Analyst walks listeners through identifying a reasonable accommodation in the workplace and discusses the interactive process.

In this 11 minute Micro-Learning Moment, Christopher Kuczynski, Former U.S. EEOC Assistant Legal Counsel, discusses the three most important things that employees and employers should know about telework as reasonable accommodation.

Join one of Mental Health News Radio Network's podcasters, Dawn Westmoreland of The Empowered Whistleblower podcast with guest, JR Reed. Can you imagine being diagnosed as a highly Autistic functioning person? JR Reed who is a Lead Editor for the Good Men Project talks about being autistic, how he is advocating for others with disabilities in our podcast interview. We both discuss how to stand up for yourself if you are being harassed in the workplace and how to request a Reasonable Accommodation for getting hired or to enjoy the benefits of employment. We add in a lot of humor during our discussion.You can learn more about JR here:https://www.notweirdjustautistic.com (web site)https://www.facebook.com/notweirdjustautistic (FB page)

Nadine O. Vogel, MBA, CSP, CSPGlobal Chief Executive Officer Springboard Consulting LLC ® __________dive in with precision 973-813-7260 nadine@consultspringboard.com Springboard in the News Q&A: How to Use Your Company's Intranet to Bolster Compliance with New Federal Requirements on Employing Workers with Disabilities Persons with Disabilities – A Worldwide Underutilized Resource Making Meetings Accessible and Inclusive for AlI Dive-In Springboard into the Profitability, Productivity, and Potential of the Special Needs Workforce Interested in Nadine's book, "DIVE IN“? Many clients purchase the book to reinforce these most important issues and as a compliment to Nadine's presentations. The book is also a great resource for training, in observation of October's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, or for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3rd. Available Now! Click here for more about the book "Dive In" What Others Are Saying "Education and technology are the two great equalizers in life, leveling the playing field for everyone, especially the disabled. DIVE IN provides..." John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco "At KPMG, we are committed to an inclusive culture that supports diversity and values the perspectives and experiences of all our people, including, as Dive In points out..." John B. Veihmeyer, CEO, KPMG LLP www.consultspringboard.com Help us reach our goal via Global Giving for The Springboard Foundation; to learn more and donate >> https://goto.gg/26119https:/ Scholarships to College Students with Disabilities by Springboard Foundation Summary This project's goal is to provide scholarships to contribute to the increase in employment opportunities for college students with disabilities. This project will provide 8 general scholarships to full-time college students who have documented disabilities of any type. The qualified student must be a full-time student currently attending a four-year college or university during the year. In addition, must have already completed 24-credits and a GPA 3.0 or above. Challenge The mission of this Foundation is to provide scholarships to college students who have documented disabilities. Approximately 11% of college freshman last year were such students. Since society has still not caught up with the realization that people with disabilities can and do go to college though typically with many more constraints than the typical college student, scholarships of this nature do not exist. Solution This project will help corporations and organizations to become more aware of the opportunities to hire outstanding academically college students with disabilities to work in their company's professional positions. Long-Term Impact With the "silver tsunami" of an aging workforce, corporations are looking for new sources for talent. This segment of the population is growing at a huge rate and will provide a tremendous talent pool as long as they have the education required. Additional Documentation This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf). Resources http:/​/​www.thespringboardfoundation.org The first 10 college scholarship recipients Blog    View our latest posts 2017 Disability Matters Keynote Speaker: Scott Burrows Help The Springboard Foundation meet its Goal Starting today #GivingTuesday! Mental Health in The Workplace: It Matters Company Fired Temporary Agency Staff Member and Failed to Hire Her for Full-Time Position Because of Association with a Child with Disabilities Leave as a Reasonable Accommodation for Employees with Disabilities

The case of the fleeing miscreant written and narrated by New York Employment Lawyer David H. Rosenberg. On this latest installment of the New York Employment Lawyer series, we explore a recent case involving alleged disability discrimination at work for an employee with high blood pressure who claims to have been retaliated against for requesting a reasonable accommodation. If you are or someone you know is suffering at work, please contact us at (516) 741-0300 and visit us online at www.employeelawnewyork.com. Problems at work are no problem for us. We at The Law Office of David H. Rosenberg, P.C. are sensitive to the needs of all employees. That is, we cover all aspects of employment law including discrimination on account of gender, pregnancy, age, disability, national origin, religion, color, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, as well as retaliation for complaining about discrimination and labor law violations such as minimum wage, maximum wage, and overtime claims. Suffering from discrimination? Retaliation? Unlawful termination? We understand the importance of your job and the implications of being fired or demoted for the wrong reason. If you were fired illegally, you may be able to sue your former employer for monetary compensation to cover your damages and to protect others from similar discrimination and retaliation. At our free consultations, we will tell you your rights and determine if your firing was legal or illegal. Contact The Law Office of David H. Rosenberg P.C. at (516) 741-0300 and online at www.employeelawnewyork.com We are top New York Employment Attorneys who protect employee rights to work in a hostile free environment. #newyorkemploymentlawyer #newyorkemploymentlawyers #employmentlawyernewyork #employmentlawyersnewyork #queensemploymentlawyer #queensemploymentlawyers #employmentlawyerqueens #employmentlawyersqueens #brooklynemploymentlawyers #brooklynemploymentlawyer #employmentlawyerbrooklyn #statenislandemploymentlawyer #statenislandemploymentlawyers #employmentlawyerstatenisland #emplolymentlawyerstatenisland #bronxemploymentlawyer #bronxemploymentlawyers #employmentlawyerbronx #employmentlawyersbronx #newyorksexualharassmentlawyer #newyorksexualharassmentlawyers #newyorkharassmentlawyer #longislandemploymentlawyer #longislandemploymentlawyers #employmentlawyerslongisland #metoolawyer #harassmentlawyer #workplaceharassmentlawyer #workplacebullying #nycjoblawyer #longislandjoblawyer #newyorkemploymentattorney #newyorklaborattorney #newyorklaborlawyer #bronxsexualharassmentlawyer #bronxracialdiscriminationlawyer #newyorkdiscriminationlawyer #newyorkdiscriminationlawyers #newyorkdiscriminationattorney #newyorkdiscriminationattorneys #discriminationlawyerslongisland #longislanddiscriminationlawywer #longislanddiscriminationlawyers #nassaucountyemploymentlawyer #suffolkcountryempoymentlawyer #hostileworkenviornmentattorneys #laborlawyerslongisland #newyorkcityjoblawyers #newyorkcityjobattorney #manhattanemploymentlawyer #manhattanemploymentlawyers #manhattansexualharassmentlawyer #manhattansexualharassmentlawyers #employmentlawyersmanhattan #longislandsexualharassmentattorney #longislandsexualharassmentattorneys #employmentlawyernearme #employmentlawyernearmenow #mineolaemploymentlawyer #employmentlawyermineola #employmentattorneymineola #mineolaemploymentattorneys #nassaucountysexualharassmentlawyers #sexualharassmentlawyersnassaucounty #nassaulaborlawyer #suffolklabaorlawyer #nassauemploymentlawyer #suffolkemploymentlawyer #newyorkretaliationlawyer #manhattanretaliationlawyer #statenislandretaliationlawyer #bronxretaliationlawyer #queensretaliationlawyer #nassauretaliationlawyer #nassaucountyretaliationlawyer #suffolkretaliationlawyer #suffolkcountyretaliationlawyers #newyorkemploymentlawyervideoseries

Today we take a listener question on Reasonable accommodation in the workplace and what is "Reasonable" and what is not. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Stitcher! Enjoy and until next time, Be Audit Secure!

Show Summary: (Full Transcript Below) Jim Barbour is a dynamic guest who has a wonderful story to share with the Blind Abilities audience. Jim speaks of his blindness, his education and employment, his deeply felt views around independence and his belief in developing and maintaining strong blindness skills. Jim takes us through his high school and college years, where he became involved with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), to which he accredits his independent mindset, and his almost fearless approach towards life and its challenges. Jim shares his experience seeking new jobs and  divulging his blindness to prospective employers.   Jim has put his computer programming talents to worked with various tech companies including Qualcomm, google and Yahoo, recently completing an oversees assignment in Ireland.   He is an Aira user and describes how the service can work as a Reasonable Accommodation in the workplace, as well as helping him acclimate to a new country oversees.   Finally, listen as Jim shares his advice for blind students who are aspiring towards college and/or employment. Join Jeff Thompson and Pete Lane as they engage in a fascinating conversation with this tremendous guest, as only Blind Abilities can!   You can find Jim on Facebook, and reach out to him via email. 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: A Conversation With Jim Barbour - Fiercely and Fearlessly Independent, and Well-Spoken Advocate Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. Pete Lane: And I'm Pete Lane. Our guest this morning is Jim Barbour. We'll be talking with Jim today about a variety of topics ranging from his visual condition, his education, his transition to college and the workplace, and his views on blindness and independence. Jim Barbour: When I was high school, my dad an Apple III computer, and I was able to use it and get it to do what I wanted it to do. I decided that computers would probably be a fun way for me to make a living. In 1988, I took time off to be one of the first students of the Colorado Center for the Blind, which actually did an awful lot to kind of strengthen and tighten my own confidence in my belief in myself. I have had several jobs, including working for a company called Qualcomm, and I worked for Google for several years, and I worked for a couple years in a company call Yahoo. The transition was mostly just me needing to learn a lot about how to advocate for myself and manage my own resources a lot better. Jim Barbour: People need to learn to do this, and it's better to learn to do it early because when you go off and get a job somewhere, there aren't people waiting around to kind of take care of this stuff for you. The question that comes up a lot around looking for jobs is, when do you disclose about your blindness? The one thing that also happened there was that no one asked me anything about my blindness, and that really seemed like a bit of a red flag to me. Jim Barbour: I really kind of felt like, if they don't know anything about my blindness, it's gonna be really easy for them to just decide that it isn't work the risk. They understand the problem, but it's just such a hard problem to fight. The inertia will take you in inaccessible directions unless you fight it really hard. Don't let yourself go down this inaccessible road because you'll make it really hard to hire blind people in the future. Jim Barbour: I think that Ira's absolutely gonna be an invaluable tool for people in the workforce, and in fact, Aira knows that. Aira helped me quite a bit to get accommodated. I also took a couple weeks off and went traveling around Europe. Again, Aira was just very helpful in allowing to very quickly orient myself to a neighborhood. Aira is much more efficient at that than what I used to do, which is to just ask people for directions. Jim Barbour: The biggest advice I can give them is that a nobody's gonna look out for you but you. You need to decide that it is up to you to get the things that you need in this world. I think I am adventurous I enjoy that. I'm a very happy, very lucky blind person. Pete Lane: And now let's meet our guest, Jim Barbour. Pete Lane: Good morning, Jim, welcome to Blind Abilities. Jim Barbour: Good morning, Pete. Good morning, Jeff. Thank you for having me. Jeff Thompson: Good morning, Jim. Pete Lane: Our pleasure. Jim why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your visual condition? Jim Barbour: I was born with an underdeveloped optic nerve. I found out as a grown up that they called it optic nerve hypoplasia. I never spent a lot of time trying to figure out about a cure or anything like that. It was a condition I had. It left me with partial vision in both eyes. When I was growing up in the '70s, they actually did not teach me Braille. They got me how to read large prints and how to use a closed circuit TV even though they were sort of very fatiguing and very challenging for me. But that's how I did a lot of my schoolwork. When I got into high school, I started learning how to use readers, so that's kind of a little bit about my visual condition, and a little bit about what it's done for me. Jim Barbour: I graduated from high school in the early '80s, and went to the University of Colorado at Boulder where Marci Carpenter and a gentleman named Homer Page ran the Disability Student Services Office. They were actually very strong NFB folks who insisted that blind people manage their own readers, and in my case since I was in computer science, they actually insisted that I find my own readers because I needed to find people who could read the advanced math and the computer science that I needed. I would go and look for them and hire them, and on occasion fire them because either they weren't doing what I needed in a timely manner, or they actually didn't know how to read the material, or they wouldn't follow my instructions in reading the material. Jim Barbour: I was in college for actually a very long time. I did not follow the four year in and out program. I was struggling a bit to finish some classes, and had to take a few classes over again. In the middle of all that, in 1988, I took time off to go be one of the first students for the Colorado Center for the Blind's, which actually did an awful lot to kind of strengthen and tighten my own confidence in my belief in myself and my NFB philosophy. Jim Barbour: I did that for seven months. I left there and went back to school. Still didn't finish, but did a much better job of taking classes and stuff. Then a couple years later, I left there and started my career as an IT, Unix IT person, and I have had several jobs since then including working for a company called Qualcomm twice, and I worked for Google for several years in the middle. I worked for a couple years at a company called Yahoo!, which most of you probably heard of as well. Pete Lane: Jim, you studied computer science with a heavy emphasis on math courses. What drew you to computer science? Jim Barbour: When I was in high school my dad had an Apple III computer, and I was able to use it by putting the monitor really close to my face, and then later by using the original OutSPOKEN program for the Mac, but it was just a way that I got to play with a cool toy, and get it to do what I wanted it to do. It was certainly a lot of fun for me as a high school kid. I decided that computers would probably be a fun way for me to make a living. Jim Barbour: Later on in high school, I was part of a summer work program for blind people, and I got a job learning how to do basic Unix computer stuff at the University, again using large print, and having the monitor really close to my face. Nobody really understood about screen-reading technology for Unix systems at that time. I got to learn to do a lot of that. It was a lot of fun, and I had a lot of people around me who weren't really sure how I would do things as a blind person, but we kind of figured it out together. Jim Barbour: Later when I started going to NFB conventions, my first NFB convention was my senior year of high school. When I started going there, I met a bunch of other blind people who were into computer science, and who showed me a bunch of different technologies for accessing computers. I kind of got solidified on the idea that this was actually something I could do, and had spent a lot of time in college both doing work and coursework to kind of build up my skills, and decide this was a job I really enjoyed, and would do well at. Jeff Thompson: Jim, what was some of your first technology that you used? I know you used the early Mac, but once you decided to give up on the large print, what did you migrate into? Jim Barbour: I actually never did give up on large print. I still use large print for some things, but I also use Artic's Business Vision and progressed on to different screen readers, of course, eventually landing with JAWS, and then later, of course, when the iPhone came out, I used that with VoiceOver. Jim Barbour: What I have sort of decided to do is a lot of the work I do is just work I do in a terminal, in a command prompt, and so for work like that using large print works just fine for me. When I need to go visit busy complicated websites with different font sizes and where there's a lot of reading involved, then I will use a screen reader of one kind or another. Jim Barbour: One thing I actually never got particularly good at was using magnification technology, like zoom and so on. What I generally did is if I could tell the program to give me a bigger font size, I would do it because I found that to be a much better experience, and if not then I switched primarily to using a screen reader. Jeff Thompson: When you transitioned from high school and decided to go to college, how did you prepare for that? Jim Barbour: I didn't. College was a huge wake up call for me. High school had been a relatively easy time in my life where I had materials prepared for me, where things were either recorded for me or made readable for me in large print, and I didn't have to worry about a lot of that stuff. Then I moved onto college, whereas I said the Disabled Students Office had pretty high expectations of their blind students. They insisted that I get readers to do recording. Back then, of course, it was all recording onto cassettes, and also get readers to take diagrams and other things that needed to be made readable by me and draw them out, either using large pieces of paper, or often I'd sit with them, and they would draw them on a whiteboard. Jim Barbour: This combination of having things enlarged and having things recorded using different readers. But it was a big transition, not only in terms of needing to plan and make sure that all of my materials became accessible in a form I could read, but also just took me longer to study. I just had to allocate a lot more time to doing school work and getting things ready to use. Jim Barbour: The other thing I had to do in college that I didn't have to worry about in high school was arrange for test taking. I would have to go talk with the professor and say, "I won't be able to take the test in class because I'll need someone to read to me." And depending on the kind of test I needed to take my answers, and maybe do my work on a whiteboard. I would have to make arrangements to take the test outside of the class with a proctor from the professor. Jim Barbour: I know these days a lot of that work is done by offered services for disabled students, but at the time the Disabled Students Office I was at insisted that I go make those arrangements. If the professor insisted on talking with the office, the office would talk to them, but basically would say work it out with them. The transition was mostly just me needing to learn a lot about how to advocate for myself, and manage my own resources a lot better than I did in high school. Jeff Thompson: And that's a great thing to have because once you start advocating for yourself, that's a lifelong skill that you can bring with you because you can't bring the disability services with you when you go looking for a job. Jim Barbour: That is an excellent point, and it's true that people need to learn to do this. It's better to learn to do it early because when you go off and get a job somewhere there aren't people waiting around to kind of take care of this stuff for you. You need to know how to do it. Jim Barbour: I also think that you come off much more professionally, and much more competently if you're able to explain to people what you're going to need, and if you're able to explain to them that you'll take care of getting it done, right? If you just sort of show up and say, "Okay, someone's gonna have to take care of this, and someone's gonna have to take care of this, and someone's gonna have to take care of this." That doesn't sound anywhere near as professional as, "Okay, I'm gonna have to make sure this gets done, this gets done, this gets done." People feel much better if they know that you know what needs to happen. Jeff Thompson: Especially during a job interview. Jim Barbour: Yeah, that's right. Pete Lane: Jim, I'm curious, when you had to schedule proctors and administrators for your tests, was that similar in some ways to finding readers in your specialty field, where you had to find somebody who was familiar with the math and the science that you were testing on? Jim Barbour: Similar, but when I went to find readers, I just went and put up notices on bulletin boards in the computer science and math department, basically saying I was looking for somebody who was willing to read math and computer science textbooks out loud. I would train them how to do it, and they would get paid a little bit of money to do it. Getting paid was enough to recruit a bunch of people. I would then sit down with them and I would give them a sheet of special characters, and tell them how I wanted those characters read, and I also showed them some simple math equations and gave examples of how I wanted them to be read. Jim Barbour: I would have them look at it for a couple of minutes, and then I would give them some example reading, and I would sort of see how they would do with the reading. I could tell pretty anyway, even if they didn't get it perfect. I could tell pretty quickly who was gonna pick it up and who wasn't, so that was basically the job interview. Jim Barbour: When it came to taking tests, what I needed to do was to find somebody who could do that reading and writing, but also could be really efficient at it because I was in the middle of taking a test. I had favorite readers I liked to use for those things. Jim Barbour: The other thing is the professor had to be around. The professor and I would sort of negotiate what times would work for me taking the test, and then I would have to find a reader who could sort of meet those times. I would, of course, do everything I could to make sure that my favorite readers were administering the tests. Jim Barbour: I never really thought much about how you could sort of use a system like that to cheat, like I could bring my best friend in to just take the test for me. I never even really considered that that was a problem. I was a pretty upstanding young man, and I brought readers in to do reading, but I realize now that a system like that is a big candidate for abuse. Jim Barbour: Mostly taking place now is that universities kind of pick the readers, and that's a real problem because you don't have any way of vetting the reader, and making sure that they are efficient, and that you and them have a rapport about how you want things read to them. Pete Lane: I would think it's kind of like a dual edged sword where the professor's sitting right there. You really can't conceal your knowledge or lack thereof if he's listening to your interaction with the reader and the writer, if he's right there. Jim Barbour: Well, so generally if I had a reader doing the test, the professor wouldn't be right there. The professor would in another room doing his own thing. It did wind up being the case, on a surprisingly large number of occasions, where the professor would just give me the test. While I was okay with that because the professor knows the material and so I can usually get him to read things in a way that would make sense, it seems like a huge waste of the professor's time. Jim Barbour: The one thing that was often convenient about it was that I often didn't wind up actually having to take the test. The professor and I would sit and talk about the material. He would ask me how I would go about solving it, and I would sort of tell him I would set up the problem this way, and he would go, "Okay, I believe you." Pete Lane: Yeah, I did that a lot too. Jim Barbour: In some cases that's good, and in other cases I think that kind of gave me short shrift on whether I really knew the material or not, but that is often what happened. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, some of these skills that you're developing as you're transitioning from high school to college, how to contact your professor yourself, how to hire and fire your own readers. These are skills that you're gonna take with you. So when people are looking for a job, who have vision loss, are actually developing a lot of skills that employers are looking for. Do you see it that way? Jim Barbour: I do. Not only are you generally more able to kind of handle yourself, have a lot of responsibility, know how to handle responsibility particularly well, know how to manage other people, even if you're not a manager, knowing how to sort of give people work and check up on them. Those are just really good skills to have. Jim Barbour: The question that comes up a lot around looking for jobs is, when do you disclose about your blindness? For me, for most of my life it was a pretty easy question. I didn't disclose until I was in the room with them. I kind of felt like I could do a much better job of managing expectation if I was there, rather than if it was like on my resume, and they had to kind of think about it before they brought me in. Jeff Thompson: And that's a good time to sell yourself too. Jim Barbour: I think that's right. But what has happened a lot before you ever get in the room with somebody, you are asked to take an online exam, or do some other kinds of work that may or may not be accessible to you as a blind person. So, now you have a tougher choice to make. Am I gonna find a reader, and do this inaccessible work myself, or am I gonna let the employer know that I'm a blind person and I'm gonna need some alternate form of exam? Both of which have their good side and their down sides. It's now, I think, a much harder question, but I do think whenever possible, holding that information until you are in a room with the people interviewing you helps a lot. Pete Lane: Now you're transition into the workplace happened back in the late '90s as I understand it, where the internet was either in its infancy, or not even in existence yet. Talk about that and how that might parlay into today's students who are migrating into the workforce looking for jobs. Jim Barbour: The World Wide Web was in its infancy, it didn't really exist. I was actually working as a contractor for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, but I was getting bored there. And so I wanted to look for other work, but the web didn't exist yet, and so you couldn't just go to a job board and look for jobs. There were a couple of important board lists, but what mostly happened was that there were email lists. I got an email one day from a company called Qualcomm out in San Diego. I was in Colorado at the time. They were looking for someone to come and join their team. I thought that sounded like a great idea and a lot of fun. Jim Barbour: I replied back and I said I was interested. They, I think, sent me a couple of programming questions and said, "Can you write some example code, and show us your work?" I did that, and then they said, "Great, we would like to fly you out here, and give you a job interview." And so far blindness had not come up at all. The thing I remember most about that was they wanted to put me in a hotel several miles from the office and just have me rent a car. I think what I wound up doing was telling them I didn't drive, but that I would like to stay in this other hotel that's right nearby the office. They were readily agreeable to that. I don't know if that tipped them off or not. Jim Barbour: I flew out to San Diego, checked into the hotel, and I think I checked in on a Sunday night, and the interview was Monday morning. I, actually, on Sunday night asked the hotel for walking directions to the office, and walked it Sunday night, just so I would know exactly how to get there on Monday. And then I did, I walked over there Monday morning, and found the front door, let them know who I was, wound up talking with the HR person, talked about my blindness a little bit. Then I wound up interviewing, and the interviews all went really well. Jim Barbour: The one thing that also happened there was that no one asked me anything about my blindness. No one asked me how I was gonna do this or how I was gonna do that. And that really seemed like a bit of a red flag to me. I really kind of felt like, if they don't know anything about my blindness, or about me and my blindness, it's gonna be really easy for them to just decide that it isn't work the risk. At the end of the day I was talking with the person who was gonna be my hiring manager. I said, "Look, this is the time when you get to ask me about my blindness." He was like, "Oh, no, no. We were told we can't ask those kind of questions." Jim Barbour: I'm like, "I understand that this is the nature of things, but you need to know about me, and you need to know about my blindness, and so I'm giving you whatever permission you need to ask me any questions." He asked me a few questions that were pretty straightforward. How was I gonna get to work every day? What kind of assistive technology would I need? Some other things like that that I answered pretty readily. I think that that really helped get him over the hump. And he's just like, "Well, I don't know what else to ask, but I'm sure that you have the answers." And I'm like, "Yes. Yes, that's true." Jim Barbour: I wound up getting that job, and it was a great job. Qualcomm was never a problem for me in terms of getting me the equipment I needed, or the readers I needed, or whatever else I needed. They were very cooperative about that. Pete Lane: What type of work were you doing with Qualcomm, programming still? Jim Barbour: Programming. Basically, my life has been either as a programmer writing tools for systems administration, or then I moved into being an architect where I designed bigger platforms and stuff, and mentored other people in how to write programs. Even at Google, that's mostly what I did, was to write a lot of code for them. Pete Lane: Just to clarify, Jim, while you had some usable vision, obviously, you were a cane user were you not when you walked into that interview? Jim Barbour: Yes. So when I walked into the interview, they knew. I started using a cane in high school. At the time I lived in Boulder, Colorado, which at that time was a really small, sleepy little town. One of my biggest challenges with my cane was figuring out how I was gonna strap it to the bicycle I was riding at the time. I always look back at that, and I'm like, "I cannot believe I rode a bicycle." I quit doing that not too long after because I think I ran into something and really hurt myself, so I was like, "Okay, this is pretty stupid." Jim Barbour: I mean I had enough vision that I could sort of get away with riding a bicycle. I got talked into using a cane pretty early by the NFB. It actually turned out to be a very good way for me to solve a lot of problems I was having, not only around sort of tripping over things, and always looking down at the ground, but also just as a way of identifying myself as a blind person, not so much to other people, but to me. I really kind of was a little unclear about my status as a blind person, and carrying a cane allowed me to be a much better traveler, and to kind of identify myself as a blind person, both of which turned out to be very useful things. Jeff Thompson: It really helps, especially when you walk into a store, that the clerk sees the cane, they kind of get the idea too. So it lets you arrive a little bit early for some explanation. Jim Barbour: Exactly, yeah. Jeff Thompson: You talked about acquiring equipment through the company. Can you talk about reasonable accommodation? Jim Barbour: Sure. I have always felt like the company can and should, and generally will, meet any reasonable request I had. For sure, I needed a screen reader. I needed them to buy a JAWS for me. For sure, I needed readers, much more then than now, but back in the late '90s I needed people to read me journal articles, textbooks. I needed to learn how to do new things, and the way that you did that back then was by going and reading stuff off of print. Those were the two main things. Jim Barbour: The other accomondation I needed, which was also not a problem for them, was I needed a way to put the computer screen right next to my face. So I mean, literally, my face two or three inches away from the screen. We needed a way to do that that was ergonomically reasonable, so I wasn't bent over all the time hunching and squinting. We had somebody come up and built this stand to put my monitor on, and then we put the keyboard underneath of it. That actually worked out really well. Then, of course, later monitor arms came along. Jim Barbour: The other accommodations I needed, well they feel into two different categories. But there were two different types of tasks that were just really hard for me to do. One was if I would travel, filling out expense reports was just a very time consuming difficult process. Originally, it was on paper, and so I needed to get a reader and stuff to do all that, and then later it was online, but it was a very poorly designed inaccessible website. I just made arrangements for one of the secretaries to take care of that for me. Again, Qualcomm was like, "Sure, I mean, that's not a problem." That was one type of task. A task that doesn't happen very often that isn't very accessible, and so someone else would do it. Jim Barbour: Another task, or tasks, that were part of my daily life as a technologist, but were not easy for me to do, and they had to do with certain kinds of looking at graphs and looking at other kinds of very visual material. There were two ways that I would handle that. One way to handle it is to go in and fix the code so that it's giving you numbers and other kinds of text-based information that's useful to you. There were times when I did that, but there were other times when I just said, "This is a task that someone else needs to do. I am not gonna sit and interpret this data all the time, nor am I gonna go in and fix it so it gives me data I can use. Give me some more programming to do, or some more other kinds of things to do, and give somebody else this task." Jim Barbour: Again, Qualcomm did it for me. Again, I think that Qualcomm trusted me to make good decisions about what I could and couldn't do. Also, Qualcomm knew that I was bringing value to the company. They would make this decision, and they would understand the trade-offs, but they were totally fine with it. I think it would actually be a lot harder today to get started because of the fact that a lot of what I would've been doing if I had gotten hired is much more visual and much more inaccessible. I would've had to spend a lot more time interacting with Qualcomm and getting them to fix their websites, or fix their other things, so that I can actually do the work. Jim Barbour: I'm now at a place in my career where I am mostly doing planning work and other kinds of work that I know how to do, and then other people are doing the day to day technical work. But over time, Qualcomm like most companies, they've kind of grown, and their equipment has become less accessible. They understand the problem, but it's just such a hard problem to fight. The inertia will take you in inaccessible directions unless you fight it really hard. And that is something that the NFB and lots other places are kind of fighting for and advocating for. Don't let yourself go down this inaccessible road because you'll make it really hard to hire blind people in the future. Pete Lane: You make a good point there, Jim, about today versus then, and tasks that may or may not be negotiable, for lack of a better word, because reasonable accommodation, essentially, by definition is intended to allow you to perform essential job duties. If the employer deems that some of those tasks are not essential, then they shouldn't have any problem offloading those to a secretary or whomever as you described. But if they're essential duties then there may be a tough point to work with them on. Jim Barbour: The other thing is that these days there are also far fewer secretaries. I mean I am lucky that I kept track of a couple, but 20 years ago there were a lot more of them. Now a lot of people are expected to do their own secretarial work. Pete Lane: Right, it's overhead. Jim Barbour: It's hard to find people around who are available to sort of do one-off jobs for you like that, right? So, you wind up either hiring readers more or doing other things, but it's harder to find people who are just around who can do reading at the last minute, or fill out forms, or other kinds of things like that. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, times have changed, and so has the technology. Now with Aira, as a reasonable accomondation, I think some people could justify using the Aira technology, the smart glasses, to access stuff. Jim Barbour: I think that Aira is absolutely gonna be an invaluable tool for people in the workforce. In fact, Aira knows that. Aira has several programs in place right now to help people get jobs, and to help employers figure out how to pay for the service, and when the service is going to be valuable and when it's not. Jim Barbour: I have to say that I have lots of conflicting feelings about Aira. I have it and I use it, and I enjoy the service a lot. The way I tend to think about Aira is as a reader, where the definition of reader is sort of broadened a bit. Three were always tasks I felt like weren't good tasks for me to get a reader to do because basically the reader would be doing the work. So, for example, reading documents and filling out forms. There's really no reason for me to be involved in that process if the point is to get the forms filled out. Jim Barbour: That kind of feels like not something I wanna hire a reader for. That's something that the company should just sort of take care of. The reader is to get me information and sometimes for me to give other people information, but I should be involved in that process. How I feel about Aira in this case is that if Aira is giving me information that I need to do my job, I think that's great, but if Aira turns out to be the entity doing my job, then I think that that's gonna be a problem. Jim Barbour: I also wanna say that I think that Aira is also going to be an interesting tool for blind people to learn how to incorporate into their toolbox because I think that it's entirely possible that there will be people who won't learn the blindness skills I learned 20 years ago because they'll just start relying on Aira for that. I think that's going to be an interesting give and take about how we as blind people develop over the next 10 or 20 years, but I am hoping that we figure out a way to make sure that blind people still learn the blindness skills that have served me so well. Pete Lane: Well, you know Aira does insist that travelers who use their product use their cane or their dog, but I'm not sure that applies to any other tasks. Jim Barbour: That's right. I'm glad Aira does that. I just think it's something that came up early, and Aira put a policy in place, and I like that policy. Jeff Thompson: I'm just real glad that Aira actually went to the NFB, to the AFB, to all these associations, and got feedback how to make this product not an enabling device, something that someone would bypass, like even using Chloe the OCR. My wife uses Aira, and she said more and more she's using the OCR part because it's so quick and easy to use. I just meet them as an accommodation, not as a crutch or a one size fits all, this is all I use, no cane, no dog, no everything like that. I'm just saying like in the workforce it might be another tool with the changing of times. Jim Barbour: I agree with you 100%. I think that Aira is going to be very, very interesting to watch over the next decade or so. I also agree with you that it's good that Aira has embedded themselves with the organizations of the blind, like the NFB, to get some feedback and to get some idea about what's going to work and what isn't gonna work. Jim Barbour: Having said all that, I do also think that how blind people work and live are going to change because of Aira, and that's gonna be really interesting to see how that goes. I am looking forward to watching the evolution, for sure. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, we've seen changes come. You yourself, from when you went from high school to college to the workplace. You've seen technology come along, and it has been changing fast with the iPhone. It's moving so quick, and they always say like, "Now's a good time to be blind with all this technology," but I'm looking like, "What can happen in two more years?" It's moving fast. Pete Lane: The landscape will totally change. Jim Barbour: I always feel a little uncomfortable when I talk about how my life as a blind person has been enhanced by technology. I mean it certainly has. My iPhone died the other day and I was without it for 24 hours. I was just amazed at the number of things I rely on it for. That's just one example of technology. But I also know that if I didn't have any technology, I know that I could take my cane and go downstairs, and sort of problem solve my way through my day. I know I could do that. Jim Barbour: I am worried that this is becoming less and less true over time, and I have mixed feelings about it. I definitely think that problem solving skills, and the ability to kind of build a map of your world and other things, are skills that we need to have even if we have a lot of technology. Jeff Thompson: Well skills and confidence, the confidence to be able to apply the skills. I've known people that have two master's degree, but they don't have the confidence to apply them. Jim Barbour: That's right. A real belief in yourself as a blind person. I go back every so often, and I talk to the Colorado Center, which is where I got a lot of the .. The Colorado Center taught me how to cook food, and how clean, and how to paint. We did a lot of painting of buildings and stuff. They taught me a lot of skills, but really the thing they taught me was that my blindness is not gonna be the thing that stops me from doing whatever I need to do. That's not gonna be the thing. There might be other reasons. I might not be smart enough. I might not be rich enough. I might not be brave enough. But that my blindness is not gonna be the thing. Jim Barbour: I will figure out ways of dealing with my blindness, and that is the kind of confidence and belief in yourself that I think is really, really important for a blind person. The technology and all the other things, they will come and they will play a role, and they will be even important, but a real belief in yourself is really, I think, the most important thing. Jeff Thompson: I've always said that if a person has a drive, if they have something that's pushing them, then they can utilize a Colorado Center or a training center to help them go further, but the drive comes from within. The technology, as you said so well, enhances some areas, or assists. But when you get to the core of it, it's you, it's your determination. It's your self-determination that is gonna push you. Jim Barbour: I think that's right. I think that that's true for everybody. I think that in life how much you accomplish, what you do, is mostly determined by your drive, by how much you wanna push yourself, what you wanna accomplish, what's important to you. The sooner you can be aware of what those things are ... I'm really into this, or I think this is really important, or I wanna make sure that these things happen in my life. Whether it be being a parent, being really good at your job, or whatever it is, I think you're right that having a drive and really having a sense of goals, and a sense of what's important to you is very important. Pete Lane: Speaking of drive and independence. I'd like to segue over to your most recent assignment with Qualcomm over in Ireland. Talk a little bit about that Jim. Jim Barbour: That was amazing. I had recently moved to Berkeley, and was living there, and was realizing that I was having a lot of fun in Berkeley, but that I was kind of in a rut. I didn't have any family responsibilities to worry about. I went and talked with my boss, and I asked him if he had any expat opportunities, a way in which Qualcomm could send me to another country and pay for me to live there for a while because often we have offices in Europe and in India that need people from the headquarters office to go over there for a while. Jim Barbour: He said he had no expat opportunities at the moment, but that he was perfectly happy if I wanted to just pick an office, and go live there for a while. I would have to pay for my own housing and stuff, but he didn't really care where I was working from. Jim Barbour: I'd looked around. There was an office that we have in Cambridge, England, which is a little bit north of London, and there was an office that had in Cork, Ireland. I went and visited those for a week each, and decided I really wanted to go live in Cork. I spent some time making arrangements, and also talking with people about where to live and stuff like that. Jim Barbour: One really interesting piece of that was I could not find any blind people to talk to. I kept looking around on lists and in other places for blind people in Ireland, and I had a very hard time finding any blind folks to talk to. I mostly just wound up talking with people who could tell me which apartments were within walking distance from the office, and how the buses were and a bunch of other things. Jim Barbour: I did as much prep work as I could, and then in January of this year I flew over, and was met by the relocation folks who were helping me out. Remember, I'd been on a plane for 12 hours, and was pretty ragged out, but they took me to my apartment, and then they took me to a grocery store to get food, and sheets and some other basic things. The apartment was furnished, but we needed to get some stuff to put in it. Then I basically was on my own. I used my phone a lot to kind of figure out how to walk to my office. I learned how to get to the grocery store and some other things that were nearby. I started to learn how to use the buses. Jim Barbour: I sort of just had a really wonderful time, not only meeting my coworkers and a bunch of other friends I met in Ireland, but also just exploring a brand new place. I spent a lot of time explaining what I needed to other people in Ireland, who had never really seen a blind person. They were all very receptive. Again, if you know what you need, and can advocate for yourself, people are often willing to come on board. Everything from getting some markings put on my apartment mailbox, to getting help at the grocery store, to a lot of other things. Jim Barbour: Another real interesting thing about that was I had had the Aira service for quite a while before that, but hadn't really used it for much. I had used it on a couple of occasions to identify some objects, but really I hadn't used it for much. I really wasn't sure what I was gonna use Aira for. But one day, on a weekend, I had a bunch of time on my hands, and I needed to go grocery shopping. I really did not feel like dealing with the cultural friction of trying to explain to an Irish grocery store worker the things I was looking for, the names of things were just a little bit different. They aren't used to shopping generally at all. Generally, these are college kids or other people who haven't done a lot of grocery shopping, so I didn't want that friction. Jim Barbour: I decided to see how Aira would do at the grocery store, and I was frankly amazed at how well it went. I was like, "There is no way Aira is gonna be able to help me with this." The idea of scanning all these grocery store shelves was just really daunting to me. I thought it would never work, but I wanted to see. I was just amazed. They helped me to not only find the things I needed, produce and milk and eggs, and a bunch of other things, but they also just taught me a lot more about what was in the store, where things were, how things were laid out, what's down each aisle. Jim Barbour: I spent 90 minutes with them, which is more than I would normally spend on a shopping trip, but I learned so much about the store, and had such a good time doing it that I felt like it was an incredible experience, and one of the really cool ways in which I think Aira is very helpful. Jim Barbour: In future shopping trips, sometimes I would use Aira, and sometimes now that I kind of understood the layout of the store, I was able to go and find things on my own, or go get near what I needed, and call them up and say, "Okay, I'm looking for the low-fat milk rather than the whole milk," and they could pick that out for me. Jim Barbour: I used Aira for that. I used Aira for some exploring what all was in this mall, what all was in my neighborhood. The other thing that's really interesting about Cork, and about Europe cities in general, is that streets are not laid out on a grid at all. There's no way for you to sort of problem solve your way around how to get from here to there. You just have to kind of learn where all the streets are. Jim Barbour: In the beginning I would use Aira a lot to just say, "How can I get from here over to this other place?" And then say, "Oh, oh, I see. You have to go all the way over here." They were able to kind of look at maps, and kind of help me figure a lot of that stuff out. Aira helped me quite a bit to get accommodated. Jim Barbour: I also, when I was over there, took a couple weeks off and went traveling around Europe. I went to Edinburgh, Scotland and to Berlin, Germany, and down in Sardinia in Italy, and a couple of other places in the UK, as well spending quite a bit of time in Dublin and those few days in Belfast. Again, Aira was just very helpful in allowing me to very quickly orient myself to a neighborhood. Aira is much more efficient at that than what I used to do, which is to ask people for directions, people who are not used to giving walking directions, people who don't know how to work with blind people. Jim Barbour: In the past I had to an awful lot of advocating and educating about, "This is what I need to do. Can you explain this to me again? Can you explain it to me this other way?" But Aira turns out to be much better at that. Even in European cities where they certainly didn't have a lot of colors, they were very good at bringing up maps. I do find Aira to be very, very useful for that kind of getting used to new neighborhoods, and navigating around new environments. Jeff Thompson: You know, Jim, we usually ask people what advice they would give to someone that's transitioning from high school to college, but I think you've answered most of those questions through your experience. But do you have any quick advice that you would give to someone that is transitioning. Jim Barbour: I spent some time talking to the computer science division, the NFBCS, at the NFB convention this summer. There were several students and several parents who were going off to college. They weren't actually asking for advice, but they were there, and they were trying to ask questions. The biggest advice I can give them is that nobody is gonna look out for you, but you. You need to learn how to make sure that you get the materials you need, that you get the mentoring you need, that you get the tutoring you need, and that you get the experiences that you need. Jim Barbour: Because, otherwise, you can easily find yourself as a blind person being sidelined, and being given the minimum amount possible in order for them to feel like they can pass you. That's not what you want out of college, and that's not what you want out of life. You need to decide that it is up to you to get the things that you need in this world. Self-advocating is the most important thing you can do for yourself. And start doing it early so that you can do it forever. Pete Lane: Good advice. Jeff Thompson: Well put. Pete Lane: We're speaking with Jim Barbour. Jim, thank you so much for coming on, and sharing your story, your views on blindness and independence, and I think that your story is going to be motivational to our listeners because you are definitely one who pushes the envelope in terms of looking for new and different challenges, as you mentioned, being adventurous. And I think that helps build that sense of confidence that we talked about earlier. Pete Lane: I think that's within you, and you can't create it out of nothing, I think it can certainly be enhanced, developed with a mindset kind of like yours. We appreciate that. Thanks so much for coming on to Blind Abilities. Jim Barbour: I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you both. Jeff Thompson: Jim, if you would like any of the listeners to contact you if they have any questions, or they wanna get some advice from you, is there any way that you wanna allow them to connect with you? Jim Barbour: I'm certainly available on Facebook if people wanna find me there, but also you can email me at jbar@barcore.com. Jeff Thompson: Awesome, we'll put some stuff in the show notes for that, and thanks a lot, Jim, for coming on to Blind Abilities. Jim Barbour: Hey you guys, this was great. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Pete Lane: Thanks again, Jim. Talk soon, you take care. Jim Barbour: Yep, all right. Pete Lane: Bye bye. Jim Barbour: Bye. Pete Lane: This concludes our conversation with Jim Barbour. Jeff and I wanna thank Jim for taking the time to chat with us. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day. Pete Lane: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com. Speaker 4: We're on Twitter. Speaker 5: We're on Facebook. Pete Lane: And be sure to check out our free app. Speaker 4: In the Apple App store. Speaker 5:  And the Google Play store.

A diversified workforce is a win-win situation for everyone. It is often easier to accommodate an employee with a disability than employers may think. This session of ADA Live! will explore the most frequent workplace accommodation requests and possible solutions. The topics for reasonable accommodations to be covered will include: Leave, Reassignment to Another Position, Accessible or Reserved Parking, Service Animals, and Reasonable Accommodation for Job-Related Testing or Training. Speaker: Nancy Horton, Technical Assistance Specialist, Mid-Atlantic ADA Center More Information and Transcript available at: https://www.adalive.org/episode21

This show is a continuation of our discussion with Nancy Horton regarding the top 5 ADA questions regarding reasonable accommodations. A diversified workforce is a win-win situation for everyone. It is often easier to accommodate an employee with a disability than employers may think. This session of ADA Live! will explore the most frequent workplace accommodation requests and possible solutions. The topics for reasonable accommodations to be covered will include: Leave, Reassignment to Another Position, Accessible or Reserved Parking, Service Animals, and Reasonable Accommodation for Job-Related Testing or Training. Speaker: Nancy Horton, Technical Assistance Specialist, Mid-Atlantic ADA Center More Information and Transcript available at: https://www.adalive.org/episode22

A diversified workforce is a win-win situation for everyone. It is often easier to accommodate an employee with a disability than employers may think. This session of ADA Live! will explore the most frequent workplace accommodation requests and possible solutions. The topics for reasonable accommodations to be covered will include: Leave, Reassignment to Another Position, Accessible or Reserved Parking, Service Animals, and Reasonable Accommodation for Job-Related Testing or Training. Join Nancy Horton, Technical Assistance Specialist at the Mid-Atlantic ADA Center, as she answers some of the most common questions from employers and workers with disabilities that are received by ADA Specialists at the 10 Regional ADA Centers in the ADA National Network. Speaker: Nancy Horton, Mid-Atlantic ADA Center More Information and Transcript available at: https://www.adalive.org/episode40

This show is a continuation of our discussion with Nancy Horton regarding the top 5 ADA questions regarding reasonable accommodations. A diversified workforce is a win-win situation for everyone. It is often easier to accommodate an employee with a disability than employers may think. This session of ADA Live! will explore the most frequent workplace accommodation requests and possible solutions. The topics for reasonable accommodations to be covered will include: Leave, Reassignment to Another Position, Accessible or Reserved Parking, Service Animals, and Reasonable Accommodation for Job-Related Testing or Training. Join Nancy Horton, Technical Assistance Specialist at the Mid-Atlantic ADA Center, as she answers some of the most common questions from employers and workers with disabilities that are received by ADA Specialists at the 10 Regional ADA Centers in the ADA National Network. For the first part of the discussion, listen to Episode 40 - Top 5 ADA Topics: Notes from an ADA Specialist (Part 1). Speaker: Nancy Horton, Mid-Atlantic ADA Center More Information and Transcript available at: https://www.adalive.org/episode41

JobInsightsExtra: Employment Breakouts, Aira on Employment and Zoom Zooms Ahead and a Great Tool in the Indeed App Full Transcript Below: In this Job Insights Extra Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson talk about the Employment Breakout Sessions at conventions. How Airais focused on employment, education and Bringing more value to their services. Serina talks aboutIndeed, an app for smart phones and a web site that assists one during the job hunt and finding employment opportunities in the field you want. Zoom Cloud Meetingsis becoming the go-to tool for conferenceing and meetings because it just works and Zoom has a lot to offer. We include a small segment from our Blind Abilities podcast, “Aira Workshop on Employment, Education, and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation,” with Michael Hingsonspeaking about Aira and how the Aira service can impact the job search, save time on the job and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation. You can find the entire podcast on BlindAbilities.com We also bring you a conversation with Dacia Vanalstine, employment Specialist at State Services for the Blind. Dacia presented at the NFB Employment Committee workshops and Jeff sat down and asked her about the breakout sessions. We wanted to do this podcast to show how the conventions can be a resource for information, educational and a place that offers opportunities to meet and talk to professionals in the field.   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:   JobInsightsExtra: Employment Breakouts, Aira on Employment and Zoom Zooms Ahead and a Great Tool in the Indeed App Serena Gilbert: Cue fancy music. Jeff Thompson: They had breakout groups that you could go into, one was on resume building, one was on disclosure, another was upward mobility, another was on job searching. Michael Hingson: Aira, by any definition of the Americans With Disabilities Act is a reasonable accommodation. Serena Gilbert: You already know I'm like Aira jealous. Jeff Thompson: Zoom works pretty good, you can record on it, you can do all sorts of stuff with it, it's just always blowing my mind a little bit. Serena Gilbert: You can also live stream to Facebook from Zoom and they'll show whatever you're showing on your Zoom screen in the Facebook Live. This podcast is not brought to you by Zoom. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights is a podcast that is helping you find careers and gainful employment through innovations and opportunities. You can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network. And as part of the Job Insights podcast, we will be bringing you the Job Insights extras, consisting of interviews, demonstrations, and news surrounding employment, careers, and jobs. With hosts Serena Gilbert, and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com. Leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter, @JobInsightsBIP. Serena Gilbert: I use the Indeed website all the time with my clients when we're looking at job openings. I like it because it filters all the scams, and weird Craigslist ads and things like that, and gets right to what you're really looking for. Jeff Thompson: In this Job Insights extra, we'll be talking about Aira, and how they are enhancing the opportunities in education and employment for students and job seekers alike. We tap into a little bit about Zoom. Is it replacing Skype? It seems to have all the features to do so. Give it a try, see what you think. We touch base on an app called Indeed, which is also a website, which will help you along your job seeking journey. And we expand upon how conventions can help you in the job market, employment, and as a student, and the upcoming CSUN Convention as well. Jeff Thompson: So now, please join Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson in this Job Insights extra. We hope you enjoy. Jeff Thompson: Well how you doing Serena? Serena Gilbert: I am doing great, Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good, just got back and I'm settling in back home here in Minnesota. Serena Gilbert: You survived. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep, a lot of employment stuff, and people showed up, and that's one thing about these conventions is not only do you get experience of traveling, different types of adventure through using mobility, getting to place to place, but you meet a lot of people, and you have a lot of opportunity to focus in on the agenda. And I focused in on the employment parts of it. Jeff Thompson: They had breakout groups that you could go into, one was on resume building, one was on disclosure, another was upward mobility, another was on job searching. There was lots of opportunities for people to get involved. And there was even one on meeting the voc rehab panel, there was a panel of voc rehab teachers and professionals in the field, DVIs, lots of good stuff. Serena Gilbert: I know that there was a lot of talk about how Aira fits into everything having to do with employment, from the job search even through to completing job tasks, is that right? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. I was in attendance at a breakout session Aira sponsored, and it was Aira and employment, and Michael Hingson was speaking, along with Patrick Lane. And they were talking about reasonable accommodations, how Aira fits that bill, the things you can do, it saves you time compared to how much it would cost for a reader for some applications, and how Aira has this program where if you are filling out a resume and getting help, and using Aira while you're researching a job, say you're going to an interview, and back again, all those minutes are covered by Aira. You don't have to pay for those minutes, so they're free. Serena Gilbert: That could be a nice way to help with ... I know sometimes there's applications that aren't the most accessible, and something weird kind of happens with it, and you kind of get stuck. So that'd be nice to be able to have the Aira agent help you figure that out, especially when it's a time sensitive employment application you're trying to get in. Jeff Thompson: Exactly, and usually you're doing that on the computer. Another thing with Aira is they have a partnership with VFO, Andrew Joyce and Jos. Serena Gilbert: So Jeff, I know there was an another one that I saw come through that they have just partnered with, do you remember who it was? Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah, more and more partnerships are being developed all the time and being announced. Just lately the 26 YMCAs in the Minneapolis area have come on board as a Aira access point, where you can use Aira services free. And some of the big news coming out is Andrew Cole from Microsoft, he's the senior data scientist that was responsible for developing seeing AI has now joined Aira as head of the artificial intelligence and research at IRA. That's great news, and Chloe is going to be worked on, and enhanced I'm sure. Yeah, where is this going to take us, we only know. But yeah, partnerships are being developed all the time, so stay tuned for more and more partnerships joining the Aira team and making Aira accessible and affordable to all. Jeff Thompson: Another area of growth is, I believe it's six days that their state agencies, vocational rehab, are now offering Aira as a service, and even colleges, their disabilities services office is now providing the service as well. Serena Gilbert: That's very nice to hear, I mean, I know it'll take a little while for the word to get out to the bureaucracy that it is. But I think it's great that that's something that people are considering to help with more accessibility for their clients. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Well, when you think about reasonable accommodation, what is it? Offering a free zone for your company, say you're a voc rehab, or a state agency for the blind and you have five or six people who could benefit from IRA, and if they do have it, why not allow those minutes to be free? I don't know, it's something interesting. I know San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired is considering making their area a free zone as well. So like you said, it's catching on, I think it's becoming more of a household name in the blindness community. It used to be kind of a idea, or people didn't know it was really out there and working, but I believe they're growing. I would have to say they've got to be up to at least 2,000 some users now, especially now that they're worldwide. And even Minnesota. Serena Gilbert: That's a whole nother country there. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. But that puts it more on the clock. So you can turn around and actually have service around the clock. Serena Gilbert: And even before they went international I feel like they had pretty accessible hours, because I believe it was like 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Pacific time, or something like that, that's pretty good. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So now it's pretty much 24/7 and from what I reckoned, when we were ... reckoned, when did I ever use that word? Serena Gilbert: Yeah, who did you hang out with from the south there for a little while? Jeff Thompson: Yeah, there was people from all over the ... every walk of life is there. The blindness doesn't pull you all together, it's just normal people and we just have a common thing of visual challenges. Serena Gilbert: And that was in a free zone too, because I know they made Orlando and ... did they call it an Aira access point or something like that, where it was free for everyone? Jeff Thompson: Exactly. And we're the guest too because if you are down there with the iPhone, you could just download the app, sign up and you could get yourself an agent and use it just like you had it. Just like you were part of it, you were an explorer now, but you're a guest. I heard a lot of people really satisfied and excited about it. Serena Gilbert: I think that's really cool. I mean, you already know I'm like Aira jealous, and I'm just waiting for that price to come down a little bit for me- Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: Before I take that plunge. But I mean, it just sounds really cool. No surprise here, Jeff, so what I most want to do with is go shopping one day. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Well, to tell you the truth, I was in an Aira session, and Michael Hingson had a few words to say, so let's segue right into that right now. 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. Michael Hingson: In any case, I have to go find someone. 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 Team Voyeur or some other team 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 this 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, let's say I'm 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 agent's help to do all of that. Michael Hingson: 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. Don't limit yourself to looking at it as a travel device. Don't look at it as something that's going to 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: 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, that will 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. So for any Aira explorer doing anything relating to getting a job is free. Michael Hingson: We are saying at Aira we want to take that unemployment 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. Michael Hingson: What does it mean though as far as getting a job, and where does Aira fit into that? The way Aira fits in is really pretty simple. Aira, by any definition of the Americans With Disabilities Act is a reasonable accomodation. 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. Jeff Thompson: And this was just a snippet taken from the full podcast that we produced over on Blind Abilities. Be sure to check it out and see how Aira enhances the opportunities in employment, education, and as a student. There's a link in the shown notes, be sure to check it out. Jeff Thompson: So with Aira, it's getting more and more, like we said, a household name, more voc rehabs are aware of it, more counselors are aware of it, so who knows what it'll be tomorrow because they are ever changing. My wife Laurie just received the Horizon glasses, which puts the lens right in the center and gives you more of a fisheye look, so the agent can actually see more and do more. They have a Samsung device that is actually a phone, but it's locked for only Aira to use. So you turn that on and there's wire that goes up to the glasses, and now you don't have any connectivity between the Bluetooth for your phone to the wifi. You have three connections that all had to be in sync, and now it's just one wire, one phone, and I believe it's up to a seven and nine hour battery life. Serena Gilbert: Oh wow, that's pretty good. And I've heard they're pretty stylish now too. Because I guess the previous ones were like glasses with no lenses. Jeff Thompson: And some of these people are getting them with the tinted glass, so ... Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: It seems all right. You know, it's Clark Kent-esque. Serena Gilbert: Oh. Jeff Thompson: Well face it, you do have a charge going to it, you do have batteries going to them, they do have a camera mounted in them, so you're not able to just have wire rims and aviator glasses so ... Laurie told me that they don't fall, they don't move once they're on, so they're real stable. That means a lot. When actually the agent wants you to look at something that you can just turn and you don't have to look like a bobble head in the back of a car. Jeff Thompson: They probably did a lot of research on this, Greg Stillson who was the product developer there, part of the team, did a great job on the Horizon. Good things on the horizon they say. Serena Gilbert: So did she get hers at the conference or did they mail them to her? Jeff Thompson: Before the convention happened they sent out notice that said if you were attending they would then bring the glasses there, and so when she was there she was on the list, and she received them. Serena Gilbert: Oh, that's awesome. Jeff Thompson: So she went up the room, put it on the charger, and later on tried them on and they seem to work really well for her, and she likes the idea that you don't have to use your phone to do it. It's kind of interesting because the wire plugs into the back end of the glasses, so the wire comes down your ... you know, it doesn't hang down your cheek, it goes- Serena Gilbert: So it's out of the way. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it goes down behind your ear, and then down your shoulder. When she was using them I didn't even really recognize the ... well, my blindness helps there, I suppose. But yeah, people were excited about them. Jeff Thompson: You know Serena, we're talking about jobs and everything like that, one thing I noticed was kind of a common denominator, I would say three out of 10 people mentioned it while I was down there, the app and I believe there's a software product for computers, Indeed. Have you ever used that? Serena Gilbert: Yep, I use the Indeed website all the time with my clients when we're looking at job openings. Jeff Thompson: And you use that on the PC? Serena Gilbert: Correct. Jeff Thompson: How do you like it? Serena Gilbert: It used to be more accessible, it used to be when you typed in the job search and everything and you picked a job you wanted to look at, it would open up in a new window. And now it still opens, but it opens up at the bottom of the page. And unless you go adventure and look for it at the bottom of the page, you never would know. So it's still accessible, it's just different now. But I like it because it filters out all of the scams, and weird Craigslist ads and things like that, and gets right to what you're really looking for. You can also set up an alert where it'll send you every day jobs that matched what you're looking for, so you can be one of the first to see them and apply for them. Jeff Thompson: Well that's great because I got a new iPad and I noticed that there's a new upgrade to the Indeed app, so I'm going to try it out on the iPad, and I'm going to try it out on my iPhone because it updated there. Serena Gilbert: No, I do use it on my phone though, it is very accessible on the phone. But I wouldn't recommend applying for a job from your phone. Jeff Thompson: Or setting up a Zoom meeting. We use Zoom on here and it's a very good app, and while I was at the convention, and in the pool I ran into a gentleman, not physically, but we were chit chatting, he was part of a ... I believe it was South Carolina Voc Rehab for the Deaf/Blind, and they had switched to Zoom and he said that because I have the pro that I can actually switch my identification number, you know, when you set up a meeting it gives you an identification number, you can actually change that if you want. You could change it to, I don't know, Volkswagen, or Lovebug, or ... you could change it to Red Pony, anything you wanted to change it to, and that would be your meeting link. Serena Gilbert: I think it has to be a series of numbers still for the meeting ID, but you can customize it to be something that people would remember easier. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, so it's really interesting, a lot of people are using it, they have a business package that they have. And he says that if you had like 15, 20 people in a meeting, he said you can break out into four groups and five people go into each group, and then you can bring them all back again. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, you can do that, I believe it's in the webinar setting on it. That one's like $40.00 a month or something, to have the webinar piece. But you can also live stream to Facebook from Zoom if you have the webinar piece added on to the account. Jeff Thompson: Oh really? Serena Gilbert: And it'll show whatever you're showing on your Zoom screen in the Facebook Live. Jeff Thompson: It's just really impressive to me what Zoom is doing when you've had other companies sitting back on their laurels, let's take Skype for example, it was Skype for many, many years. That's all it was. That's all we used it for, and some others have come and gone, but Zoom seemed to come in all ready and prepared, because it just seems like it keeps growing. Or I keep on finding out more and more of what you can do with it. So people out there are looking for a conference type of, I don't know, walkie talkie communication here that we're using, Zoom works pretty good. You can record on it, you can do all sorts of stuff with it, it's just always blowing my mind a little bit. Serena Gilbert: This podcast is not brought to you by Zoom. Jeff Thompson: But you do like it, right? Serena Gilbert: Oh I love Zoom. I hate Skype, it's a pain to use. Zoom just works. That's really just ... it's kind of like Apple, it just works. Except it really does just work. Jeff Thompson: Really, really works. Except for when we did it today, when we were trying to connect up. I sent a request- Serena Gilbert: I am convinced you sent me a different link. Jeff Thompson: Well, I set it up on the phone and I sent it out, it says, "send request", and so I sent it out, and then I came into my computer, started it up, and I saw the meeting was there so I went into the room, and she went into a room, but we were in different rooms. And for some reason, my phone must be set up for ... what did you say, private room? Serena Gilbert: Yeah, well so when you have a Zoom account you get a personal meeting ID that is the exact same meeting ID every time you send someone that link. And that's the link that you sent me, was the personal meeting ID. I was like I feel special. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. So then I sent another link from my computer and then we got all connected up, so other than that ... Serena Gilbert: Jeff's still on conference time. Jeff Thompson: It is. If people ever get a chance to check out one of the conventions, next year it's in Las Vegas, the NFB, National Federation of the Blind Convention will be in Las Vegas, and I believe it runs from July 7th to July 12th, and ACB will be in Rochester, New York. I believe that will be before that, I don't think they're going to be running overlapping, I think they'll probably be going from ... my guess will be from the 1st to the 9th or something. I know ACB is a little bit longer, but they have a lot more fun activities, lots of walks, lots of, I don't know, boat rides and all sorts of stuff outside the area, a lot of busing around to do things, but they seem to make it a really social type of atmosphere at those. Jeff Thompson: And the NFB is I would say mostly locked into a lot of business and a lot of opportunities to get together with people. Serena Gilbert: And CSUN is in February. Jeff Thompson: End of February, that's right. And this time, it's moving to Anaheim, California. Serena Gilbert: And for those who don't know what CSUN is, it stands for California State University Northridge. From what my understanding is, is it's the biggest assistive technology conference for bling and low vision, at least in the North America, maybe even the world. And very large names come into that, that's where a lot of new technology is introduced and talked about that's related to blind and low vision. It's kind of like a person like my like biggest dream, because I'm just a tech nerd. I've been trying to go there for years, but it never works out. But I think it might work out this year, hint, hint. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I'm really excited about it because I haven't ever gone to one of those, and you hear about it, and you hear a lot about the tech stuff, that's really what it is. But there's also a lot of breakout rooms, like Microsoft might have three different sessions that they're talking about, Google would be there with sessions that you can go into and they'll talk about their accessibility and the development that they're doing with the Chromebook and what is the ... don't they have Voice Box or something like that? Serena Gilbert: Chromebox. Jeff Thompson: Chromevox. Serena Gilbert: Chrome ... yeah, it's like their built in screen reader for their Chromebooks. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I was talking to them and they wanted to give me a demonstration, but I had to move over to the Amazon because I got an interview with none other than Peter Korn. Amazon's Peter Korn. And there's one thing that I really want to make a point of at conventions, the things that are changing at conventions when you go into the exhibit halls, it used to be where's the JAWS? Where are they? Where's Hinter Joyce now it's VFO, where's Humanware, all these different places that we would flock to. Now you walk in, front and center you've got Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Aira, they've taken over the front of the convention hall. Kind of reminds me of Walmart coming into a small town, Walmart comes in and a lot of the small mom and pop shops disappear. Jeff Thompson: Well, it's not really happening like that to effect, but look how many timers are being sold by Maxi Aids when you can use your Amazon device, your Google device, your Siri, what time is it? Set timer. So a lot of the gidgets and gadgets have gone to the wayside, a lot of these devices, we're changing and it's starting to show in the convention. How many times has Microsoft ever showed up to an NFB convention? Two? Google, once? Now we Amazon, twice. Where's it going to be in five years? HIMS didn't even show up. Serena Gilbert: Oh wow. Jeff Thompson: So I think we're in for a change, more of the mainstream companies are starting to take over the products, making things accessible and that's what we want. So seeing these big companies come in and things might be more mainstream. They send in their people who are involved with the accessibility at the company, Peter Korn, he was an accessibility director, all the way back to Kindle his department went. So it was really neat to see them all there in full force, all about accessibility. Serena Gilbert: That's great. Sounds like you had fun. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Oh yeah. And I even went to convention. No, it was a lot of fun. Serena Gilbert: I even attended some breakout sessions. Jeff Thompson: It's really neat to meet people because that's what it is about networking, you know. You really get an opportunity to meet some interesting people with very like mindedness, people who have overcome the struggles and the challenges ahead of you with blindness as you go through your journey, so a lot of success stories there, and I captured a few of them that you'll be listening to, some job extras. Hey, if we were in the Tupperware, we'd be a Tupperware party, right? Serena Gilbert: Yes. Jeff Thompson: But it's always nice to get back home, you know, after you go to the convention, it's nice to get back home. You get too much of the different foods, different people, different stuff, and all the congestion, it's 2500 canes and dogs, elevators and all that. It's almost like you need more noise, heck, let's bring it to Vegas, that'll be a lot better. And then you have gambling machines going ding, ding, ding. To me it almost gets to a point of aggravation in Vegas. So I don't know, I imagine it'll be quite a trip. Serena Gilbert: Oh gosh, that could be stimulation overload, like, man ... Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah, when you're actually just trying to figure out where you're going and your cane- Serena Gilbert: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Tapping, how you use all the sounds to identify things and all you need is two people to win the jackpot and you get lost, like it's crazy. Serena Gilbert: Yeah. And that casino ... well, none of the casinos are really very well lit. For low vision. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's really interesting to meet all sorts of different people. Well it's all over for this year, now we get to wait for the next one, and like you said, it's CSUN isn't it? CSUN 2019. Serena Gilbert: If I have my luck at a yes. Jeff Thompson: There you go. The thing about CSUN, I would in advance try and find a place there because the hotels are pretty expensive, and Anaheim I don't think is any cheaper. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: Usually when I go to a convention, on January 1st is when I do the stuff for the summer ones, so when you're talking CSUN, when you find out exactly which hotel it is, I would start looking probably around Thanksgiving time, start looking for those hotel rooms, because they fill up fast and then they go to an overflow, and overflow is not as much fun. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, that's not where the party's at. Jeff Thompson: But yeah, CSUN, Anaheim, I think I'll be there. You? Serena Gilbert: I don't know Jeff, will I? Jeff Thompson: We'll have to see. Serena Gilbert: To be continued. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. So stay tuned folks for more podcasts from Job Insights, my name's Jeff Thompson and you can find me at KnownAsJeff on Twitter. Serena Gilbert: And I'm Serena Gilbert, you can find me at BlindyBlog, that's @ B-L-I-N-D-Y, B-L-O-G. Cue fancy music. Jeff Thompson: I'm going to leave that. Thank you for listening to this Job Insights extra. And be sure to check out all the Job Insights podcasts on BlindAbilities.com. Big thank you to Cheechau for your beautiful music. And that's Lcheechau on Twitter. Jeff Thompson: Once again, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed. And until next time, bye bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise]  -   When we share, What we see, Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store:  'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.      

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.    

Job Insights Extra: Gaining Skills and confidence, Getting the Job You Want and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation – Meet Lori Thompson   Welcome to a Job Insights Extra 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 Extra is where we highlight success and whether it be a person or a product, app or development, we will share the success with you. This Extra episode we want to introduce Lori Thompson. Serina Gilbert sits down with Lori in the studio to talk about her journey through Adjustment to Blindness Training, her work with State Services in the job hunt and the accommodations used at her job.   Lori has her Aira Smart Glasses in her toolbox and talks about how she incorporates Aira to independently do her job. She also talks about other adaptations and alternative tools that keeps her efficient in the workplace.   Lori and Serina are both Guide Dog users and they talk a bit about having their Guide dogs in the workplace.   Join Lori Thompson and Serina Gilbert for this Job Insights Extra and see how Lori’s determination and hard work led her to the job she wanted.   You can follow Lori on Twitter @LThompson6835   You can find out more about Aira on the web at www.Aira.io [caption id="attachment_2435" align="aligncenter" width="200"]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   Thanks for listening! You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by 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    

Quebec Hearings on "Reasonable Accommodation" A series of government-initiated public hearings on cultural differences and immigrant integration began this week in Quebec. FSRN's Stefan Christoff reports from Montreal. Immigrants in Quebec have faced a growing political storm throughout the past year, as a Provincial debate on what is referred to as ‘reasonable accommodation' has attracted international headlines. A series of public hearings will occur throughout the coming months in Quebec, as part of the state commission lead by two Quebec academics who are not new immigrants. Nazila Bettache is with No One is Illegal Montreal. (sound) “Using the term accommodation simply put really, sort of implies to me a hierarchy of identities, where by, the identity the one that has been framed in the mainstream media as the so-called Quebcoies national identity, so the identity of the white settler prevails and the action of quote / unquote, “allowing” the expression of religious or faith based identity that of the quote / unquote “new-comer” is an accommodation to begin with.” Debate on immigration in Quebec reached extremes in the past year, when the rural town of Herouxville passed a resolution which demanded that “new arrivals, abandon the way of life from their countries of origin, as it cannot be recreated” in Quebec. Civil liberties groups throughout Canada slammed the resolution as racist. For Free Speech Radio News, this is Stefan Christoff, in Montreal. /// listen to reports produced for Free Speech Radio News between 2002 - 2012, the flagship Pacifica radio daily news program, these reports were produced in Montreal, but also in Beirut, Lebanon. putting these reports up for archiving purposes, they address numerous grassroots struggles for justice and against oppression, particularly looking at struggles surrounding migrant justice, also indigenous movements for land and rights, while also struggles against colonialist wars today & the persisting impacts of wars past. thank you for listening ! stefan @spirodon

INNERSIGHT FREEDOM REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION IS NOT REASONABLE Frank Perino Host Suzanne Tarazi-Ferraro Co-Host Joseph Arian Engineer INNERSIGHT Means FREEDOM Advocates for the Disabled.  

Part 1 of a 2 part discussion on multiculturalism and the issue which is in front of Canadians now, the niqab being worn during a citizenship oath-taking ceremony. Roy is joined by Andre Drouin - Former member of council of the municipality of Herouxville, Quebec, who drafted and introduced Canadians to the Herouxville Charter for Newcomers, which gave birth to the movement which resulted in the Quebec Commission on Reasonable Accommodation. Martin Collacott - Former Canadian Ambassador to Syria and Lebanon and spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform and Richard Kurland - Immigration lawyer, Vancouver, and advisor to federal and provincial governments on immigration. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

INNERSIGHT - Give me EQUALITY, NOT REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION!   INNERSIGHT Means 'FREEDOM' Advocates for the Disabled

INNERSIGHT - Give me equality, not reasonable accommodation!  Will be aired on Monday February 24th. Tonight is a recap of save the animals and help the disabled.   INNERSIGHT Means 'FREEDOM' Advocates for the Disabled