"Live that life you want."
Welcome to Exxon, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind.
The co-founders of Envision have broken their silence on the future of the company and
it's not looking good.
Jakob Rossin covers e-democracy in Estonia and the European Accessibility Act.
Now that it's been around a few weeks listeners offer feedback and questions about iOS 27.
And an expert offers some advice for anybody who's considering entering the software development
field.
It's Jonathan Rosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland where the weather's
starting to get just a wee bit colder now, welcoming you to episode 97 of the podcast.
We have mentioned the first part of this announcement before but we have a second part
to add to it now.
So let me recap the fact that human wear and the American Printing House for the Blind
are offering Federation members a special price of $12,999 on the monarch.
Now if you're not familiar with the monarch you can go back through the access on archives.
We've done a lot on this, we've given you a full demonstration of it and it keeps expanding
in its capabilities.
So even since we did that episode I believe it was in January the monarch does a lot more.
That deal by the way is a saving of $2,500 and it's good until the end of the year.
And you can find that discount code in your member profile.
So if you're a member of the National Federation of the Blind, log in as a member and you'll
find that there as well as several other member benefits, you can make purchases by calling
APH Customer Service or by entering your discount code online.
This special pricing reflects the important role Federation members have played in developing
this innovative device.
We've been proud to be a partner in this historic project.
But now let's have a look at the second part of this.
President Riccobono did elude to the fact that this was coming at national convention and now
it is here.
The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, we really just call it the Action
Fund, is launching a limited low interest loan program to help eligible blind people
in the United States purchase a monarch.
The program will finance a limited number of monarchs.
Applicants won't be required to prove financial hardship if you want to apply.
When you should complete the monarch low interest loan program interest form.
The Action Fund will consider forms in the order they are received, so don't delay.
But be aware that submitting the interest form is the first step in the process and it
doesn't guarantee loan approval.
The Action Fund will review submissions and contact applicants about next steps and we
will include a link to that application form in the show notes for this episode.
We hope that this program opens another path to this innovative technology for blind people
who can benefit most.
For some months now we have heard from Access On listeners concerned about the state of
Envision.
This is the Blindness Pacific AI Company behind the Envision App, Envision Glasses and
more recently Ally.
We've had expressions of concern about slower updates, quieter communication and a general
sense that something wasn't right.
Rather than speculate here on the podcast, we reached out to Envision directly seeking
clarity about the company's viability.
On October 5, Envision's co-founders, Karthik Mehadevin and Karthik Cannon, published an
open letter.
It was called "All We Had As Far As We Could" and I'll give you the gist of it.
We'll also include a link to the letter in the show notes.
The letter opens with a look back, the two Karthiks found the Envision back in 2017 when
one of them was still a student.
They say people warned them off accessibility, telling them "Hardware is hard, global distribution
is complex, and insurance, which is a big thing in Europe, and reimbursement are a nightmare."
They went ahead anyway, they say their app reached nearly a million people.
They launched what they described as the first AI glasses for blind people in 2020 and
they partnered with Google, Meta and Microsoft.
They then explained that while revenue looked stable from the outside, two problems kept
growing underneath.
The first concerned the business model.
Envision began as a free app with a paid pro tier and at its peak it had around 15,000
paying subscribers.
But each new subscriber cost more to acquire than the last.
In the glasses launched, Envision made the app free and relied on hardware sales.
The founders acknowledged that glasses are a one time purchase with no recurring revenue
and they expected mainstream smart glasses to become cheap and common.
Their answer was "Allie", a freemium app designed to run on general purpose smart glasses
letting them return to setting software.
The second problem they say was a ceiling on growth.
Envision found that the first 100,000 users came easily but growth slowed dramatically somewhere
around a million.
They say they compared notes with others in the field and found the same pattern everywhere.
Although the world has roughly 300 million blind and low vision people, the founders argue
that for most of them, more pressing barriers like poverty, unemployment and lack of basic
access come before technology.
That means even free or cheap products struggle to pass the million mark and paying customers
make up a much smaller share.
The founders say that the company tried to find a way through, it pivoted towards setting
to businesses, winning uni-lever as a customer and running paid pilots for several museums
but they found that model hard to scale.
The founders also admit it simply didn't excite them because they prefer building for individual
users.
Envision also tried expanding to older people which went reasonably well but serving that audience
meant building a different product and they couldn't do both well.
After what they call "hard conversations" with their team, shareholders and themselves,
the founders concluded they've taken envision as far as they can.
They say that talking with a few potential partners who might carry it forward in a new direction
and they've invited anyone who knows a suitable partner to get in touch.
So what this means for you if you are currently an envision customer in any form is this,
if envision doesn't find partner by the end of this year, active development of its products
will stop on December 31st, 2026.
After that the apps online features will begin to wind down, envision hasn't set a date
for that yet but it has committed to giving users clear notice before anything stops working.
Before the wind down envision plans to release a final update that moves as many features
as possible offline onto your device.
That version will remain available to everyone for free, the offline features will keep working
but they won't receive updates or support.
If you have any active subscription envision says it'll cancel it before the online features
shut down so you won't pay for anything that no longer works, you'll keep the free
version with the top-line features, envision says it'll share platform specific details closer
to the time and the founders plan a long conversation with the community soon.
We'll keep following the story and if envision announces a partner or firm dates for the
wind down we will bring it to you here on AccessR.
One of the many things I like about working here at the National Federation of the Blind's
Journigan Institute is all the interesting people who come through our doors.
Just last week we held an event called Access the Future, it was held in conjunction with
the Officers Meeting of the World Blind Union which we also hosted and it saw key people
from the technology industry and blind people get together to talk about how blind people
direct the exciting future of this technology.
Some people stayed on and came for a tour of the International Rail and Technology Centre
and to talk about some of the ways that we can collaborate internationally going forward.
One person who did that is Jakob Rossin from Estonia so there was an opportunity for me to
sit down with Jakob in the International Rail and Technology Centre conference room to
have a chat with him.
It's great to have you at the National Federation of the Blind Jakob so welcome.
Thank you and it's great to be on the other side of the podcast for a bridge.
Well you know when you have been around as long as I have you start to see these cycles
because I first remember your name from when a bunch of you I think you were at a school
for the blind in Estonia, you still listen to Mushroom FM in the very early days.
I did use to but I wasn't going actually I did to go to a regular school at this time.
And although there is a blind in a school in Estonia but I did sort of get my feet wet
with the International Blindness Community through Mushroom FM indeed.
It was back then when all the big community you know join all together over Twitter and
then it suddenly felt that you know lots of people were much closer than they actually
were.
There were three of you as I recall from Estonia that used to listen pretty well.
regularly there was you and then there was Elizabeth who last I heard of her was in Oxford.
Now she's in Oxford indeed, yeah. She is studying languages and music, which have been her
passions I think for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. And then there was Maryland
as well from Australia. Indeed. She's now also abroad. So she's also left the country
to get some more, let's say, knowledge, hopefully into back to us in Australia. So the moral
of the story is listen to my stream of them and you'll go far. Yeah, it looks so. Yeah, you
know, we all ended up in different places in the world. And then we all did, including
me. It didn't even you. So it definitely seems to be a credible connection there. So tell
me a little bit about you and what you've been doing in Estonia. There are so many things
which have happened. I was one of the kids, blind kids. I've been blind since birth who has
never felt that I can be quiet when things haven't worked right. So I attended to reach
out to the closest people who I knew to be able to solve a problem, whether it was an accessibility
issue, whether it was regarding some kind of service related to blind people, etc.
And probably because of that, that I did this, I got a call from a friend. It was about
13 years ago or something like that. And he asked me, do you want to go to politics? And
the politics ended up being part of the Estonian blind unions board at that time. And it was
a fairly bold move by them because they wanted to, let's say, recruit more young people
into the system and I decided to do this. And this is how I got into the advocacy side of
blindness. And since then, after several years, I was elected to be the chair of the same organization.
But I didn't feel that that was enough, I guess. And back in 2021, me and my wife,
we did find an accessibility, let's say, consultancy agency in Estonia, where we intend to also,
you know, there's one side of accessibility, where it is advocacy, the other side is helping,
for example, developers or designers with a technical job on how to fix things or providing
training. And now we're doing that across physical spaces and digital spaces, etc. So those
have been maybe the two bigger ones. And from the advocacy side, because Estonia has, let's
say, we've been connected with the global community a bit, but the knowledge on how to do things
properly wasn't there. So I, as the chair, started reaching out to our colleagues in Europe,
in the European blind union, in various organizations of blind people in the EU. And this is how I got
affiliated with the European blind union and announced a tingle on that board as well. So,
yes, it's sometimes hard to choose the hat to wear today among all those still-called roles.
But I think they all carry the feel that accessibility and inclusion and then, you know,
blind people should matter more. And that's what I try to do with advocacy and also with the
practical work. Am I right in saying that separately, you have also been working for the public
broadcast? Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. I have been. Because actually, I went to
university to study journalism. And I did study journalism in the telling university. And after
that, I worked for one of the bigger newspapers in Estonia as a writing reporter. Then I worked
as a reporter for one of the biggest technology portals, because I'm also a sort of tech nerd.
And I couldn't help to try to be, you know, on top of all the new gadgets and etc. So, I decided
try to connect this also professionally. But I also got a invitation to work in Estonian
public broadcasting. I started out working as a breakfast show host for one of the stations,
which is more get towards younger audiences. So it was very upbeat and energetic. It also meant
to be at work every Friday at 16 the morning. And I did this for a few years. But then I
was invited to do a technology show for another station, which carried on for the next seven years.
And this this work actually wrapped up a couple of months ago. So I view this as myself as I'm
pausing the work in radio at the moment. But, you know, I'm not closing that door because I like
to speak and talk as well about those things. Yeah. Radio tunes to get in your blood as well. So I'm
sure you'll get back to it and find another way to have input into that. It's good to
talk. And I'm trying to now use those skills in the work I'm doing with Estonia Blond Union,
European Blond Union and with our agency. But I love the again, the technology side of that. So,
you know, pushing failures and then buttons and, you know, pressing play at the right time and
making the show sound nice. This has also been important to me. But I think for a good radio show,
there are two sides. There's the content what you're talking about and how you're talking about this.
But the side is how it does sound together. You know, how the, I mean, you know, there's
very well as well. But how does the show feel to the listener? And I think it's important that also
the techy bits are very well made. Estonia has really strived. I mean, it's one of the former
Soviet republics that has just really come into its own. And it's got this amazing economy.
And even people that I wouldn't necessarily expect to be on top of things, I mentioned that
I was going to be talking to someone from Estonia and taking them to the best steakhouse ever.
And they said, oh, yeah, Estonia, it's really going well with all this e-democracy things.
How accessible is all of that? And how does it actually work? You know, we hear with envy
about all the online voting that you have the way that you can engage with the government online
for almost everything. And it sounds glorious. Is it actually glorious in an accessibility sense?
It's not ideal anyway, but I think we are way better off than in many situations. So let me just
bring you an example, document signatures. So maybe I'm going to step back a few steps and then
describe how the Estonian e-identity system works. So every citizen has, let's say, an identity.
This is connected to your national ID card, which is like a credit card-sized card,
which we can use as a passport to travel around in Europe or identify ourselves physically.
But the card also has a chip. And you can plug it into a reader, which is a produce B device.
And you have a couple of codes. And then this is where I'm not very good at explaining
how the security part works. But I trust those guys. It has not failed us once in the 21 years
to be in there. So if I now want to say to a service that, hey, I am Jakob and it's me, whether
it is a bank, whether it is a national health portal where I can book a doctor appointment or see
my prescriptions or something like that, I go to the website. I do type in my personal,
personal codes, which is maybe something similar to the social security number.
And now the computer asks me to plug in the ID card. It verifies that this is Jakob's ID card,
and then I have to enter a pin code. And based on that, it verifies that it is me who is behind
this computer at the moment. Nowadays, we use to start with the ID card. Nowadays, the ID card can
also exist virtually on my phone. So I don't need to plug in anything. But my phone, when I enter
my code, it pops up a little message asking for my pin. I enter it on my phone. And it signs me in.
The second part of it is signatures. I also can use the same method to sign a document. And
this signature is technically and legally as valid as a handwritten signature.
I can buy houses or sell, you know, stock or form contracts, whatever with those signatures.
And the way it works is there's a piece of software on your computer, which we call DiggyDoc.
And if I open a file in there, it asks, okay, if you want to sign this, I do. And now it has
signed this document so that if I send it to, let's say it's you, Jonathan, you would have
the same software on your computer. And if you open this up, you'll see Jakob has signed this
on this date. And he has verified this with his, you know, security digital identity.
I'm very much simplifying this. And it may sound like, you know, what if somebody steals your
card, but they don't know at the same time the pin code or they cannot access my phone. So in this
case, it's super secure. And this framework is where we end up building all the other services,
such as digital voting to vote in elections. I go to the election website. I download the
piece of software, which is just specially made for this elections. And I'm able to look through
all the candidates for a screen reader point of view. It works as a tree view. So you have parties
and you open up a party and you can look at the candidates. Then it's
check which one you want and then you sign your vote from the access.
So I see this process and this metology is very good in bringing the services closer
to people because organizing a braille voting or male voting system will be much more laborious
task and digital voting being accessible, being independent for a lot of people in your
home. It makes it possible to to open up for example elections or or again those contracts
or whatever you want to do to everybody. And now from 2019 we have had something we call
a web accessibility directive. It's an European European law. European Union has made this
law mandatory to all the countries and it basically says all the public sector, all the
government websites and mobile applications have to be accessible. And they've been you
know trying their best since it's it's not ideal but you know they've been they've been
working heavily towards more accessible services. We still have problems but at least we
do now have the law to back us up and it has brought in several let's say key services
which are now more accessible. For example when COVID hit they started this national vaccination
scheme everybody was able to sign up for vaccinations and we had to work for weeks to have this
made more accessible because the law was there but apparently the knowledge really wasn't
the vaccination system although again it works with the same national ID system the the
website itself wasn't accessible you weren't able to choose a correct time or place where
you want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. But they've I hope learned from their lessons
and the those sides have been now more accessible. So this is the side we work in and it would
be wonderful to be able to see those systems expand across Europe across the whole world.
But I think there's an important part to this we are we in Estonia we invented those back
in 2003 when let's say internet was more let's say hopeful and and and positive right now we
are questioning privacy and security much more and I guess building the struts in people will
be much harder this time. So this is what Estonia is doing we're trying to reach out to lots of
countries and talk about how how great this is but still when I need to sign documents between
international colleagues I by happy to have signed the documents in the Stonian way and sent them
the files and get very confused people back is like what is this file you know it doesn't it does
not open for us and apparently the alternative there is to open up a PDF in your phone and scribble
something on the screen and somehow this is more valid than a digital signature which again from
me as somebody who has used this basically for my own life does not really you know add up because
you cannot also verify this in an accessible way etc so that's that's very briefly the ecosystem
where we're working on with the digital identity in Estonia. So the importance of accessibility is
obviously critical but so is the appearance of accessibility in authenticity so it sounds like
there is a high level of trust about the whole evoting it doesn't sound like it's coming up as a
major red flag for people to say well I'm not sure that the selection is secure or safe enough.
There is a component to check it independently so when you finish your voting and the process
is completely finished for you you can go to another website which is separate from the voting
application there's a QR code you can scan you scan it on your phone you then authenticate
yourself again with your EID and it tells you who did you vote for and what else is interesting
with this evoting it can go and change my vote if I want to if there has been an error if I
change my mind until the you know election day wraps I can even go into a physical station
and cost my vote there and this overrides the evote we do have trust questions there have been
raised politically there have been raised by technical people there have been independent audits
because it's all open source and I think that's very good it's important to challenge those systems
it's important to look for holes it's important to look for issues and problems and fix them
because I don't think trusting anything without questions is healthy so because those are being
challenged on the national level they've been also audited internationally that in my mind builds
trust more because they're so far have not been any major breaches or any credible issues found
by nobody and again anybody who's technically mind it's into security cryptography whatever you
know they can take this code and look how it all happens it's a proprietary hidden system but
yeah the trust is being challenged and I think in a grand scheme is good now looking through
the field the way that products behave and have to operate in Europe is becoming increasingly
different from how they do here in the United States and sometimes that's a source of envy on
either side I know for example I see on social media people from Europe expressing frustration that
there were certain products that we have here that because of the regulatory environment have not
come to Europe yet and then on top of that there is now also the European Accessibility Act which
is relatively new at least in terms of it being enforced what are some of the things that the European
Blind Union is thinking about in the context of the technology regulatory environment and the
legislation that's now operating there so the European Accessibility Act came off to the
Web Accessibility Directive which I mentioned so the Web Accessibility Directive is only responsible
for the public sector European Accessibility Act now targets private sector it mandates that
products and services in many categories are accessible there are things like banking digital banking
payment terminals e commerce so online stores websites and apps related to public transport
including for example tickets if you get a PDF ticket the PDF would need to be accessible
there's also physical hardware like ATMs TV streaming boxes like for example Apple TV the
general idea is that there's a broad category instead of category of things which do need to be
accessible the way European Blind Union is hoping to work is we want to make the connections with
the industry with the organizations who are manufacturing who are selling or providing those
services to people to make the breach between accessibility as a legal compliance basically there's
a digital accessibility standard most people here in the United States know Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines or WCAG we in Europe we follow the marvelously named EN301549 standard
which which adds some more requirements catchy it is very catchy which is a EN by now
but we love numbers in in this space so now we we try to work with some industry to unify
some things so one of the strands of work we we are trying to take on and where we already are
are making some progress his payment terminals this is a very interesting space because a lot of
the payment terminals are becoming rapidly the touch screen based systems that you don't type your
pin on a keyboard but you do it on a touch screen which is able to show you other things like
tip choices or asking for you know feedback or whatever the merchants wants to show there
those are not accessible at all for blind people now the European Accessibility Act does tell
the companies to make it accessible but it doesn't tell them really how there is this fantastic EN3015
standard but the standard is quite generic so for example one of the things companies now are
looking at is a way of making the terminal speak they don't want to make it speak for all the
customers but to make it speak for let's say just a blind customer how do you activate this method
is never is nowhere told this is where we try to talk to the companies and advocate for a universal
way of the very firm terminals specifically problem Monday they are like this thing that's spreading
around the world when I was living in New Zealand there was a glut of these very firm terminals
rolling out and it's very difficult to have a conversation with the company because they say oh
it's accessible because the RNIB said it was accessible and yet a blind person unless they have
been specifically trained on how to use that unit has no clue how to use it because it's not
following any kind of normal touch green access paradigm not to mention the fact that there are
many blind people who have no experience with touch greens at all what we want to achieve is
ideally would love to see at least that you can enter your pin code on a physical keypad
right because it's a cheap it makes sense it's no everybody who has seen a keypad once and then
worked with it a bit they understand the layout you have the dot five is marked the number five is
marked with a dot you know your your way around that and you're able to enter your pin code within
a reasonable amount of time
And it's humiliating right because there are people who line up behind you when you're
trying to pay, and if you're lucky, the person behind the counter has been told how
to turn on the accessibility mode, or maybe you know how to turn it on.
But if you're the first time user of this thing, it's just so unusual in terms of trying
to work out how to into your pin because they don't want to speaking over the speaker
and even then, when you plug in headphones, it's not speaking through the headphones as
you drag your finger along the touch screen.
So you have to learn the somewhat idiosyncratic way of using the machines and they call the
accessibility.
They do.
And this is something which I feel is a battle or a campaign we could try to influence globally
because it's not just Europe, it's here in the United States, I've seen similar terminals
being used in Asia, you know, it's all over the world.
And I fail to see much benefits.
I think when I try to talk to some industry people once to ask why the touch screen is
better, there were two arguments, it's easier to clean and we can show ads.
And I was like, come on.
And you are sacrificing that cheaper to produce as well.
Yes.
Well, it's cheaper to produce.
I mean, we're sacrificing so much user, it's not just blind people.
It's people of age, it's people who are low vision.
People with hand tremors, etc, etc, there's so many people who are affected by this.
I'm conscious that we're about to send you on a tour of our building which means that
you'll be, you'll be gone for ages.
But I wanted to, so the European Accessibility Act is fairly new right.
At the moment, would you describe all of this as a promise or are there things that you
can point to where you can already say, hey, this legislation has actually changed lives
for the better already.
I think it has happened or it's happening.
It's happening quite slowly.
One of the things the Act is doing is it finally is giving more power to the users in EU.
We didn't really use to have a way to say, please make this accessible because you have
to.
We rely more on the advocacy side.
As blind people are users, we need to use your service too, it's not possible right now,
which is the way you should do accessibility.
Now we do have the law to back us up, we can say, on top of that, you do need to do this
because it's mandated by a national and an international law.
On that front, I feel it's giving the tools for people.
I do think people could use those tools more and use those more effectively.
I think giving feedback or, as we call it, complain about accessibility problems should
be more prominent than people should know their rights.
On the front of the real gains, one of the things I've seen so lately because I do travel
quite a bit because of my work.
The airline's websites have become quite a lot better, not all of them and not perfectly,
but there definitely is a change.
I've found myself, give less thought on how hard the task of checking in or booking a
ticket would be pickers.
It now is at least a little bit more tolerable than it used to be.
For example, one side where we see this is definitely in transportation in airlines.
We see changes in some of the e-commerce signs, so online shopping is becoming a little
bit more accessible.
But there's still lots of work to do.
I would say we still are having a couple of gains rather than we can say that everything
has magically gotten better within the few years.
This law has been out.
So there's still lots of work to do.
There's still lots of awareness and understanding to do.
One of the things which is problematic with this law is it does not yet have everywhere.
It does not have good teeth, as we say, because the law is implemented in each country as
a national law.
This means each country implements the way the law is monitoring.
This one, again, depends on how good and how knowledgeable people are behind that work
in each country.
Some, let's say, for example, France may have very good people who are very knowledgeable
in accessibility and who understand the user impact.
But some other country might have some people who treat this again as a just legal thing,
as a compliance thing, without taking into consideration the real users behind this.
This shows.
This definitely shows.
So I think this is a bit problematic that some of the countries, some of the users benefit
from having better national organizations who are dealing with this law, who are properly
approaching this, and some users are a little bit disadvantaged, because their officials
have hired people who are just doing some kind of compliance or box-taking, as we can
say.
Well, there's plenty of collaboration to be had.
So we look forward to working with you again and send you on your tour of the building
and the International Rail and Technology Centre, but we're absolutely thrilled to have
you here, and we look forward to watching progress in Europe with a lot of interest.
I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad we are having this conversation because a lot of those
problems are between both sides of the ocean, and it does make the most sense to just work
towards the goals together.
So really, I'm going to go and disappear into the building now.
I don't know how big it is.
It seems to be quite huge.
Yeah, it is.
Fantastic.
Lovely to have you here.
Stay up to date on both local and national news by subscribing to NFB NewsLine, a free audio
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Sign up at NFB.org/NFBNewsLine.
And indeed, as the midterms get a bit closer and people are starting to vote now, there
is so much information on NFB NewsLine to guide you in terms of making an informed choice.
So make sure you check it out.
We've got time for some listener responses on access on this week Dave Gordon is writing,
and he says he enjoyed the look at iOS 27, and he wants to know about the dynamic island.
Is it useful for blind people, and if so, what's it useful for, and how do you use it?
Well it's a fair question because when the dynamic island was first announced, of course
there was a lot of publicity about the visual animations in the dynamic island, but beyond
those visuals is a genuinely useful accessibility tool, so let's go into that.
You can think of the dynamic island as a live interactive hub that sits at the very top
of your screen.
It only appears when there is an active background task like a running timer, or a phone call,
maybe turned by turn directions, that's another example, where you could be streaming audio
in some way.
So how do you use it with voiceover?
Well first of all you gotta know how to find it.
The dynamic island doesn't automatically announce itself when it appears to locate it, you
just touch the top centre of your screen, or swipe through your status bar elements, there
are hotkeys of course on Braille displays and Bluetooth keyboards that will also get
you to the status bar.
One voiceover lands on it, it'll read the current activity.
So if you're listening to music, it will tell you the track and the artist who put the
track together, if you're running a timer, it will read the remaining time which is actually
very handy.
Once you're focused on the island, you have a few ways to interact with it.
A standard double tap will open the full app that's currently utilizing the island, so
for example if you see that there's three minutes remaining on your timer, if you just
double tap at that point it will take you into the clock application.
But if you double tap and hold, or you use your voiceover rotor, you can expand the island
itself and it becomes kind of like a mini control panel, and that allows you to pause your
music, musical or end maps route right then and there without ever leaving the app that
you were originally working in, so you could do this all while being in another app.
When you're finished, just double tap anywhere outside the island and that will collapse it.
So I use the dynamic island a lot, it's a brilliant way to multitask and it proves that good
design can both be visually interesting and highly accessible.
Let's stay with iOS and banners writing in, he says thank you for always putting on such
a wonderful and informative podcast, this is a great resource for everyone in our community
regardless of their level of experience with access tech.
Thank you Ben, that's what we try to do, we try to make it of interest to people regardless
of where they are in their tech journey.
He says I have read several articles where sighted users praised the iOS 27 update and
I wish I could concur, however with a plethora of small bugs that I encounter as a voiceover
user, I find myself feeding like in some ways we have taken a step backward.
To be sure, image description on the rotor is a great new feature with plenty of promise.
The new and improved Siri also is appreciated, though very overdue and has some unfortunate
quirks.
I'm using an iPhone 17 Pro and would like to let you know.
you know about several bugs I see that degrade performance. There are three bugs that I noticed
many times before my phone is even unlocked. First, the audio quality of voiceover speech has
gone down hell, and I believe that is not subjective. While I am already pretty used to it,
there is no doubt that voiceover over the iPhone's speakers is less rich, flatter, and more
tinny. Headphones seem to negate this, and this is by no means unusable, but it is noticeable,
and I would worry that this could be even more pronounced for those who have hearing loss.
I also notice that Face ID seems slower and is not always triggered right away when performing
the home gesture. I find myself having to enter my passcode more often, or locking and unlocking
my phone rapidly in order to try and trigger Face ID again. When I do push the unlock button,
I am often greeted with an inaccurate time announcement from voiceover. It seems to often
announce that time from the last instance it was unlocked, while quickly swiping forward and
back will announce the correct time, this seems like a sloppy oversight that should have been
addressed in the beta cycle. I navigate between apps and screens on my iPhone very rapidly,
something my 17 Pro has had no problem with. I now notice that voiceover sometimes freezes
for about 3-5 seconds when I jump somewhere else, either from the app switcher or maybe just
triggering the back button. I am also disappointed with the way the new Siri behaves in many ways.
If I ask Siri to open an app, I have to dismiss her with the home gesture afterwards,
otherwise she will stay active and tell me something is wrong. The old Siri was smart enough
to go away after opening an app. Then there is the reverse problem. If Siri asks me a follow-up
question, I now have to push the side button in order to respond. Old Siri would automatically give
me the sound where I could respond. I have rubbed through my Siri settings and a fix for these issues
is not obvious. The cumulative effect of these bugs along with others that I may not know about
or be able to recall right now does make for a less polished and more frustrating experience.
I wonder if Apple needs to be reminded of the importance of making sure accessibility
bugs are addressed in major iOS releases. I had been under the impression that this year's
release was supposed to be highly focused on splashing bugs, which increases my disappointment.
I would be interested to know your thoughts on this and if others see it differently.
Thanks so much for adding in Ben and Ben is the president of the National Federation of the Blind
of Wisconsin. I am sure that you are having a few late nights at the moment where the brewers are
concerned. Lots of talk about that around the office here that I can tell you.
Regarding iOS 27, this is one of the rare occasions where I would actually recommend that people
upgrade to the beta. I'm normally very cautious about that because things are called beta for a reason,
but I do think in this case that quite a few of the issues that you mention, I resolved in 27.2
beta and they are so annoying, they're so inconvenient that I would recommend anybody does this,
who's frustrated by these bugs. The audio is better, the Siri issue you talk about is better,
a slightly easier way to dismiss Siri, by the way, is to tap the side button rather than execute
the home gesture. Or you could make it just all go away by upgrading to the 27.2 beta. You can
do that by going into settings in general and suffer updates and turning one of the beta seeds on.
What I do encourage people to do though, unless you like living on the cutting edge, is once Apple
releases 27.2 for real, and I don't think that will be far away now at the time that this podcast
is published, I would switch the beta's off again by doing the same process, go into settings,
general, software updates, double tap the beta option and make sure that you have beta switched to off.
Otherwise you will get new beta's going through the 27 cycle that may also introduce bugs
and they come pretty thick and fast. So it is disruptive for some people who don't like living
and breathing this technology to be constantly prompted to update their phone. So as someone who
is very conservative about recommending beta's to people, this is one exception where I recommend it
for everybody because it is just so much better than 27. It is disappointing that these things do
keep happening and as you say the 27 cycle was promised as this magical bug fix release. One of the
things we talked about in our access to future global technology summit last week was this defect
equity framework. This is something that I propose in 2023 when President Riccobono invited me
to the convention to talk about living blindly and technology and then in 2024, the federation
adopted the concept of a defect equity framework as policy by way of resolution. The way that
this works is to try and find a framework that says what is the equivalent if this happened to
a non-blind person? Because if our bugs are prioritized based solely on how many people they
affect, our bugs are always going to be at the bottom of the queue. But if we have a defect equity
framework that says hey a voice over is playing up that's effectively like a sighted person's
screen playing up, then we're far more focused on the impact rather than the number of people affected
and I think that's essential for getting these bugs resolved in a timely manner. It's something
that we have to think about it, something that we have to implement now that mainstream companies
have also become access tech companies. So I appreciate you raising this Ben, you are certainly not
the first to raise the frustration. In this case, go out and get that 27.2 beta. A lot of your
issues will be resolved some won't I am still having the issue you talk about where series
and automatically coming back to listen after it asks you a question like do you want to send
this message and that is frustrating and I do hope that that will be addressed very quickly.
This segues us nicely into a message from Sai who says hi Jonathan, you mentioned that the
public beta of iOS 27.2 is much better in terms of voice over accessibility. Do we have any idea when
27.2 might be released? I've never missed around with iOS beta releases before but I do have an
iPhone 18 Pro I'd love to start using and must start using by November 1 so I can trade my iPhone
15 in Verizon for a large discount on the new phone. Sai, I don't know Apple hasn't said so I'm
going to take a guess based on reading the tea leaves that we may see 27.2 in the last week
of October. That is what I'm thinking so we're not too far away at all if you can hang on a
little bit longer or if you really want to get using that new phone I mean it must be sitting
there tantalizing you if you've got that new phone and you're not using it yet it's kind of like
eating one potato chip with the bag there you know so if you wonder what grade now you can switch it
off again as I just mentioned once 27.2 was out but I think we've only got a capital more weeks
to wait and horseway from Canada says hello Jonathan I bought the new iPhone 18 running iOS 27.01
and when I'm making the gesture two times two fingers on each side of the screen to enable
braille screen input a lot of times it does the two times three finger gesture it is the first time
I experienced this problem and I am wondering if I am the only one with this issue to fix this for
the moment I've reassigned another gesture to open braille screen input thanks for writing in with
this I have an iPhone 18 Pro Max I didn't get it on release day I think I I jinxed it by saying
on access on because I knew it was going to be published after release and I was recording early
and I said oh I got mine all that kind of thing and I didn't actually get it on delivery day because
of a bit of a debacle with the delivery and if you follow me on social media or you've been
looking at my sooner creations on my YouTube channel you will have seen the song that I was inspired
to put together with Suno about my delivery debacle with the iPhone but anyway it did actually
finally turn up so I have the iPhone 18 Pro Max and what I can say is that that standard method
you describe of invoking braille screen input is working flawlessly for me but that doesn't mean
it's working flawlessly for everybody because there may be some setting some variable somewhere in
the myriad of voice oppositions that causes it to be unreliable so let's put it out there to the massive
access on audience and find out there's anybody else noticing that with new Apple hardware it is
difficult to invoke braille screen input with the traditional method or it's now traditional anyway
of having a finger on the top of the phone and a finger on the bottom of the phone and double tapping
there I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this issue hello Jonathan writes Richard
Turner the subject line is my question oh I better check the subject line thank you for the great
podcast you are doing which Siri voice did you use in the podcast about iOS 27 and the new
Siri Richard it is called American voice six and it's one of those voices that's only available
on the newer phones that have the resources to run it and once you've chosen that voice you also
have some ability to configure its
parameters such as how expressive it is. So that means that one person's Siri voice
6 may sound a little different from another's. Robert J. Chris says, "I was listening to an
excess on podcast from June 2025 where you reviewed Oakley smart glasses. You commented
during the podcast that you thought more blind people should go into IT fields. I have
a degree in computer science and have been involved in various capacities for most of
the past 50 years. Here are some observations that I hope will help. One, good braille skills
are a must. Computer programming requires that code be entered correctly. For example, one
popular language, Python, uses leading spaces as part of a program. Blocks of code must
be indented. If a statement doesn't have the correct number of leading spaces, an error
or unexpected behavior will result. Two, an eight dot braille display is very important. In
modern languages such as Python, Java, Rust, Go etc., capitalization is important. For
example, it is possible to create a variable named Cat that's Cat with all lower case.
If Cat is written with one or more uppercase letters, it is presumed to be a separate and
distinct variable from Cat or lower case. The variables Cat and then capital CAT and
all blocked capitals CAT and CA capital T are treated as four separate variables. Three,
programs are often developed using development environments. These can be difficult for the
blind student to use. Fortunately, a blind student can get around the use of specialized
environments by using editors such as Ed Sharp, notepad++, notepad or on a Linux system
using one of the standard editors. Four, in order to obtain a certification, a student
must take exams administered by the company PearsonView. This can be problematic if a student
needs to use a proctor to read the questions and or describe a diagram. Thank you so much
Robert. Really appreciate that and as you know, the federation is deeply committed to ensuring
that blind people have access to STEM subjects, STEM education. It's one of the reasons why
we have played such a key role in the development of Monarch. It's super technology for this
very purpose and you make a very important point about the importance of Braille. Here's
Abby Taylor. Haven't heard from you for a while, Abby, so welcome. She says as always,
I enjoy your access on podcast. I found your IRS 27 demos enlightening and I'm curious
about your toothbrush and app. Maybe you could elaborate on that in a future episode. It's
called the Philips SonoCare Prestige 9000. It's one of those ultra sonic toothbrushes
and the app kind of tells you where you're brushing to match or where you're not brushing
enough and that kind of thing. The app is a little bit tangential to the fact that it gives
a really good clean in my experience and it's quite reliable. It's not particularly cheap
but I'm hoping that it will last based on the reviews that I have it should. It gets
pretty high reviews on Amazon. I think Philips SonoCare is about to release a new brush
and from what I can gather that new brush may have a screen on it. The one that I have
does not and I like it that way. I don't know whether the screen will introduce any accessibility
challenges, whether it is just read only, or whether there may be some touch elements
to that screen. So if anybody investigates the new generation of Philips SonoCare brush,
you can let us know but this Prestige 9000 seems to be doing the job alright I think.
If we continue now I'm writing about an issue of which your listeners may not be aware.
Amazon KDP, which stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, is now requiring all authors to verify
their identity to continue selling and publishing books there. They've imposed an October 13th
deadline for most writers like me. The process involving scanning an ID and taking pictures
of your faith from several angles can be challenging for sighted individuals. But for
those with blindness or low vision, without assistance, it's impossible. KDP recommends
using a smart device instead of a computer. I was able to complete the process but it
took me three hours and three IRA agents. Scanning my ID wasn't difficult but the infinitely
patient interpreter said trouble telling me how to hold the phone so the camera could capture
the photos of my face. To make matters worse, the video service on the KDP website timed
out every five minutes and after 30 minutes my IRA small business minutes timed out and
I had to call back. Finally when a third IRA agent suggested putting my phone on the
desk holding it upright and moving it that way we were able to get the job done in a matter
of minutes. I was lucky but I'm sure there are other blind or visually impaired authors
who don't even have smartphones, but loan access to IRA or other sighted assistants. Surely
you agree that Amazon should provide reasonable accommodation for these writers.
Thanks very much Abby, I can say that I haven't been made aware of this until your email
and for this sort of thing which obviously has quite a great deal of significance I would
encourage people to contact me directly.
[email protected] is my address, this is a systemic
issue of significance and if I don't know about it then we can't make progress. I wanted
to read this given the looming deadline on this issue but I have also reached out to Amazon
on it now that I'm aware of it and if we get a response from Amazon we will let you
know if we don't we will persist. So thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Hi Jonathan and everyone this is Amy Rool calling in from Maine. I just wanted to talk
a bit about the issue regarding ordering with Alexa. I have not had any difficulty and have
been able to go through the entire checkout process. I am using Alexa plus if that makes
a difference and I don't have a pin involved because I haven't been required to have one.
However I have not only been able to fully check out but I also have been able to ask when
there are different size options what is the cheapest per unit price which I couldn't
do when I was using the older version of Alexa. Anyway just my two cents thought I would
let people know that at least here I am able to fully check out from Amazon using the
alady plus. Lucky you Amy thank you so much for sharing your experience and I might just
try it again you've inspired me. That concludes this episode of Axis on the technology
podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future
episode email us, attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to
[email protected].
That's
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That's
[email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind
Visit our website nfb.org or phone us 410659-9314. That's 410659-9314 and be sure to
check out the nation's blind podcast right from where you heard this podcast.
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