187 – Convention Mention

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Show Notes

In episode 187 of the iACast podcast, Michael, along with Taylor and Lynn, kick off the episode by giving a brief recap of the previous episode. We also mention the WayAround booth at a convention and our participation in the Tuesday Unmute Presents call for the ACB community. Moving on to the news segment, we delve into the limitations and negative press around ChatGPT, an AI language model, and discuss its potential future developments. We also touch on Meta’s recent release of the app called Threads and its potential impact on Mastodon and accessibility. We express our curiosity about the interconnectivity between different platforms and raise concerns about possible restrictions and their impact on advertising revenue. We also mention the ongoing legal dispute between Elon Musk and Meta related to Threads. Next, we talk about rate limits on Twitter and share our experiences from conferences in the blindness and low vision community. We emphasize the importance of accurate resolution wording and discuss biases in AI models. Additionally, we shed light on the challenges that blind individuals face with services like Uber and Lyft and advocate for effective advocacy and communication. In the latter part of the episode, we touch on the decline in technical skills and discuss AccessiBe’s web accessibility tool. Unfortunately, we are unable to pay a certain individual as they requested the content to be taken down. Nonetheless, we share our great experience at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) conference, where we discussed accessibility. We spent a considerable amount of time in the exhibit hall and were intrigued by devices like the Sense Player and the Monarch. The Sense Player is an Android book player with the ability to control both iOS and Android devices. It also has its own Android apps in the works. On the other hand, the Monarch is a compact device with features such as braille refresh, image zoom, regular braille, buttons, and a lamination screen. It includes USB ports and HDMI as well. We express our excitement about the Monarch and eagerly await its pricing details. We also mention the Graffiti as another favorite device, although it lacks the ability to display braille in line with graphics like the Monarch does. We appreciate advancements in braille technology such as the modular Optima braille display and the use of Orbit Braille cells. The Optima display offers HDMI and customizable USB ports, and we anticipate its release. It is encouraging to see companies like Humanware advocating for accessible devices like the Monarch. We believe that innovation and the resolution of supply chain issues will lead to a brighter future for braille technology. We then discuss our experience at the Way Around convention where we showcased our public token signs and distributed tokens with NFC tags. The feedback has been positive, and we continue to improve and expand our platform. To wrap up the show, we each share our picks of the week. Taylor recommends Squarespace, a user-friendly website builder, despite its accessibility issues. Lynn recommends the Lookup app for word enthusiasts. I, on the other hand, recommend the Stormbox Blast speaker and express my excitement for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy 3 movie. We thank Lynn and Taylor for joining us in the discussion and point out that we are approaching the two-hour mark. Stay tuned for the outtake show. Lastly, we express gratitude to our listeners and encourage them to check out our YouTube channel and other podcasts on the iACast network.Episode Notes

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