For some of us, those first scary days of the Covid-19 pandemic may now feel like it was a million years ago, but for others still dealing with the trauma and aftermath of grief and loss, or who are still struggling with "long Covid," it may feel like a never-ending nightmare. The predominant emotion I… Read more about Pandemic to passion project: Let’s Go Shopping
Announcements
A Cast Of Thousands
Introduction Last month James “Jamie” Teh announced he would be leaving NVAccess, an organization he co-founded with Mick Curren to create, improve and maintain NVDA, the screen reader used by an estimated 40% of blind people on the Windows platform. Almost immediately, I started receiving Twitter direct messages (DMs) and emails asking what I thought… Read more about A Cast Of Thousands
Seeing AI: First Impressions
Introduction On July 12 of this year, Microsoft released a pretty remarkable new app for Apple’s iOS line of products. The app is called Seeing AI: Talking Camera For The Blind, it can be used to perform OCR, recognize products, to do facial recognition and (in a beta state) to have a scene described to… Read more about Seeing AI: First Impressions
Howard Kaplan, Spotlight Gateway and Me
February is visually impaired awareness month so I chose to write about a very interesting project being announced today by a number of organizations and companies. Introduction Spotlight Gateway, announced today by a number of blindness organizations, a large pharmaceutical company and Bookshare intends to provide an iPad to every underprivileged child who is either… Read more about Howard Kaplan, Spotlight Gateway and Me
Deque Opens Up
Introduction When it comes to accessibility, I live in a world of cognitive dissonance. On one hand, based both in objective measures and in my own use cases, I am compelled to admit that, as of this writing, Apple, especially on iOS, is the “best” provider of out-of-the-box accessibility. At the same time, as I… Read more about Deque Opens Up